In the belly of this story: The role of fantasy in four American women\u27s novels of the 1980s

The fantastic in literature can be defined as a violation of what is normally thought of as possibility. As a literature of subversion, which deals with the tension between the laws of human society and the resistance of the unconscious to such laws, fantasy gives voice to otherwise unheard desires of women in our times. This study will examine the role of fantasy in four contemporary novels, two by white mainstream writers--Lois Gould\u27s Subject to Change (1989) and Margaret Atwood\u27s The Handmaid\u27s Tale (1985)--and two by minority authors--Afro-American writer Toni Morrison\u27s Beloved (1987) and the Native American novelist Leslie Marmon Silko\u27s Ceremony (1977). In all of these novels, fantasy plays a dual role. First, it subversively deconstructs public worlds and selves. Second, fantasy becomes the agent for a developing self. That self seeks a wholeness. It seeks an individual voice, a voice not merely measured against the male or dominant voice as other, but one that emerges from women\u27s experience. (Even though the protagonist of Ceremony is a man, he cannot speak until he learns to balance the masculine with the feminine in his voice.) Once found, a woman\u27s voice yearns to connect with others in community. Finally, the self seeks agency, the capacity to act or exert power. Fantasy is radical; its resolutions are conservative. The self which fantasy threatens to deconstruct survives in a new guise. In each novel, desire is covered over, and the social structure opens to take in the fantastic subject, newly equipped to deal with its dominant value systems