Kitabı oku: «The Rhetoric of Women’s Humour in Barbara Pym’s Fiction»

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

For my daughters, Nihal and Nilay, who made me laugh and thus helped me to survive. May the free-spirited women who struggle to survive find similar humour.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Preface by Orna Raz

1 Characteristics of Women’s Humour

1.1 Myth of Women’s Lack of a Sense of Humour

1.2 Undermining Women’s Wit

1.3 Women’s Language and écriture féminine

1.4. Difference between Irony and Humour

1.5 Necessity of a Humour of One’s Own

1.6 Humour: A Female Device?

1.7 Misreading Women’s Humour and Images of Women

1.8 Lack of Ending in the Works of Women Writers

1.9 Differences between Conventional Humour and Women’s Humour

1.10 Women’s Humour and Socio-Cultural Restraints

1.11 Ideology of Domesticity and Domestic Comedy

1.12 Characteristics of Women’s Humour

1.13 Major Areas and Tactics of Female Humour

1.14 Self-Irony

1.15 Women Writers’ Humour in the Nineteenth Century

1.16 Humour as a Device of Sympathy

1.17 Female Humour and Narrative Structure

1.18 Rhetoric of Humour in Pym’s Novels

2 Some Tame Gazelle: Construction of Women’s Veiled Humour

2.1. Role of Rhetorical Strategies in the Construction of Women’s Humour in STG

2.1.1 Subversion of the Romantic Plot and the Discourse of Trivia

2.1.2 Belinda’s Double Text Discourse

2.1.3 Function of Gossip in the Construction of Humorous Narrative

2.1.4 Understatement and Self-Deprecation

2.1.5 Sympathetic Bond between Narrator and Heroine and among Characters

2.2. Function of Themes and Motifs in the Construction of Humorous Plot

2.2.1 Subversion of Female Stereotypes

2.2.2 Subversion of Male Images

2.3 Women’s Humour as Social Critique: Undermining the Institution of Church and Clergymen

3 Excellent Women: Humour of Mildred Regarded as an Excellent Woman

3.1 Rhetorical Strategies in the Construction of Women’s Humour

3.1.1 Understatement and Self-Deprecation

3.1.2 Mildred’s Double-Voiced Discourse

3.2 Themes and Motifs in the Construction of Humorous Plot

3.2.1 Subversion of the Stereotype of Excellent Woman

3.2.2 Subversion of Male Images

4 Jane and Prudence: Unconventional Wife and Satisfied Spinster

4.1 Jane’s Subversion of the Image of Conventional Clergyman’s Wife

4.1.1 Jane’s Creation of a Fantastic World

4.1.2 Jane’s Reversal of the Role of Serving Female

4.1.3 Jane’s and Prudence’s Use of Double-Voiced Discourse

4.2 Subversion of the Image of the Spinster and Prudence’s Creation of a Romantic World

4.3 Subversion of the Male Image by Exposure of Men’s Indolence and Self-Indulgence

Conclusion

Works Cited

Acknowledgements

I began this study seven years ago in an environment in which neither women nor women’s humour were considered important by official culture. Nobody knew Barbara Pym or was concerned with women’s writing and humour. I began reading Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle for the funny reason that I liked her name. What stuck in my memory was Pym’s unique and specific humour. I decided to write my PhD dissertation on women’s humour in her novels. The path was thorny and long since there was no study on women’s humour at that time. However, I was lucky enough to have the support of my dear parents and friends, including my thesis advisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mustafa Zeki Çıraklı. I appreciate his help. I am also deeply thankful to Barbara Pym scholar Dr. Orna Raz for her invaluable encouragement, help and friendship.

Years later, with the encouragement of my husband, I decided to rework my dissertation into a book. Orna Raz kindly accepted to write the preface. I am also grateful to Rose Little and Deirdre Bryan-Brown for providing me with Barbara Pym’s books from England. I thank Susan Mednick Bramson for sharing her views on Barbara Pym. The greatest thanks of all go to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kerem Nayebpour, my husband, for his valuable comments, constant support, and kindness. He helped me to pursue my dream of a PhD and did all he could to provide a peaceful environment, so that I could study and write my dissertation. He also contributed much to the revision of the manuscript. This book could not be published without his contribution and support. I also appreciate and thank our dear friend, a painter himself, Buyuk Budagi, for his excellent suggestion for the front cover of this book.

May the world one day acknowledge the importance of women’s literature and humour.

Abbreviations

EW Excellent Women

JP Jane and Prudence

STG Some Tame Gazelle

Preface by Orna Raz

Ever since the 1950s, when her books first emerged on the literary scene, Barbara Pym has been roundly praised for her brilliant sense of humor. Her original audience appreciated her satirically incisive depictions of everyday life and her many slyly topical references, and contemporary readers continue to enjoy her sparkling wit and gently ironic social critique. Pym’s humor has also been the subject of much praise by other writers: Alexander McCall Smith has maintained that “Excellent Women is one of the 20th century’s most endearing and amusing novels,” while Jilly Cooper discloses that “even an umpteenth reading [of Jane and Prudence] this weekend was punctuated by gasps of joy, laughter and wonder that this lovely book should remain so fresh, funny and true to life.”

While Pym’s wit is generally acknowledged, very little specific research has been conducted about her employment of comic elements as a device. We might surmise that Pym’s humor has often been considered a merely decorative aspect of her novels, rather than an integral aspect of her craft, one that shaped her characterizations and plots, and formed an integral part of her protagonists’ engagements with – and the coping devices for navigating – the world depicted in her novels.

It is thus a particular pleasure to introduce a new book which constitutes a significant contribution to Pym scholarship, one that centers on the subject of humor in her novels. Naghmeh Varghaiyan’s The Rhetoric of Women’s Humour in Barbara Pym’s Fiction is an important and insightful study of three early novels of Barbara Pym: Some Tame Gazelle (1950), Excellent Women (1952) and Jane and Prudence (1953). As Varghaiyan shows, Sevda Caliskan’s claim that traditionally “women and humor [have been regarded as] quite incompatible categories” (49) remains unfortunately relevant to this day. By focusing her investigation on Pym, Varghaiyan makes a convincing case for a specifically female sense of humor, countering the centuries-long tradition of mistakenly regarding such “writings related to comedy and humor […] as serious works since they differed from the established conventions of comic writings.”

Following a comprehensive opening survey of attitudes towards the humorous works produced by female writers, Varghaiyan devotes the rest of her book to Pym’s early novels, of which at least two – Excellent Women and Jane and Prudence – are set in the post war era (the dating of the events in Some Tame Gazelle, which Pym began writing in the 1930s and revised after the second World War, is unclear). While Pym’s female characters are not overtly rebellious, they grow discontent with the patriarchal reality of their day, and their wry and often comic observations come to represent a mode of coping with the world. As Varghaiyan astutely notes, a good sense of humor can be both a matter of personal survival as well as a weapon. But although Pym's female characters turn to humor to cope with various distressing realities of their day – indignities ranging from the mundane (a shared bathroom in Excellent Women) to the existential (the loneliness of a young unmarried woman in Jane and Prudence) – they are never cruel, and their humor is not used to humiliate or belittle fellow human beings. In that regard, Varghaiyan argues, female humor in Pym’s work is different from conventional humor: it allows her heroines to undermine the authoritative power of the dominant male culture around them.

Writing this preface in the summer of 2020 amid the global COVID-19 pandemic affords a fresh and unexpected perspective from which to view Pym’s novels of the 1950s. Rereading Excellent Women, I feel like I better understand the crucial importance of comic moments in ameliorating the various hardships the characters encounter as they navigate their new postwar reality. On social media, members of the “Barbara Pym Fan Club” on Facebook report that her novels are a constant source of consolation. Just the other day, one member shared how rereading Some Tame Gazelle helped her get over her grumpiness about having to postpone her vacation this year, and another reader wrote that he kept returning to her books because they were “wickedly funny.”1

During a recent spate of correspondence with Varghaiyan, in which we checked in on each other during the pandemic, we found ourselves chatting, as usual, about Pym, the reason why we first became friends several years ago. The humorist and academic Regina Barreca claims that humor (or comedy) is the least universal textual territory. But perhaps the case of my friendship with Varghaiyan proves that Pym’s humor transcends “age, race, ethnic background, and class.” After all, Varghaiyan and I are probably as distant a readership as Pym could have ever imagined: two women living in the Middle East: a Muslim and a Jew bound in friendship through our mutual admiration for her novels, with their humorous depictions of wry spinsters and bumbling curates; jumble sales and the ritual and hierarchy of tea pouring. If a stronger argument exists for the importance of appreciating female humor, I am eager to hear it.

Introduction

This book explores the basic characteristics and functions of women’s humour in British novelist Barbara Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle (STG), Excellent Women (EW) and Jane and Prudence (JP). The heroines featured in these novels manage to survive in a patriarchal culture through their personalities and humour. Guided by Pym’s structural and thematic strategies, their subversive humour undermines the authoritative power of the dominating culture. Although this study focuses on subjects, themes, and topics that are relevant to women, Pym did not have an openly feminist agenda. But since, as Michael Cotsell points out, “any study of Pym must keep in mind that its subject is a woman author, exploring one phase of women’s experience” (7), feminist concerns have to be considered in an analysis of her work.

Although theories of humour have undergone fundamental changes, they have mostly remained under the influence of the standards set by the dominant patriarchal perspectives. Accordingly, the classical theory of humour has failed to provide an adequate set of terminology, or effective technical tools with which to analyse the specific sense of humour of female writers.

This study is based on terminologies offered by forerunners of the theory of women’s writing such as Eileen Gillooly, Regina Barreca, and Nancy Walker. Dismissing conventional theories of humour in female writing, this study aims to offer an alternative approach to such humour as instantiated by Pym’s novels.

Barreca highlights the inadequacy of conventional theories of humour in relation to female comical writing. According to her study, comedy has been traditionally defined in these ways: as a “celebration of fertility and regeneration,” as “the vulgar and exaggerated presentation of the familiar,” as “catharsis of desire and frustration,” as a “social safety valve,” as a “carnival,” as an “unconscious, psychological reaction to personal and social instabilities,” and as a “happy ending, joyous celebration, and reestablishment of order” (introduction 8). Such definitions, as Barreca understands, do not exemplify women’s comic writing, which primarily “has to do with power and its systematic misappropriation.” In spite of its undermining power, traditional humour substantiates the dominant cultural values, mostly patriarchal. Judith Curlee also emphasises this point, stating that traditional and conventional comic discourse supports the patriarchal order since it “generally maintains the status quo in society by failing to problematize the kinds of inequity that it often reveals” (35). Thus, the traditional comic discourse has covertly and invariably been in the service of the dominating patriarchal culture.

According to Barreca, numerous events and details in life determine, and have an impact on, “the way we create and respond to” (Untamed 12) the humorous and humour. Thus, the theoretical discussions on humour and comedy, as one of the artistic mediums of humour, had long existed before the commencement of any structural analysis in literary studies. In the canonised sense of the term, humour can be described as something which causes one to smile and/or to laugh. This concept has been a relatively recent phenomenon, although the concept of comedy has always existed in literary texts.2 “Comedy,” according to Alleen and Don Nilsen, “is a term that literary scholars ‘owned’ long before the popular culture gave it today’s more generalized meaning of something that brings smiles and laughter” (246). The definition of the term ‘comedy,’ however, has undergone enormous changes throughout time. For instance, as Alleen and Don Nilsen point out, in medieval times it “was applied to literary works that were not necessarily created for the purpose of arousing laughter, however, it had happier endings and less exalted styles than tragedies.” In the Middle Ages it was categorised into different parts such as “High Comedy (what we now refer to as smart comedy or literary comedy) relied for its humour on wit and sophistication, while low comedy relied on burlesque, crude jokes, and buffoonery” (246). As Barreca highlights, the lack of a universal definition for comedy is due to the fact that “out of all the textual territories explored,” it is “the least universal” (12). The reason is that comedy appears to be fundamentally subjective in nature so that its production as well as its reception is contextually gender-based since “age, race, ethnic background, and class are all significant factors in the production and reception of humor” (Barreca 12).

