Weldon, Fay 1931–

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Weldon, Fay 1931–

PERSONAL: Born September 22, 1931, in Alvechurch, Worcestershire, England; daughter of Frank Thornton (a physician) and Margaret (a writer; maiden name, Jepson) Birkinshaw; married briefly and divorced in her early twenties; married Ronald Weldon (an antique dealer), 1962 (divorced, 1994); married Nick Fox (a poet); children: (first marriage) Nicholas; (second marriage) Daniel, Thomas, Samuel. Education: University of St. Andrews, M.A., 1954.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Casarotto Co., Ltd., National House, 62/66 Wardour St., London W1V 3HP, England.

CAREER: Novelist, playwright, television and radio scriptwriter. Worked as a propaganda writer for the British Foreign Office and as a market researcher for the Daily Mirror, London, England. Advertising copywriter for various firms in London; creator of the slogan "Go to work on an egg." Former member of the Art Council of Great Britain's literary panel and of the GLA's film and video panel; chair of the judges' panel for the Booker McConnell Prize, 1983.

AWARDS, HONORS: Society of Film and Television Arts award for best series, 1971, for "On Trial" episode of Upstairs, Downstairs television series; Writer's Guild award for best radio play, 1973, for Spider; Giles Cooper Award for best radio play, 1978, for Polaris; Booker McConnell Prize nomination, National Book League, 1979, for Praxis; Society of Authors' traveling scholarship, 1981; D.Litt., University of St. Andrew's, 1989.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Fat Woman's Joke (also see below), MacGibbon & Kee (London, England), 1967, published as … And the Wife Ran Away, McKay (New York, NY), 1968.

Down among the Women, Heinemann (London, England), 1971, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1972.

Female Friends, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1974.

Remember Me, Random House (New York, NY), 1976.

Words of Advice, Random House (New York, NY), 1977, published as Little Sisters, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1978.

Praxis, Summit Books (New York, NY), 1978.

Puffball, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1979, Summit Books (New York, NY), 1980.

The President's Child, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1982, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1983.

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1983, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1984.

The Shrapnel Academy, Viking (New York, NY), 1986.

The Hearts and Lives of Men, Viking (New York, NY), 1987.

The Rules of Life, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1987.

Leader of the Band, Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

The Heart of the Country, Viking (New York, NY), 1988.

The Cloning of Joanna May, Viking (New York, NY), 1990.

Darcy's Utopia, Viking (New York, NY), 1991.

Life Force, Viking (New York, NY), 1992.

Trouble, Viking (New York, NY), published as Affliction, HarperCollins (London, England), 1993.

Splitting, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Worst Fears, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Big Girls Don't Cry, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Growing Rich, Penguin (New York, NY), 1998.

Rhode Island Blues, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2000.

The Bulgari Connection, Grove/Atlantic (New York, NY), 2001.

Mantrapped, Grove/Atlantic (New York, NY), 2005.

PLAYS

Permanence (produced in the West End at Comedy Theatre, 1969), published in Mixed Blessings: An Entertainment on Marriage, Methuen (New York, NY), 1970.

Time Hurries On, published in Scene Scripts, edited by Michael Marland, Longman (London, England), 1972.

Words of Advice (one-act; produced in Richmond, England, at Orange Tree Theatre, 1974), Samuel French (New York, NY), 1974.

Friends, produced in Richmond at Orange Tree Theatre, 1975.

Moving House, produced in Farnham, England, at Red-grave Theatre, 1976.

Mr. Director, produced at Orange Tree Theatre, 1978.

Action Replay (produced in Birmingham, England, at Birmingham Repertory Studio Theatre, 1979; produced as Love among the Women in Vancouver, British Columbia, at City Stage, 1982), Samuel French, 1980.

I Love My Love, produced in Exeter, England, at North-cott Theatre, 1981.

Woodworm, first produced as After the Prize, off-Broadway at Phoenix Theatre, 1981; produced in Melbourne, Australia, at Playbox Theatre, 1983.

