My wife and I have a running joke — or as she puts it: a running conversation — that we’ve maintained for years. To set up the joke: I’m a 6’ 2” male-presenting person, which is practically the perfect height for someone like me. It’s tall enough that most people will refer to you as ‘tall’. People often have to look up at you to hold a conversation. On the other hand, you aren’t so tall that you’re bumping your head on lighting fixtures or doorways. Like I said: the perfect height.
My wife, while taller than average, is shorter than I am. However, she mock-refuses to embrace the fact, even when I have to reach for something on her behalf. She insists that she is so tall, taller than I am. Truth be told, in many ways she is, just not physically.
It’s not a good joke, but like with many relationships, it’s part of our history and something we find to be cute (even if no one else does).
The protagonist in Fay Weldon’s THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A SHE-DEVIL (SHE-DEVIL going forward) is Ruth, a 6’ 2” woman who, given the nature of a world built around men, does not fit because the world expects women to adhere to a specific mould. She is deemed too tall, too gangly, too plain — she has four moles on her face, three of which sprout hairs — and is simply too much for society to bear. She is married to an accountant named Bobbo, to whom she births two children — Nicola and Andy — after which Bobbo quickly loses interest in Ruth, ultimately leaving her for one of his clients: Anne Fisher, a romance novelist, who literally is a beacon of light for Bobbo, living in a repurposed lighthouse.
Upon being scorned, Ruth sheds her house, her children, and begins a new life that includes ruining the people and systems that brought her misery, all while literally reshaping herself into the physical shape that society will embrace.
While it’s tempting to consider SHE-DEVIL as a vengeance tale — and yes, there’s definitely a lot of vengeance being sown here — Weldon noted that it’s more of a tale of envy. That much is undeniable, as Ruth uses her wiles and smarts and coercive abilities to shine a light on male oppressors, corrupting them while also using them to turn herself into the visage of someone who will be embraced by a patriarchal society, even if it means enduring endless indignities, pain, and suffering to become the image of someone the world accepts.
Yes, there’s that undercurrent of envy, of wanting to be the perfect woman who can get by without friction in a man’s world, but it’s executed in a way that subverts each-and-every column of said world; from religion to science to the medicinal. Ruth considers herself a she-devil — a fallen woman — and while men would consider her to be a villain, she’s doing a hero’s work, even as she castigates herself to do so, to an extent that becomes body horror.
SHE-DEVIL is a very complex work, and I’m somewhat shocked that it’s mostly been forgotten. (I’ll note that there was a BBC mini-series adaptation of it in the mid-80s, and there was a late-80s film version starring Roseanne Barr — both of which I’ll address in future posts.)
Sadly, Weldon passed away earlier this year at the age of 91, leaving behind a great number of feminist novels, so if you want to remember her in the best way possible, pick up a few and start turning those pages.