Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta
Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky
Magisterská diplomová práce
Klára Němcová
2012 Klára Němcová
20
12 Hřbet
Masaryk University Faculty of Arts
Department of English and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Klára Němcová
Development of Major Female Characters in the Novels of A. S. Byatt and Margaret Drabble Master’s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.
2012
1
I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
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2
I would like to thank my supervisor, prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A., for her kindness, valuable advice, patience and support.
3 Table of Contents
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………….. 5
1. THEORETICAL APPROACH ……………………………………………… 6
1.1. Role of character in literary work ……………………………………. 6
1.2. Introduction to feminism ……………………………………………... 12
1.2.1. Feminism in the novels: Are Byatt and Drabble feminist
writers? ……………………………………...... 18
2. AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS ………………………………………….. 21
2.1. Antonia Susan Byatt – life and work ………………………………..... 21
2.2. The Virgin in the Garden / Still Life – plot summary ...... 23
2.3. Margaret Drabble – life and work …………………………………..... 26
2.4. The Radiant Way / A Natural Curiosity – plot summary ...... 29
3. DEVELOPMENT OF FEMALE CHARACTERS...... 32
3.1. A. S. Byatt: The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life ...... 32
3.2. Margaret Drabble: The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity ...... 43
3.3. Comparison of female characters in all novels...... 61
3.4. Comparison of Byatt and Drabble's portrayal of female
characters ...... 67
Conclusion ...... 72
Works cited ...... 74
Summary ...... 78
Resumé ...... 79
Appendix ...... 80
4 Introduction
This thesis analyzes the major female characters in the novels of two contemporary
British women writers and sisters at the same time – A. S. Byatt and Margaret Drabble.
It focuses on the development of the major female characters in the novels The Virgin in the Garden (1978) and Still Life (1985) by Byatt and The Radiant Way (1987) and A
Natural Curiosity (1989) by Drabble. Its aim is to examine how much the female characters develop throughout the novels and to what extent this development is limited by the social environment, family background and relationships with men.
The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part is conceived as a theoretical part and it deals with the general role of a character within a literary work. It explains the term “character” itself and analyzes its importance for a literary work. The first part of the thesis also touches upon the topic of feminism as it examines whether Byatt and
Drabble are feminist writers or if there are at least some feminist features in their novels.
The second part of the thesis is devoted to the authors and their literary career. It offers a brief introduction to their lives and work and it also contains plot summaries of the novels.
Finally, the last part conceived as a practical part analyzes the major female characters in the four novels mentioned above. This part deals with the maturation of the characters during the course of the stories. It also attempts to find out what are the similarities and differences between Byatt and Drabble‟s portrayal of female characters in general.
5 1. THEORETICAL APPROACH
1.1. Role of Character in Literary Work
As Chris Baldick states in his Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms, the term
„character‟ stands for “a personage in a narrative or dramatic work” (Baldick 33). A. F.
Scott in the Current Literary Terms – A Concise Dictionary adds a piece of information that the term „character‟ derives from a Greek word kharaktér (Scott 48). Thus characters are all the „people‟ who appear in a novel or any other literary work.
The character creates an illusion of behaving like a real person; the reader can either identify with the character and feel sympathy towards him or despise his behaviour and actions, on the other hand. Nevertheless, what the character looks like and how he or she behaves is fully up to the author. As E. M. Forster claims in his Aspects of the
Novel: “The novelist, unlike many of his colleagues, makes up a number of word- masses roughly describing himself, gives them names and sex, assigns them plausible gestures, and causes them to speak by the use of inverted commas, and perhaps to behave consistently. These word-masses are his characters” (Forster 54-5).
I have to agree with Forster at this point as it is self-evident that the characters must be created by somebody. The author gives lives to all his characters and in some cases he also uses his own experience and thus may make the characters partially or fully autobiographical. Wellek and Warren make a comparison between the fictitious character and a real person and they claim: “A character in a novel differs from a historical figure or a figure in real life. He is made only of the sentences describing him or put into his mouth by the author. He has no past, no future, and sometimes no continuity of life” (Wellek and Warren 25). Thus they share the same point of view with
Forster as they all claim the importance of the author in the process of creating fictitious characters.
