The Making Of A She Devil

Fay Weldon (1933- ) is a contemporary British woman writer, whose enchanting works in various genres win great acclaim for her at home and abroad. As one of her representative novels dealing with the common experience of women, The Life and Loves of a She Devil (1983) tells a highly dramatic and thrilling revenge story of a monstrous woman. In spite of its wide popularity in the West, the novel yet gains inadequate critical attention during the past few years. Still, among the scarce study on Fay Weldon's works, the term "subversion" is widely used and discussed, whether from the psychological or narratological approach. However, little attention has been paid to the fundamental archetypes throughout the story. Thus, a further archetypal study of the novel becomes the main focus of this thesis. Through a detailed textual reading and analysis, the thesis attempts to prove that as a characteristic feminist fantasy, the novel of She Devil exhibits the female efforts to adapt and subvert the orthodox literary convention as well as patriarchal ideology as reflected in the traditional myths.The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction to the author, her novel She Devil, as well as literature review. Chapter Two surveys the features of feminist criticism and the female literary tradition since the 1960s. Then, in Chapter Three, Four and Five, there is a detailed analysis of the adaptation and subversion of the archetypal motifs embodied in the novel: the Original Sin, Satan's temptation and Satan's kingdom. Chapter Six is the conclusion, which further explores the significance of such adaptation and subversion in modern female writing as a whole.