A FASTIDIOUS ART : THE SHORT STORIES OF A.S. BYATT

Abstract

This project is an attempt at understanding A.S. Byatt's short stories, many of which reveal a fastidious concern for meticulous observation of phenomena and rigorous analysis of the relationship between language and perception, literary constructs and reality. It is an examination of the stringent demands that Byatt makes in relation to her craft--that the order of art should not totally subvert reality, that language should (despite its perceived opacity) mirror the truth instead of merely reinventing it. Central to Byatt's work is the paradoxical desire to have imaginative embodiment as well as "the hard idea of truth" (Passions 24). She also tries to combine the roles of writer and critic because she believes that both roles are mutually reinforcing. Her background as a critic and academic therefore informs and influences her choice of literary subjects. Her stories are often self-consciously about the concerns of writers, scholars, or artists who, like her, are wrestling with the problems and theories of art. This dissertation will be an examination of that self-conscious and theory-based approach to fiction. It will be a study not only of art but the problems of art, not only of perception but the mechanics of perception in her works. This dissertation will attempt to show how she tries to negotiate her own equilibrium between different theoretical positions, for example, how she combines realism and symbolism, how she casts doubts on notions of total objectivity yet does not embrace solipsism and how she reduces some characters to a random set of attributes without taking away their singularity. Her analysis is rigorous because she tries to reconcile opposing theories of art. Such art, which is always in an uneasy state of becoming, which raises more questions than answers, reveals an intense interest in not only the 'truth' but the processes by which it is arrived at. Even though her literary ideas are derivative, there is paradoxically an inventiveness in the way she explains, discards, modifies or combines them to make her fictional 'truth'. This dissertation seeks to investigate the extent of that inventiveness which can only be the product of a fastidious artistic temperament. I have chosen six stories from the collection Sugar and other Stories, all of which raise central issues Byatt examines in her works. I will examine the idea of language as a form of understanding and empowerment in the story "Racine and the Tablecloth''. Next, I will combine the ghost stories "July Ghost" and “The Next Room" to analyse how Byatt uses language to describe the mystical as well as the mundane. Since Byatt is already concerned with the difficulties of using language to capture ordinary experience, the phenomenon of ghosts would be an extreme test of her linguistic scruples. I will also look at the story "On the Day that E.M. Forster Died", to examine how Byatt anticipates criticism against her own self-conscious, metafictional techniques by creating her own critic in the story whose conventional ideas about literature she undermines. The chapter "Precipice-Encurled" will explore Byatt's ideas about the elusive self and the complexities of creating a character. The last chapter on the biographical narrative "Sugar", is the longest because it is a 'story' that encapsulates and comments on the rest of the stories in this collection. "Sugar" raises issues pertaining to fictionality, the distortions of memory and the difficulties and potential of language.