In this study of three of Barbara Pym's novels, Naghmeh Varghaiyan, drawing on examinations of women's 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 women's humour enables Pym's female characters to survive in the patriarchal culture and to unsettle it.

Naghmeh Varghaiyan is assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Agri Ibrahim Cecen University, Agri, Turkey. Her research interests include Feminism, Women's Literature, Feminist Marxist theory, and Women's Humour.

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