Cultural and Literary Background
In all of her works, Fay Weldon challenges gender, social, and literary conventions; she also provides an astute commentary on the contemporary cultural moment in which her books are written. Weldon’s first novel, The Fat Woman’s Joke (1967), based on her 1966 teleplay The Fat Woman’s Tale, establishes many of the themes that are present in her subsequent writing: the problems women face because they are women, fraught relationships between women and men, men’s greater economic and social power, women’s domestic discontent and subversive behaviour. The novel also reflects the pervasive cultural changes taking place in post-war …
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Citation: Reisman, Mara. "The Fat Woman's Joke". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 October 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=884, accessed 21 November 2024.]
