However what I´ve tried to show in my thesis is that this style based on a double code resulting from a constant process of combining assimilation as well as detachment, becomes even more complex in Weldon´s writings if we take into account that it also entails an insouciant parodic game. The formula employed to shock the reader is annihilating. Weldon´s narrative offers an assumption and recreation of Gothic topics and models with satiric intention. A Gothic conception of existence based on a display of sentimentality at the expense of contention and rationality is combined with the social projection and indignation that satire represents. Satire, thereby, becomes more effective and caustic inmersed in a lurid Gothic bacground. This may serve as explanation for the characteristic kitsch and strident quality of Weldon´s fictions, which is also a feature of a literary genre connected with theatricallity and created to cause shock.
Consequently, in the second chapter of my work, I examine the filiation between Weldon´s narrative and the Gothic. The moment we include her fictions in a popular genre with a long tradition of more than two centuries, it is necessary to remember Linda Hutcheon´s theory that contemporary art and novels entail a parodic imitation and reformulation of previous models. In this regard, an absorption of a Gothic atmosphere and a readaptation of its perspective can be experienced in Weldon´s fictions.
If we take this into account, we can easily understand why reality and fantasy intermingle in Weldon´s narratives, why characters unfold and split into several personalities and why the past sometimes intrudes into the present. If we accept that a Gothic essence pervades her novels and short stories, we can grasp the nature of her writing: both transgressive and moderate. The ambivalent nature of the rich ethical universe offered in her narrative corresponds to the moral tenor of the Gothic genre and it matches the ruling spirit of the Postmodern age.
Reading Weldon´s fictions following Gothic parameters helps identify some descriptive features of her narrative which otherwise would go unnoticed or could be considered isolated and incomprehensible eccentricities. Among them, I´d like to point out a constant deconstuction of a monolithic conception of the female identity, the character of the narrators and their role in the novels, the sinister overtones some objects acquire through Weldon´s heroines psyques, and, above all, the complex moral quality based on ethical values characteristic of her narrative which seems to escape many readers. And even though there have been a lot of good studies on Weldon´s fictions, I´ve never seen these features described in detail before, notwithstanding the fact that through them we can prove that Weldon´s narratives trascend realism and the sphere of the mimetic.
GOTHIC PERSPECTIVE