Theorists and humourists throughout history, however, have only paid attention to men’s humour. This intellectual subordination of women was mostly due to the fact that, as Virginia Woolf states in A Room of One’s Own “nothing could be expected of women intellectually” (55) since numerous intellectuals believed in “the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women” (31). Likewise, as Regina Gagnier suggests, despite the fact that some recent works address the effects of gender on humour, “historically theorists of humour have been men, and they have seldom considered the role of gender in humor” (136). Barreca also asserts that male theorists such as Freud and others before him misinterpreted the specificity of women’s humor as humourlessness: “What early theorists like Freud failed to understand is that women do not lack a sense of humour; they just find different things funny” (qtd. in Bennett 37).

There has been a long-standing claim against feminists’ lack of a sense of humour. As Barreca argues, the belief that women lack a sense of humour is specific to men only, since “women typically have hidden this trait from men in order to appear traditionally ‘feminine.’” Accordingly, she emphasises that “it is no secret to women that women have a sense of humor” (Snow White 103). Thus, a theory of women’s humour is indeed necessary to analyse the true nature of the humour in the works of female writers and to prevent misinterpretations of such texts. As Gail Finney sums up, in addition to Judy Little’s work, the works of Walker, Barreca, Gillooly, Sochen, and Zita Dresner have “effectively exploded the myth that women have no sense of humour” (1).

The comedy present in Pym’s work holds a special place in literature and can be classified as high comedy.3 Mason Cooley names “realism and comedy” amongst the most significant ingredients of her fiction (“Barbara” 384). Her specific type of comedy is mostly marked by indirectness and subtlety. While mainly rendering the lives and traditions of middle-class ordinary people, Pym depicts them and the human condition as “shot through with the antic spirit of comedy” (Cooley “Barbara” 384). By experience, Pym was entirely familiar with the conventions and traditions of the middle classes. Her awareness of the nature of middle-class culture and mentality significantly contributed to her detailed descriptions of middle-class life and people. Moreover, the Pyms were closely associated with the church and the vicarage, or “the vicar and curates” (Long 3).4

Pym’s novels STG, EW, and JP were published in 1950, 1952 and 1953, respectively, by Jonathan Cape. Following the publication of her sixth novel No Fond Return of Love, a prolonged period of negative critical responses to Pym’s novels began with the publication of her novel An Unsuitable Attachment. This period lasted for fourteen years. Despite suffering from depression and a lack of self-assurance, Pym continued writing several novels including an unpublished academic novel, and The Sweet Dove Died. Pym’s unpublished works were only published after Lord David Cecil and Phillip Larkin in the Times Literary Supplement in 1977 “named her one of the nation’s most underrated novelists” (Bentley et al. 286). Since then, various articles, books and dissertations have been written about her novels.5

Published in 1950, STG was Pym’s first novel. Her first experience as a novelist was generally favoured by critics and the critical reviews were mostly approving. Some critics connect this novel with the English sense of humour and traditional comedy. Being narrated from an omniscient point of view, the novel, in Long’s words, is “modestly voiced yet sharply focused” (14). STG is mostly considered as one of the most humorous novels of Pym. According to Long, it comprises Pym’s “characteristic ironies, ambivalences, and sense of the ridiculous,” displaying a humour coloured with “gentle malice” (Long 15). Her wit was considered to be subtle and indirect. Long argues that after STG, Pym began to “focus [on] her comic vision” (8). According to Cooley, the novel helped to establish Pym as a successful writer of comedy whose domain extends from “farce to the rarefied mental acrobatics of high comedy” (“Barbara” 367). Pym’s thoughtful employment of wit, as well as the attentive application of comic tactics and strategies contributes to the reversal and parodying of “literary convention” (“Barbara” 367). Critics generally agree that this novel subverts the romantic plot. Cooley, who studied Pym’s comic vision, suggests that this novel “both celebrates and mocks romantic comedy” (“Barbara” 367). Reversing conventional literary structure and subject matter, Pym’s subtle and gentle humour in STG undermines the long-held values of the prevailing patriarchal culture.

Critics also classify Pym’s second novel EW (1952) as a comic work. Here Pym satirises the figure of spinster and the Church of England (Long 15). According to Long, the critical reviews of this novel were exceedingly favourable as they stressed the novel’s brilliant comedy instead of its partial tone of “isolation and loneliness” (15). Cooley argues that Pym in this work effectively surmounts the hard task of accomplishing “comic effects” without breaking up the “realistic surface” (“Barbara” 367).

The first-person narration recounts the story of Mildred Lathbury, a country clergyman’s daughter, who is living alone in a shabby apartment in London. Mildred “establishes the character type of the ‘excellent woman,’ who is at the center of most of Pym’s fiction” (Cooley, “Barbara” 368). However, Marina Mackay suggests that although Pym appears to deride these excellent women, she is in fact “sympathetic” (161) towards them.

JP, Pym’s third novel chosen for this study, is narrated by an omniscient narrator and is mainly about two friends, Jane and Prudence. The mood and setting of this novel, in Long’s words, is “lighthearted yet extremely knowing, and the institution of marriage is examined from within and without.” The novel subverts the romantic plot and is in stark contrast to the “quest for romantic love” (16). According to Cooley, it is “one of Pym’s most purely funny novels. It handles the theme of appearance and reality, convention and fact, in a light and playful way” (“Barbara” 372). Moreover, it “is more obviously ‘literary’ in its inspiration and more explicitly comic” (370). It covers unexampled subjects such as inefficient wives and clergymen, unemotional mothers and egoist male characters.

Pym wrote a number of novels after JP; some of these were published during her lifetime, others posthumously. The experience of working as an editor in an anthropology institute helped her in shaping the subject matter and the characters of Less Than Angels, published in 1955, which primarily deals with the lives of anthropologists.

According to Cooley, most of Pym’s novels written during this era are “in an entirely modern world, postreligious and fragmented.” Human relations are “noncommittal and in flux” (“Barbara” 372). Although Less Than Angels appears to be much gloomier than Pym’s earlier novels, Long asserts that one reviewer’s note on it – a “humorous treatment of the anthropologists” – reminds us of Austen’s “extracting comedy from the dull or pompous’” (16).

Pym’s next novel, A Glass of Blessings (1958), is extensively praised for its singular and mighty comedy. Cooley considers this novel as “the most elegant and gossamer of Barbara Pym’s comedies” (“Barbara” 378). According to Long, Pym with her “faultlessly wry, deadpan humor that is typical of the understated quality of the work,” created one of the most appreciated comic novels. A Glass of Blessings is generally praised by reviewers, in particular for its “brilliant characterisation” and its “sparkling feminine malice” (Long 17).

Comic vision and techniques are noticeable in Pym’s subsequent novels as well. In her sixth novel, No Fond Return of Love (1961), Pym, applies “the most delicately comic scenes as well as broad comedy” (Long 17). The reviewers’ critique of the novel was also favourable and pointed to Pym’s sharp, tricky and devious wit (17). Pym’s next novel, An Unsuitable Attachment, which was rejected numerous times, was finally published posthumously in 1982. Ackley here finds “serious flaws in unity, focus, and credibility.” For instance, “there are too many characters given equal attention” (7). Pym’s next posthumous novel, The Sweet Dove Died, published in 1987, deals with the subject of homosexuality. In Long’s words, the novel became a “study in feminine wounding and isolation” (20). In An Academic Question, published in 1986, Pym practises a “different style” (Ackley 7). Although she failed, Pym tried to modernise her work. According to Ackley, the novel has “a few purely Pym characters and scenes” (8).

Quartet in Autumn (1977) is Pym’s only Booker Prize finalist novel. It differs considerably from her other works and can be described as a “study in urban isolation” (Long 21). It is much bleaker than her earlier novels and an extreme instance of “dark irony” (Cooley, “Barbara” 380). It is generally considered as a turning point, after which “Pym turned away from comedy to write tragedy or at least a very dark and sad realism” (380). However, as Pym stated in an interview in the BBC program Finding a Voice, it appears that her purpose in writing this novel was to present the novel not as tragic, but “as fundamentally comic” (Cooley, “Barbara” 380). Thus, traces of Pym’s wry style of humour are evident even in this seemingly bleak novel. Humour is a basic narrative element in Pym’s next two novels. A Few Green Leaves (1980) can be regarded as a typical Pym novel containing “small or ordinary lives, love of eccentricity, and attraction to vicars and spinsters” (Long 23). Crampton Hodnet (1985) can also be considered amongst Pym’s most humorous works. As Cooley states, by presenting “British respectability,” an indication of a secure and unchanging society, Pym both “burlesques and glorifies” the small group of common people who engage in daily activities of “love affairs and gossip” free from evils such as “war, disease, ageing, poverty, and more imperious passions” (“Barbara” 364). All in all, humour is a continuing aspect of Pym’s entire canon.

Women have been considered as being humourless over centuries, and their comedic and humorous writings have been ignored or misunderstood as serious works since they differed from the established conventions of comic literature. However, a more recent view of women’s writing proposes that, in Showalter’s words: “Women writing are not […] inside and outside of the male tradition; they are inside two traditions simultaneously” (202; emphasis original). Women’s writing is a “double-voiced discourse” (204) containing the inscriptions of both the dominant male culture and the oppressed, muted female one. The two discourses are not segregated but interwoven and simultaneous. In addition to its relation to general culture and literature, women’s literature treats matters relating to women’s lives and experiences. In this respect, women’s humour differs from mainstream humour.

The operation of the two-fold discourse is detectable in the novels treated here. While at the surface level it is the orthodox discourse which controls the narration, at the undercurrent level a resistant or an already oppressed but disrupting discourse lies at the centre of the textual orientation. This disruption is achieved mainly by humour in the selected narratives, in which the humorous voice largely operates as a strategy to resist and survive within the general culture. Therefore, it is arguable that Pym’s narratives contribute to the construction of women’s culture through a (re)description of conventionalised issues from the female perspective.

Pym’s humorous style seems to spring from her character. Her sense of humour would attract everybody during her lifetime. One person who in particular recognised Pym’s sense of humour was Robert Liddell. He appreciates Pym’s “original and quaint sense of humour – which she freely employed against herself. [...] Like myself” (qtd. in Long 5). Pym’s self-irony and her self-effacing humour primarily originated from her experiences in life and her temper. Her artistic vision involves creating a humorous situation out of tragic circumstances and distressing conditions. As Ackley rightly points out, “Pym implies that seeing the comic in things helps keep a balanced perspective on the sad and indefinite” (12). Pym was able to deal with “her characters and their experiences with humour and detachment” irrespective of “how serious her subject matter [was] – with illness, aging, decay, and death” (Ackley 3). In Pym’s comedy, Long finds “a special and distinctive charm.” At the same time, he thinks that Pym’s comedy includes a certain kind of sorrow. For example, most of her characters seek satisfaction in relationships that, “elusively, are only just out of reach of realization” (24).

