She Devil Essay 
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Essay
2 Question 4 “Fay Weldon’s The Lives and Loves of a She Devil is a feminist revenge fantasy run riot but it scarcely opens up any credible and liberating spaces for the re-invention of female identity.” Discuss.
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Fay
Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a She-Devil [SD] is not a feminist manifesto, a call to arms or declaration of independence. Weldon does not seek out and 1
colonise new territory for the emancipation of women from a patriarchal and misogynistic society. Instead, Weldon delineates the complexity of female identity and feminine compliance through SD’s grotesque revenge plot. Rather than expanding the territory of female identity Weldon uses satire as a wedge to illustrate the futility of the feminine “masquerade” (Lacan 583). Weldon’s bifurcation demonstrates that female identity remains entirely dependent on phallic parameters. It is only through the protagonist’s metaphysical transmogriMication that masculine sites and structures are threatened, which, ironically, occurs as a by-‐product of her desire to be desired by men. To support this interpretation, I will argue that in SD the psychoanalytical and theoretical positions of Jacques Lacan are exposed, enforced and extended. This essay suggests that feminine subjectivity is revealed and even ridiculed, but is ultimately
Essay
2 Question 4 “Fay Weldon’s The Lives and Loves of a She Devil is a feminist revenge fantasy run riot but it scarcely opens up any credible and liberating spaces for the re-invention of female identity.” Discuss.
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
Fay
Weldon’s The Life and Loves of a She-Devil [SD] is not a feminist manifesto, a call to arms or declaration of independence. Weldon does not seek out and 1
colonise new territory for the emancipation of women from a patriarchal and misogynistic society. Instead, Weldon delineates the complexity of female identity and feminine compliance through SD’s grotesque revenge plot. Rather than expanding the territory of female identity Weldon uses satire as a wedge to illustrate the futility of the feminine “masquerade” (Lacan 583). Weldon’s bifurcation demonstrates that female identity remains entirely dependent on phallic parameters. It is only through the protagonist’s metaphysical transmogriMication that masculine sites and structures are threatened, which, ironically, occurs as a by-‐product of her desire to be desired by men. To support this interpretation, I will argue that in SD the psychoanalytical and theoretical positions of Jacques Lacan are exposed, enforced and extended. This essay suggests that feminine subjectivity is revealed and even ridiculed, but is ultimately
Cited: Press, 2009. UP, 1998. (1993): 103.