Free Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions by Regina Barreca

de gueules ... ( Pantagruel, ch. 1, p. 219)

 

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And others grew in the nose so much that it resembled the spout of an alembic, and was all multicolored, all spangled with little buboes, proliferating, empurpled, pom-pommed, all enamelled, all buttoned and broidered with gules ...
Weldon's armory of stylistic devices includes the Rabelaisian catalogue, the comic technique that involves dazing the reader with a seemingly unstoppable list. The list is most often a recitation of objects, or the attributes of objects, in their unignorable physicality, which is itself a reflection of the profusion of Nature. At times the list may be mockingly organized under a teasing scheme of pseudo-coherence, as in a recipe:
"Take 1/2 pt of vinegar," she said, "2 oz Fuller's earth, 1 oz of dried fowl dung, 1/2 oz of soap and the juice of two large onions....". [ The Rules of Life, p. 40]
It is an aspect of Rabelaisian humor that such objects in a list need not by any means be attractiveat least according to the official view of the attractive, though they are always sensuous:
Elsa, stopping to do up her zip, stumbles over her own yellow and crimson platform heels and drops her shoulder bag. Its contents roll down the steps: hair rollers, pay slips, brush, old underground tickets, deodorants, contraceptive pills, her change of clothespink satin shirt, yellow cheesecloth blouse, clean red bikini pantsand so on. [ Little Sisters, p. 7]
Every item reminds us of the physicality of Elsa, untameable, though she may try to tame her hair with curlers, her power to conceive with pills, her odor with deodorant, and her red crotch with red pants. The list most often implies body contact with inanimate objects, the possibility of carnally caused dirt and disorder. The more a list spreads, the more it spreads the possibility of contamination, the miscellany hinting at a miscegenation, the union of things that ought to be kept separatelike dung and onions, or dung and drapery:
Puis je me torchay aux linceaux, à la couverture, aux rideaulx, d'un coisson, d'un tapiz, d'un verd, d'une mappe, d'une serviette, d'un mouschenez, d'un peignouoir. [ Gargantua, ch. xiii, p. 78]
Then I wiped myself on cloth hangings, on the coverlet, on the curtains, on a cushion, on a carpet, on a green rug, on a wiper, on a napkin, on a handkerchief, on a dressing-gown.
The effect of unstoppability, of excess reflecting nature's thoughtless excess, is never more pronounced than in the employment of lists involving food.

 

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Grandgousier estoit bon raillard en son temps, aymant à boyre net autant que homme qui pour lors fust au monde, et mangeoit volontiers salé. A ceste fin, avoit ordinairement bonne munition de jambons de Magence et de Baionne, force langues de beuf fumées, abondance de andouilles en la saison et beuf sallé à la moustarde, renfort de boutargues, provision de saulcisses ... [ Gargantua, ch. iii, p. 46]
Grandgousier was a boon companion in his day, loving unwatered drink as much as any man in the world, and by choice he ate salt food. To this end, he ordinarily had a good supply of hams of Mayence and Bayonne, many smoked tongues of beef, an abundance of tripes in season and beef salted with mustard, reinforcements of caviar, provision of sausages ...
Women writers of recent times, including Margaret Atwood, have made an effective use of the listing technique, especially in enumerating food items to create huge surplus, but Weldon is a superb and constant player of this game of disconcerting abundance:
"I dream of strange and marvellous things. I dream of fish and chips and bread and butter and cups of sweet tea. I dream of ship-loads of boiling jam cleaving their way through the polar ice-caps." [ The Fat Woman's Joke, p. 63]
So says the dieting Alan, discovering the important agony of deprived orality in the Weldonesque world of oral cravings and experience. The chief mediator between Rabelais and Weldonif any is wantingmust be James Joyce. Yet