Pym’s effective use of humour has been compared to Jane Austen’s, although Pym was embarrassed by such a tribute given to her. Ackley holds that “Pym’s style reminds one of Austen’s command of the humorous scene and her detached observations” (12). Pym’s central characters also portray her own “witty and wry sense of humour” (Ackley 21). Pym’s genuine talent and her skill lie in detecting humour in relation to “just about every character and event” (Ackley 16). Her concern for the affairs of the “domestic life such as food and clothing” is coherent with her belief “in the importance of small details” (16). For instance, the descriptions of preparing food, eating, and drinking are represented as having a significant role in the construction of Pym’s narratives. They also have a huge impact on the lives of the involved characters. Likewise, details of the characters’ clothing are employed for a humorous narrative. “Pym,” according to Cooley, “learned to combine humour with a delight in ordinary experience in order to rise up from the black depths to the saving surface of existence. She thus personified the very spirit of comedy by laughing away her sorrows” (Comic 6). Ackley finds Pym’s manner of handling misfortunate and pitiful conditions are “gentle, subtle and understated, seldom acrylic” (20).

Spinsters are considered to be Pym’s most mirthful and comic characters. However, avoiding stereotypes, she does not use her humour to humiliate. There are many reasons why Pym selected spinsters as her main characters. Having an undefined role in society, unmarried women are able to turn their hardships into humour since they are capable of creating satisfaction “despite unrequited love, solitude, and tedious work” (Cooley 4). Rather than denigrating her spinster characters, Pym uses her humour to sympathetically take a stand for victimised women in an oppressing patriarchal culture. The target of his kind of humour is the prevailing authoritarian system, not its victims. Pym’s ridicule extends beyond the individual level; by deriding male characters, she also criticises the dominant culture which creates hypocritical, absurd individuals.

Despite recognition of the comic as “the shaping spirit” (Long 3) of Pym’s work, Cooley’s comprehensive study of her comedy and her comic vision, for instance, is limited to the textual analysis of ironical humour. Cooley does not establish a particular theoretical basis. As Wyatt-Brown proposes, it is time to “examine the unexpected subsoil from which Pym’s comedy emerged” (xiii).

Pym’s humour reflects the socio-cultural and historical circumstances of 1950s England. In her exploration of this relationship, Orna Raz holds that Pym “limits her criticism to what she knows and often likes best” (6). Raz’s claim arises out of Pym’s own statement: “I suppose I criticize and mock at the clergy and the C. of E. [the Church of England] because I am fond of them” (qtd. in Raz 7). Therefore, the relatively subdued quality of Pym’s criticism is partially due to “the affection she has for her characters and her milieu” (7).

According to Anne M. Wyatt-Brown, there is a close connection between Pym’s life and her fictional works. Conducting a biographical study, she argues that Pym’s novels represent events of her own life: Pym “shared the perspective of marginal women, women of her generation, who, despite education and cultivation, felt they had no recognizable role left in the modern world,” because “social changes had undermined [women’s] inherited status” (2). Pym accompanies this estrangement with “comic good humour.”

Cotsell argues that Pym’s female point of view records and unveils seemingly insignificant matters in the lives of the characters. In agreement with other critics, Cotsell also contends that Pym considers humour to be an essential tactic in order to defy “disappointments” by means of maintaining “a humorous and hopeful engagement with life” (5).

Pym’s novels are measured against the novel of manners. As Annette Weld states, the novel of manners is interwoven with comedy and its roots “lie deeply buried in the comic mode” (8). Pym’s novels appear to be “creating a female, post-war perspective on a world where manners and social behavior are more often bypassed by popular writers in favor of the graphically violent or sexually explicit” (15). It should be noted that Pym’s notion of manners deviates from the traditional nineteenth-century notion. While presenting so-called proper manners, respectability, suitability, and conventionality are criticised and ridiculed as merely the traditional set of rules and norms.

Pym’s female characters mostly seek romance and love. Pym presents either the absence of love or failure in love in all its forms, transforming failure into comedy. In some way, she is able to relieve failure. Diana Benet attests to Pym’s “development from the comic to the tragic and from a feminine to a universal vision” (3). Exploring the function of gender in Pym’s novels, Janice Rossen argues that Pym “was a feminist writer in the 1950s before feminism became fashionable” (2). Laura L. Doan elaborates the role and function of the spinster in society and in Pym’s fiction. She argues that by applying a “dual-voiced narrative” (152), Pym presents two opposing viewpoints in relation to the spinster: “the voice of the patriarchy and the voice challenging that authority” (152). Relying on her own experience as a spinster and by expressing the experiences of being treated in the margins of society, Pym is able to break down the stereotype usually , surrounding the spinster.

According to Ellen M. Tsagaris, Pym through the discourse of trivia effectively undermines the “discourse of the romance novel” (9), stressing the “trivial,” as well as focusing on “the woman’s point of view” (29). As an established expert on Woolf, Pym, and Brook-Rose, Judy Little argues that the voices existent in women’s discourse are “appositional” and related to each other rather than being “oppositional” or subversive (2). In a similar vein, this book tries to show how Pym creates an appositional discourse and produces a significant discourse out of a seemingly insignificant one through what Little refers to as positioning “the discourse of the trivial” within “the ordinary and the everyday” (76).

Chapter 1, The History and Characteristics of Women’s Humour, explores the reasons behind the myth of women’s humourlessness and shows how the presuppositions and prejudgments of the dominant culture have affected women’s manifestation of humour. The humour specific to women is discussed in its deviation from conventional humour. The chapter in the process explores different theories of women’s humour.

Chapter 2 examines the function of humour in STG. The narrative voice in this novel mocks and criticises the hypocrisies and absurdities of respectable community. Belinda Bede’s critique of her community, in a covert and oblique manner, subverts the power of religious authoritarian institutions such as the church and the clergy. The humorous tone and the trivial discourse in the narrative undermine the dominant male discourse. The narrative subverts both the conventional romantic plot and the so-called happy ending by eliminating the possible marriage of the two protagonists at the end of the novel.

Chapter 3 examines EW. The main focus is on the central character Mildred Lathbury’s ironic and comic account of her community and society during post-war England. Being on the verge of spinsterhood, Mildred narrates humorously the conventions, conducts and manners of the people surrounding her. Her paradoxical status, as both an unrelated single woman and an active member of the community, allows her to identify the deficiencies and hypocrisies in the individuals connected to the power structure, such as men in critical positions and clergymen. In a similar way to STG, EW presents spinsters not as sacrificial and selfless women, but independent individuals capable of loving and being loved and who, in fact, detest being regarded as men’s helpmates.

Chapter 4, which examines JP, focuses on the two protagonists’, Jane’s and Prudence’s, lives in their search for false myths and stereotypes. The main sources of humour here are how Jane as the inefficient wife of a clergyman subverts the presuppositions about women as helpmates of the clergy and the mocking of Prudence’s incessant seeking of romance.

This study contends that, unlike conventional humour, Pym’s humour neither humiliates nor ridicules the female characters at its centre; on the contrary, it creates a sympathetic bond between the heroine and the reader, as well as between the female characters themselves through demonstrating their victimisation by patriarchal culture. Pym’s humour hits hard on images and stereotypes such as the spinster and the Byronic hero by undermining the values and presuppositions associated with them. The female characters’ understatement and self-deprecation are not meant to humiliate them; rather, the characters are empowered by positioning themselves in the place of the oppressors, thus preventing further oppression. Pym artfully employs the double-voiced discourse such that it neither threatens nor endangers the dominant order but helps initiate reforms within that order. Pym also reverses the romantic love plot through the discourse of trivia, and by creating the significant out of the insignificant, and making gossip function as a shaping force of the narrative.

1 <https://www.facebook.com/groups/5250054113/?epa=SEARCH_BOX>

2 Theorists of humour have defined three types of humour on the basis of superiority theories, repression/release theories, and incongruity theories. Superiority theory suggests that laughter is rooted in the glorification of the self, mostly at the expense of others. Thomas Hobbes argued that we laugh at others’ limitations because it makes us feel superior. “Sigmund Freud believed that aggressive and sexual drives, necessary for survival, are repressed in their socially unacceptable form by the ego. “Humor thus provides a socially acceptable and pleasurable form of release of this repressed psychic energy” (Naranjo-Huebl 12). Incongruity theories focus on similarity and dissimilarity and how, in the presence of certain other factors such as surprise or suddenness and a perception of harmlessness, they elicit laughter. “Humor occurs, according to most incongruity theorists, when two distinct logic patterns or models of thought unexpectedly collide” (12).

3 Lord David Cecil praises Pym’s novels as “the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years” (qtd. in Long 221).

4 Pym began studying English literature at Oxford in 1931 and graduated in 1934. During World War II, she worked as a censor in the Postal and Telegraph Censorship in Bristol. In 1943 she joined the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service). Later, she worked as an editorial assistant at the International Institute of African Languages and Culture in London where she continued to work until 1974.

5 Pym enjoyed relative popularity afterwards. According to Long, she “reacted to this sudden fame unpretentiously, and her habits of living did not change” (23). Within some years, her health began to deteriorate and she became gravely ill by January 1980. Chemotherapy was unsuccessful and she died on January 11, 1980, and was buried in Finstock.

1 Characteristics of Women’s Humour

Comedy is dangerous. Humor is a weapon. Laughter is refusal and triumph. (Barreca, Untamed 30)

This study examines women’s humour as a subcategory of women’s writing. This humour, therefore, requires a different quality of reading and a different type of knowledge than male humour. The view of women’s humour1 as an aberration from the male norm will be engaged.

The possibility of a distinct women’s writing has always been a controversial subject among feminist critics. Elaine Showalter considers women’s writing as an achievable end within the dominant trend. Similarly, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar believe that women writers can inscribe their own character in the dominant language they write and speak. Eileen Gillooly, Nancy Walker, and Regina Barreca also argue that women’s humour must be considered as a distinct type. Thus, major feminist critics acknowledge the existence of a distinct women’s humour through which a woman writer can imprint her unique character, voice, and culture in the canon.

1.1 Myth of Women’s Lack of a Sense of Humour

Literary theorists and critics have rarely associated women with humour. Their sense of humour has mostly been discredited, even negated. As one reason for this Walker suggests that comedy, considered to be “boisterous and aggressive,” was “temperamentally unsuited to women”: Women should remain “lady-like and angel-like” because aggression was “improper” to them (94). According to Gillooly, women writers, particularly those who wrote comedies, crossed the established gender borders and, therefore, regarded as “not only ‘scandalous’ scribblers but, given the double entendre of female publication (public woman = prostitute), suspiciously whorish as well” (Smile 4; emphasis original).

In order to highlight the limitation of women’s humour, critics generally refer to women’s roles in comedies. According to Walker, comedies do not represent women truly because they “are restricted to some stereotypes, being unlike women’s real selves.” She argues that “Female roles in comedy are limited and limiting, and are often misinterpreted as evidence of the limitations of female humour” (Disobedient 94).

