Fay Weldon webchat - Weds 27 Nov, 4-5pm

whenim64

Hi Fay. Do you have any more of your novels due to be filmed or televised? She Devil was my favourite series of your novel. Did you ever think of writing a sequel? I would be fascinated to learn how the rest of Ruth's life panned out, as she planned to make her husband as miserable as he had made her Such a rich landscape to plough, eh?

A company is currently trying to set up the Love and Inheritance trilogy for filming, but these things take years and years. I've been trying to work out a sequel to She Devil for a long time, but society has changed so much since it was written, the same rules simply do not apply.

grapefruit

I also wanted to ask, if things hadn't worked out for you as a writer, what do you think you would be doing now? Or what would like to be doing?

I always wanted to be a mill owner in the north of England, having read a lot of sagas when I was a child. failing that later on I thought I wanted to run ICI, nowadays I'd be more interested in running Google. I am a power freak!

flopsybunny

Another feminism question. I read somewhere about your views on a patriarchal society. Do you think this has changed much over the last generation? I like to think that it will be different for our granddaughters than it was for our daughters but I fear this may be wishful thinking

I think society has changed enormously over the last two generations - that's 50 years. Women have choice now, whether to marry, not to marry, whether to have babies, not to have babies and so on. The only choice they don't have, which they used to have, is not to go out to work. I think women and men are much happier in their personal lives than they used to be, but we all work much harder. We have to.

iceandaslice

Afternoon Fay, thank you for joining us! I just wanted to say thank you for showing that women of a certain age can still achieve brilliant things and carry on working. Do you ever experience ageism in your industry?

When you get to a certain age there are some jobs which get difficult to do. I think if you're a nurse you should be able to retire when you're 60 (if not before!). Jobs like writing you can, thank goodness, keep on doing because mostly it's sedentary and the only bit of you that has to work properly is your brian. Long may we, of the older generation, continue while being grateful that we live in the computer age.

grapefruit

Has GNHQ shown you the new tea towel - which do you think is you?

I'm looking at the tea towel even as I speak. I think I'm all of them, except thin or sporty! I'm not particularly a jet-setting gran either - I like home. It's extraordinary how many skills everybody has. Icing cakes was always something I'd like to do, but that too has become a professional thing.

pasttheyardarm

Hi Fay! Are you a fan of Downton Abbey? Or do you feel like it ripped off Upstairs Downstairs a bit? And why do you think people so so fascinated with class, even today?

I think even today people are fascinated by class. 100 years ago everybody had both rights and obligations. If you were the lady of the household in the Dilburn family, Mrs Beeton in her household management would tell her that she had to work hard, she had to set an example, not get drunk, go to bed early, and in return she expected to be waited on. The head parlour maid would expect to have her cup of tea brought to her by the under-parlour maid. You knew where you were. It was a settled society. You look back and think it's terrible, but what we have now, which still does not give us a proper class mobility, is worse now than it was a generation ago. In Henry VIII's time the butcher's boy could rise to be Head of Affairs, such a thing nowadays just doesn't happen. How do other people see it?

I hope you all find the digging rewarding! I really loved writing the trilogy and it's really nice as a reward to be able to talk to Gransnet.