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A review by teresatumminello
Angels and Insects by A.S. Byatt
4.0
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.
*
'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.