Another formidable challenge that kept women from participating in comedic writings and performances was that sexual themes were considered necessary for comedy and comedic performances, but considered inappropriate for women. A woman who is an object in the sexual marketplace cannot participate in the joke-telling tradition or write in a comic mode; otherwise, as Barreca rightly points out, she might be regarded as “sexually promiscuous.” This is because of the assumption “that it takes a certain ‘fallen’ knowledge to make a joke”; thus, “only old women – or women who are somehow outside the sexual marketplace – are permitted to make lewd remarks” (qtd. in Stott 94). They are thus entitled to participate in the joke-telling and comic-writing tradition. As a spinster, to whom these criteria apply, Pym used her entitlement, but in a patriarchal society it was neither easy nor a pleasant task for her. Consequently, her humour is subtle and indirect.

1.2 Undermining Women’s Wit

Women’s exclusion from writing, according to Walker, has had a considerable influence on their creation of a literature and humour of their own: “The exclusion of women from language and the authority it confers has become a common trope in women’s writing itself” (Disobedient 2). Historically, women have often been forbidden from telling jokes. In explanation, the sociologist Paul McGhee states that “women are neither expected, nor trained, to joke in this culture. […] it seems reasonable to propose that attempting a witty remark is often an intrusive, disturbing and aggressive act, and within this culture, probably unacceptable for a female” (qtd. in Barreca, introduction 5). McGhee finds a close connection between the controlling socio-cultural power and the successful use of humour: According to him, the initiation of humour has culturally become associated with males rather than with females because males hold the power (Bunkers 162).

Moreover, women’s talent in writing has been ascribed to the potential power of the genre itself rather than to female authors (Walker, Very 94). Walker also holds that men’s insufficient or distorted understanding of a woman’s thoughts and desires stands in the way of their appreciation of female humour (Very 94). In order to be able to identify with women’s humour, men must step down from the state of being originators of the law and standards and sympathise with marginalised female writers. A common example of misunderstanding is the misreading of

women’s protest against a male-dominated culture that is embedded in women’s humor. To find such humor amusing requires that the reader assents to the political proposition it contains, and just as women find uncomfortable the negative images of themselves found in male literature, so men find it difficult to appreciate accusations that they occupy the role of oppressor. (Walker, Very 72)

Writings on ethics, conduct, and social etiquettes have exerted a profound effect on women’s humorous styles, often silencing women’s voices. Even though wit is typically considered a virtue, John Gregory, for example, warns women against exercising their wit:

Wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess. It must be guarded with great discretion and good nature, otherwise it will create you many enemies. […] Wit is perfectly consistent with softness and delicacy; yet they are seldom found united. Wit is so flattering to vanity, that they who possess it become intoxicated, and lose all self-command. (Qtd. in Walker, Disobedient 93)

Some conduct books advised women how best to serve selflessly in the roles ascribed to them. A series of conduct books by Sarah Stikney Ellis, for instance, and similar publications, “gave specific, detailed directions on how to most selflessly serve in the domestic roles available to women” Gillooly, Smile 248). Ellis’s advice is grounded “on her belief that female self interest lies in selflessness.” If women carry out the labours related with their roles as “wife, mother, unmarried daughter most fully and selflessly the women will best be appreciated and therefore be financially provided for” (qtd. in Smile 248).

Wit is considered the most significant factor in comic writing. Walker differentiates wit from sentimentality:

If sentimentality in literature is a result of powerlessness, wit may be seen as its opposite: an expression of confidence and power. The word remains closely associated with its Old English origin in wita, “one who knows.” Long before it acquired the connotation of amusement, wit was connected with knowledge, understanding, perception. Sentimentality exerts a passive, often subversive power; wit, on the other hand, is a direct and open expression of perceptions, taking for granted a position of strength and insight. (“Wit” 6)

Wit is a mental state as well as a strategy for writers to prevent their fall into the pit of sentimentality. While wit has mostly been considered an integral part of men’s writings, it is seen as a dangerous weapon in women’s hands. However, Pym’s rational use of it makes the total body of her work unsentimental as well as witty. According to the conventional ideology of domesticity and the proper female, women are exclusively a source of comfort to their husbands. A witty woman, as conduct writer James Fordyce has it, is “a permanent nuisance for the comfort and ease of the husband since she always criticizes him” (qtd. in Bilger 22-23). Therefore, Fordyce does not approve of women exercising wit as it goes along with criticism.

Audrey Bilger asserts that since “middle-class women had few outside forums in which to register their discontent with their place within the domestic sphere” (23), conduct books and their advice to refrain from criticising men can interpreted as upholding the whole patriarchal system rather than just the domestic domain. Similarly, Walker proposes that:

by the mid-nineteenth century […] the ‘cult of domesticity’ was so firmly entrenched that womanly wit had difficulty maneuvering around the image of ideal womanhood – an image that denigrated woman’s intellect in favor of her emotional and intuitive nature. (Very 27)

1.3 Women’s Language and écriture féminine

Critical theories have often emphasised the different functions of language in men’s and women’s speech acts. In the patriarchal tradition, women have often been secluded and marginalised from the unifying power of linguistic conventions. The foundation of women’s language,” according to Robin Lakoff, is her marginality from the “serious concerns of life” (48), which are the domain of men.

The expression of a woman’s thoughts is restrained: “In appropriate women’s speech, strong expression of feeling is avoided, expression of uncertainty is favored, and means of expression in regard to subject-matter deemed ‘trivial’ to the ‘real’ world are elaborated” (Lakoff 48). Women are considered objects whose “sexual nature” and “social roles” require them to use euphemism and be “derivative and dependent in relation to men” (45). Women have usually been regarded as dependent beings or powerless sexual objects. Therefore, women’s language is “restricted in use to women and […] descriptive of women alone” (Lakoff 45). It systematically withholds power from women.

Women writers, however, have made efforts to overcome the linguistic barriers by following certain stylistic strategies in their works. Therefore, men’s and women’s relations to power differ considerably because of their differences in using language. Pym’s self-censorship, self-effacement, and use of indirect, subtle language are considered to be the most significant linguistic features of her works. In addition to being an unmarried woman-writer and living on the periphery of her society, Pym had no direct access to the power structures. Thus, her conservative and indirect use of language in her writings is due to her peculiar socio-cultural position as a woman-writer, living in the margins of society.

The concept of women’s writing has long been a controversial issue among feminist theorists. Anglo-American and French feminist critics such as Virginia Woolf, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Showalter, and Gilbert and Gubar have theorised about the boundaries, possibilities, content, and structure of such writing. There is a controversy among scholars concerning the labelling of different types of women’s humour. The comedian Kate Clinton, according to Linda Pershing, makes a distinction between “feminist humor” and “mainstream male and female humor” (qtd. in Pershing, 223-24). In her description, rather than being “covert,” feminist humour is “overt.” Instead of being passive, it is “active,” and in contrast to conventional female humour’s anti-revolutionary strategies, feminist humour is grounded “on the possibility of change.” Rather than escapist, feminist humour is transformational: it “transforms painful expression.” Thus, it surpasses the duality which considers that “serious is more real. Serious is truth. Humorous is less than real, trivial, trifling.” Moreover, feminist humour “does not ridicule or humiliate, instead, it is thoughtful.”

Nancy A. Walker also differentiates feminist humour from women’s humour. According to her, “the collective consciousness of women as an identifiable group with common problems and interests leads ultimately to a feminist humor” (Very 13). Based on this tradition, feminist humour has two forms. The most frequent type of feminist humour “makes use of a double text to pose a subtle challenge to the stereotype or the circumstance that the writer appears superficially merely to describe.” The other sort of feminist humour “stresses discrimination, and has tended to emerge during the periods of organized agitation for women’s rights. This type of feminist humor may parody anti-suffrage arguments, or may, by the use of fantasy, posit a society in which women are powerful” (Very 13). Walker argues that although women’s humour differs from feminist humour, “it has a feminist consciousness or stance than has been acknowledged” (Very 142). By recalling Naomi Weisstein’s view on feminist humour, Walker argues that in women’s condition there exists “an absurdity that they should use for their own purposes” (Very 143). According to Weisstein, it is a success “to turn what is defined as a ridiculous state of being into your own definition of the ridiculous, to take control of the quality of the absurdity, [and] to turn it away from yourself.” A humorous writer, according to Weisstein, must demonstrate that “nobody is either WOMAN or ‘lady,’ and that all this is very funny indeed” (qtd. in Walker, Very 143).

Feminist humour, therefore, has the capability to redefine conventional views about women, thus proving that it is the male-centred culture that is ridiculous – not women. Walker draws on Gloria Kaufman in order to show their shared emphasis on the role of social system in feminist humour. According to Kaufman, social revolution is the desired purpose inherent in feminist humour. Women’s aim in ridiculing the system is to transform it. Female humour, as Kaufman says, “may ridicule a person or a system from an accepting point of view (‘that’s life’), while the nonacceptance of oppression characterizes feminist humor and satire” (qtd. in Walker, Very 143; emphasis original). Kaufman concludes that while on the one hand female humour is normally less biting than feminist humour, on the other hand, it is “humor of hope” since it rejects oppression and refuses to submit to the existent conditions. In other words, feminist humour does not ridicule the action itself, since deriding the absurd action is to make it appear unimportant. Rather, as Walker says, it derides the ideology of gender inequality in order to depict this inequality as “absurd and powerless.” Similarly, the author of the female humour “is not merely ‘accepting’ the status quo, but is in fact calling attention to gender inequality, in ways designed to lead to its ultimate rejection” (Very 145).

Theorists of feminist humour have unanimously proposed that an effective way of resisting the dominant patriarchal order for women writers is through using a particular type of humour. It can enable them to enter their muted voice into the dominant general culture based on male standards. Central to their discussion is the point that since texts written by women are encoded by their particular biology, psyche, language use, culture, and unique experience, the decoding of such texts requires quite a different kind of approach which should take into account the fundamental characteristics of women’s writing as a whole. In other words, any study on women’s humour, including the present one, presupposes the existence of women’s writing as a distinct type of writing that needs to be investigated based on a different approach. The main reason for such a presupposition is the fact that women writers explore female experiences in non-conventional, non-canonised ways.

Virginia Woolf advises women writers to create their own tradition of writing. Although women might learn “a few tricks” from male writers, they cannot generally benefit from the dominant male tradition. When a woman writer began writing in the past, “Perhaps the first thing she would find [...] was that there was no common sentence ready for her use” (Room 79). And such a “lack of tradition, such a scarcity and inadequacy of tools” spared the woman author “freedom and fullness of expression” (80). To create such a tradition, not only the female, but also the male writer’s mind should function androgynously: “woman-manly and man-womanly,” because it is “when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties” (102). A woman writer can find her own tradition if the female part of her brain functions cooperatively with the male part, or if she can use all faculties of her brain simultaneously. Thus, Woolf’s emphasis lies mainly on the role of the author’s psyche in the creation of a different kind of tradition. Besides that, Woolf condemns the social conditions for restricting women’s creativity since the psyches of women writers are basically the by-products of social conditions.2

Furthermore, by referring to the “angel in the house” as an ideal of womanhood, Woolf highlights the socio-historical connotation of the concept as an “influential Victorian ideal of deferential, sportive and domestic womanhood” (Parsons 85). This ideal woman was thought to be “intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. […] She was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. […] Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty – her blushes, her great grace” (Woolf, Death). As Woolf suggests, women themselves have unconsciously strengthened such a cultural myth by internalising it over the years. Thus, Woolf considers “Killing the Angel in the House” a significant task of the woman writer. In her own writings, Woolf struggled to dispose of the established image since, as she argues, “had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing” (Death).

