The Spa Decameron by Fay Weldon
Mar. 24th, 2009 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaI recently read Fay Weldon's The Spa [American version of the title], which is her take on Boccacio's Decameron. I was thinking about the various issues discussed therein and how important/relevant they are, even when presented in such a vulgar and sordid way.
Weldon is a rare writer of satire in these overly sincere times. One of her repetitive themes is how women aren't prevented from making good choices about their lives and well-being merely from the blinding or entrapment of circumstance, but are complicit through sentiment. The unraveling that often occurs for these women reveals secret, hidden, strengths that run contrary to what was both expected and suggested by their previous lives.
I especially liked the story of the Vicar's Ex-Wife, which is about a marriage/vicarage haunted by a poltergeist that is always breaking and hiding things. This is, unsurprisingly, indicative of both the abusive/controlling marriage and the wives (repressed) emotional state:
"Do I believe in ghosts?" she asks. "Not really, I can't afford to.... But I believe in the power of rage if you try to deny it," she says.
And rage the ghost does. The more the wife tries play Patient Griselda, the angrier the ghost becomes, especially fond of the vicar's collection of antique porcelain and pottery. The vicar's wife aka the manifestation is like a patchwork collection of remnants (revenants) of all the women who were wronged at the vicarage (and by extension the church.) The story is quite funny, but also a mite chilling, even as it is told without affect by a non-believer. That combination of subject and tone is something only Weldon would attempt.
It could be argued that Weldon is really a one-novel writer who's been practicing theme and variation her enter career. Her own life story peeks out of the pages of her books with predictable regularity and yet that doesn't mean those experiences are irrelevant to the issues at hand.
My other favorite chapter is the Conspiracy Theorist's tale in which a woman living an otherwise unremarkable upper-middle class life believes in what she calls the 'Gramsci Project.' Built on the theories of Antonio Gramsci she posits the supremacy of the state through a kind of group consensus mind control that is guided primarily through a culture of entertainment.
This chapter is chillingly prescient until someone asks who would benefit from such a state of things? Especially if it brought about the end of capitalism as she claims. We are brought back to the present situation with a reminder that this character, like Weldon, is an economist by education. Her education has been thwarted by the lack of opportunity, that her life, quite frankly, does not offer her sufficient outlet for her exceptional mind.
I found the description of the 'Gramsci Project' quite compelling along with the final realization about education/opportunity and how this is a state of things that impacts not just women, but many adults.
There is a story about a women (the Public Speaker) with a heart condition that is constantly landing her in emergency rooms. She thrives on the attention and is concerned that the condition seems to have subsided since she became involved with a taxi driver. Her identity is so wrapped up in her illness that she fears the disappearance of the condition means she's lost something essential. At the end of her story, when the condition returns, she says, "Oh thank God! It's all right. I can have my friends as well! I can have my my man. I can have my heart, I can have it all."
She departs in a whirl of activity and the narrator wryly observes, "Perhaps she could indeed have it all, though she had to risk death to achieve it."
Many of the stories end with these wry kickers. While it might not be her best book it is certainly a worthy satire of Boccacio whose ribald tales of the wealthy at rest while hiding out from the plague has a similar eschatological flavor of decadence and decay. Most of the readers' reviews online talk about how they gave up in disgust---I would say that's a fair estimation of the book---but I would also comment the despite all the press we get about living in the age of irony, Weldon's work is a rare contemporary example of satire, which is by nature both disgusting and taboo-breaking (and hilarious!) I don't know that I would recommend the book to anyone I know, but I got far more than I initially realized out of reading it.
Weldon is a rare writer of satire in these overly sincere times. One of her repetitive themes is how women aren't prevented from making good choices about their lives and well-being merely from the blinding or entrapment of circumstance, but are complicit through sentiment. The unraveling that often occurs for these women reveals secret, hidden, strengths that run contrary to what was both expected and suggested by their previous lives.
I especially liked the story of the Vicar's Ex-Wife, which is about a marriage/vicarage haunted by a poltergeist that is always breaking and hiding things. This is, unsurprisingly, indicative of both the abusive/controlling marriage and the wives (repressed) emotional state:
"Do I believe in ghosts?" she asks. "Not really, I can't afford to.... But I believe in the power of rage if you try to deny it," she says.
And rage the ghost does. The more the wife tries play Patient Griselda, the angrier the ghost becomes, especially fond of the vicar's collection of antique porcelain and pottery. The vicar's wife aka the manifestation is like a patchwork collection of remnants (revenants) of all the women who were wronged at the vicarage (and by extension the church.) The story is quite funny, but also a mite chilling, even as it is told without affect by a non-believer. That combination of subject and tone is something only Weldon would attempt.
It could be argued that Weldon is really a one-novel writer who's been practicing theme and variation her enter career. Her own life story peeks out of the pages of her books with predictable regularity and yet that doesn't mean those experiences are irrelevant to the issues at hand.
My other favorite chapter is the Conspiracy Theorist's tale in which a woman living an otherwise unremarkable upper-middle class life believes in what she calls the 'Gramsci Project.' Built on the theories of Antonio Gramsci she posits the supremacy of the state through a kind of group consensus mind control that is guided primarily through a culture of entertainment.
This chapter is chillingly prescient until someone asks who would benefit from such a state of things? Especially if it brought about the end of capitalism as she claims. We are brought back to the present situation with a reminder that this character, like Weldon, is an economist by education. Her education has been thwarted by the lack of opportunity, that her life, quite frankly, does not offer her sufficient outlet for her exceptional mind.
I found the description of the 'Gramsci Project' quite compelling along with the final realization about education/opportunity and how this is a state of things that impacts not just women, but many adults.
There is a story about a women (the Public Speaker) with a heart condition that is constantly landing her in emergency rooms. She thrives on the attention and is concerned that the condition seems to have subsided since she became involved with a taxi driver. Her identity is so wrapped up in her illness that she fears the disappearance of the condition means she's lost something essential. At the end of her story, when the condition returns, she says, "Oh thank God! It's all right. I can have my friends as well! I can have my my man. I can have my heart, I can have it all."
She departs in a whirl of activity and the narrator wryly observes, "Perhaps she could indeed have it all, though she had to risk death to achieve it."
Many of the stories end with these wry kickers. While it might not be her best book it is certainly a worthy satire of Boccacio whose ribald tales of the wealthy at rest while hiding out from the plague has a similar eschatological flavor of decadence and decay. Most of the readers' reviews online talk about how they gave up in disgust---I would say that's a fair estimation of the book---but I would also comment the despite all the press we get about living in the age of irony, Weldon's work is a rare contemporary example of satire, which is by nature both disgusting and taboo-breaking (and hilarious!) I don't know that I would recommend the book to anyone I know, but I got far more than I initially realized out of reading it.
