A Study Of Gender Issues In A.S. Byatt's Fiction

This dissertation is a specific study of the fiction by A. S. Byatt, a foremost writer and literary critic still writing in Britain. It focuses on the gender issues in A. S. Byatt's seven novels (including a tetralogy) and two novellas and her thoughts on these issues. Because gender is closely connected with society, the present study investigates the social existence of human beings, not only women but also men, and the relationship between the sexes or within each sex. Such an investigation goes beyond the mere feminist perspective in the existing criticism of Byatt's fiction.The dissertation comprises three parts—Introduction, the main body, and Conclusion. Introduction makes general comments on A. S. Byatt's fiction both strategically and thematically. One of the important findings of the present study is that A. S. Byatt follows the British female literary tradition, and therefore gender perspective will be the best choice as the methodological approach in analysing her fiction, for it is a way that best interprets one of the two problems that Byatt is anxious about—"human and literary." However, "gender study" doesn't simply mean "women study." After interpreting the latest theoretical findings in "gender study", Introduction illustrates Byatt's concerns for gender issues from three aspects: Byatt's statements in her own essays or talks, her literary practice, and the existing criticism. Following this is the literature review, presenting the status quo of the study of A. S. Byatt both at home and abroad.The main body is composed of five chapters which clarify the gender issues in A. S. Byatt's fiction and her gender ideology from different aspects. Chapter One explores the issue of female power in Byatt's rewritten myths which are related not only to ancient Europe and the Renaissant England but also to the conditions of the Victorian and post-war England. Byatt eulogizes the female power and show pity for women's loss of it. The rewritten mythic tales The Fairy Melusina and The City of Is, which reflect Byatt's strong European culture complex, are the eulogies of the typical aquatic beings who are independent female figures possessing authority and creativity. They are subversion and deconstruction of the male-dominated traditional myths which have so long deceived both women and men. By retelling the myth of the Virgin Queen, Byatt ironically emphasises the fact that Elizabeth I became the archetypal virgin with power by refusing to marry so as to keep her virginity and separate identity, while women figures in real life are eager to lose that power, which reveals Byatt's condemnation of moral degradation in the 1950s' England. In addition, Byatt associates Stephanie with the mythic image Proserpina and suggests the tragic ending of this energetic and enchanting intelligent woman and her rebirth via her daughter. These investigations show that A. S. Byatt believes that women's power comes from solitude and separation from men and that it is sex and love that have restricted female power.Chapter Two probes into the issues of gender identity anxiety and sexual dilemma of men in the post-war England. Byatt depicts the variety of sexual forms and behaviours via analogizing the human world with the natural world of plants, showing her sympathy and understanding for men living in gender dilemma. Such a depiction forms an essential part of the English landscape, revealing men's struggle in the construction of the self and the relation of that self to the social and political culture surrounding it. Byatt's exploration .of the gender issues is obviously based on the latest achievements in psychological research. She emphasises the importance of social, cultural and environmental forces in shaping one's gender identity and personality.The Second World War has had harmful impact on both Byatt's characters and her country which are adjusting to a post-war era. Byatt's depiction of the virgins, the androgynous, homosexual, or narcissistic males who live in gender or sexual dilemma and their struggles in exploring gender identity, and her presentation of the males' sense of loss and depression exhibit her hearty humane concerns for the males as she has always done for the females. The depiction of their sexual experience and the pains they suffer from their gender identity anxiety demonstrates Byatt's comprehensive perception of sex and gender, though the male gender issues in Byatt's fiction have been neglected in existing criticism.By dissecting the various images of enclosure in Byatt's fiction, Chapter Three explores the issue of confinement from which both men and women suffer. Following and going beyond the distinctively Victorian female literary tradition, Byatt associates the images of enclosure and escape not only with women but also with men. Gendering the images of enclosure as not only feminine but also masculine has become one of the reasons that have made Byatt distinctive.A. S. Byatt's marginalized Victorian women are confined by both patriarchal and social conventions, but they show strong female consciousness. Her women artists, mostly representatives of the budding feminist ideas, are willing to be physically confined, preferring separateness and solitude in order to survive. Although the Victorian women are confined both literarily and socially, they can liberate themselves from the imprisonment and assert their autonomy. Byatt's association of Cassandra Corbett to her namesake in the Greek myth, the shaping of the "mad woman" image, is virtually an association with failure—here the failure of vision and of the female artist as visionary. One theme explored in most of Byatt's fiction is that love and marriage are images of enclosure which confine not only women but also men. Byatt affirms the creativity that love and sex has inspired, but she particularly emphasizes how love and sex have bound them, especially in frustrating women's interest and success.Byatt's attitude towards the images of enclosed space is ambivalent. On the one hand, it offers shelter for women, under which they can keep their creativity whilst leaving it means risks; on the other hand, it confines women's