Pym’s fiction includes such angels – Belinda Bede, Mildred Lathbury, and Jane Cleveland are among them. At least, society expects them to be angels. Although they may appear to be helpmates, their thoughts show how they dislike being considered as such. The socio-cultural expectations towards women prevent them from expressing their true selves and from revealing their experiences in their writing. In the case of her characters’ traits and their life accounts, Pym ironically criticises the existing socio-cultural conditions which act as invisible obstacles preventing their private and social contributions. Pym’s criticism was about the cultural realities of her time. As Gillooly states, “in the globalizing middle-class culture of the late twentieth-century,” a culture which was financially and mentally based on the satisfaction of “self-interest.” it was not an easy task for female virtues such as “self-sacrifice and eager sympathy” to seem “ludicrous” (Smile 208).

According to American feminist and literary critic Elaine Showalter’s argument in her A Literature of Her Own,3 women’s specific condition in the patriarchal society should be taken as the most important factor in encouraging them to create a different kind of literature – their own literature. She coined the term “gynocriticism” in order to pose the significant issue of “difference.” Her main purpose was to “constitute women as a distinct literary group” and to recognise and analyse the “difference of women’s writing” (15), which is why women’s writing should be rediscovered and extended. In developing her theory on the direct relationship between women’s writing and women’s culture, Showalter critically reviews existing theories about the relationship between a woman’s text and her body, psyche, and language. According to this discussion, the shift from “an androcentric to a gynocentric” criticism is owed to Patricia Meyer Spacks’s studies. Showalter emphasises the importance of Spacks’s analysis of “how women’s writing had been different, and how womanhood itself shaped women’s creative expression” (15).

Showalter regards the concept of écriture féminine, which was proposed by Hélène Cixous,4 as possibly the most significant contribution to the issue of women’s writing. Showalter considers it “the inscription of the female body and female difference in language and text.” Écriture feminine signifies a “Utopian possibility rather than a literary practice” (15) since showing the defining differences in women’s writing is a challenging task. Showalter also argues that there is no agreement among critics whether women’s writing is be considered a stylistic or a generic matter, or a subject related to experience, or “produced by the reading process, as some textual critics would maintain” (16). Critics in general believe that the difference in women’s writing is affected by all these factors. That is, women writers’ style, the experience they convey, and the themes and subjects they write about differ to a great extent from what is common in mainstream literature. According to critics such as Judith Fetterley and Jonathan Culler, women’s reading process differs from that of men.

While discussing differences, theorists of women’s writing generally take into account four factors – biology, language, psychoanalysis, and culture. Although feminist criticism resists the patriarchal attribution of lower biological status to women, it takes into account the metaphorical significance of female biological difference in women’s own writings and the writings about them. In The Madwoman in the Attic, for instance, Gilbert and Gubar construct their explanation of women’s writing around metaphors of literary paternity. As Gilbert and Gubar understand, a woman writer undergoes anxiety of authorship caused by “socio-economic oppression and intellectual inferiorization as they have been considered to necessarily lack the instrument of generative power” (Madwoman 293). Hence, women writers’ anxiety is greatly felt “through the words they have produced and their anxiety of authorship is not only due to their status as mere ‘writers,’ but also due to their status as ‘women writers.’ The term refers to the ‘conscious fears of [writing] authority’ of a woman writer who conceives of the act of writing as ‘inappropriate to her sex’” (293). Gilbert and Gubar also cite socio-historical and cultural reasons for women’s absence from canonical literature. According to them, internalised cultural beliefs keep women away from reading and writing by restricting their self-awareness. Gilbert and Gubar propose that

women’s intellectual capabilities were overlooked, and they were given little chance to express themselves through literature. Only men could refer to themselves as the creators of artistic works in the colonial puritan society. Women almost always felt that they committed sin when they happened to put something in ink. Indeed, reading and writing were considered rather dangerous for women. (293)

In Showalter’s discussion of the rhetorical history of women’s writing in Anglo-American and French Feminism, Showalter highlights the defining importance of language from their perspectives. According to Nelly Furman, for instance, “It is through the medium of language that we define and categorize areas of difference and similarity, which in turn allow us to comprehend the world around us” (qtd. in Showalter 20). Male-centred categorisations predominate American English and “subtly shape our understanding and perception of reality; this is why attention is increasingly directed to the inherently oppressive aspects for women of a male-constructed language system.” Annie Leclerc proposes that women writers, in the first place, should “invent a language that is not oppressive, a language that does not leave speechless but that loosens the tongue” (qtd. in Showalter 21). In this way, through the gradual disruption of established patriarchal language, women writers can enter the appropriate language of their own into the existing discourse.

Showalter argues that women writers have long been accused of disrupting male discourse even before the rise of such discussions, mostly in the French tradition of feminist criticism. She emphasises that “the concept of a women’s language is not original with feminist criticism; it is very ancient and appears frequently in folklore and myth. In such myths, the essence of women’s language is its secrecy; what is really being described is the male fantasy of the enigmatic nature of the feminine” (21). Such a traditional view of women’s language is a misidentified recognition based on male illusion. Comparing the invention of a new language particular to women to the selection of a language in a decolonised society, Showalter argues that some women, by using the existing male language, endeavour to deliver their own experience through it. They gradually disrupt the established language in order to make their own voices heard and inscribe their style in the general writing tradition. In contrast, other critics believe that women writers should establish a fundamentally new language. As Showalter puts it, “The language issue in feminist criticism has emerged, in a sense, after our revolution, and it reveals the tensions in the women’s movement between those who would stay outside the academic establishments and the institutions of criticism and those who would enter and even conquer them” (22). Showalter acknowledges that “the concept of the women’s language is riddled with difficulties” because “there is no mother tongue, no genderlect spoken by the female population in a society, which differs significantly from the dominant language” (22). Moreover, the possibility of women’s language, its feasibility, as Showalter states, is not certain from the linguistic perspective either:

English and American linguists agree that “there is absolutely no evidence that would suggest the sexes are pre-programmed to develop structurally different linguistic systems.” Furthermore, the many specific differences in male and female speech, intonation, and language use that have been identified cannot be explained in terms of “two separate sex-specific languages” [McConnell-Ginet] but need to be considered instead in terms of styles, strategies, and contexts of linguistic performance. (22-23)

Showalter does not advocate a specific language for women as distinct from the male tradition. Instead, she holds that a new women’s language should be extracted from the dominant language. Her suggestion to feminist criticism

is to concentrate on women’s access to language, on the available lexical range from which words can be selected, on the ideological and cultural determinants of expression. The problem is not that language is insufficient to express women’s consciousness but that women have been denied the full resources of language and have been forced into silence, euphemism, or circumlocution. (23)

Therefore, women writers should primarily employ all the capacities of the existing language to be heard in that discourse because “women’s literature is still haunted by the ghosts of repressed language, and until we have exorcised those ghosts, it ought not to be in language that we base our theory of difference” (23).

Showalter’s understanding of women’s writing is in line with Gilbert and Gubar’s argument that “the female subject is not necessarily alienated from the words she writes and speaks” (“Sexual” 516). They argue that by using the existing discourse a woman writer can enter “not just female jouissance but female puissance” or her own identity into the dominant culture. In this way and “in spite of the feminist doubt and masculinist dread,” Gilbert and Gubar confirm that “woman has not been sentenced to transcribe male penmanship; rather, she commands sentences which inscribe her own powerful character” (“Sexual” 516; emphasis original). Gilbert and Gubar, therefore, do not advocate a totally new female writing tradition; instead, according to them, “there has always been an ‘écriture féminine;’ it has just been overlooked” (Berg 10). They hold that in order to express their particular experiences, women have “come to terms with the urgent need for female literary authority through fantasies about the possession of a mother tongue” (qtd. in Berg 10). The so-called “mother tongue,” according to Berg, is considered to be “primordial, passionate, powerful, [and] private.” It also includes “new words, a new language to express what has never been expressed before, [and] the woman’s experience.” This new type of language is “a subversive language powerful enough to subvert patriarchal power” (Berg 11).

As with women’s writing, feminist critics also disagree about the existence of a distinct women’s culture. The relationship between women’s culture and general culture based on the patriarchal values is by no means straightforward. To define women’s culture, some basic models have been proposed by critics, historians and anthropologists. Some critics point out the existence of a totally separate sphere as a necessity for the possibility of a separate female culture. In contrast, Edwin Ardener proposes a diagram on the relationship between the dominant and the muted group, maintaining that a great deal of the two spheres overlap, while there is still a “wild zone” which belongs to the muted group, and stands outside the male domain (qtd. in Showalter 200):

If we think of the wild zone metaphysically, or in terms of consciousness, it has no corresponding male space since all of male consciousness is within the circle of the dominant structure and thus accessible to or structured by language. In this sense, the 'wild' is always imaginary; from the male point of view, it may simply be the projection of the unconscious. In terms of cultural anthropology, women know what the male crescent is like, even if they have never seen it, because it becomes the subject of legend (like the wilderness). But men do not know what is in the wild. (Showalter 200)

Criticising those who think that it is possible for female writers to write only in the wild zone extracted from the dominant sphere, Showalter asserts that, “we must also understand that there can be no writing or criticism totally outside of the dominant structure” since the publication industry totally depends on the “economic and political pressures of the male-dominated society.” Therefore, “the concept of a woman’s text in the wild zone is a playful abstraction.” Showalter believes that “women’s writing is a ‘double-voiced discourse’ that always embodies the social, literary, and cultural heritages of both the muted and the dominant.” Thus, women’s writing cannot be considered as “inside and outside of the male tradition;” rather, it is “inside two traditions simultaneously” and reflects the characteristics of both traditions (201-02; emphasis original). Moreover, some critics have tried to explain the production and interpretation of the women- authored texts by the theory of double-text5.

Showalter, then, believes in a two-fold relationship between the general, dominant culture and women’s muted culture: “One of the great advantages of the women’s-culture model is that it shows how the female tradition can be a positive source of strength and solidarity as well as a negative source of powerlessness; it can generate its own experiences and symbols which are not simply the obverse of the male tradition” (204). Showalter highlights the importance of such cultural models in the reading of women’s fiction, proposing that:

Women’s fiction can be read as a double-voiced discourse, containing a “dominant” and a “muted” story […] I have described it elsewhere as an object/field problem in which we must keep two alternative oscillating texts simultaneously in view: “In the purest feminist literary criticism we are […] presented with a radical alteration of our vision, a demand that we see meaning in what has previously been empty space. The orthodox plot recedes, and another plot, hitherto submerged in the anonymity of the background, stands out in bold relief like a thumbprint. (204)

Pym’s texts can also be considered as a double-voiced discourse in Showalter’s sense. The first part of this is the dominant patriarchal discourse. The second part is the humorous discourse of the woman writer which, standing outside the power relations, ridicules the dominant discourse as well as the values and the ideology related to it.

Acting within the limitations of the existent dominant culture, the exploration of women’s culture can be regarded as the most important part of the search for a theory of women’s writing. The appearance of such culture can help to redefine conventionally established female roles, functions, activities, tastes and behaviours from a woman’s perspective based on her real life experiences. By the same token, Pym’s novels represent women’s lives as a distinct way of life differing from the dominant one.

STG, for instance, depicts the lives of two middle-class, middle-aged, unmarried sisters. The narrative mostly focuses on their disjointed viewpoints which subtly disrupt dominant cultural values. Similarly, EW displays Mildred’s unique values, beliefs and behaviours which oppose the dominant post-WW II culture of 1950s England. Likewise, the lives of Jane and Prudence in JP show their disconnected cultures and perspectives and their centrifugal drive away from the prevalent stream of patriarchal culture. Pym in these narratives attempts to redefine fundamental concepts from the women’s perspective.

