Fay Weldon

Author

• Born: September 22, 1931
• Birthplace: Alvechurch, Worcestershire, England
• Died: January 4, 2023
• Place of death: Northampton, England

Biography

Fay Weldon is a major contemporary feminist writer, noted for short fiction and novels as well as for plays for stage, radio, and television. She was born Franklin Birkinshaw on September 22, 1931, in Alvechurch, Worcestershire, England, to Frank Thornton Birkinshaw, a doctor, and Margaret Jepson Birkinshaw, a writer of romantic novels. Her maternal grandfather and an uncle were also writers. Weldon was reared in New Zealand. When she was five, her parents were divorced; she spent the rest of her childhood in an all-female household, consisting of her mother, her grandmother, and her sister, and then was educated at a girls’ school. After returning to England, Weldon attended Hampstead Girls’ High School, London. In 1949, she went to St. Andrews University in Fife, Scotland, and received her master’s degree in economics and psychology in 1954. In the 1950s, Weldon worked as a report writer for the British Foreign Office, spent some time as a market researcher for the London Daily Mirror, and then became an advertising copywriter. After a brief, disastrous marriage in 1958, in 1960 she married Ronald (Ron) Weldon, an antique dealer, painter, and jazz musician; their marriage lasted until 1994. Weldon subsequently married poet Nick Fox.

Although Weldon had worked on novels in the 1950s, her career as a successful writer should be dated from the year 1966, when three of her plays were produced on British television. Her first novel, The Fat Woman’s Joke, which was published a year later, grew out of the teleplay The Fat Woman’s Tale. Witty, satirical, and conversational, it set the pattern for her later works, which have consistently dealt with women’s problems as seen through women’s eyes. In 1969, Weldon’s first play was produced in London; it was followed by six others during the next decade. Meanwhile, she continued to write novels, short stories, and numerous teleplays, including an award-winning episode of the popular series Upstairs, Downstairs. In the 1970s, she also wrote a number of radio plays; in 1973, she won the Writers’ Guild Award for one of them, Spider, and in 1978, she won the Giles Cooper Award for Polaris. In every genre, she was praised for skillful plot development, witty and realistic dialogue, and an accurate delineation of the plight of all women, single or married, who are victims of their biological drives and of the men who dominate society. Although her themes remain the same, critics are impressed by Weldon’s seemingly endless powers of invention. In the early work Remember Me (1976), for example, a dead divorced wife comes back to haunt her ex-husband; in Puffball (1980), a pregnant woman, alone in Somerset, is beset by a witch; and in what is perhaps Weldon’s most famous novel, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), an abandoned wife takes an elaborate revenge on her husband and on the wealthy romance writer who stole him from her.

In addition to her own fiction and plays, Weldon has written acclaimed scripts based on the works of other writers, including Aunt Tatty, based on a short story by Elizabeth Bowen, and the five-part dramatization of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, that was shown in England and in the United States in 1980. Her interest in Austen led to the publication of an unusual book, Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (1984), which is cast as a series of letters from the novelist to a fictional niece. In addition to analyses of Austen’s novels and details about her life, the book includes Weldon’s comments on the art of fiction and on her own work. In 1985, Weldon’s book Rebecca West was structured similarly. In this case Weldon supposes herself to be writing fictitious letters to another writer, Rebecca West, after the birth in 1914 of West’s son by H. G. Wells. In keeping with her feminist posture, she praises West’s determined unconventionality but also reminds her that a satisfying life does not depend on Wells or on any other man.

Weldon’s novels and stories tend to be rational and witty. Both men and women are targets of her satire, men because they so often insist on bolstering their own insecurities by bullying the women who love them or who are involved with them, and women because they conspire in their own subjugation, assuming that thus they will keep the men they so desperately need in order to maintain their own identities. Extreme feminists criticize Weldon because her men are not monsters; most of them are weak. Like Bobbo in The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, they collapse as soon as women cease to adore them. Such critics also complain that Weldon’s women are often as foolish as the men. Other critics disagree, pointing out that her incisive social commentary may lay the groundwork for a new maturity and respect in relationships between men and women, based on a new balance in the lives of women such as Weldon herself.

In 2001, Weldon received a great deal of criticism for her novel The Bulgari Connection when it was revealed that she had accepted an undisclosed but large sum of money from the Italian jewelers Bulgari for “product placement” within the work—essentially, for using her novel as a form of advertising for the company. The practice has been increasingly used, and increasingly deplored, in film, and Weldon’s complicity in bringing it into the world of print was felt by many to be a triumph of crass commercialism over art. The novel itself received mixed reviews, with many feeling that it was classic Weldon satire, while others felt the novelist was merely marking time and repeating a formula.

