The Rhetoric of Women′s Humour in Barbara Pym′s Fiction

In this study of three of Barbara Pyms novels, Naghmeh Varghaiyan, drawing on examinations of womens humour by Eileen Gillooly, Regina Barreca, and others, shows how the humorous female discourse in Some Tame Gazelle, Excellent Women, and Jane and Prudence undermines patriarchal culture and subverts both female and male stereotypes such as that of the spinster and of the Byronic hero. Varghaiyan reveals how the rhetoric of womens humour enables Pyms female characters to survive in the patriarchal culture and to unsettle it.