Although feminist critics and theorists disagree over the existence of a separate kind of writing called women’s writing, nonetheless, they commonly accept that female experiences in women’s writings may vary from male experiences due to differences in their biology, history, language, and culture. Thus, women are seen capable of finding a way of expression to disrupt the deep structure of the patriarchal tradition. Thus, by working within the existing male tradition, women writers include in their writing some subtleties which are related to their own being and existence in order to imprint their voice or biological, historical, linguistic, and cultural concerns in the literary canon. In order to understand such texts, readers should also take into account the historical concerns of the woman author who mostly imagine their implied readers be aware of the woman writer’s conditions as a whole.

Female humour is generally considered to be one of the techniques female authors use in order to have their own voices heard and also to criticise the existing patriarchal tradition. Besides, women’s humour is addressed to a particular group of readers since only some well-informed readers can interpret and decode the strategies women use in their writings in order to neutralise the masculine obstacles. Related to this, Gillooly argues that since “the production and content of the humour are gender-marked,” thus, the readers for such humour are also probably “gender-marked” (Smile xx). Moreover, the relation between the writer of the humour and her/his addressee is a significant issue. The traditional and conventional forms of humour call for an extremely rigid “emotional distance” between the writer and his addressee whom Gillooly calls his “victim” (Smile 12). In contrast, women writers’ humour comforts the “suffering self ... soliciting readerly empathy for her in the process” (Smile 12). Referring to the problem-novels, such as Jane Austen’s, Gillooly states that “Curiously, the narrator’s relation to the heroine in the problem novels is at once less distant and less stable than in the others” (Smile 80). The relation between the heroine and the narrator is, however, of a compromising nature and, thus at some point, the narrator makes some alterations in the relationship. As Gillooly proposes, what has usually been labelled as Jane Austen’s “irony,” severely settles “the quality of all her narrator-heroine relationships” (Smile 80). The narrator sometimes distances herself from her heroine, while at other times intimately connects and wordplays with her.

Pym’s works, as are the case with Austen’s novels, raise a significant question of the prevalent mode – are they mostly ironic or humours? This study considers Pym’s writings as humorous, rather than ironic. Similarly, Jane Austen’s texts are of consideration in terms of the recurrent mistaking women’s humour as irony, and have symptomatic value in this context. As Gillooly points out, theorists of women’s humour suggest that Austen should not be considered as an “ironist” but rather a humourist, because of the “affective closeness she sustains between her narrator and heroine, even when the latter is the object of narrative amusement” (Smile 80). Gillooly, furthermore, asserts that a certain emotional distance that exists between “the ironist and the ironized,” however, can either be “experienced by the reader abstractly (in the disjunction between the ideal and real) or immediately (in the disproportionate knowledge of reader and character).” In contrast, there exists a “necessary emotional distance” in feminine humour. This emotive intimacy inscribed in the “narrator-heroine bond” (Smile 80) ends in Austen’s texts as being instances of female humour rather than irony, as has been considered until now. Accordingly, the woman writer’s bond to the source based on which she constructs her own sense of humour is not authoritative and mastering; rather, it is sympathetic and respectful owing to the particular socio-cultural experiences encountered by women. Gillooly further argues that female humour in this way can work “as a tactic of cultural as well as textual resistance” (Smile xx). This statement shows that female humour is not only a textual device, but also a cultural and ethnical resistance and can benefit from women’s individual lives. In a similar manner to Austen’s, Pym’s works have mostly been considered by scholars and critics as ironical works. However, the present study considers Pym’s writings as humorous, rather than ironic.

1.4. Difference between Irony and Humour

Women writers have not only used humour in their writings, they have reflected on it as well. According to Gillooly, George Eliot, for example, studied the different kinds of humour and the nature of the ludicrous. Eliot differentiates three main groups of humour. The first type, related to the illiterate and uncultivated, is “barbaric” humour. This kind of humour is associated with ludicrous events or situations, and the pleasure is evoked through “its ‘flavor’ in ‘triumphant egoism or intolerance,’ and its origins in ‘the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhings of a suffering enemy.’” This type is totally aggressive in dealing with its victims since its pleasure comes from the farcical deriding of an individual and laughing at its pain in the hands of its victimisers. The second type of humour, “wit” in Eliot’s classification, is based on the mental faculty and its significant features are “ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness.” This “wit” is not different from “reasoning raised to a higher power.”

Eliot suggests that “both barbaric humor and ‘wit’ are troped as masculine strategies.” The latter is close to what other theorists refer to as irony. Although it is not as rough and aggressive as the first type, it lacks the shaping element of women’s humour. It solely deals with reason, intellect and wordplay. This type also displays “hostility toward the Other.”

The third type of humour, according to Eliot, is “sympathetic humor,” which is closer to women’s humour. She describes this type as “a refined, ‘higher form’ of humor, which ‘in proportion as it associates itself with the sympathetic emotions,’ with the ‘sympathetic presentation of incongruous elements in human nature and life,’ [and] frequently attains the status of ‘poetry.’” It has much in common with women’s humour in many respects. First of all, it creates a sense of sympathy that accompanies the exchange of discourse caught up in a continuum of further suggestions. Patriarchal wit, by contrast, comes out as a weapon directed against a certain addressee while sympathetic humour, according to Gillooly, “is not simply feminine but preoedipally maternal.” Moreover, Eliot proposes that “in being ‘poetic’ and imaginative, it [sympathetic humor] is ‘of earlier growth than Wit,’ and thus prior to reason and the Law.” As Eliot adds, “‘maternal’ feelings belong solely to women” and woman novelists “have a precious specialty, lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience.” Eliot states that “‘chastened delicate humor’,” in addition to being metaphorically maternal, is “the chief aim and measure of female writing as well” (qtd. in Giloolly, Smile 165-66).

Modern critics have frequently defined and evaluated irony and humour based on a pattern of dual oppositions. For instance, by contrasting their relationship with law, Deleuze argues that “The first way of overturning the law is ironic, where irony appears as an art of principles, of ascent towards the principles and of overturning principles. The second is humour, which is an art of consequences and descents, of suspensions and falls” (qtd. in Colebrook 129). While irony “ascends” the existing context, the “descending” humour functions inside the existing context focusing on the “bodies, particularities, noises and disruptions that are in excess of the system and law of speech” (Colebrook 129).

According to Candace D. Lang’s distinction of irony from humour, which highlights the ideological potential inherent in each, the two linguistically different phenomena have mistakenly been marked as “irony” despite their diametrically different meanings. The function of an ironic text is to present “a preexistent idea or concept like any sincere statement in language” (Lang 5). The purpose of irony is limitation and suppression of meaning addressed to a specific addressee. Humour, by contrast, avoids addressing meaning to a particular addressee by employing linguistic ambiguities and connotative resonances. The ironist is often in distress because of the inadequacy of language for self-expression, while for the humourist language plays a constitutive role for both thought ego. The ironist needs to twist the function of language and his/her aim is the expression of meaning, whereas the humourist needs to exert language elements and his/her purpose is the production of meaning. The ironist has a certain intention or message in advance while the humourist has little idea what will emerge in the process. The humorous text does not express meaning in the “traditional, etymological sense of exteriorizing what was interior to the authorial psyche;” but it brings together linguistic elements and arranges them “into systems offering a variety of potential meanings to be actualized by the reader” (Lang 7). In an ironic text, the intended meaning of the author/intender prevails over the reader/addressee’s. In other words, with an implication that s/he has a complete identity or message, the author tries to control the meaning of the text. But “the author” in the humorous text is of secondary importance. The humourist, unlike the ironist, creates potential meaning(s) to be actualized by “the reader.” For the humourist, the discourse/text is central and the potential meaning(s) are liberated. The liberated humourist text, therefore, contributes to the consolidation of the very presence of the utterer. As Lang argues, “The humourist critic focuses on the functioning of the text at the level of the signifier, rather than seeking to somehow ‘see through’ the language to its referent or authorial source” (7). Consequently, the reader of humorous texts is relatively free to read and interpret such texts. Thus, irony can be interpreted or translated while humour can be commented or rewritten. If a statement can be negated in an ironic statement, then we can achieve a signifier-signified match. In other words, “when the signifier coincides with the signified,” we can assume that “irony becomes serious” (Lang 41-42).

Considering Lang’s discussion, Gillooly argues that Hegelian or romantic irony is “based upon a logic of binary oppositions (like ideal/real, meaning/expression, subject/object, male/female, master/slave)” (“Women” 446-77). Moreover, romantic irony refers to the “notion that the word itself is but an envelope for the idea.” This type of irony functions based on negation and the assertion that there is “a primary and originary intention” behind written words (Lang 2-3), even though these words fail to express it adequately. Thus, it is the inequality “between the idea and the word that constitutes the ‘irony’” (Gillooly, “Women” 477). On the other hand, Socratic irony, or what Lang labels as humour, keeps away from the “simple splitting or duplication” (115) of meaning. This is the most important feature of Hegelian irony which “limit[s] one’s reading to the extraction of a coherent message” (Lang 193). In opposition to irony, which seeks “truth,” humour is understood “only as a divergence from truth, with no subsequent moment of convergence” (Lang 42). Humour disseminates signification through challenging “the traditional concept of meaning as a transcendental signified” (Lang 194). As Colebrook, based on Deleuze’s understanding of the concept, argues:

Humour falls or collapses: ‘down’ from meaning and intentions to the singularities of life that have no order, no high and low, no before and after. Humour can reverse or pervert logic, disrupt moral categories or dissolve the body into parts without any governing intention. Humour is not the reversal of cause and effect but the abandonment of the ‘before and after’ relations – the very line of time – that allow us to think in terms of causes and intentions, of grounds and consequents. (134; emphasis original)

Gillooly similarly argues that humour not only rejects the “‘truth’ of a master discourse or interpretation” (“Women” 477) but also endangers its basis.6 Therefore, in contrast to irony, which is an outcome of binary logic, humour produces “multiple, often conflicting, interpretive possibilities” in language and, consequently, subverts the potency of the prescribed language. Thus seen, while irony functions as “a principle of antithesis, humour operates as a principle of subversion.” Considering the fact that “the rire of irony corresponds to the derire of humor” (Lang 186; emphasis original), it can be argued that the ridiculing and mocking of the official and the law, as well as its “dialectic discourse” (Gillooly, “Women” 477), may function as a technique for domination. The user of irony tends to master the other(s), and since irony operates as a “momentary or sustained recognition of existential dissonance,” it also includes, among others, “sarcasm and satire as well as a host of otherwise unspecified and not necessarily funny incongruities in life and representation” (Smile xxi). Moreover, the most elemental constituent of irony is “The disparity between the idea and the word (or between normative and individual action)” (Smile xxii). Being a masculine trope, “in its comic incarnation, irony presumes not only an alazon but an eiron or figure of disguised authority.” This figure is “an awkward posture for the feminine to maintain in almost any existent culture” (Smile xxii).