desire and creativity. This argument is a partial subversion of Virginia Woolf's view in her famous feminist book A Room of One's Own and coincides with Elaine Showalter's view in her more reputable feminist book A Literature of Their Own (Expanded Edition), in which Showalter considered a room of one's own as both a sanctuary and a prison, or both a tomb and a place of birth. The symbolic images of enclosure which are frequently deployed in Byatt's fiction express her characters' sense of imprisonment and their angry desire to escape from the constraints. Her specific treatment of love and marriage as such an image virtually protrudes their nature as a trap, which both women and men are afraid of and struggle to escape from.Chapter Four discusses the dualistic relationship between men and women via the interpretation of Byatt's construction of the "sun-shadow dichotomy," a recurrent motif in her fiction. Byatt's recognition of the female sun in "Norse and in German" makes her attempt to subvert the traditional dualistic view which regards the sun and light as male and the moon and darkness as female. She set out with the issue of females' inability to see or transmit light due to their gender identity, but in her later works, she solved the problem by creating females of glare who are as shining as or even surpassing the males. This "sun-shadow dichotomy" is associated with gender issues and Byatt's own gender ideology, which is an exploration of the problem about not only male but also female art and thought in both British history and the postmodern era.Three patterns are identified in correspondence to the "sun-shadow dichotomy" in Byatt's fiction. The first is the shining fathers and ambitious daughters whose power and creativity are overshadowed. The fathers are endowed with the features of the sun gods—they are the centers of the world, dominating and emitting light like the sun, and thus any other person will live in the shadows cast because of their light. Another pattern is the renowned brilliant husbands and the consumed wives. The literary males among Byatt's major characters shine like the sun, in whose shadows are their silent, devoted, disappointed, and even despairing wives. A. S. Byatt's depiction of such consumed wives in either the Victorian or the post-war England seems to suggest that what is not changed with time is women's subordinate position in conjugal relationships. The third pattern—the female sun and pale men in the shadows—obviously shows the complicated imagery of the "sun-shadow dichotomy" with the shining female figures paralleling and even outdoing the male ones. It is in her Booker Prize winner Possession in which the glare of the shining women contrasts with the paleness of men that Byatt explicitly manifests that the sun can be female. By defining the sun as female and women as shining images like the sun, Byatt has not only subverted tradition but also deconstructed her own former "sun-shadow dichotomy."The last chapter investigates the development of the relationship between the two sexes from the separation of body and soul to an unstable union. Because A. S. Byatt regards sex as a problem and threat, she focuses more on the importance of other concerns of the mind: the ambition of educated women and the degree of their satisfaction in actualising this ambition.Under the influence of the Victorian writing tradition, A. S. Byatt deliberately treats the theme of female Utopias. The LaMotte-Glover lesbian utopia is virtually a manifestation of the female self-consciousness and the budding of feminist ideas in the Victorian Age; whilst the Agatha-Frederica practical utopia shows that living in the 1960s' England when feminism has become a movement and in a postmodern world which is more tolerant for women's sexual choice, they are much more fortunate than their ancestresses, though both Utopias are disintegrated in the end due to the intrusion and potential existence of men. While depicting the eighteenth-century Romantic Utopia which is based on pure sex and freedom, Byatt suggests that the failure of the utopia lies in the fact that the community is so sick that it fails to achieve the unity it desires. The failure of this invented utopia is actually a subversion of Fourier's Utopia of harmony and freedom. The shuffled themes, the role of women, passion and love and sex, the degree to which society should permit individual freedoms, are all mirroring the issues affecting the figures in the 1960s' England. Virtually, Frederica's disillusion of her own romantic utopia—a marriage based on sex, parallels the disintegration of the eighteenth-century Romantic Utopia. In spite of the failures of the female and romantic Utopias, Byatt continues to pursue a harmony between the sexes and between body and soul. However, the uncertainty and doubt about the true nature of love and marriage which are repeated by her characters reveal Byatt's pessimistic attitude. Byatt seems to suggest that there is no real balance and harmony between body and soul, and that men and women exist in an awkward relationship. What Byatt offers is an ambivalent and unstable solution to the issue between love and autonomy—to live both separately and combined.The study of the gender issues in A. S. Byatt's fiction from the five aspects above testifies the richness and uniqueness of Byatt's gender ideology. As the gender issues related to not only women but also men change at different historical stages, Byatt's thinking on these issues becomes more profound. What she has been elaborately exploring is a harmony between body and soul. However, in her fiction, the process of men and women's struggle for a union is long and hard. Although the union has been fulfilled, yet it is unstable. This dissertation not only interprets the developing process of A. S. Byatt's gender ideology but also provides a methodology approach to the study of her other works, so it has its own values in both theory and practical applications. Conclusion generalises Byatt's contribution to and transcendence of British women's literary tradition. Conclusion also points out the academic values of this study and offers a prospect of a further study of A. S. Byatt's fiction.