Reread
*
'My name', she said, 'is Matilda. Up here at night there is no Matty. Only Matilda. Look at Me.'

The above is dialogue from the book's first novella, Morpho Eugenia, and eerily echoes a recent read of mine, which eerily echoed another novel I read not too long ago. While an overall theme of Morpho Eugenia is the dichotomy between the male protagonist's present life with a Victorian English family and his past experiences in the Amazon, Matty/Matilda is revealed as a patient, reckoning force. Though I fully remembered the ending from my prior read, I was still surprised by part of it. Despite some self-indulgent sections, knowing full well that's what you get with Byatt, I once again found this novella a multi-layered, fascinating work.
*
Mrs. Papagay ... wondered whether other people told themselves stories in this way in their heads, whether everyone made up everyone else, living and dead, at every turn, whether this she knew about Mrs Hearnshaw could be called knowledge or lies, or both...

Before starting the second novella, The Conjugial Angel, I was already swarmed by 19th-century women--real, fictional, even hybrids. With this work, I can now add two more--one fictional and the other a hybrid. As interesting and erudite as Byatt's Swedenborgian and Tennysonian riffs were, I preferred being in the heads of the women. Adding to the 'minor' theme of the unseen woman of the first novella, a 'minor' theme here is resistance to the Victorian age's angel-in-the-house mentality, a resistance that perhaps leads to Emily's willful eccentricity, perhaps also to a bit of [b:The Yellow Wallpaper|99300|The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories|Charlotte Perkins Gilman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327909237s/99300.jpg|1467808] but at least not to [b:The Madwoman in the Attic|149709|The Madwoman in the Attic The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination|Sandra M. Gilbert|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348225811s/149709.jpg|2986123].
*
After reading Byatt back-to-back (along with my recent read of [b:The Children's Book|6280379|The Children's Book|A.S. Byatt|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320548114s/6280379.jpg|5768221]), it struck me that despite her very dark themes, these stories end on uplifting notes, endings that may be 'fantasies' (especially for the time) but are not fantastical.

if you write or create, chapter 10 of The Conjugial Angel will blow your mind. A.S. Byatt is officially apart of my literary pantheon beside Emily Bronte, Woolf and Anne Carson.

"The world looked different, and larger, and brighter, not water-colour washes of green and blue and grey, but a dazzling pattern of fine lines and dizzying pinpoints, jet-black, striped and spotted crimson, iridescent emerald, sloppy caramel, slime-silver."

"There is a kind of tree called the Sipo Matador--which translates, the Murderer Sipo--which grows tall and thin like a creeper and clings to another tree, to make its way up the thirty, forty feet to the canopy, eating its way into the very substance of its host until that dies--and the Sipo perforce crashes down with it."

"There are a great many frustrated lovers who are set to sorting seeds."

"Larger insects were advancing along the black floor, their wings outspread. More could be seen forcing themselves through a small hole in the pane of the conservatory door. More still sailed down from the roof, hurtling blindly forwards in the semi-dark. The small concussions of the creatures on the glass walls and roof increased in number and volume. They advanced, a disorderly, driven army, beating about Eugenia's head, burring against her skin, thirty, forty, fifty, a cloud, the male Emperors propelling themselves out of the night towards the torpid female. More came. And more. Eugenia tried to push them off, she brushed her skirts, she plucked at those lost in her sleeves, in the crevices of her dress."

Loved Morpho Eugenia. Had more trouble with the angels.

A bit of a mixed bag. The first novella in this collection, Morpho Eugenia, is well-written and plotted. The story of a Victorian man of science and his ill-fated marriage in a well-bred house deals with the Victorian struggles of science vs. religion, classism, and morality (in a "what separates man from beasts?" type way). The metaphors are not subtle; the insects and angels are present on nearly every page. But the story itself cracks along and I couldn't put it down.

The second story, The Conjugial Angel, is much weaker. This one deals with the Victorians' obsession with spiritualism and death. Unlike the first novella, it features multiple narrators, and suffers for it; their voices are too similar. Also, the story revolves around Tennyson's younger sister and a doomed romance with another poet... which meant that A LOT of poetry was quoted. And I prefer my poetry in much smaller doses, and without lengthy digressions into its meaning and each character's reaction to it.

So, 4 stars for Morpho Eugenia and 2 for The Conjugial Angel for an average of 3.

There are very few authors in my mind that even come close to having the command of language Byatt has and, rarer still, she is an author that credits her reader with as much intelligence as she herself possesses.

That being said, "Angels and Insects" just didn't deliver for me. It's wonderfully written (of course) but it didn't quite enrapture me the way Byatt's other novels and short stories, in particular, have.

There are two novellas within the book which explore, in turn, the Victorian fascination with the rather conflicting ideas of science and spiritualism.

Full review here