Nell Dunn is Talking to Women

Talking to Women by Nell Dun

Nell Dunn’s interview book ‘Talking To Women’ was re-issued in 2018. It first appeared in 1965.

‘Talking To Women’ by Nell Dunn is exactly that: writer Nell Dunn talking to women. Nine of them. Some famous (poet, painter, actress Pauline Boty), some to become very famous (novelist Edna O’Brien), same famously unknown and with every intention to stay that way (butter factory worker Kathy Collier). Most are friends of Nell’s to some degree. All of them were born between 1930 and 1940 (like Nell Dunn herself), and were in their mid-twenties to early thirties when they were interviewed in 1964.

Well, not really: in fact, this is Nell Dunn talking to women about women, Woman, womanhood and a number of issues that clearly occupied these modern women’s minds at that particular time: sex, promiscuity, relationships, children, marriage, old age, careers, dreams, the household. And Men.

Truthful about taboos

So what? Well, when this interview book appeared in 1965, two years after Nell Dunn’s successful collection of stories ‘Up The Junction’, its approach and contents were entirely new. It was an extraordinary publication because of Dunn’s casual, intimate method of interviewing - probably because she had not been trained in the art of the interview as practised at the time – and especially because of the truthful and honest replies she was given about subjects that were mostly taboo, such as sexual intercourse with a married man, orgasms, abortion, divorce, pregnancy as a method of ‘opting-out’, the importance of sex, eroticism, indulging in pleasures, the female body, and so forth.

Now, this book could equally have been titled ‘Talking About Men’, because it is Men that trouble these women to a large extent. Men surely are a different species, but these women are looking for solutions, other ways of approaching (their) men, methods to try and understand them. Men are not enemies, they just seem to be so difficult to grasp. Hence these questions: Can one really relate to a Man? Should one be faithful to 1 man? For life? Should one marry, or better: why, in fact, is one married? How does one deal with Men? Men seem to stand in the way of the personal development, dreams and desires of Women.

Searching

This isn’t a feminist book at all. Contrary to the generation that (soon thereafter) would burn bras and dump all accessories that make females attractive to males, here the interviewees are concerned about the essence of being a Woman. They worry about becoming less attractive as they grow older and they wonder how partners in their fifties relate to each other.

No, this is about a search. In 1964, the sixties as we got to know them in hindsight were only just beginning. The girls that screamed their lungs out at Beatles and Stones gigs in 1964, often still wore scarves. They left school at fifteen and went to work in a factory. They knew nothing about sex and even less about contraceptives. They were all destined to marry and become a good wife.
Nell Dunn questions society as she sees it around her, particularly the not so enviable position of women in that society. But how does one introduce change? One of the few real questions that Nell asks all nine women is if they can tell right from wrong. Translate as: do you have a sure, fixed, straight set of morals about all of the items mentioned above? Translate: we’re trying to shake off the old values and we’re experimenting with new ones, but how does one do that? Dunn doesn’t have a prescription, that’s why she wonders what her friends may be thinking.

‘Talking To Women’ is, basically, a young woman (the author) seeking new directions as a woman and asking nine women (friends) in which direction they are seeking, what they’ve found so far and if they think it makes for progress.

Still relevant

Is ‘Talking To Women’ still relevant, now that journalism is all about talking casually to Guests who are treated as Friends in a relaxing and luxurious setting which is expected to yield confessions that will make headlines?
I’d say it is still a most relevant book. For one thing, we’re still struggling with the answer to Nell Dunn’s pivotal question: ‘Can you tell Right from Wrong?’
We’ve found a new book to replace the old one: it is called The Human Rights, it is said to be universal and it is, therefore, beginning to replace morality everywhere. It’s a new jacket, but still a jacket. One size fits all.
We also have a strategy that avoids the question, called Multiculturalism. In this case, all groups are allowed to have their own set of Rights and Wrongs and everyone is expected to respect everyone else’s, the surest way of admitting one hasn’t got a clue but thinks it wiser not to discuss the matter. We arrange things vertically, in parallel, so they never meet. That keeps us quiet.
We also have at our disposition this new form of hypocrisy labelled Political Correctness, whereby priority must be given to values that emanate from the poor and exploited – as if their poor social status guarantees rich morality. As it happens, this is the sort of reasoning that Nell Dunn rejects.

New backward thinking

Nell Dunn’s endeavour, however, is to be situated on different level: she approaches individuals and asks about their individual progress, presuming that the exchange of information (her book) may further the debate and create some clarity. She hopes for light, but realizes that seekers partly remain in the dark. This is where they see the contours of the light better, but cannot catch it. And Nell Dunn approaches women, because for them the search is even more difficult. Women are not supposed to act or think on their own.

In fact, this is a very brave book because we are now living in a time where, regretfully, entire communities are questioning Nell Dunn’s central question. The Answer is known to all who want to believe it is there, and surely women need not look any further. There are too many out there propagating the idea that a woman should have no desires and not arouse any desires in men. That life is not worth living, that to indulge in pleasures is a sin. That music is a sin. That we are better off in Paradise. Dead. Such backward thinking can only lead us back in time – to a time, not so long ago, a little before Nell Dunn’s time, when it was safer not to ask any question and not to question those who told you so. A time when women were second-rate citizens.

Nell Dunn (° 1936) is still alive and living somewhere in London. That’s good to know.

‘Talking to Women’ by Nell Dunn was first published in 1965 by Pan Books and re-issued by Silver Press, UK, in 2018. She became famous with her first collection of stories titled ‘Up The Junction’ (1963) and repeated her success with ‘Poor Cow’ in 1967. Both books were made into films. Donovan wrote the theme for ‘Poor Cow’, whereas Manfred Mann took care of the soundtrack of ‘Up The Junction’. Dunn always writes about the position of women in society.