Also author of Watching Me, Watching You, a stage adaptation of four of her short stories; Jane Eyre, a stage adaptation of the novel by Charlotte Brontë, 1986; and The Hole in the Top of the World, 1987.

TELEVISION PLAYS

The Fat Woman's Tale, Granada Television, 1966.

Wife in a Blond Wig, British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC-TV), 1966.

Office Party, Thames Television, 1970.

"On Trial" (episode in Upstairs, Downstairs series), London Weekend Television, 1971.

Hands, BBC-TV, 1972.

Poor Baby, ATV Network, 1975.

The Terrible Tale of Timothy Bagshott, BBC-TV, 1975.

Aunt Tatty (dramatization based on an Elizabeth Bowen short story), BBC-TV, 1975.

"Married Love" (part of Marie Stopes's Six Women series), BBC-TV, 1977.

Pride and Prejudice (five-part dramatization based on the novel by Jane Austen), BBC-TV, 1980.

"Watching Me, Watching You" (episode in Leap in the Dark series), BBC-TV, 1980.

Life for Christine, Granada Television, 1980.

Little Miss Perkins, London Weekend Television, 1982.

Loving Women, Granada Television, 1983.

The Wife's Revenge, BBC-TV, 1983.

Also author of Big Women, a four-part series, for Channel 4 television, and over twenty-five other teleplays for BBC-TV and independent television networks.

RADIO PLAYS

Housebreaker, BBC Radio 3, 1973.

Mr. Fox and Mr. First, BBC Radio 3, 1974.

The Doctor's Wife, BBC Radio 4, 1975.

"Weekend" (episode in Just before Midnight series), BBC Radio 4, 1979.

All the Bells of Paradise, BBC Radio 4, 1979.

Polaris, American Broadcasting Co. (ABC Radio), 1980, published in Best Radio Plays of 1978: The Giles Cooper Award Winners, Eyre Methuen, 1979.

The Hearts and Lives of Men, BBC Radio 4, 1996.

Also author of Spider, 1972, and If Only I Could Find the Words, BBC.

OTHER

(Editor, with Elaine Feinstein) New Stories 4: An Arts Council Anthology, Hutchinson, 1979.

Watching Me, Watching You (short stories; also includes the novel The Fat Woman's Joke), Summit Books (New York, NY), 1981.

Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (nonfiction), Michael Joseph, 1984, Carroll & Graf (New York, NY), 2000.

Polaris and Other Stories, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 1985.

Moon over Minneapolis; or, Why She Couldn't Stay (short stories), Viking (New York, NY), 1992.

So Very English, Serpent's Tail, 1992.

Wicked Women: A Collection of Short Stories, Flamingo (London, England), 1995, Atlantic Monthly Press (Boston, MA), 1997.

Godless in Eden: A Book of Essays, Flamingo, 1999.

Auto da Fay (memoir), Grove (New York, NY), 2003.

Mantrapped (nonfiction), Grove Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Also author of children's books, including Wolf the Mechanical Dog, 1988, Party Puddle, 1989, and Nobody Likes Me, 1997.

ADAPTATIONS: The Life and Loves of a She-Devil was adapted into the film She-Devil in 1989, written by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns, directed by Susan Seidelman, starring Roseanne Barr and Meryl Streep.

SIDELIGHTS: After her parents divorced when she was only five, Fay Weldon grew up in New Zealand with her mother, sister, and grandmother. Returning to England to attend college, she studied psychology and economics at St. Andrews in Scotland. As a single mother in her twenties, Weldon supported herself and her son with a variety of odd jobs until she settled into a successful career as a copywriter. After marrying in the early sixties, Weldon had three more sons, underwent psychoanalysis as a result of depression, and subsequently abandoned her work in advertising for freelance creative writing. Her first novel, The Fat Woman's Joke, appeared in 1967 when she was thirty-six years old. Since that time she has published numerous novels, short stories, and plays for the theater, television, and radio. Throughout this work, Weldon's "major subject is the experience of women," wrote Agate Nesaule Krouse in Critique. "Sexual initiation, marriage, infidelity, divorce, contraception, abortion, motherhood, housework, and thwarted careers … all receive attention." Products of a keen mind concerned with women's issues, Weldon's novels have been labeled "feminist" by many reviewers. Yet, Weldon's views are her own and are not easily classified. In fact, feminists have at times taken exception to her portrayal of women, accusing the author of perpetuating traditional stereotypes.

