Self And Other

The contemporary British writer Fay Weldon has become famous for hernovels since the1970s. The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, published in1983, wasone of Weldon’s most famous and popular novels. Through the protagonist Ruth’stransformation from a weak housewife to a tough dictator, Weldon presents thesocial reality of British patriarchal supremacy, investigates the way out offeminism and the future of women, explores the critical view of postmodernfeminist thoughts, reveals the dilemma of feminist movement and development,and implies the author’s own contradictory feminist ideas which are bothsupportive and critical. From postmodern feminist perspective, this thesis exploresRuth’s struggle between self and other in the process of her awakening, revengeand perplexity through textual analysis and reveals Weldon’s feminist propositionand her contemplation on the way out of feminism and the future of women.The paper is mainly divided into three parts. Chapter One analyses Ruth’sawakening in ambivalence as the other-victim with her sufferings as the startingpoint. With the theories of the French feminist Beauvoir and the postmodernfeminists such as Cixous, this part discusses the bitter experiences, inner struggleand ambivalent mentality of Ruth as the submissive other-victim as well as herawakening after struggle. Chapter Two analyses Ruth’s revenge from theperspective of postmodern feminism and explores her rebellion against thepatriarchy and emancipation of the self. Ruth is awakened after being abandonedand transforms into an emancipator of female sexuality, subjectivity and capability.She breaks free from the patriarchal confinement of female subjectivity, performsradical revenge in various identities and transfers discourse power from men towomen. It is a process of rebelling against and deconstructing other as well asemancipating and constructing self. Chapter Three studies the dilemma of Ruth as the other duplicate, her perplexity in the process of deconstructing tradition andconstructing self and her indeterminate future as a self and a woman from theperspective of postmodern feminism. Ruth has not successfully constructed hertrue self and womanhood; on the contrary, she builds a female hegemony underphallocentrism by duplicating male utopia. Thus the future of Ruth as a self and awoman is indeterminate and perplexed.The Life and Loves of a She-Devil is Fay Weldon’s masterpiece ofpostmodern feminism, in which she presents seemingly contradictory but actuallycritical feminist ideas through the depiction of the awakening, revenge andperplexity of Ruth in the process of her struggling between self and other. Weldonholds the view that it is terribly wrong if feminism emphasizes and pursues femalesupremacy and falls into the patriarchal cliché.