00:01Praksis, støvbold, en hundjæves bekendelser, selvbiografien Autodafay og mandefælden og mange andre romaner er det blevet til, siden den britiske forfatter Faye Weldon i 1967 udgav sin første roman, The Fat Woman's Joke.
00:15Bøger, der gav hende prædikatet, feministisk romanforfatter, mere eller mindre tilsigtet.
00:20I never started that. I think it was before even the word feminist was really in common use at all.
00:27No, I was just writing a picture of the society I saw around me and the attitudes I saw around me, which did seem rather strange,
00:35because I'd been brought up in an all-women's household and gone to all-girls schools, and men always seemed rather strange anyway.
00:47And so this is how it turned out to be.
00:52Looking at it from outside, it was seen to be very quickly as feminist novels,
00:58because it was dealing with these very skewed relationships, which men and women did have at the time.
01:17Vi er i Syde-England, hjemme hos Faye og hendes tredje ægtemand Nick Fox,
01:27for at vide lidt mere om forfatteren Faye Weldon, hendes liv og kvinde- og kønsrollekampen før og nu.
01:33I was an English child brought up by white intellectual parents in New Zealand,
01:41which was a very unintellectual country at the time.
01:45And my parents were divorced, which was very unusual at the time.
01:51My mother supported us, which was also very unusual.
01:55So I was always on the outside, never on the inside of a society,
01:59which I think is probably very good for a writer.
02:02When I was in New Zealand, I was an English child and seen as an English child.
02:06And when I later, in my teens, when I came to England, I was the New Zealand child in English society.
02:13So it never occurred to me, actually, to want to fit in, which I think is also a great strength.
02:19If you know you're an outsider, then, you know, you make your friends amongst outsiders.
02:24Yes.
02:33Sisterhood.
02:33Do you think there was much of that back in your childhood when you grew up?
02:39Well, you see, oddly enough, I think sisterhood was stronger almost before it was recognised,
02:46before it was seen as something women did support each other.
02:50They kind of had to because the men were so separate from the women that the women had a world of their own.
02:56The women weren't trying to be companions of men.
03:00They were the wives or sisters or mothers of men, but they were not their companions.
03:03There was a much, I mean, the separation between the genders was much greater because the men earned and the women didn't.
03:10The men were at a great advantage all the time.
03:14But oddly, the support that you got from other women, I think, was quite strong.
03:19And how does that look today, do you think?
03:23I just think women are incredibly competitive.
03:27They used to be competitive for men, but I think on the whole lost interest in men,
03:31and they're very competitive with each other.
03:34And being competitive with each other, so far as I can see, means, you know, having higher heels or being thinner than the next person.
03:39And, you know, so sisterhood in offices, I think, is a very rare thing that women are somehow trained to be themselves
03:52and to get ahead and to, you know, to push everybody off the ladder, and this is what they do.
03:58So, you know, you bring about these great social changes, but the sum of human happiness, I suspect, remains about the same.
04:11So what about the competition between men and women in relationships?
04:17The competition between men and women?
04:21Oh, goodness, I think they just want to get on with each other.
04:24Really, I don't think, you know, outside relationships, I think women are winning, most decidedly,
04:33because women don't care particularly what men think of them, and men continue to care, I think, very greatly, what women think of them.
04:42So in a way, you know, the one who feels least is the one who wins, and on the whole it's the women, I think, now.
04:49Faye Weldon blev enlig mor som 22-årig.
04:55Hun valgte at beholde barnet, den første af fire sønner.
04:58Også selvom det, universitetseksamen eller ej, var svært at forsørge sig selv.
05:02I went to the tax person to complain about something, and that, who was a woman, and she said, but, you know, but you've got a husband, what you earn is pin money.
05:12And I said, no, actually, it's not like that, look around, because I think this was one of one's sorts of indignations that the myth of what life was like and what the actuality of life was like was so different.
05:24Or even with writing or literature, you see, that all the books that I had read, I mean, you were talking, all the books that I have read presented women something which was completely unrecognisable to me.
05:37So I thought there was something wrong with me, because I wasn't like any of the women I'd read about.
05:42And when I started to write, you realise there was so much to be said, because nobody has been saying it for generations, or even almost, since, you know, men first took up their pens to write fiction.
05:57Never did a woman appear who had any relevance, any woman yet living.
06:01Fifty years ago, married women would stay at home and take care of the household and the children and so on, and that today they can provide for themselves.
06:17They sort of don't need the husband anymore.
06:19No, they don't. But the problem is, I think, really, that a lot of women would really prefer to stay at home, be kept, and not go out to rather boring jobs, which are the jobs that are offered to most women, really, and a need to most men.
06:35That, you know, the feminists somehow made it, who were, on the whole, intelligent, educated, competent women who were incredibly bored at home, spoke for all the women in the world who were not bored at home, who just liked sort of sloughing around, looking, well, no, looking after children, all the rest of it.
06:57And I say sloughing around, but it's, I mean, domestic technology has made an enormous difference and has set women free from all these terribly, to me, terribly boring tasks of washing up and cooking and wiping bottoms and all the rest of it.
07:15But a lot of women really, I think, kind of like this, and why should they not? But they all have to go out to work. So I think the great awfulness now is that you have to go out to work, not because you want to, but because you have no choice, but to, you know, but to work and to hand your children over to the care of other women and be this other sort of person, which it is not necessarily in your nature to be.
07:40Faye Weldons andet ægteskab med antikvitethandleren Ron varede i 30 år, men så ville han skilles. For Faye var Ron den eneste ene, også selvom den efterhåndens succesrige og anerkendte feministiske forfatter ofte måtte underlægge sig ægtemandens luner, som for eksempel betød ingen larmende vaske- og skrivemaskiner. Det fik betydning for Faye Weldons skrivestil.
08:02It was a great advantage, really, not having a typewriter, because, you know, I could sort of sit on the stairs with a pad and a pen and write.
08:12And sitting on the stairs was really good, because you'd sort of have little children below you and little children above you.
08:18But, you know, so long as they can sort of see you, they just keep an eye on you, which seems more important than you keeping an eye on men, they will leave you alone and you can get on with your writing.
08:34Very short sentences in those days, find you, and short paragraphs, because you were always having to get up and attend to one or the other one.
08:40So, you know, you would try and finish the sentence, but they got rather short.
08:57You're still going strong, even though you have passed 80. You're still writing novels, habits of the house.
09:05A bit like Upstairs, Downstairs.
09:06Well, it is like Upstairs, Downstairs, only I can have my own way. But if you're writing a television serial, then, you know, you have other people who keep trying to tell you what to do.
09:16And they fired me in the end anyway, so.
09:19So, this is your revenge.
09:20So, this is the kind of way. It's been a long time. It's my revenge to get it right at last, you know, which has been, and that's been fun to do.
09:29And I've done the second one. I'm just finishing the third one now.
09:32Looking back at your life, do you feel blessed?
09:36I feel it's been a lot of hard work.
09:43Unlucky. Let me say, extremely lucky.
09:45Unlucky.
09:52Unlucky.
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10:14Unlucky.
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