Three Kinds of Funny
Humourous novels by women.
There are three novels I wanted to discuss under a theme of comedic writing by women. Which seemed at the onset to be a straight forward proposition. It turns out to be a bit tricky.
The first issue might just be the thinness of the ice I’m on by gender differencing. Is there a difference between the way in which men and women approach humour? It would be difficult to imagine anyone but a woman writing Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones Diary. And although a man could construct a novel like The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger with a similar plot, there is a particular dynamic that arises out of a very specific historical and cultural landscape as experienced by women that is integral to the humour in the book.
Having said that, to now be rather apostate, the three novels I’ve selected could have been penned by either gender. Interestingly enough, they all incorporate male points of view. I would maintain, with numerous examples readily at hand, authors by the act of imagination can successfully write from a position of another gender, race, class, age and so forth. To think otherwise would be to reduce all writing to autobiography.
What also became apparent pretty quickly, was the very different kind of funny each one of these books represented. The three selected fall broadly into categories which I will hazard naming; the farcical, dark humour and rom-com.
In the Crypt With a Candle Stick by Daisy Waugh
Farce is a term usually applied to theatre. It’s a form of satire that plays upon exaggerating stereotypical characters and letting them loose in a nominally normal situation, thereby making it absurd. Like all satire it requires the audience to be conversant with the ‘normal situation’ and knowing which figures are being lampooned. The humour we find in the exaggerated upper class twittery of P G Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster is somewhat dependent on our being conversant with the norms of the late Edwardian era carrying on through the interwar years. That we are familiar with that lost world enough to get the joke is down, largely, to the literature of the time and most of all, the novels, plays, films and television that follow on from it.
And that’s where the enjoyment of Daisy Waugh’s In the Crypt With a Candle Stick lies. It opens with Lady Emma Tode of Tode Hall burying her late husband, Sir Ecbert. Also on hand is the gardener, Oliver Mellors. At a later date we are introduced to other, rather disagreeable, estate employees named; Mrs Danvers, Nurse Ratched and Miss Sharp. The novel, whose title itself immediately evokes Agatha Christie, classic 1930’s crime novels and the board game Cluedo, is peppered with allusions to numerous novels and films. Making the story contemporary instead setting it in the 1930s, has, cleverly, given Waugh the opportunity to bring in references to everything from 1970’s and 80s television, to the heritage industry, right up to YouTube influencers. Taking the piss out of the television and film adaptions of Waugh’s grandfather’s Brideshead Revisited is a recurring element throughout the narrative.
Daisy Waugh has obviously had a great deal of fun composing this pastiche, when reading one can almost hear the author cackling with laughter as she’s writing it. How often the reader is laughing is a bit dependant on how familiar they are with what it is being made fun of. Still, with such a broad range of material satirized, there’s something for everyone in this very enjoyable romp.
Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason
There’s a lot of the Coen Brothers in Three Graves Full. Particularly their breakthrough film Blood Simple. We are in the world of ‘what could possibly go wrong’, of unintended consequences and of no deed, good or bad, going unpunished. All for comedic effect, for which this kind, dark humour, has its prerequisites.
The protagonists are presented as everyman. However venal, greedy, very often stupid and deserving of their fate, we must see ourselves as not very different from them. This serves to generate a feeling of anxiety in us, like as in one of those dreams where you’ve neglected to do something or can’t manage to complete a task. What alleviates this nightmare, turning it from horror to humour, is the interjection of irony and a sense of the absurd.
The nature of the problem, the misadventure, needs to be something that violates a strong social taboo. This is usually murder. A subject that, needless to say, arouses strong feelings in us. In art there are number of ways to resolve the anxious tension this creates and one of those is to make a joke of it.
There then has to be, as there often is in the aforementioned dreams, an escalation of the anxiety caused by the initial misadventure. Each attempt to resolve the problem is met with further complications.
Jamie Mason’s 2013 novel certainly fulfils this brief. Unlikely murderer, the rather nebbish everyman, Jason Getty thinks he’s gotten away with it but there’s more than just his secret buried out in the garden. The point of view moves around quite a bit, which complicates things, but then complications are a required feature for this kind of plot.
Three Graves Full was the author’s debut novel and while that shows a bit in some rather overwrought and clunky prose in places, it still delivers for those who like their laughs on the morbid side.
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
A lot of what gets designated as ‘chick-lit’ or ‘Aga-sagas’ qualifies as rom-com. The term rom-com, romantic comedy, comes to us out the world of film and to my mind what signals a novel’s designation as such would be it possessing a cinema-graphic quality. If while reading you’re imagining the main female character as Jennifer Anniston, that’d pretty much nail it.
All literature, obviously, requires a situation. Rom-com is in effect a sub-division of sit-com, the situation being romance, and we can identify rom-com as a comedic genre from Shakespeare to Austen and beyond. And romance, in this instance, is the process of finding a mate, significantly the appropriate one. This was hugely important, especially for women, in the past, for economic and political reasons. The fear of getting this wrong, in spite of all the societal, cultural and legal changes over the last century, apparently still bubbles away underground. The tension this produces in the reader, like the anxieties addressed in dark humour, finds relief in humour. And, of course, in the case of rom-coms, more often than not, a happy ending.
Beth O’Leary’s bestselling debut novel of 2019, The Flatshare, certainly possesses all the necessary ingredients for the genre. Both the protagonists, Tiffy and Leon, are involved, albeit in different ways, with the ‘wrong’ choice of partner. Both find themselves, driven by forces beyond their control, connected in sharing a peculiar situation that allows plenty of scope for misunderstandings. This, the basic rom-com scenario, is aided and abetted in Tiffy’s side of the story, by few other of the comic tropes endemic to the form. There are, amongst others, the ‘Greek Chorus’ of best friends, the ducking and diving, as well as the perils, of the work place and eccentric characters.
Leon’s side contributes the pathos that provides not just the necessary balance to Tiffy’s more madcap life but, in meeting those challenges in a forthright manner, provides the proof that he is the ‘right one’. Of course, intimating that there will be a happy ending doesn’t really constitute a ‘spoiler’ for this genre, as the path to true love is never straight forward and much fun is to be had along the way.
What marks The Flatshare out, besides the pitch perfect and sparkly prose, is the inclusion of a troubling and topical sub-plot that Beth O’Leary manages to skilfully weave into the story without dampening the overall comedic tone.
Further Reading
Farce:
Cold Comfort Farm, 1932 by Stella Gibbons
Excellent Women, 1952 by Barbara Pym
Moo, 1995 by Jane Smiley
The Devil Wears Prada, 2003 by Lauren Weisberger
Mislaid, 2015 by Nell Zink
Dark Humour:
The Driver’s Seat, 1970 by Muriel Spark
(A bit controversial to posit it as humourous, perhaps.)
Life and Loves of a She-Devil, 1983 by Fay Welden
Rom-Com:
Where to start? Well, with Jane Austen’s Emma, 1815, followed by Helen Fielding’s 1996 homage to Austen, Bridget Jones’s Diary
Otherwise, there are a plethora of authors whose efforts fall into the ‘will she find happiness, will she find the right shoes for the outfit’ category. A few, who write intentionally funny stories, that spring readily to mind;
Jenny Colgan
Jane Costello
Katie Fforde
Marian Keyes