Fay Weldon, who died on 1 January aged 91, is praised in obituaries as a feminist novelist.
Although she wrote some 31 novels, I confess I had read none of them. I had seen some of her titles in jumble sales and among the freebies of suburban neighbours sorting out their clutter. I had assumed they consisted of erotic plots similar to what I used to read on Women’s Own as a teenager (female virgin enraptured by handsome stranger who turns out to be lord of the manor, basically the Jane Eyre plot line).
Feminist titles by Virago
But with my mature tastes, I was systematically reading through the feminist Virago titles (founded 1973) available at the local library, at a time “chick lit” (now a rejected term) was being applied to books like “Bridget Jones Diary” which dealt both with the young women’s struggles in their jobs as well as their romantic yearnings. Now, in my even more mature years, I have read more history of female emancipation, both in the workplace and because of the Pill, and so tend to regard literature of from mid-twentieth century, in film or novel, with a critical eye to verisimilitude to the actual situation of women at that time. So it is in that way that I now approached my first dip in Fay Weldon’s novels.
Weldon in Wikipedia
A quick check in Wikipedia reveals that she was born in 1932, of a writing family (her mother also wrote novels). The first 14 years of her life were in New Zealand where her father was a doctor. He remained there while wife with daughter took ship. They arrived in post-war England in 1946 and Fay completed her schooling in Hampstead before taking a degree at St Andrews in Psychology and Economics. Her first job was as a clerk in the Foreign Office at £6 per week, but she had to leave that when she became pregnant.
As a single mother, she then worked for advertising agencies. She began writing for radio and TV in 1963. Her first novel was published in 1967. She continued to write for TV, for instance the first episode of “Upstairs, Downstairs” and a docudrama “Life for Christine”. She also wrote a fiction series for Woman magazine, which was later published as “The Hearts and Lives of Men”, thus copying Dickens’s method of a just-in-time composition of cliff-hanging plots for serialisation in a magazine. She continued to write novels into her old age, as well as other literary activities such as chairing the Booker judges (1983) and film festival jury (Berlin 1996).
Three weddings
In the early 1960s, as a single mother, she had married a man 25 years older who was a headmaster, but split from him after two years, and then, aged 29 in 1963, coupled with Mr Ron Weldon who was an antiques dealer and jazz musician. They married and had three sons together. In 1992, Ron left her for his “astrological therapist” but died shortly after in 1994. Fay then married her literary manager, Nick, twenty years her junior and stayed with him until she was in her late eighties.
I am interested to see how such life experience features in her fiction. A feature of both her novels that I have read, “Down Among the Women” (1971) and “Mr Darcy’s Utopia” (1990) is several instances of age-disparate couples. In the 1990 novel, the heroine’s father has coupled up with her grandmother. In the 1971 novel, the single mother heroine marries an elderly school inspector to get independence from her mother, her father having already remarried someone much younger. This probably draws on her own two-year experience with the headmaster in 1960. In the 1990 novel, it is a Vice Chancellor who plucks the young wife into glamour.
Love life of elderly men
Without being too prurient, one guesses that the break in mid-teens with her own father (a half-brother born when she was 12) would also have contributed to this depiction of the love life of elderly men. But also the other way round: Fay’s last marriage was to a man much her junior.
She is dubbed a witty writer. Rather like in Iris Murdoch’s fiction, some of her characters indulge in clever-clever conversation which challenge convention (a product of a training in philosophy?): for example, this from Darcy’s Utopia:
“Sex is the source of all pleasure; money is the source of all pain”
“You mean lack of money?”
“I do not. It is this assumption that so hampers our thinking. Because lack of money is bad, we assume money itself is good. It is another example of the Trap of False Polarity.”
Changing sexual morality
The 1971 novel contains views that show how it pivots on the years when sexual morality was changing because of the Pill. The traditional view as voiced by one character:
“Female fidelity is the cornerstone on which the family, the hereditary principle, and whole of capitalism rests.”
A few pages later the teenage girl tries to seduce teenage “uncle” (son of her own father by the younger woman) in the basement, without success:
“His heart is …square. He keeps claiming incest, but that’s just an excuse…the whole incest taboo thing is on genetic grounds, after all, and …no-one has to get pregnant these days.”
Rather ahead of its time, methinks. In real life I was refused the Pill in the early 1970s. NHS doctors were only allowed to prescribe it to married women.
“Down among the Women” is supposedly based in the 1950s, mostly in London, so it shares some of the background of “Call the Midwife” (but West London, not East). In small details my memory twitches at coal fires, lino covered floors, milk in bottles, jam sandwiches, orange squash for the children. Housework was arduous and often full-time for the wife and mother. Up until that time, women had mostly been forced to give up work on marrying (as Fay had to as a single mother). Clever graduate women were pushed out: they commented tartly from the wings as their menfolk took centre stage.
Talking about sex
Both the novels contain a group of female friends, tracing different paths from virginity through various couplings, mostly into motherhood, which is depicted as burdensome rather than enjoyable. The more carefree ones are the “kept” woman, like Audrey, whose man finances a house for her. Or Sylvia who, after ill-treatment by her man, is put back together by the NHS and National Assistance to live without a partner. All of them talk more candidly about sex than was allowed in earlier novels by female writers. Some both yearn and mock.
In real life, Fay herself in her twenties had plenty of experience in temp jobs, such as waitress, and care-worker, before she started her career as a copy-writer. But, as she got further into a media career, scripting for film and TV, she was appalled at how aspiring females were treated. No matter their talent and hard training, she saw how the men were selecting them just on their looks, for whether they could get laid. She says this is what made her a feminist. I was not unhappy when our daughter revealed that she loved reading Fay Weldon as a teenager. She must have picked some ideas that strengthened her for earning her way in London jobs a few years later.
Some aspects of 20th century escaped Weldon
But looking back into Fay Weldon’s world now, there were aspects of the late twentieth century that seemed to have escaped her. There is nothing to connect with the growth of multicultural communities in cities. Perhaps, living in Somerset for 25 years, she was apart from this. Although she is daring in exploration of various modes of heterosexuality, anything that veers towards LBGTQ+ is ignored (one has to look at Virago for that).
She Devil
I love watching classic TV comedy from the 1980s: “To the Manor born”, “The Mistress”, “Yes, Minister”, middle/upper class and Southern England, like the background of Fay Weldon’s novels. The women are wittily aware of their powers in a world where men take the lead. The action takes place in beautifully furnished rooms, the actresses slim and well-dressed, as they rule their menfolk from the sofa. Female power – one of Fay Weldon’s most famous works is the series on “She Devil” which is a romp about the revenge of a jilted woman.
Fay Weldon’s feminism produced various stimulating plots. When she died, she was wealthy (£5 million) from her writing. So clearly a lot of people read her books, enjoyed the plots and laughed at the witticisms.
A Fay Weldon Omnibus is available as a download from the KCC Libby site.
