Female Friends: Analysis of Major Characters
"Female Friends: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the complexities of female friendship and the intertwined lives of its major characters. Central to the narrative is Chloe Evans Rudore, a nearly forty-year-old mother of five, whose challenging upbringing in a bar has shaped her forgiving nature and low self-esteem. She is en route to London to meet her friends, Marjorie and Grace, who are encouraging her to confront her husband Oliver’s infidelity with their French housekeeper.
Marjorie, a smart and capable BBC producer, grapples with the responsibilities of others while struggling with her own difficulties, stemming from a childhood spent seeking her mother’s approval. Grace Songford, on the other hand, is a beautiful yet disillusioned woman who has historically relied on men for support, navigating tumultuous relationships and the fallout from her failed marriage.
The narrative is further enriched by Oliver Rudore, Chloe's domineering husband, and Patrick Bates, a painter with a checkered past who maintains a lingering connection with each of the women. Overall, the dynamics among these characters present a rich exploration of themes such as loyalty, betrayal, and the social expectations placed upon women, making this analysis a thought-provoking resource for those interested in character studies within the context of female friendships.
Female Friends: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Fay Weldon
First published: 1974
Genre: Novel
Locale: London and rural England
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: A few days in 1970, with flashbacks to 1940 and the intervening decades
Chloe Evans Rudore, a wife and mother of five (only two of them her biological children). Nearly forty years old, tall, and very slender, with short dark hair, she grew up in a room behind the Rose and Crown, a bar in the British village of Ulden, where her mother, Gwyneth, cleaned and served customers. There she learned never to stand up for herself, but rather to understand and forgive whenever ills befell her. This upbringing left her somewhat lacking in self-esteem. As the novel begins, she is on her way to London to meet her friends Marjorie and Grace, both of whom are urging her to end her husband's affair with the Rudores' French housekeeper. Chloe, however, is almost relieved that her tyrannical husband has found a replacement for her.
Marjorie, a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation. She is about forty years old and very smart. She has a pear-shaped body, frizzy hair, oily skin, and sad, astonished eyes. She was evacuated from London to Ulden during World War II and essentially was abandoned there by Helen, her socialite mother, to be reared by the Songford family. As a girl, she thought that if she were good, her mother might retrieve her. As an adult, she is still playing the role of the good, capable daughter by shouldering other people's burdens. Chloe claims that Marjorie “invites trouble, in order to face it.” Despite this knack, Marjorie often seems to lack the ability to cope with her own misfortunes.
Grace Songford, a high-strung and beautiful woman more than forty years old, with green eyes and red hair. She has some money of her own, but for the most part, she lives off men. As the novel begins, she is sharing a half-finished flat with Sebastian, a twenty-five-year-old actor. As a girl, Grace took Marjorie's fashionable, yet heartless, mother Helen as a role model instead of her own subservient and cowed mother. Her thoughtlessness was tempered somewhat when she married, but after an ugly divorce from her architect husband, she was left completely disillusioned with domestic life. She manages to survive her defeat in a bitter custody fight by affecting no interest in her children. When she has a child fathered by Patrick Bates, she gives the boy to Chloe to rear.
Patrick Bates, a forty-seven-year-old painter with brilliant blue eyes, coarse reddish hair, and a way with women. Chloe, Marjorie, and Grace first met him in Ulden when he was twenty-two and serving as the entertainment officer at the local air force camp. Each of the girls lost her virginity to him, and he never entirely leaves their lives, although only Grace carries on a long-term affair with him. As he grew rich and famous from his painting, he grew nasty and stingy in equal measure. Midge, his despairing wife, eventually committed suicide, and he danced on her grave. As the novel begins, Chloe has not seen him for nine years, Marjorie has taken responsibility for his laundry, and Grace is his occasional lover.
Oliver Rudore, Chloe's husband and a screenwriter of B films. The slight, muscular, and hairy man rules at home with a set of idiosyncratic rules and habits. For a time, in the early 1960's, Oliver and Patrick were drinking and whoring buddies, to the disgust and despair of their wives.
Françoise, Chloe and Oliver's French housekeeper. Stocky and lascivious-looking, the twenty-eight-year-old woman has been sharing Oliver's bed for the past nine months as the novel begins.