Women's humour in Barbara Pym's fiction

Abstract

This dissertation explores the function(s) and characteristics of women's humour in Barbara Pym's Some Tame Gazelle (STG), Excellent Women (EW), and Jane and Prudence (JP). The study argues that the structural and thematic strategies related with women's humour, help the writer to deconstruct the fundamentals of the existing dominant culture in these novels. In STG, women's humour undermines the patriarchal order through thematic and structural strategies used by Belinda and Harriet, such as the reversal of the romantic love plot, double-voiced discourse, gossip, self-deprecating or understating language, the sympathetic bond between the narrator and the heroine as well as among the characters, undermining the images and stereotypes of a spinster and a bachelor, humour - as a means of the narrator's power and control, as well as a device for women's social critique through the subversion of the institution of church and the clergymen. Likewise, it is also argued that through the application of women's humour, disruption of the established and dominating patriarchal culture is primarily pursued in EW. Taking into account the construction of women's humour in this novel, the role(s) of following rhetorical and thematic strategies are found to be significant: highlighting Mildred's self-deprecation and double voiced discourse, emphasising on the subversion of images and stereotypes of both female characters such as spinsters, and male characters, such as the Byronic hero. Similarly, it is argued that Pym's JP subverts the conventional image of the housewife and spinster by presenting Jane and Prudence, two unconventional women. Pym undermines the image of the conventional wife of the clergyman through Jane's creation of a fantastic world, in which there is a reversal of her female character and her use of the double-voiced discourse. It also subverts the image of the spinster through Prudence's creation of a romantic and satisfactory world which consequently subverts the male image through presenting their indolence and self-indulgence.