Fay Weldon’s novel The Life and Loves of a She Devil, deals with many important issues that woman in our society face every day. Most strikingly is the issue of Ruth drastically changing her appearance and risking her life in the process. She becomes a mold of society’s perfect women, on the outside; and a monster, a she – devil, on the inside. It is important to understand how the patriarchy affects society. In Wolf’s The Beauty Myth, she describes the boundaries our patriarchal society puts on us. The struggle of Victorian feminists was to foster the idea that women were not naturally chained to their homes. Women were becoming more liberated than ever. In order to keep power in the hands of men, women were pushed into believing the beauty…show more content… It changes who she is, emotionally and physically. While she doesn’t understand that she is falling into the newly idealized beauty myth, she does understand that beauty is the best way to advance herself in the oppressive society she lives in; whether it is because she wants to be the beautiful heroine, or to have the same amount of power as the men around her. Some argue that Ruth becomes a monster; that the literal transformation of her body changes the women that she is, and she becomes the female version of Frankenstein. While the transformation of Ruth’s body is freakish and awing, Weldon is describing something much deeper than the physical transformation of Ruth. The pressure put on women by the patriarchy is the cause of the destruction of her body. The ideologies society engraved in not only Ruth’s mind but all women’s minds, causes her to believe that changing the way she appears is the only way she can be respected by others in this…show more content… Ruth understands that beauty is not free. Whether it is a monetary value or pain, she is willing to pay the price. The monster that is the patriarchal economy feeds on this; he becomes stronger and more powerful every time a woman buys into the beauty myth. He wants to become more powerful, and is going to do everything he can do to make sure women purchase his goods. He is the reason for romance novels, and plastic surgeries. The patriarchal economy is the monster in modern day life, and in order for the patriarchy to still exist, he must live