6 How much would be revealed from the lives of the characters and how much would stay a secret depends on the author as well. Because it is the author who thoroughly invents and selects all the information that readers receive. At this point Forster says:
“People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed. […] The novelist is allowed to remember and understand everything, if it suits him. He knows all the hidden life”
(Forster 57-8).
Sometimes the author provides readers with a detailed description of the physical appearance of his characters so that they can imagine or visualize them but it is impossible for the reader to imagine the character in the same way the author did. Who can provide us with a certain kind of „help‟ in this situation is the film industry. As lots of films based on famous novels were and are being shot, the „problem‟ with the visualization of the characters is partially solved; the characters are portrayed by the actors. So for example, people who have seen the film The Great Gatsby in 1974 would probably visualize Jay Gatsby as Robert Redford.
Some novels remain bestsellers in the course of decades which certainly makes new film adaptations possible. The tastes of the viewers as well as the technical possibilities of film industry have been continuously changing; the same story, thus, appears in a variety of different depictions. Naturally, several actors change in playing the part of the same hero. One of the most repeatedly filmed novels is Ian Fleming‟s story of James
Bond. The part of this famous hero was played by six actors in the course of fifty years
– Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and
Daniel Craig. How should we, then, identify with so many performers of the same character if moreover each of these actors has rather a different physical appearance?
The identification in this case is quite difficult; more or less it depends on the viewer
7 himself which one of these actors would meet his own James Bond vision. Moreover, the older generation of film goers would probably prefer Connery as opposed to young people whose ideas of Bond would correspond with Craig‟s portrayal of the hero. Thus, it can be claimed that the identification with the film protagonist as well as his visualization depend on the personality of the viewer and also on the current time period and trends in fashion, technical field, etc.
Concerning the development of the characters throughout the story, E. M. Forster divides the characters into the so called „flat‟ and „round‟ characters. His definition of the flat characters is as follows: “Flat characters were called „humours‟ in the seventeenth century, and are sometimes called types, and sometimes caricatures. In their purest form, they are constructed round a single idea or quality. […] They are easily remembered by the reader afterwards. They remain in his mind as unalterable for the reason that they were not changed by circumstances” (Forster 73-4).
Flat characters are usually minor static characters that do not go through any important changes or development during the story. However, they are important for the whole story even though they play just a marginal role. Forster sees them mainly in the comic roles claiming that “it is only round people who are fit to perform tragically for any length of time and can move us to any feelings except humour and appropriateness”
(Forster 77). Thus it is clear that for a novel the round characters are of vital importance. They undergo various changes and development in the course of the story, they suffer conflicts that change them and readers know their inner feelings and motivations. If flat characters are rather static, the round characters can be defined as dynamic. As this thesis is going to analyze and discuss the major female characters in the novels, it is obvious that I am going to deal with the round characters.
8 Moreover, there are numerous types of literary characters with their particular functions in a story. The major character of a story and the character with whom the readers identify with mostly is called „protagonist‟. In simplified terms, it is the hero of a story even though he does not have to always be a good personage. The reader usually feels sympathy towards the protagonist, follows his adventures and hopes that his hero will complete all the tasks necessary to reach his life‟s target, for instance happiness, beloved person or wealth. As opposed to the protagonist, there is the „antagonist‟ who plays the opposite role. The antagonist tries to prevent the protagonist from accomplishing his aim by creating obstacles. Even though the antagonist is not always a bad person, the reader usually feels negative emotions towards him and supports the protagonist. The relationship between protagonist and antagonist can be traced for instance in Othello – the Moor of Venice where Othello plays the role of the protagonist and Iago is the antagonist. Nevertheless, as Abhijit Naik claims, there is also the possibility of the protagonist being the antagonist at the same time. Naik names as an example the novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis
Stevenson (Naik).
