The Cloning of Joanna May by Fay Weldon
"The Cloning of Joanna May" is a novel by Fay Weldon that explores themes surrounding the complexities of relationships and the implications of cloning. The story is set against the backdrop of a tumultuous October storm and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, intertwining personal and societal anxieties. It follows Joanna May, who, in her sixtieth year, discovers that her ex-husband, Carl, has created four clones of her without her knowledge. These clones—Jane, Julie, Gina, and Alice—each grow up in different circumstances, unaware of their shared origins.
As Joanna grapples with the revelation of her clones and Carl’s controlling nature, she seeks to reunite with the women while Carl attempts to eliminate them. Their journeys intersect as they navigate personal struggles and the quest for identity. The novel ultimately portrays the strength of female solidarity, culminating in a resolution where the women confront Carl's malice and forge their own futures. The narrative examines the "battle of the sexes" through a lens of science fiction and emotional drama, raising questions about autonomy, motherhood, and the consequences of scientific intervention in human life.
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The Cloning of Joanna May
First published: 1989
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—feminist
Time of work: The late twentieth century
Locale: England
The Plot
The thematic concern of novelist Fay Weldon is the “battle of the sexes,” and her novel The Cloning of Joanna May is no exception. Weldon chronicles Joanna’s story in fifty-five brief chapters recalling the marriage and divorce of Joanna and Carl May, as well as Joanna’s discovery of four clones, secretly conceived by her former husband.
The novel opens during Joanna’s sixtieth year. A chill October windstorm brings destructive force and bears supernatural power that frightens not only Joanna but also her four clones, Jane, Julie, Gina, and Alice. The thirty-year-old women seem unsettled; they wish for change but are unsure how to engineer it. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurs on the heels of the storm, and the radiation scare it brings to England serves as a backdrop for the action and tension of the plot.
In the meantime, Carl, who has never gotten over his divorce from Joanna, ends years of self-imposed celibacy to begin a relationship with twenty-four-year-old Bethany. Carl is neurotic and controlling. He has survived a ghastly childhood (his mother left him chained in a dog kennel) to become the chief executive of Britnuc, a corporate overseer of nuclear power stations. During a televised news conference, after the Chernobyl scare, to reassure the public that nuclear radiation poses no threat, Carl inadvertently lets the press photograph his lover, Bethany. Joanna watches the telecast of her former husband with his mistress and is outraged because a bond still exists between the estranged couple. She goes to Britnuc to confront him.
In the course of their conflict, Carl discloses his diabolical secret. Thirty years earlier, when Joanna sought medical attention for a “hysterical pregnancy,” Carl and Dr. Holly, his medical research expert, took away a “nice ripe egg” and through scientific means “irritated it in amniotic fluid” until the nucleus split into four embryos that were implanted in the wombs of different women. Each of Joanna’s clones was reared in a different environment, unaware of her origins or kinships.
Once Joanna learns the truth, she hires a female detective to find her sister-daughters. At the same time, Carl hires goons to exterminate them. Intuitively, Julie, Jane, Gina, and Alice sense a disturbance and miraculously find one another. When Julie flees to a McDonald’s restaurant to mourn her loveless, childless marriage, she meets Gina, who has sought the same location to feed her children and escape her abusive husband. Likewise, Jane seeks an interview with a model for a documentary on women’s difficult career choices, and she conveniently finds that the model is Alice, the fourth clone. Startled by their similarities, both pairs of clones seek the truth about their origins and are eventually united with their progenitor, Joanna.
The women’s combined power helps to defeat the evil purposes of Carl. He does not recover from a public relations media stunt in which he swims in a nuclear plant cooling pond to demonstrate the harmless effects of low-level radiation. In the novel’s epilogue, the women join forces to rear their own little man, a clone of Carl.