Weldon began teaching creative writing at London’s Brunel University in 2006, and in 2012 she began teaching at Bath Spa University. She has also published several works in the 2000s and 2010s, including Rhode Island Blues (2000), the autobiography Auto da Fay (2002), Mantrapped (2004), She May Not Leave (2005), What Makes Women Happy (2006), the Edwardian trilogy comprising Habits of the House (2012), Long Live the King (2013), and The New Countess (2013), and Before the War (2016). In 2017, over three decades later, she published a sequel to The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, titled Death of a She Devil. The book did not receive favorable reviews overall, especially when compared to its predecessor, as critics tended not to respond well to a subplot involving a transgender storyline and claimed that the sequel goes against the feminist message of her earlier works.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

The Fat Woman’s Joke, 1967 (also known as . . . And the Wife Ran Away, 1968)

Down Among the Women, 1971

Female Friends, 1974

Remember Me, 1976

Words of Advice, 1977 (also known as Little Sisters, 1978)

Praxis, 1978

Puffball, 1980

The President’s Child, 1982

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, 1983

The Shrapnel Academy, 1986

The Rules of Life, 1987

The Heart of the Country, 1987

The Hearts and Lives of Men, 1987

Leader of the Band, 1988

The Cloning of Joanna May, 1989

Darcy’s Utopia, 1990

Growing Rich, 1992

Life Force, 1992

Affliction, 1993 (also known as Trouble)

Splitting, 1995

Worst Fears, 1996

Big Women, 1997 (also known as Big Girls Don’t Cry)

Rhode Island Blues, 2000

The Bulgari Connection, 2001

Mantrapped, 2004

She May Not Leave, 2005

The Spa Decameron, 2007 (pb. in the United States as The Spa, 2007)

The Stepmother's Diary, 2008

Chalcot Crescent, 2009

Kehua!, 2010

Habits of the House, 2012

Long Live the King, 2013

The New Countess, 2013

Before the War, 2016

Death of a She Devil, 2017

Short Fiction:

Watching Me, Watching You, 1981

Polaris, and Other Stories, 1985

Moon over Minneapolis: Or, Why She Couldn’t Stay, 1991

Angel, All Innocence, and Other Stories, 1995

Wicked Women: A Collection of Short Stories, 1995

A Hard Time to Be a Father, 1998

Nothing to Wear and Nowhere to Hide, 2002

Mischief, 2015

Drama:

Permanence, pr. 1969

Time Hurries On, pb. 1972

Words of Advice, pr., pb. 1974

Friends, pr. 1975

Moving House, pr. 1976

Mr.Director, pr. 1978

Action Replay, pr. 1979 (also known as Love Among the Women)

After the Prize, pr. 1981 (also known as Wordworm)

I Love My Love, pr. 1981

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, pr. 1992 (adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel)

The Four Alice Bakers, pr. 1999

The Reading Group, pb. 1999

Teleplays:

Wife in a Blonde Wig, 1966

The Fat Woman’s Tale, 1966

What About Me, 1967

Dr. De Waldon’s Therapy, 1967

Goodnight Mrs. Dill, 1967

The Forty-fifth Unmarried Mother, 1967

Fall of the Goat, 1967

Ruined Houses, 1968

Venus Rising, 1968

The Three Wives of Felix Hull, 1968

Hippy Hippy Who Cares, 1968

£13083, 1968

The Loophole, 1969

Smokescreen, 1969

Poor Mother, 1970

Office Party, 1970

On Trial, 1971 (in Upstairs, Downstairs series)

Hands, 1972

The Lament of an Unmarried Father, 1972

A Nice Rest, 1972

Old Man’s Hat, 1972

A Splinter of Ice, 1972

Comfortable Words, 1973

Desirous of Change, 1973

In Memoriam, 1974

Poor Baby, 1975

The Terrible Tale of Timothy Bagshott, 1975

Aunt Tatty, 1975 (adaptation of Elizabeth Bowen’s story)

Act of Rape, 1977

Married Love, 1977 (in Six Women series)

Pride and Prejudice, 1980 (adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel)

Honey Ann, 1980

Watching Me, Watching You, 1980 (in Leap in the Dark series)

Life for Christine, 1980

Little Miss Perkins, 1982

Loving Women, 1983

Redundant! Or, The Wife’s Revenge, 1983

Radio Plays:

Spider, 1972

Housebreaker, 1973

Mr. Fox and Mr. First, 1974

The Doctor’sWife, 1975

Polaris, 1978

Weekend, 1979 (in Just Before Midnight series)

All the Bells of Paradise, 1979

I Love My Love, 1981

Nonfiction:

Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, 1984

Rebecca West, 1985

Sacred Cows: A Portrait of Britain, Post-Rushdie, Pre-Utopia, 1989

Godless in Eden, 1999

Auto da Fay, 2002

What Makes Women Happy, 2006

Children’s/Young Adult Literature:

Wolf the Mechanical Dog, 1988

Party Puddle, 1989

Nobody Likes Me, 1997

Edited Text:

New Stories Four: An Arts Council Anthology, 1979 (with Elaine Feinstein)

Godless in Eden: A Book of Essays, 1999

Bibliography

Armitstead, Claire. "Fay Weldon: 'Feminism Was a Success, but Then You Lose a Generation.'" The Guardian, 31 Mar. 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/31/fay-weldon-interview-feminism-death-of-a-she-devil. Accessed 23 May 2017. An interview with Weldon in which she discusses her life and approach to writing upon the publication of the sequel Death of a She Devil.

Barreca, Regina, ed. Fay Weldon’s Wicked Fictions. Hanover: UP of New England, 1994. Print. A collection of eighteen critical essays, five by Weldon herself, dealing with leading themes and techniques in her fiction and various issues raised by it, such as her relation to feminism and her politics and moral stance. A few essays focus on specific novels, but others are relevant to both her short and long fiction. Includes “The Monologic Narrator in Fay Weldon’s Short Fiction,” by Lee A. Jacobus. Essays by Weldon include “The Changing Face of Fiction” and “On the Reading of Frivolous Fiction.”

Cane, Aleta F. “Demythifying Motherhood in Three Novels by Fay Weldon.” Family Matters in the British and American Novel. Ed. Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Elizabeth Mahn Nollen, and Sheila Reitzel Foor. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1997. Print. Cane, Aleta F. “Demythifying Motherhood in Three Novels by Fay Weldon.” In Family Matters in the British and American Novel, edited by Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Elizabeth Mahn Nollen, and Sheila Reitzel Foor. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1997. Cane points out that in Puffball, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, and Life Force, dysfunctional mothers produce daughters who are also dysfunctional mothers. Obviously, it is argued, Weldon agrees with the feminist position about mothering, that it cannot be improved until women cease to be marginalized.

Dowling, Finuala. Fay Weldon’s Fiction. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1998. Print. An examination of the themes and techniques in Weldon’s fiction, with emphasis on the novels but relevance to the short fiction as well.

Faulks, Lana. Fay Weldon. New York: Twayne, 1998. Print. Twayne’s English Authors series 551. An introduction to Weldon’s life and work. Focusing on the novels, Faulks sees Weldon’s work as “feminist comedy” contrasting with feminist writing that depicts women as oppressed. Also examines Weldon’s experiments with narrative techniques.

Haffenden, John. “Fay Weldon.” Novelists in Interview. London: Methuen, 1985. Print. Weldon discusses her life and her inspirations for and attitudes toward writing. The topic discussed at the greatest length is Weldon’s feminism; she explains that what she writes is feminist because she is a feminist. Contains a selected bibliography of the author’s works at the time of publication.

Mitchell, Margaret E. “Fay Weldon.” British Writers. Suppl. 4. Contemporary British Writers. Ed. George Stade and Carol Howard. New York: Scribner’s, 1997. Print. A very comprehensive study of Weldon’s life and work. A lengthy but readable analysis is divided into sections on “Weldon’s Feminism,” “The Personal as Political,” “Nature, Fate, and Magic,” “Self and Solidarity,” and “Fictions.” Contains a biographical essay and a bibliography.

Salzmann-Brunner, Brigitte. Amanuenses to the Present: Protagonists in the Fiction of Penelope Mortimer, Margaret Drabble, and Fay Weldon. New York: Lang, 1988. Print. Examines the women in these authors’ works, with opportunities for some comparisons and contrasts.

Weldon, Fay. “Towards a Humorous View of the Universe.” Last Laughs: Perspectives on Women and Comedy. Ed. Regina Barreca. New York: Gordon, 1988. Print. A short (three-page) article about humor as a protection against pain, with perceptive comments about class-related and gendered aspects of humor. Although Weldon herself does not draw the connections specifically, the reader can infer much from her comments about the role of humor in her own work.

Wilde, Alan. “‘Bold, But Not Too Bold’: Fay Weldon and the Limits of Poststructuralist Criticism.” Contemporary Literature 29. 3 (1988): 403–19. Print. The author focuses primarily not on Weldon’s work but on literary theory, using The Life and Loves of a She-Devil as an arena to pit poststructuralism against New Criticism. The argument is at times obscure, but Wilde offers some useful comments regarding moderation versus extremism in this novel.

Zylinska, Joanna. “Nature, Science, and Witchcraft: An Interview with Fay Weldon.” Critical Survey 12.3 (2000): 108–22. Print. Weldon discusses her writing and the inspirations for it. While the interview primarily concerns Weldon’s novels, her comments are helpful for understanding the themes of her drama as well.