Weldon's fiction fosters disparate interpretations because its author sees the complexity of the woman's experience. As Susan Hill noted in Books and Bookmen, Weldon has "the sharpest eyes for revealing details which, appearing like bubbles on the surface, are clues to the state of things lying far, far below." Weldon accepts feminist ideology as a liberating force, but she also understands its limitations. Thus, what emerges from Weldon's writing is more than an understanding of women's issues; she appreciates the plight of the individual woman. She told Sybil Steinberg in an interview in Publishers Weekly, "Women must ask themselves: What is it that will give me fulfillment? That's the serious question I'm attempting to answer."

Weldon's early novels, especially Down among the Women, Female Friends, and Remember Me, gained recognition both for their artistry and their social concerns. "Vivid imagery, a strong sense of time and place, memorable dialogue, complex events, and multiple characters that are neither confusing nor superficially observed," characterize these novels according to Krouse, making them "a rich rendering of life with brevity and wit." In her writing, John Braine added in Books and Bookmen, Fay Weldon "is never vague…. She understands what few novelists understand, that physical details are not embellishments on the story, but the bricks from which the story is made." And, like few other novelists, especially those that deal with women's issues, observed Braine, "she possesses that very rare quality, a sardonic, earthy, disenchanted, slightly bitter but never cruel sense of humour."

Although each of these books possesses elements typical of a Weldon novel, they focus on different aspects of the female experience and the forces that influence them. Down among the Women reflects how three generations of women, each the product of a different social climate, react to the same dilemma. Krouse found that in this book Weldon creates "a work whose very structure is feminist." She added in her Critique review, "The whole novel could profitably be analyzed as a definition of womanhood: passages describing how one has to live 'down among the women' contrast with anecdotes of male behavior." The image of womanhood offered here is not ideal, but as Krouse commented, Weldon's ability to blend "the terrible and the ridiculous is one of the major reasons why a novel filled with the pain endured by women … is neither painfully depressing nor cheerfully sentimental."

As its title suggests, Female Friends examines relationships among women, how the companionship of other women can be comforting to a woman wearied by the battle of the sexes. "The most radical feminist could not possibly equal the picture of injustice [Weldon] paints with wry, cool, concise words," wrote L.E. Sissman in the New Yorker. Sissman found that "the real triumph of Female Friends is the gritty replication of the gross texture of everyday life, placed in perspective and made universal; the perfectly recorded dialogue, precisely differentiated for each character; the shocking progression of events that, however rude, seem real." Weldon does not overlook the injustices committed by women in this day-to-day struggle, however. Ultimately, her characters suggest, women are responsible for their own lives. As Arthur Cooper concluded in Newsweek, Weldon "has penetrated the semidarkness of the semiliberated and shown that only truth and self-awareness can set them free."

Remember Me is the story of one man's impact on the lives of three women and how the resentment of one of those women becomes a disruptive force even after her death. This novel suggests that elements beyond the control of the individual often dictate her actions. "Scores of … coincidences … emphasize the theme that chance, misunderstanding, and necessarily limited knowledge play a significant part in human life," observed Krouse. Human frailties, Krouse added, body functions, pain, sickness "and death are recurrent images underscoring human mortality." Phyllis Birnbaum, writing in the Saturday Review, stated, "Precise satire, impassioned monologue, and a sense of limited human possibility make this novel a daring examination of twentieth-century discontent."

