Big Women. Fay Weldon

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СКАЧАТЬ only those who couldn’t get a man developed the life of the mind.

      Meanwhile women read, thought, began to speak up in public, took strength from one another, learned to withstand mockery and required justice in the home and in the workplace: mockery and derision aimed at the women of Medusa was a small price to pay. They could put up with it, and did. Men would walk out of rooms when they walked into them: so what?

      The History and Nature of the Female Orgasm was not a filthy book, simply an honest one. The Hidden Order of Female Art by no means special pleading. The novel Sisters won a literary prize or so. Gender Statistics became a seminal book in the universities. Women – Made or Born? one year outsold the Bible, and was presently to enable Medusa to move to better offices and get itself organised.

      Money and success, as Layla observed in the beginning, means you get taken seriously.

      Let us look in at a meeting of the Advisory Board. Nancy is presenting the annual report. Round the big table are young, enthusiastic, eager, female faces, all without makeup, serviceably dressed. Time is on their side, and the future is theirs. Only Layla wears a skirt. Boiler suits are out: jeans and jumpers in. A couple of babies have been brought in; they’re female. The boys, by common consent, are left at home. Proof copies of the next season’s lists are on display. The Inessential Gender – a History, magazines from Stephanie’s new newsprint division – Liberation Review, and Multigender Dialectic: the Feminist Primer rather badly printed. And down at Layla’s end of the table a display of Medusa Classics, elegantly packaged, eloquently produced.

      ‘Medusa is now a shareholding company,’ says Nancy to the assembled women, ‘minimally in profit. Our retail outlets are properly established, and male resistance to the idea of a separate literary market for women for the most part overcome. The “women’s market” no longer means romances and Woman’s Own. It means serious books at serious prices. Nevertheless, problems remain. The company’s undercapitalised. We live from hand to mouth. Profits from Women – Made or Born? paid back our starting-up costs, but sales are falling off.’

      Nancy, out of delicacy, made no mention of Layla’s occasional large injections of family cash into Medusa’s coffers. These appeared in the books merely as ‘Anonymous donations’. ‘Public demand’, Nancy went on, ‘can’t always be predicted. If only it could. Thus Made or Born does startlingly well: Multigender Dialectic may have to be withdrawn for lack of forward orders. We can build up a core of faithful readers, women loyal to our imprint, of course we can, and will: but real profits always lie within the margins of guesswork, which is an uncomfortable place to be. As the women’s courses in the universities proliferate, thanks to Alice, Medusa will of course provide the standard texts, there being no one else in the field – and we will find ourselves safer.’

      ‘Why are we talking about profits?’ protested one of the Board. ‘Our main business is to reclaim women’s artistic past. Commercial success isn’t our aim: why even talk about it?’

      ‘Fuck art,’ said another. ‘We exist to raise female consciousness.’

      ‘In order to exist at all,’ said Layla, ‘we have to break even. I’m not going to go on digging into my own pocket for ever.’

      Layla’s hair was short and curly. She was said to have a new lover, whom the newspapers longed to identify, but couldn’t, and her eyes were bright. There was a feeling around the table that she lacked the capacity for constructive self-criticism.

      ‘There’s certainly a case for breaking even,’ someone said, ‘if only so Layla doesn’t always get her own way.’

      ‘Money should be the last of our considerations,’ said Stephanie, ‘when it comes to choosing the list.’ She was looking drawn, and had a spot on her normally perfect chin. She had trouble with her conscience, and her children, and still lived at the top of Layla’s house. She made frequent attempts to move out, but would develop an allergy or flu or hurt her back if the attempts showed signs of success, and so stayed on. Her divorce from Hamish lingered on. Fine gestures create legal opportunity. Nakedness in public gets publicly discussed. Newspaper cartoonists revelled in the vision of a naked Stephanie, bosom pressed against a Mini steering-wheel. It was hard for her. Layla was patient.

      ‘So what’s for dinner today?’ enquired Layla of the assembled Board. ‘Oh, goodie, look! It’s integrity.’

      ‘We need to keep afloat, of course,’ said someone piously. ‘But not be a prey to crude commercialism. That’s the male way.’

      ‘I disagree,’ said Layla. ‘Since the male way keeps men so comfortable, I don’t see why women shouldn’t do the same.’

      ‘I’m trying to speak,’ said Nancy crossly. ‘Can we not have these interruptions.’

      ‘They are not interruptions,’ said someone. ‘They are important contributions to a debate. And why are you standing up there at the end of the table, Nancy; spouting at us as if you saw yourself as apart and superior? Surely this is a co-operative in spirit as well as actuality. We were told Medusa would remain hierarchy-free, even though for technical reasons never fully explained to us we became a shareholding company. I see no evidence of that spirit here today.’

      ‘Trouble at mill!’ hissed Layla to Stephie.

      ‘Told you there would be,’ said Stephie.

      ‘Be all that as it may,’ said Nancy firmly and loudly, ‘as I have been trying to explain to you, we have to raise further capital or Medusa will once again approach Standstill, as the I Ching describes it. Stasis. And I’m sure none of us would want that.’

      Alice had converted Nancy to the I Ching: tactlessly, Nancy now referred to it. There was further uproar. Many of the Board members had backgrounds in Methodism and the old Adult Education movement, and were stern rationalists.

      ‘You haven’t been doing the I Ching again, have you!’ cried one woman, in the exact tone of voice she’d use to rebuke a child –‘What, soiled your pants again!’ Women had yet to learn the art of scolding without appearing either maternal or shrewish: to develop the male knack of making reproach seem to come from some cosmic, a-personal source. Accused of nagging over centuries, they had developed the tendency. These days men nag, women reproach.

      ‘Casting coins to tell our fortune? This is a responsible women’s publishing house; these are the seventies, not the sixties.’

      An innocent asked what the I Ching was, protesting that it wasn’t fair to women to intimidate women by raising matters and using words which not everyone understood: it was a male trick.

      Someone explained that the I Ching was a Confucian book of oracles: you asked questions, it answered them, like a wise old man, through the pattern the coins threw up.

      ‘Man!’ someone shrieked. Why was a feminist publishing house asking questions of a man?

      Alice said in her soft voice, ‘Don’t be alarmed. The book has a foreword by Jung, whose concepts of the anima and the id have so informed the women’s movement we can almost reckon him an honorary female. Publishing, as Nancy has pointed out, is a matter of prophecy. We merely use what is available.’

      ‘Please, no one mention the I Ching outside these walls,’ begged Layla, with an alarm unusual for her. ‘If the press get hold of it, they’ll have a fucking field day.’

      ‘Language!’ СКАЧАТЬ