1.5 Necessity of a Humour of One’s Own

One of the most controversial issues among critics is whether women’s humour is different from male humour. In her A Room of One’s Own, Woolf differentiates between conventional humour and women’s humour as related to women’s experience. Woolf foregrounds women’s humour concentrating on their distinct experiences. Thus, as Judy Little argues, comedy “written by women may be different from comedy written by men” (Comedy ix) since, according to Woolf, men’s and women’s “values” are to some extent different although the prevailing values are masculine. She maintains that “the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex.” Woolf considers this difference very “natural” and unquestionable: “this is so” (Room 76). However, she sidelines the constraints imposed by the existing male standards prevailing over the context in which women writers produce literature. She adds:

Speaking crudely, football and sport are ‘important’; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes 'trivial'. And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room. A scene in a battlefield is more important than a scene in a shop - everywhere and much more subtly the difference of value persists. (Room 77)

Woolf, nevertheless, recommends women to draw on their particular experiences, caused by their particular condition, as an advantage in order to write their own peculiar humour through which they can see and laugh at men’s absurdities and hypocrisies: “learn to laugh, without bitterness, at the vanities – say rather at the peculiarities, for it is a less offensive word – of the other sex” (Room 94). Thus, Woolf prepares the basis for women’s humour and encourages them to express themselves humorously.

Exploring and questioning the conventional theories related with humour, theory of women’s humour has recently appeared as an outstanding strategy of reading women’s fiction. By considering the rise and development of the theories of humour and their application, a comprehensive theoretical study of women’s humour necessarily puts into question the traditional claim that since women do not have a sense of humour, or at best a particular or distinct one, humour is primarily considered to be a male dominion. Some of the twentieth century thinkers, such as Schopenhauer, Bergson, and Freud declared that “women had no sense of humor” (Sochen 9). Thus, it is no surprise that women’s humour has been ignored and misread since the patriarchal ideology did not recognise women’s sense of humour as a separate and specific type of humour in its own right. As June Sochen observes, “the conservative point of view dominated, and the rebellious one, albeit a powerful one, was looked at suspiciously by all lovers of the status quo, it took a long time to overthrow the long-held notions about women’s alleged lack of capacity to laugh and to create laughter” (10). Consequently, it was a challenging task for the dominating male system to grant recognition to this type of humour for women’s use and to provide the required conditions to broaden and theorise about it.

According to the theorists who essentially consider humour as a male art, any theorising about women’s humour is invalid. Referring to this situation, Kate Sanborn, as the first woman who published an influential book on women’s humour, proposes that “While the wit of men, as a subject for admiration and discussion, is now threadbare, the wit of women has been almost utterly ignored and unrecognized” (1). Theorists of women’s humour thus tend to highlight it as a separate ignored and unrecognized category of humour, particular to women. The theory that women do indeed possess a humour of their own initiated further investigation of their particular style of humour and its difference from the conventional male humour. For instance, in the introduction to her anthology, Sanborn admits that her decision to collect women’s humour is largely due to the myth that women do not have a sense of humour. Her purpose in collecting the humorous writings of women is an attempt to prove the falsity of the general belief, as put by Richard Grant White, that comedy is the ‘‘rarest of qualities in woman” (qtd. in Sanborn 13). Sanborn, moreover, describes her desire to publish such a book by stating that “it roused such a host of brilliant recollections that it was a temptation to try to materialize the ghosts that were haunting me; to lay forever the suspicion that they did not exist” (13). Although Sanborn does not theorise about women’s humour in her book, she collects English women’s humorous writings and claims that “there were many literary Englishwomen who had undoubted humour” (15). Accordingly, women’s humour is generally believed to have appeared in women’s texts as a remarkable rhetorical device.

1.6 Humour: A Female Device?

The kind and function of humour in women’s writing have always been under debate. For example, by referring to the problematic history of the theory of women’s humour, Gillooly states that Lang’s discussion contributed a lot to the study of women’s humour her personal lack of interest in women’s use of humour. As Gillooly says, Lang “suggests why ‘humor’ as opposed to irony, comedy, or another formulation is the most appropriate general term by which to refer to what is amusing in women’s writing” (“Women” 477). She further proposes that the peculiar characteristics inherent in women’s humour including, for instance, “the characteristic subtlety, the intercategorical nature, of female humor ... conforms more fully to a reading attuned to polyvalence than to the strict either/or dualism associated with Hegelian irony” (“Women” 477). Moreover, dissimilar to irony that attempts “to dominate signification” in order to remove other ‘trivial’ and insignificant meanings, women’s humour is in fact “adversarial and oppositional to the dominant discourse” without threatening or endangering the foundations of the dominant order. Therefore, humour, as Gillooly asserts, “like female utterance, is unauthorized discourse,” “It is not a sharply contrasted principle enforcing the law by negation, instead, it is beyond the law and thus “dangerously subversive of its hegemony” (“Women” 477-78).

In her attempt to theorise about female irony, Gillooly argues that, in comparison to the “reinforcement of ego characteristic of irony,” female ego is fabricated as “dispersed, relational, passive, and renunciative.” Thus, as Gillooly states, the female writer benefits more from humour because it provides her more “sympathetic relation to self” (Smile xxii). Walker also points out “women’s quite different relationship to authority” (Very 12) while at the same time demonstrating women’s alienation from the dominant order. Agreeing with Walker, Gillooly asserts that if irony is a “masculine” device, which is a “direct negative response to the Law,” then “feminine irony,” obstructed by the women’s peculiar position in society, is only expressed as “silence” (Smile xxii). Moreover, Walker proposes that language, as being the most essential constituent of women’s writing, is applied in two different styles. The first group of women writers resist and challenge “the male-dominated language, either by appropriating male discourse for women’s purposes or by altering or subverting it.” This is the strategy that women comic writers employ in their writings. They resist and challenge the “dominant discourse” by the application of comic strategies such as “irony.” The second group of women writers stress “women’s exclusion from language – their silence.” These writers, according to Walker, mostly tend towards modes such as fantasy as another accompanying narrative strategy (Feminist 44). Those women writers, who chose to challenge the male-centred language by various strategies, must realise that “the initial step in negating the hegemony of oppressive language is to question its authority by making fun of it.” (Walker, Feminist 44) Pym applies this tactic effectively in her fiction. For example, although she accepts religion as her ideology, yet, she challenges it in a peculiar humorous tone. Thus, in Walker’s words, by employing humour that contradicts “the power of hegemonic discourse,” by her refusal “to take that power seriously,” and by “pointing to the absurdity of the official language of a culture,” the woman comic writer can build up resistance against the dominance of the male-centred language (Feminist 44).

Pym’s ridiculing tone regarding patriarchal discourse is observable in her dealing with the very topics and themes which are regarded as insignificant by male critics and writers. Barreca also points out the disregard of the literary and cultural critics for women’s humour, “When it can be seen, comedy written by women is perceived as trivial, silly and unworthy of serious attention.” (Untamed 20). Thus, since women writers mostly write outside the domain of “power and authority,” many critics consider women’s writing activities less significant than those of men: “by writing comedy, in which the unofficial nature of the world is explored (to paraphrase Bakhtin), women are damned to insignificant twice over” since “traditional arguments posit that women’s comedy, as in women’s gossip, the unimportant discuss the unofficial” (Barreca, Untamed 20). Thus, it is possible to regard women writers’ humour as generally unimportant through evaluating the subjects they write about as insignificant.

1.7 Misreading Women’s Humour and Images of Women

Misreading and misunderstanding women’s humorous writing is the most problematic subject in women’s writing. Women comic writers have often been victims of the misreading and misunderstandings of the critics. In this regard, Barreca states that “Women’s humor has not so much been ignored as it has been unrecognized, passed over, or misread as tragic” (Untamed 17). Furthermore, as Gillooly refers to it, women’s comic writings are often valued according to the universal standards: “Because readers have historically been taught to identify and appreciate the presence of humour according to ‘universal’ standards and to privilege certain of these over others, they frequently ignore or misread humour produced by women whenever it refuses to conform to the established standards” (Women 475). Barreca also underlines the role of universal standards by proposing that the important problem in reading and recognizing women’s humour has been measuring their humour against the so-called universals (Untamed 45).

According to critics such as Woolf, the fact that many woman writers choose to write about the so-called small details of life (e.g. birth, death, marriage, and sex) implies that women cannot master the universal subjects (e.g. sports, finance, and academics) (Room 77). Woolf highlights the inefficiency of the literary critical tradition to “recognize and read women’s humour” rather than the “inability of women to produce comedy that accounts for the absence of critical material on the subject” (Room 20). By the same token, while some critics and scholars misread Pym’s humour as serious and sober, they misrecognise her subtle and covert style of humour.

As it is true about the existing images and stereotypes for women, classification of women into types and groups, rather than considering them as individuals, has been one of the significant factors in misreading their humour through the years. As long as the conventionalised stereotypes for women ignore their individualities, working against their particular private and social states, and as long as a woman is viewed merely as “helpmate, sex object, and domestic servant, she cannot at the same time be allowed the capacity for humour, with its implication of superiority and its fundamental critique of social reality” (Walker, Very 98). Therefore, in order to read women’s humour without the prejudices and presuppositions, and to understand it, first of all the negative stereotypes related with women must be wiped out. Understanding women’s historical, cultural and social states is obligatory for reading and understanding their particular type of humour. Further, what in fact differentiates women’s humorous writing from those of men, originates from differences in the way women relate to culture, as well as from the lack of a balance between the authorised and the unauthorised, and the workings of the power between them. The authorised and the dominant are not always powerful and the unauthorised and marginal are not always powerless.

The balance between the power of the authorised and the unauthorised may sometimes turn counter-wise. Walker proposes that the “delicate balance between power and powerlessness” shapes the “themes and forms of women’s humorous writing.” She also adds that women’s literature “has described myriad aspects of women’s lives, employing familiar stereotypes about women for the purpose of mocking those stereotypes and showing their absurdity and even their danger” (Very 10). Pym employs these stereotypes in her writing in order to display the absurd and subordinating view of the patriarchal culture in relation to these stereotypes. Likewise, Walker states that, “It is for this reason that women’s humor so often seems to turn on and perpetuate traditional stereotypes of women: the gossipy spinster, the nagging wife, the inept housekeeper, the lovelorn woman, the dumb blonde. These are some of the roles in which women have been cast by men and male institutions, and as such they have, until quite recently, seemed fixed” (Very 11). Similarly, Pym’s novels are full of spinsters, unloved women, and tactless housewives. She depicts these women not primarily to exhibit their ineffectiveness, but to display the shortcomings of the male-centred culture in dealing with them. Walker also observes that: “What female humorists have done with these stereotypes, however, is to subvert them. The housewives who cannot reach perfection ... are in this situation because the standards for their performance are impossibly high; the lovelorn women ... are victims of male indifference and the double standard” (Very 11). Pym likewise resists and undermines the dominant order by ridiculing the standards set for women by the prevailing culture. In addition to subverting the standards prescribed for women, women’s humour also criticises the institutions and individuals who are in some manner associated with the power structures.

1.8 Lack of Ending in the Works of Women Writers

One significant difference that theorists of women’s humour point out is that between the endings of novels written by female and male humorous writers. Barreca considers women’s humour a specific type of humour stating that comedies by female writers have no “happy endings” (introduction 8). Instead, “The endings of comic works by women writers,” as Barreca states, “do not, ultimately, reproduce the expected hierarchies, or if they do there is often an attendant sense of dislocation even with the happiest ending” (Untamed 23).7 Following that, Little considers “lack of closure” or “lack of resolution” as the fundamental characteristic of the feminist comedy (qtd. in Untamed 29). However, despite their non-comedic endings, women’s humorous writings “can indeed be classified as comedies” (Barreca, introduction 8). Similarly, the narrative endings in Pym’s selected novels do not conform to the established norms of comedy; for instance, the endings of Pym’s novels differ from the endings of the traditional plots. Although marriage and union are obtained at the end of some of her novels, they cannot be considered a great change in the fate of the characters. In fact, marriages and unions are reversed as unfortunate destinies of the characters. In many of Pym’s novels, nothing in particular happens at the end, and everything goes on as before.

