A.S. Byatt’s Humanistic Reconstruction Of The Victorian Age In Possession And Angels And Insects

Byatt has a complex with history, particularly that of the Victorian age. Two of her tour-de-forces, Possession and Angels and Insects, explains such a complex quite well. Based on the foundation of domestic studies on Byatt and her works, this paper is going to focus on the humanistic reconstruction of the Victorian society in Possession and Angels and Insects from the aspect of historiographic metafiction as well as Byatt’s own theoretic ideas in two of her monographs, On Histories and Stories and Passions of the Mind.This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter, Representation of Faith:Religion or Science?, concentrates on the collision between religion and science around the year Darwin’s Origin of Species was published. In both the Victorian language and manner, Byatt demonstrates mental struggles of intellectuals, scientists, Christians and Spiritualists respectively represented by Ash, William, Harald and female spirit mediums to present a Victorian world where people have distinct choices of life due to various values of being when confronting faith crisis.The second chapter, Reconstruction of Female Images:Monsters or Angels?, focusing on female characters in the Victorian epoch, discusses their identities as monsters or angels at that time from the point of view of the Victorian women’s own, respectively selecting LaMotte, Emily Tennyson the widow and Ellen the angel in the house as representatives of their age. Byatt depicts an overall situation of the female from Victorian characters’ choices, including those who have grasped their opportunity to be independent but having been considered to be monsters and those good wives as angels in the house, showing the author’s respect for their dignity and lifestyle choices.The third chapter, Recomposition of Myths:Imitation or Authorship?, makes an analysis on the rewriting of two Victorian female writers, LaMotte and Matty, their attitudes toward such a rewriting and the difference between their ambition and the outcome, taking both the social situation and the women’s own pursuit of the self into consideration. Through the reconstruction of the literary development for women writers from imitation to deconstructive intention and then to authorship in pursuit of independent existence, the author shows her compassion and respect for Victorian women writers from the perspective of self-realization.To sum up, when reconstructing the Victorian world in the three aspects, faith crisis, lifestyle choices and pursuit of self-realization, Byatt represents the Victorian society in a Victorian manner to speak for the Victorian dead by using Victorian words, focusing on the characters’own values of being, dignity and independent existence with her humanistic concerns over Victorian people. Through skills of historigraphic metafiction, such as narrating forms and strategies of representation, Byatt reconstructs Victorian people with fullness and humanity.