Praxis is an interesting book to come back to for many reasons, but as I read it in tandem with Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, the two books worked, rather curiously with no small amount of synchronicity–odd really as the books are about entirely different things, for while Life after Life explores alternate lives and brings up the possibly of changing fate, Praxis focuses on a character who rarely exercises her Free Will. It was pure accident that I read these two books simultaneously, and while both books focus on the lives and the choices of two women, time wise, Praxis extends into the late 20th century, whereas Life After Life is rooted in the first half of the 20th century. Weldon, a feminist writer who’s been the centre of some controversy, concentrates on the lives of women with themes that include: female identity & self-image, transformation & reinvention, gender inequality, female madness and the vicious relationships between women. While Weldon’s work, full of bitingly wicked humour, obviously fits in any feminist canon, her work can also be considered Transgressive fiction for the way her marvelous characters subvert societal norms. Praxis is the story of a 20th century woman who’s transformed (not for the better) by her relationships with men. A female chameleon with little sense of just who she really is, Praxis subsumes herself in her relationships, becoming what her lovers expect/want her to be. Becoming what is expected or desired brings only unhappiness and confusion, and through this character’s transformations, we see Praxis struggling with her identity, her own worst enemy as the years fall away spent on some meaningless daily life that fulfills someone else’s demands and expectations. And then the day comes when Praxis acts spontaneously and as a result goes to prison. Is she a feminist hero or a monster? The Praxis of the title is the youngest daughter of Lucy Duveen and her common-law husband, Benjamin. The story is told by a now elderly Praxis, a woman who has apparently spent a few years in prison for an unspecified crime. Praxis writes down her story, going back in time to at age 5, “sitting on the beach at Brighton,” with her mother and her older sister Hypatia. Lucy and her two daughters give an idyllic impression to passer-bys including WWI veteran and former bombardier, Henry Whitechapel, who now lurks on the beaches pretending to take photographs for tourists with film (if he actually has any) that he never develops.Told in both first and third person narration, we follow Praxis through her life, through her university days, her lovers, marriages, divorces, children, step-children, endless cooking and cleaning, and there are several points at which Praxis finds herself in a life she didn’t plan and doesn’t want. With a ‘how-did-I-get-here’ feeling, a stupefied Praxis marvels that lacking a sense of self, she’s been molded into a person she no longer recognizes in order to please whichever man is in her life."Staring at herself in the mirror, at her doll’s face, stiff doll’s body, curly blonde doll’s hair, she wondered what experience or wisdom could possibly shine through the casing that Ivor had selected for her. She did not blame Ivor: she knew that she had done it to herself : had preferred to live as a figment of Ivor’s imagination, rather than put up with the confusion of being herself."But while Praxis tries to hard to please the various men in her life, she fails to befriend women, and since Weldon is big on the betrayals of women towards their own sex, there are several times when Praxis’s peculiar, and very possibly mad, sister, Hypatia (“People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an OBE goes on for ever,“) takes measures to ensure her sister’s unhappiness. It’s no coincidence that the very best things that happen in Praxis’s life occur on those rare occasions when women stick together.While the style, tone and theme of Praxis were all vastly dissimilar to Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life, there were connections. Life after Life gives us a protagonist who lives many versions of the same life. Choices made in a split second lead Ursula down different paths in an alternative universe sort-of-way. While Weldon’s Praxis is grounded in bitter reality, her life is segmented by divisions and a metaphysical connection with the star Betelgeuse–which signals death of one self and the rebirth of another ‘new’ Praxis. While Ursula has moments of disturbing deja-vu, Praxis feels a strong disconnect with her life–almost as though one day she wakes up and wonders just how she got to this place.Praxis, who becomes entangled with the swinging sixties, also runs head-long into feminism, and Praxis has mixed feelings about feminists–initially repelled, they begin to make sense to her–although as the years pass, once again, Praxis feels out of touch with "the New Women."I can’t conclude without mentioning one of my favourite characters in the book, Irma, a friend from Praxis’s university days. Irma is the sort of hard, driven woman who always seems to know what she wants and how to get it. She marries a man she thinks will be successful and she leads a rather terrifying life of social success and mental emptiness. At one point, for example she offers Praxis some practical advice:“There’s only way to get out of the fix you’re in,” said Irma. “And that’s to sleep your way out of it. Sorry and all that.” Since this is a Weldon novel, Irma undergoes her own radical transformation, becoming a militant feminist and appearing on television while her ex-husband nastily argues that all “poor Irma” needs is:“a good lay. But where is she going to find that? Look at the way she dresses.”
Well where to start. The book is basically about the confusion each generation of females goes through as we are defined into roles by the generation before us and the one that emerges after us. But to tell the story you must really go through some ugliness that doesn't feel real to me. If Brighton Beach England was truly like this post WWII and into the sexual revolution than I'm really disturbed. This book is full of a girl feeling unloved, trying to find a sense of belonging through sexuality, using ones body to regain power, and then succumbing to roles again forced on us by society. And the whole time she appears miserable...no joy from her family, her lovers or husbands, or her children. The only thing she feels remotely good about is her work. Women are fuller beings than that. I'm not saying superwoman syndrome, I'm just saying this very narrow perspective of women did not resonate with me.
Do You like book Praxis (1993)?
This will always be one of my favorite novels. Personally, I think Weldon's playful words are so magnetic it draws me to Praxis' world whenever she speaks about things that express feminism. I am not really a bookworm (I've read less than 15 novels thus far)but this novel kept my interest all throughout. Not a single bored bone in my body while I was reading it. Objectively speaking on the other hand, the story has very realistic characters. The flow wasn't dragging and the characters were well developed.
—Ree Villaruel