Thus, the endings of women’s comedy differ sharply, and considerably, from the male’s traditional perspective of the term comedy. This particular type of comedy does, as Barreca emphasises, destroy social order without establishing a new and different one. Moreover, it revolts against the norms and the values of the patriarchal system which have already penetrated into the socio-cultural deep structure. Barreca, moreover, proposes that women’s comedic writings “may contain very little joyous celebration” and in contrast to the comedies produced as “a safety valve,” they are produced as “an inflammatory device.” The result of this type of humour “is not to purge desire and frustration” but “to transform it into action” (Untamed 18). Similarly, Walker argues that women’s writings lack a definite ending. It implies that the text does not allow for a closure. As she observes: “A feminine textual body is recognized by the fact that it is always endless, without ending: there’s no closure, it doesn’t stop.” She suggests that there exists in women’s texts the tone of being interminable, “A feminine text starts on all sides, all at once, starts twenty times, thirty times, over (Feminist 11). Accordingly, as Stott argues, even though women wrote comedies, which they in fact did, they were criticised for being restricted in themes compared to men’s comedies which deal with important aspects of life: “Female comedians only discuss ‘women’s’ themes – relationships, shopping, and menstruation, for example – whereas male topics are thought to be unbounded and therefore to have universal appeal” (94).

Pym’s novels are mostly inconclusive. In other words, no satisfactory conclusion may be drawn after reading them. The three selected novels in this stury are open-ended and the reader can imagine dozens of possible endings for them. It is for the purpose of comedy that Pym deliberately keeps her novels open-ended. For instance, the ending of EW gives only some hints that Everard might ask Mildred to marry him. Through the narrator’s report of her inner thoughts, Mildred is reported as imagining herself at Everard’s “sink peeling potatoes and washing up;” doing Everard’s indexing and proofreading for a “nice change” (EW 255). Moreover, the endings of STG and JP suggest implicitly that they are in fact non-endings. For example, it is possible to imagine that Belinda and Harriet Bede, despite having suitors, will stay unmarried; Belinda will remain in love with Henry; Harriet will go on flirting with the young curates; and/or Jane will seek worthy suitors for Prudence Bates, while Prudence will fall in and out of love with imaginary lovers! This sharp contrast between the endings of the women’s and men’s writings makes possible the other differences between the more conventional humour and women’s specific humour.

1.9 Differences between Conventional Humour and Women’s Humour

Feminist critics and theorists of humour claim that women have a humour peculiar to themselves that differs widely from men’s conventional humour. According to Gail Finne, women’s humour is different from men’s and is particular to themselves: “The gender of the creator of comedy makes a difference in the kind of comedy produced” (1). Reading and encoding this humour calls for a particular type of historical, social, and political knowledge about women’s condition since according to Walker, “women’s relation to language, literature, education and cultural traditions has been made problematic and complex by centuries of unequal access to power and agency within these systems” (Disobedient 2). Gillooly also “demarcates” women’s humour from men’s and proposes to investigate the peculiar techniques: “Those narrative, rhetorical, and affective tactics that – because of their passivity, indirection, and self-effacement – have been gendered feminine in nineteenth-century British culture” (Smile xix). Hence, on account of women’s unequal relation to language and power, women are obliged to apply different tactics and strategies so that they might overcome the dominating patriarchal language. Consequently, this results in their producing a different kind of humour.

The writer’ gender, therefore, has a determining effect on the kind of humour present in his/her writings. For example, Finney observes that “the gender of the creator of comedy can make a difference in the kind of comedy produced” (1). Theorists also argue that the socio-cultural conditions have operated against women’s manifestation of humour. Based on Walker’s opinion, the main cause of women’s limitation in expressing their humour is that they “have lacked opportunities for free expression of their humour due to the cultural expectations regarding their status and behaviour.” However, women have always struggled to reject this opposition. Hence, to resist this lack, as Walker puts it, “women have typically masked their humorous utterance with a pose of anxious adherence to cultural norms” (Very 86). Consequently, women’s humour lacks the direct and aggressive nature of men’s humour. Since women live in a patriarchal society, they have to adapt their humour to the realities of the society wherein they live. As a result, women’s resistance to the patriarchal order occurs in a particular context where they have to survive and their humour takes the form of indirect resistance to power. Moreover, according to Walker, the paradoxical beliefs about women and their position and status in society, such as the general culture’s belief in their sinfulness and at the same time the simultaneous admiration “for their purity,” are some of the reasons for women’s use of subversive forms of humour. Women have always resisted against such patriarchal beliefs “by means of a subversive laughter” (Very 86).

Some critics argue that women’s humour mostly supports the oppressed and the powerless, rather than supporting the oppressors and the powerful. For instance, Barbara Bennett suggests that a significant difference between male and female humour is what Emily Toth in her article “Female Wits” has termed as the “humane humor rule.” Toth argues that women, in contrast to men, “target the powerful rather than the powerless and rarely ridicule an aspect of a person or society that cannot be changed.” She then gives the example of the “physically handicapped, choosing instead to attack those who hold narrow-minded attitudes and adhere to cultural stereotypes” (qtd. in Bennett 13). Likewise, Barreca observes that “Women are more likely to make fun of those in high and seemingly invulnerable positions than their male counterparts.” To put the same thought differently, women’s humour, according to Barreca, “is power-sensitive” or it is “often anarchic and apocalyptic; the unsolicited laughter of women spells trouble to those in power” (Untamed 21-22). However, women’s humour is opposed to the creation and employment of any stereotype. For instance, the stereotype of the father-in-law does not exist in women’s humour, in contrast to the stereotype of the mother-in-law, or a bachelor is not ridiculed as a spinster is parodied in men’s humour. According to Gillooly, “feminine” humour can be distinguished from the other forms of traditional or “masculine” humour in different aspects of “production and consumption, in form, content, occasion, and psychological function” (Smile xx). For instance, in spite of conceiving humour as the disconnection between the norm and its violation, as the theories of humour as incongruity have argued, female humour reverses the standards by ridiculing the traditional patriarchal norms.

Based on Gillooly’s study, another significant deviation of women’s humour from the traditional, conventional, or masculine humour is that, by exercising various tactics and strategies in the text, feminine humour not only furtively attacks the dominating “ideological construction of ‘woman,’” but also denounces “certain narrative and rhetorical tactics” such as used by the nineteenth-century writer Ribaldry (Smile 17). Furthermore, women do not employ satire in their writings: “Nor does satire – at least in concentrated form or in prodigious quantities – occur with any regularity” (Smile 18). The humour of Vanity Fair is an example of masculine humour which does not apply the “veiled tactics common to feminine humour to replicate.” Masculine humour is, therefore, “too pronounced and transparent” compared to the covert tactics of feminine humour. Rather, feminine humour, works invisibly, to “unsay its sober expression, locally undermining the overt ideology of the text” (Smile 18). That is feminine humour does not express itself in a straightforward manner; instead, it topically subverts the open and visible notions of the text.

Similarly, Walker claims that unlike women’s humour, which “is almost never purely comic or absurd” (Very xii), men’s humour is carefree and playful. According to Walker, the melancholic mood and serious tone of women’s humour can be regarded as the significant characteristics of their humorous expression since in referring to the infinite “absurdities that woman have been forced to endure in this culture, it carries with it not the light-hearted feeling that is the privilege of the powerful, but instead a subtext of anguish and frustration” (Very xii). Thus, the state of being carefree and playful is not consistent with women’s humour wherein a troubled and melancholic ego exists underneath. The woman humour writer has her own way of healing for her troubled ego, or as Walker proposes, being “at odds with the publicly espoused values of the culture,” the woman writer subverts the traditional and conventional grounds ridiculing the absurdities of “the politician, the pious, and the pompous.” The woman humourist, then, “must break out of the passive, subordinate position mandated for them by centuries of patriarchal tradition and take on the power accruing to those who reveal the shams, hypocrisies, and incongruities of the dominant culture.” A woman humourist’s task, therefore, as Walker identifies, is an arduous one since it must face and overthrow the authority that keeps her unauthorised as well as “to risk alienating those upon whom women are dependent for economic survival” (Very 9). This is one of the reasons why women’s humour has conventionally been subverted and ignored through the ages.

A major difference between masculine and feminine humour refers to the modifications feminine humour makes to the narrative conventions. While, as Gillooly points out, women’s humour is subtle and “at least apparently unthreatening” (Smile I18), the narrative conventions of masculine humour are generally direct and threatening. One instance of such alterations is in decentring the marriage convention “as the authorizing textual principle.” However, women’s humour does not openly challenge the “authority of culturally dominant oedipal narrative” that mostly results in “the heroine’s erotic and economic transformation from daughter to wife” (Smile 18). Thus, feminine humour does not make drastic changes to the narrative; instead, it undermines the authority of the dominant patriarchal ideology through gradual disruption of its power. For instance, Pym similarly undermines the mastering ideology by counteracting the power of marriage at the end of her novels. Her novels for the most part do not end in marriage and if, by chance they do, marriage is demonstrated as the reversal of the type of marriage depicted in the conventional comic novels. The marriage Pym presents is ineffective, and does not result in the coupling of the lovers.

Even though men and women reserve narrative motifs and themes for comic outcomes, feminine humourists, as Gillooly contends, employ “literary forms generally shunned by their fellows” (Smile 18). The reason for women writers’ acting in this way might differ from writer to writer, but the most important cause is the limitation and restriction of their writings in terms of motifs and structure. Throughout history, women writers have been able to express their humour in a specific language and mode, different from men’s. For instance, they picked out the genre of fairy tales and made radical changes to it. As Gillooly claims, “Fairy tales – which inform the content and closure of most narratives of the period – are openly exploited by writers like Gaskell, Bronte, and Austen for humorous purposes” (Smile 18). Much later, the form of the fairy tale is also used in the novels of Pym for the same humorous purpose.

Pym’s novels reverse the narrative structure and the plot of the conventional fairy tale in all aspects. To make a relationship with Gillooly’s statement, they typically revise the “family romance that pervades nineteenth-century British narrative.” Pym’s novels generally reverse the structure of the fairy tales in which, as Gillooly says, “paternal figures (fathers primarily) are customarily royal, powerful, and loving, stepmothers cruel and sometimes murderous” (Smile 19). Unlike fairy tales, Pym’s novels are emptied of the royal, efficient, and powerful male figures and fathers. There barely exist any father-figures in her novels. If they do, they are all inefficient fathers and husbands. They are exceedingly common men without a single drop of royal blood. They are mostly clergymen or university professors who do not have the authority as the father-figure at home. They are mostly abandoned by their wives and their children and are left with nobody really to care for them. In contrast, the spinsters in Pym’s novels are the ones with the authority. They are all efficient individuals, capable of not only solving their own problems, but also counteracting those of other characters. The world in which Pym’s characters live is not even a nuclear family. Most men and women live lonely lives, without having any children. By drawing such a sketch and for comic reasons, Pym reverses the conventional structure of the nuclear family and family romance.