Fay Weldon, the author, best known for The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, and for the dramas of her private life, has always been adept at catching the headlines. She’s done it again, accusing her third husband of 30 years, who managed her affairs, of coercive control and financial mismanagement. Her second husband left her she claimed as the result of one visit to an astrologer, which resulted in her going on a media rant against astrology. He died within eight hours of their divorce coming through, which always felt a touch spooky.
Her best-known She-Devil novel written when she was 52, featured an unattractive wife who took her revenge on her unfaithful husband and his lover to almost psychotic lengths, wrecking both their lives. It echoes a theme in her own life from her childhood: “I was born large, blonde and big-boned into a family of small beautiful women. My mother thought it was unlikely that anyone would marry me.”
Born 22 September 1931 5.50 pm Alvechurch, England, she has a communicative Virgo Sun on the cusp of her 8th house; with a zany Aquarius Moon conjunct her Ascendant from the 12th opposition Jupiter in Leo. Plus the signature tough-minded Great Depression Pluto in Cancer opposition Saturn in Capricorn square an innovative Uranus in Aries. Such a Uranus can be a law-unto-itself type of personality, a disrupter, self-willed and unpredictable, though also a trailblazer. In addition she has Venus in Libra in her intense 8th conjunct her Sun as well as an unaspected Mars in vengeful Scorpio. Such a Mars can be uncompromising, constantly on the go, prone to irrational outbursts.
Her Sun/Moon midpoint which is the marriage significator is square her Neptune sitting in her 7th house both of which point to an attraction for creative men and a difficulty in making total commitment. Her Sun/Moon is also sesquiquadrate Pluto which again is a hint of power-struggles within close relationships. She always insists “My only ambition was always to be married.”
She has well-aspected creative 5th and 7th harmonic charts, as well as the writers’ 21H so clearly has talent. Though not I suspect much self-awareness or insight.
Photo: Mogens Engelund
I’m a lifelong fan of Fay Weldon… I even met her once when I just arrived in London via some older friends in a pub…..she was born in UK but brought up in New Zealand, and has a lot of that place about her (I’m from there). But her gorgeous, wonderful take on women, families, femininity and men couldn’t ever be beaten. I seem to remember she was the person who wrote the famous lines (working for an ad agency) “go to work on an egg” but maybe that’s romantic. Oh! the President’s Child/The Heart of the Country/Female Friends…everything she wrote was magic even though dreadful….. I remember being thrilled she’d found someone (her young publisher as I recall) again but nobody changed the landscape of honesty with all the trappings of men and women as much as she did. Brilliant always, sardonic, sagelike…..gutsy. A survivor, God bless her.