Employing Gothic parameters when studying Weldon´s opus is really clarifying when it comes to analysing the constant process of deconstruction which the female personality in its traditional sense undergoes. In my thesis I argue that, for instance, the title and content of one of her key novels, Praxis, is illuminating in as far as it represent an unblinking demolition of restrictive topics by means of humour and the experimentation of changing identities. In this regard, rather than categorizing Praxis as a Bildungsroman we would have to use the terms entbildung or the destruction of all that which has been previously assimilated.
In order to dismantle the ideal of femininity towards which women have traditionally aspired it is necessary to examine the process by which we develop our personalities. And here I follow Susanne Becker who adopts Kristeva´s concept of abjection, which refers to all those surplus elements we abject or expel from us so as to become social beings. These elements which we have per force suppressed in the course of our development are interpreted as anomalies or deviations but they still remain there to haunt us. We have feelings of both attraction and repulsion towards them. If we allow ourselves to be subdued by these socially unacceptable elements we are exposed to the disintegration of our personality as we know it. A destiny of total marginality would await us. A breakdown of limits would come about: those which separate the sexes, the one which separates pain from pleasure, life from death, etc.
Taking into account the rigid norms which contribute to personality formation according to gender parameters, we see female characters following the inverse process to that adopted in their education in order to reach happiness. This explains why the concept of disintegration of personality acquires a different sense, it no longer means death or anihilation and it entails renewal and a new life. In these new rites of passage women have to become resilient, lose their ingrained tendency to become victims and stop seeing their bodies as alien presences bent on contradicting their desires and decisions. In this regard, the image of maternity wards in which we come across all kinds of grotesque situations sometimes appears in Weldon´s fictions.
Overcoming barriers is a necessary requirement in Weldon´s narrative, to the extent that those characters that are unable to surmount the obstacles hindering their own development may reappear in the shape of spirits. Their existence beggars belief. Similarly, the suffering that drove them to that stand makes no sense.
The morbid obsession for the decomposition of identity is a Gothic topic. It constitutes an ambiguous source of pleasure in a genre that was born out of the contradictions inherent to the inception of the Modern age. But, most of all, it reflects beings who become split when confronted with cultural chaos and social conflict and are symbolised by the figure of the Doppelganger.
FEMALE PERSONALITY
