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The Life and Loves of a She-Devil [Secure Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader]
eBook by Fay Weldon
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eBook Category: Mainstream
eBook Description:  Ruth is, by her own admission, an unlucky woman. Ungainly, unattractive, unassertive, she trudges through life bowed under the weight of a loveless marriage to a brazen, cheating, indifferent man named Bobbo. Although she has patiently suffered through the small and not-so-small indignities occasioned by sharing a life with the uncaring Bobbo, as The Life and Loves of a She-Devil opens, Ruth's patience is wearing thin, and the pain and resentment she has been swallowing all these years are finally beginning to bubble over. This is a black comedy, but it is also-as black comedies tend to be-an exceedingly sad meditation on facing one's lot in life, and coming to grips with a capricious fate that lavishly rewards some while cruelly withholding from others. But more importantly, it is a scathing indictment of a society and a value system that reinforces, twenty times over, that basic, cosmic unfairness. Ruth's adversary is a petite blonde named Mary Fisher, a superficial and casually amoral woman whose chosen occupation is writing passionate, best-selling, romance novels about the nature of love. Mary has been born with everything-looks, proportions, hair, and an understanding of how best to negotiate with the world to get what she wants. Not only does the world pay constant tribute to her shallow attributes (her novels are best-sellers), but Ruth's own husband openly prefers her over his dutiful, but unglamorous wife. When Ruth finally snaps and embraces the hatred that has been welling up inside of her, she goes on a single-minded quest for the power, success and glamour that have been denied her all these years. While she's at it, she wreaks revenge on her wayward husband and his loathsome mistress. In doing so, in embracing the "She-Devil" inside of her, Ruth exposes the contradictions and hypocrisies of the superficial culture in which we live. If our culture tends to heap further rewards on those already rewarded by fate, it also sells us the largely false notion that we can shape ourselves into whatever we want to be. It is a pernicious system since it not only teaches a person to be perpetually dissatisfied with him or (especially) herself, it also suggests that the feeling of dissatisfaction is indicative of a failure of will, of morals, of money, of imagination. Ruth, grotesquely transforms herself utterly, burning down her house, overhauling her goals and her sense of purpose, and, most alarmingly, recreating the contours of her body and face through extensive plastic surgery. The result is monstrous and totally morally bankrupt, but may unfortunately be indicative of the monstrosity and bankruptcy of the image-obsessed value system in which we live.
eBook Publisher: RosettaBooks
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2002
Available eBook Formats [Secure Mobipocket/Microsoft Reader - What's this?]: SECURE MOBIPOCKET FORMAT (293 KB], SECURE MICROSOFT READER FORMAT (309 KB] - Requires Microsoft Reader 2.1.1 for PCs, or Microsoft Reader 2.2.2 on Pocket PC 2002 handheld devices. Some older Pocket PCs can be upgraded. Learn More.
All formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
Microsoft Reader ISBN: 0795308000
MobiPocket Reader ISBN: 079530806X
Adobe Acrobat Reader ISBN: 0795308027
eReader (recommended) ISBN: 0795308051
 
Chapter 1 Mary Fisher lives in a High Tower, on the edge of the sea: she writes a great deal about the nature of love. She tells lies. Mary Fisher is forty-three, and accustomed to love. There has always been a man around to love her, sometimes quite desperately, and she has on occasion returned this love, but never, I think, with desperation. She is a writer of romantic fiction. She tells lies to herself, and to the world. Mary Fisher has $ (US) 754,300 on deposit in a bank in Cyprus, where the tax laws are lax. This is the equivalent of £502,867 sterling, 1,931,009 German marks, 1,599,117 Swiss francs, 185,055,050 yen, and so forth, it hardly matters which. A woman's life is what it is, in any corner of the world. And wherever you go it is the same -- to them that hath, such as Mary Fisher, shall be given, and to them that hath not, such as myself, even that which they have shall be taken away. Mary Fisher earned all her money herself. Her first husband, Jonah, told her that capitalism was immoral, and she believed him, having a gentle and pliable nature. Otherwise no doubt by now Mary Fisher would have a substantial portfolio of investments. As it is, she owns four houses and these are cumulatively worth -- depending on the state of the property market -- anything between half a million and a million dollars. A house, of course, only means anything in financial terms if there is anyone to buy it, or if you can bear to sell it. Otherwise a house can only be somewhere to live, or somewhere where those connected with you can live. With luck, the ownership of property brings peace of mind; without this luck it brings aggravation and discontent. I wish unluck in property matters on Mary Fisher. Mary Fisher is small and pretty and delicately formed, prone to fainting and weeping and sleeping with men while pretending that she doesn't. Mary Fisher is loved by my husband, who is her accountant. I love my husband and I hate Mary Fisher. Copyright © 1958 by Fay Weldon
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