By the time she had written her sixth novel, Praxis (the fifth, Words of Advice, appeared in 1977), Weldon was considered, as Susan Hill put it, "an expert chronicler of the minutiae of women's lives, good at putting their case and pleading their cause." Kelley Cherry pointed out in the Chicago Tribune Books that Praxis is a novel about endurance. The central character, Praxis Duveen, must endure in a world filled with "just about every kind of manipulation and aggression that men use to get women where they want them," observed Katha Pollitt in the New York Times Book Review, "and just about every nuance of guilt and passivity that keeps women there." Struggling against most of the catastrophes that can befall a woman, Praxis does emerge, revealing according to Hill, that even though "Weldon's women are victims, they do have many compensatory qualities—toughness, resilience, flexibility, inventiveness, patience, nerve."

A novel in which so many misfortunes plague one character runs the risk of becoming unbelievable. Yet, Cherry wrote, "The writing throughout is brisk and ever so slightly off the wall—sufficiently askew to convey the oddness of events, sufficiently no-nonsense to make that oddness credible." And, concluded Pollitt, "As a narrative it is perhaps too ambitious, but as a collection of vignettes, polemics, epigrams, it is often dazzling, pointing up the mad underside of our sexual politics with a venomous accuracy for which wit is far too mild a word."

In her next novel, Puffball, "Weldon mixes gynecology and witchcraft to concoct an unusual brew," Joan Reardon noted in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Here, more than before, Weldon confronts the woman's condition on a physical level, focusing on pregnancy. "Weldon has the audacity to include technical information on fertility, conception, and fetal development as an integral part of the story," commented Lorallee MacPike in Best Sellers. "She makes the physical process preceding and during pregnancy not only interesting but essential to the development of both story and character."

In the eyes of some reviewers such as Joan Reardon, however, the technical information weakens the novel. She wrote that in Puffball, "perspicacity has given way to whimsy and 'the pain in my soul, my heart, and my mind' has become a detailed analysis of the pituitary system." Moreover, some feminists faulted this book for its old-fashioned images of women; as Anita Brookner pointed out in the Times Literary Supplement, "superficially, it is a great leap backwards for the stereotype feminist. It argues in favour of the old myths of earth and motherhood and universal harmony: a fantasy for the tired businesswoman." Yet a reviewer for the Atlantic found that "the assertion of the primacy of physical destiny that lies at the center of Puffball gives the book a surprising seriousness and an impressive optimism."

In The President's Child, Weldon breaks new ground, exploring the impact of political intrigue on individual lives. Her next novel, however, is reminiscent of Praxis. Like Praxis, the protagonist of Weldon's ninth novel, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, is buffeted by the injustice of her world. Yet, whereas Praxis endures, Ruth gets revenge. Losing her husband to a beautiful romance novelist, tall, unattractive Ruth turns against husband, novelist, and anyone else who gets in her way. Unleashing the vengeance of a she-devil, she ruins them all; the novelist dies and the husband becomes a broken man. In the end, having undergone extensive surgery to make her the very image of her former competitor, she begins a new life with her former husband. "What makes this a powerfully funny and oddly powerful book is the energy that vibrates off the pages," wrote Carol E. Rinzler in the Washington Post Book World. Weldon has created in She-Devil, Sybil Steinberg noted in Publishers Weekly, a "biting satire of the war between the sexes, indicting not only the male establishment's standards of beauty and feminine worthiness, but also women's own willingness … to subscribe to these standards."

Seeing Ruth's revenge as a positive response to the injustice of the male establishment, some reviewers were disappointed by her turnaround at the novel's end. As Michiko Kakutani pointed out in the New York Times, "Her final act—having extensive plastic surgery that makes her irresistible to men—actually seems like a capitulation to the male values she says she despises." Weldon is aware of the contradictions suggested by her story; she discussed this issue in her interview with Sybil Steinberg: "The first half of the book is an exercise in feminist thought…. It's the feminist manifesto really: a woman must be free, independent and rich. But I found myself asking, what then?… I think women are discovering that liberation isn't enough. The companionship of women is not enough. The other side of their nature is unfulfilled."

