A. S. Byatt. . - Reviews - book review

Studies in Short Fiction, Spring, 1998 by W.S. Hampl

A. S. BYATT by Kathleen Coyne Kelly. Twayne's English Authors Series. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996. xiii 158 pages. $24.95

Limited to Byatt's early fiction, Kelly's text contains an extensive bibliography that catalogs Byatt's nonfiction. The preface places Byatt as both a realist and a postmodernist, and Kelly explains both terms and why one might judiciously apply them to Byatt's oeuvre. Kelly's work proves valuable in her final chapters on Byatt's later fiction; indeed, the concluding chapters are much better than the earlier ones.

After an introduction describing Byatt's family and educational background, Kelly devotes an unhappy chapter to Byatt's first novels, The Shadow of the Sun (1964) and The Game (1967). Kelly's reading suggests that she is trying to force the novels to represent the plight of women in society. (Interestingly, she never brings in Luce Irigaray.) Kelly pinpoints the first novel's theme--that human relationships are often difficult--but confuses several characters' actions. For instance, Kelly writes that Oliver and Margaret Canning have a sex life in which husband often abuses wife; however, the novel suggests, via Margaret's eventual mental breakdown, that she is an unhappy woman whose accounts of abuse are imagined. Also, Kelly claims that, at the end of the novel, Oliver follows Anna and the reader questions Anna's ultimate fate; instead, Anna abandons her fiance to meet Oliver, and at the novel's conclusion, Anna is clearly once again under his spell. Misreadings continue when Kelly claims that at The Game's conclusion, neither Julia nor her sister Cassandra "wins"; just the same, at the novel's end Cassandra has committed suicide, whereas Julia is alive and in a car with Simon, the friend whom she "steals" from her sister.

Next, Kelly addresses the works from "Sugar" and Other Stories (1987) and The Matisse Stories (1994). By not devoting separate sections to each respective story, Kelly seems to short-change several stories. Her explication, however, of "Loss of Face" is biographically and etymologically enlightening, referring to Byatt's own trips to the East and to the double meaning of orientation, which may refer both to the East (the Orient) and to a focusing of direction.

However, one wishes that Kelly had taken similar care with the remaining stories; for instance, she does not mention in "Medusa's Ankles" the double meaning of decline, which may mean "to give the particular conjugations of a certain word" and "to refuse." In a related manner, Kelly fails to call attention to Byatt's use of the two ants in "Art Work" which are "running in circles, possibly busy, possibly frantically lost," as a symbol for the frustration of the story's hardworking but unsuccessful artists.

Kelly considers, unfortunately, the first two dense novels in the "Powerhouse Quartet" in the same chapter, resulting in rushed readings of The Virgin in the Garden (1978) and Still Life (1985). As one might expect, Kelly's hurried readings (i.e., her failure properly to detail the uncontrollable sexuality causing the breakdown of the Lucas-Marcus relationship) prove questionable, such as when she amazingly claims that Marcus is "clearly in the early stages of schizophrenia"; despite his precarious health at the end of the first novel, Marcus does not exhibit this condition in either of the next two novels.

When Kelly examines Possession: A Romance (1990), her etymological and historical work results in a truly inspired reading. Kelly's detailing of the significance of the characters' names and the theory of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) that history is cyclical adds to a richer understanding of the characters themselves and how they relate to each other. In addition, Kelly's earlier work with postmodernism clarifies the multiple formats of the novel.

Likewise, Kelly's penultimate chapter on Angels and Insects: Two Novellas (1992) is thoroughly rewarding. Though she omits discussion of the movie adaptation, she supplies numerous historical references to Charles Darwin and other authors that illuminate Morpho Eugenia, the first novella. Employing Eve Sedgwick's theory of homosociality between men, Kelly sheds light on the relationship between Arthur Hallam and Alfred and Emily Tennyson in The Conjugial Angel. One notes that had Kelly employed this critical apparatus when dealing with The Shadow of the Sun, her reading of this novel--especially the scene when the father enlists his rival to secure his daughter--would have been vastly different and much more convincing.

Concluding with a laudatory commentary on Byatt as a twentieth-century artist, Kelly's text, despite its shortcomings in the earlier chapters, proves worthwhile in its later examination of Byatt's best-known works.

W. S. HAMPL University of Rhode Island