Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions Read Online Free PDF

herself signals her own unreliability by referring to her story as "fiction" and warning the priest who transcribes her tape that there are no rules in fiction, thus granting herself the freedom of the storyteller. "I have," she remarks, "or had in my life, no particular appetite for truth'' (p. 17). Further, the priest several times doubts the accuracy of the tape recording, acknowledging that the "Technology of Truth" is "in its infancy, not its maturity" (p. 16). Finally, the story of the dead is refuted by the living. Timothy Tovey, said by Gabriella to have been the most devoted of her lovers, denies to the priest having seen her in the twenty years before being summoned to her deathbed. "Did she tell you the truth?" Tovey inquires of the priest. "I doubt it" (p. 77). The closest Gabriella has come to royalty is to have lived, as Tovey's mistress, in a house "in the keeping of the Royal Family to dispose of as they want" (p. 17).
Yet unlike Ruth, in She-Devil, who ends by inhabiting another woman's story, tower, and even her body, Gabriella is her own creation. In her own tale she is, unlike Red Riding Hood, unafraid of the wolf, and in the end she chooses the role of a Sleeping Beauty who does not wait for the kiss of a prince, but instead captivates the priest who transcribes her story, as if to prove her claim to the part of the irresistible princess.
There may be no rules in fiction, but there are rules in life, Gabriella Sumpter maintains as she distills the "valid rules" from her experience. In a similar spirit of instruction, Gemma passes along "words of advice" in Weldon's novel with that phrase as its title. Like Gwyneth's aphorisms and Gabriella's rules, Gemma's "words" are suspect, arising as they do from the fairy tale that she inhabits as an antidote to reality. Words of Advice tells of three womenGemma, Elsa, and Janicewho must extricate themselves from the mythologies on which they have patterned their behavior and expectations. Instead of palimpsestic images, as they are in The Rules of Life, fairy tales are in this novel used overtly as elements of the plot. Elsa tells fairy tales to her brothers and sisters and comes to see herself in terms of the tales, Gemma tells Elsa her own life as a fairy tale in order to save her from ignorance, and Janice awakens from her grim existence as the discarded wife. Transformations abound amid resonances of Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, and Sleeping Beauty.
Young Elsa, secretary to and mistress of Victor, Janice's estranged husband, is compounded of Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and the heroine of Rumpelstiltskin, narrowly escaping the fates of all three. Arriving at the

 

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home of Hamish and Gemma for the weekend, Elsa finds herself consigned to a high room where she is expected to type inventories of the antiques that the wealthy Hamish will sell to Victor. No more able to type well than she is to spin straw into gold, Elsa is rescued by Hamish-as-Rumpelstiltskin in exchange for sexual favors; here, that is, Rumpelstiltskin not only demands the girl's first-born child, but intends to father it himself. Simultaneously, Elsa as Red Riding Hood is willingly pursued by Victor-as-wolf, a reference that Weldon confirms by several times echoing the language of the tale. Following their predinner lovemaking, for example, Victor prepares to leave Elsa, "the better to change for dinner" (p. 9).
Elsa's youthful innocence is counterpointed to Gemma's cynicism. Whereas nineteen-year-old Elsa is vulnerable to the snares set for fairy-tale heroines, Gemma has willfully constructed her own history to resemble a fairy tale rather than the unglamorous truth that she has married the frog instead of the prince. Gemma recognizes in Elsa the naivete of her own youthful self; what she does not recognize until the end of the novel is that she is just as ensnared in fiction as Elsa is. Early in the novel, Gemma signals their similarity when she says to Elsa, "I have a