"Central to many of [Weldon's] plots is the rise of the Nietzschean superwoman," contended Daniel Harris in prefacing his review of the author's 1993 novel Trouble in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Paralleling Weldon's own rise to literary acceptance from her former career as a lowly advertising copywriter, Harris characterized such women as emerging "out of the seething multitudes of hungry romantic careerists just waiting for their chance to advance up a hierarchical power structure that Weldon describes as the equivalent among women of a food chain." Annette Horrocks, the pregnant protagonist of Trouble is just such a woman, the second wife of a chauvinistic businessman who be-comes threatened when his wife publishes a novel. In a twist, the husband runs, not into the arms of yet another manipulative woman, but into the clutches of a pair of pseudo-therapists, who convince him that Annette is his enemy. The novel was faulted by some for being uncharacteristic Weldon. "The characters are thin, the plot maniacally unreal, the dialogue brisk and bleak," noted Observer critic Nicci Gerrard, maintaining that Trouble contains too large a dose of its author's personal anger.

Weldon's twentieth novel, Splitting, finds the author returned to form, according to Bertha Harris in the New York Times Book Review. Seventeen-year-old former rock star Angelica White is determined to become the perfect female companion in order to endear herself to dissolute but wealthy Sir Edwin Rice and obtain a marriage commitment. She discards her image as the rock queen Kinky Virgin, doffs the nose rings and the spectacularly colored hair, and becomes overweight, drug-abusing Edwin's helpmate. "In effect, Angelica's troubles begin when she resolves that it's 'time to give up and grow up,'" according to Harris. Soon the typical flock of avaricious females descend on Angelica, breaking up her home and causing her to fracture into four separate personalities. Ultimately banished from the Rice estate, her money having long since been usurped by her husband, Angelica ultimately avenges herself through the savvy, recklessness, and sense of fun created by her multiple selves. "The splitting device works shamelessly well," explained Kate Kellaway in the Observer. "Weldon uses it as a way of exploring and rejoicing in the theatricality of women, their volatility, their love of disguise, of fancy dress, of playing different parts." As the author has one of Angelica's new selves say, "Women tend to be more than one person at the best of times. Men just get to be the one."

Weldon has since continued her pace, not only with novels such as 1996's Worst Fears, but also with a short story collection, appropriately titled Wicked Women, which she published in 1995. In Worst Fears, a widowed woman suddenly realizes that her life has not in fact been the rosy picture she imagined it. Snubbed by her friends, and lacking sympathy in favor of her husband's mistress, Alexandra soon finds that such deception by the living is nothing compared to the deceptions practiced on her by her now dead husband. Left with nothing, she plans her revenge in true Weldon fashion in a novel in which the author "has filed down a few sharp edges," according to New York Times Book Review critic Karen Karbo, "… and that makes it one of her best novels yet." Variations on this traditional Weldon theme are also played out in the sixteen short stories in Wicked Women. While noting that the collection is somewhat uneven in effectiveness, Spectator reviewer Susan Crosland hastened to add, "When the seesaw swings up, Fay Weldon is on form: sparkling, sharply observing, insights delivered with a light touch that puts us in a good mood, however dark the comedy. And one of the great things about short stories is that you can pick and chose."

Writing for the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, Jean Blish Siers stated: "Perhaps the funniest of all Fay Weldon's very funny novels, Big Girls Don't Cry tackles the feminist movement head-on with the wry, ironic comedy for which Weldon is famous." This 1997 volume is also typical of Weldon's work in that its story is presented episodically, with short paragraphs and scenes often delivered in a temporally fragmented fashion. "It is a tapestry Weldon weaves," observed a critic for the online publication The Complete Review, "and the story does come together very well. Weldon's succinct style, with few wasted words, her dialogue brutally honest and straightforward, her explanations always cutting to the quick make for a powerful reading experience. Not everyone likes their fiction so direct, but we approve heartily and recommend the book highly." The plot of Big Girl's Don't Cry moves from the early seventies to the present and concerns five women who found a feminist publishing house called Medusa. As the novel opens we meet Zoë, a young mother in a loveless marriage, the beautiful Stephanie, the sexy Layla, the intellectual Alice, and Nancy, who has just broken off an unsatisfying engagement. While the publishing house thrives over the next three decades, the women's lives evolve dramatically. Husbands and friends change; children are abandoned; internecine conflicts sometimes plague the five while at other times they must rally in support of one another. "In the end," noted Siers, "the five—older but not much wiser—must face the consequences of decisions made a quarter-century earlier." A Complete Review critic commented: "The characters are all very human, and while they profess idealism Weldon ruthlessly shows how difficult it is to live up to it." Siers concluded: "Weldon never paints simple pictures of right and wrong. The men might be pigs, but they simply don't know any better. The women might mean well, but they blunder ahead with little thought of ramifications."

In 1999 Weldon's collection of essays Godless in Eden was published. Therein she covers a wide range of topics and examines a variety of controversial issues, including sex and society, the feminization of politics, the Royal Family, therapy, her own life and loves, and the changing roles of men and women in the contemporary world.

Weldon's understanding of the individual woman, living in a world somewhere between the nightmare of male chauvinism and the feminist ideal, has allowed her to achieve a balance in her writing. "She has succeeded in uniting the negative feminism, necessarily evident in novels portraying the problems of women, with a positive feminism, evident in the belief that change or equilibrium is possible," wrote Agate Nesaule Krouse. For this reason, "[Weldon] speaks for the female experience without becoming doctrinaire," noted New York Times Book Review contributor Mary Cantwell, "and without the dogged humorlessness that has characterized so much feminist writing." Having found an audience for her writing—insights into the condition of woman, shaped by her intelligence and humor—Fay Weldon has risen to prominence in literary circles. Writing in the Times Literary Supplement, Anita Brookner called Weldon "one of the most astute and distinctive women writing fiction today."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Barreca, Regina, Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions, University Press of New England (Lebanon, NH), 1994.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 122, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2000.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 194: British Novelists since 1960, Second Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1998.

Dowling, Finuala, Fay Weldon's Fiction, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Madison, NJ), 1998.

Faulks, Lana, Fay Weldon, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1998.

PERIODICALS

Atlantic Monthly, August, 1980.

Best Sellers, October, 1980.

Booklist, May 1, 1995, p. 1554; June 1, 1995, p. 1804; May 1, 1996, p. 1470.

Books and Bookmen, January, 1977; March, 1979; May, 1979.

Critique, December, 1978.

Entertainment Weekly, June 16, 1995, p. 57.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune New Service, January 20, 1999, Jean Blish Siers, review of Big Girls Don't Cry.

Library Journal, February 15, 1995, p. 198; April 15, 1995, p. 117; March 15, 1996, p. 110; May 15, 1996, p. 85.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 7, 1980; April 19, 1987; April 10, 1988; December 18, 1988; June 4, 1989; June 25, 1995, pp. 3, 9.

New Statesman and Society, February 11, 1994, p. 40; January 5, 1996, p. 39.

Newsweek, November, 1974; December 4, 1978.

New Yorker, March 3, 1975; November, 1978.

New York Times, November 24, 1981; December 21, 1981; August 21, 1984; October 29, 1988; May 31, 1989; March 16, 1990.

New York Times Book Review, June 11, 1995, p. 48; June 9, 1996, p. 19.

Observer (London, England), February 13, 1994; May 7, 1995.

Publishers Weekly, January 13, 1984; August 24, 1984.

Saturday Review, December, 1976.

Spectator, March 1, 1980; July 1, 1981; October 2, 1982; February 12, 1994, pp. 29-30; May 13, 1995, pp. 39-40.

Times Literary Supplement, September 10, 1971; February 22, 1980; May 22, 1981; September 24, 1982; January 20, 1984; July 6, 1984; August 9, 1985; February 13, 1987; July 15, 1988; February 18, 1994.

Tribune Books, November 12, 1978; September 28, 1980; February 14, 1982; March 13, 1988; November 20, 1988; June 18, 1989; March 18, 1990.

Washington Post Book World, November 3, 1974; September 30, 1984; July 14, 1985; May 10, 1987; April 24, 1988; November 13, 1988; April 1, 1990.