So far I have talked about two types or characters – the protagonist and the antagonist. However, J. Hillis Miller claims that “the minimal personages necessary for a narrative are three: a protagonist, an antagonist, and a witness who learns. Sometimes the protagonist, the antagonist, or the reader may be the witness” (Lentricchia and
McLaughlin 75).
In case of children‟s stories and fables, especially, it is true what Miller claims – there are topics and situations that can be instructive for the characters as well as for the readers in a certain way. Readers can witness and experience situations that would never happen in real life and they can learn a lesson from the story.
9 Nevertheless, it is still the author who is responsible for the behaviour of his characters and thus it is him who can provide us with some kind of „learning‟. As James
Wood points out in his How Fiction Works:
Nabokov used to say that he pushed his characters around like serfs
and chess pieces – he had no time for that metaphorical ignorance and
impotence whereby authors like to say, „I don‟t know what happened,
but my character just got away from me and did his own thing. I had
nothing to do with it.‟ Nonsense, said Nabokov, if I want my character
to cross the road, he crosses the road. I am his master (Wood 90).
Thus, the author bears the responsibility of the character‟s actions, his temperament, decisions, mistakes and successes. And subsequently, it is also the author who can
„teach‟ us something via his characters. Even though we cannot expect the learning to be the primal concern of a literary work, there is still a possibility that the reader will reveal certain truth applicable to his own life. However, this kind of learning is rather subjective and depends on the personality of the reader as well as on his perceptiveness.
I would like to finish this chapter with the importance of the character and the plot.
According to Aristotle, the “plot is the most important feature of a narrative. […] The other features of narrative – character, setting, diction, and so forth – are all subsidiary to the chief element of plot” (Lentricchia and McLaughlin 66).
In my opinion, however, it is the character that creates a literary work. Can a novel with exciting plot exist without characters? Would such a piece of literature be interesting for the readers? I am not saying that the plot is not important at all; obviously, the plot forms a vital part of a novel. However, I suppose, the literary character plays a more important role in a story than the plot itself. A novel with a dull plot but with interesting and elaborated characters can still attract readers. For example,
10 Dostoyevsky‟s Crime and Punishment is fully built around the main character. The plot seems to me quite ordinary but what made the book so memorable and famous is the depiction of the major character and his psyche. The reader follows Raskolnikov‟s inner feelings and the moral dilemmas he is going through. Without him, the novel would lose its tension and even its sense. Thus, I would disagree with Aristotle and his claim that the plot is more vital for a literary work than the characters. In my opinion, contrarily, the characters are the basis of a literary work.
11 1.2. Introduction to Feminism
Feminism is a movement that seeks justice and equality of sexes at the intellectual, material as well as political level. In this sense, the term was first used in France in the
1870s (féministe). According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the appearance of the term „feminism‟ in Great Britain dates back to 1895. Even though we can find certain features of feminism in ancient Greece, or in Jane Austen, the feminism as a movement dates back to the mid-19th century.
Pam Morris in her Literature and Feminism defines feminism as a political view reflecting two basic preconditions. The first precondition is, according to Morris, the difference between sexes which is responsible for the social injustice towards women.
The second, Morris continues, is the importance of cultural interpretation of difference between sexes. She claims that the biological difference between men and women is not the source of inequality between sexes; according to her, the cultural interpretation is the factor responsible for the social injustice towards women (Morris).
In the past, women were biologically limited in performing certain activities, such as hunting or fighting. Their sex determined them mostly to take care of children and household. Dividing daily duties and following „natural‟ inclinations, however, does not imply any inferiority of women to men, in my opinion. I agree with Morris that it is the cultural interpretation that creates the atmosphere of female subordination. The way the masculine part of the society treats women is the key factor. Throughout centuries till the modern times women were more and more deprived of their rights and their position was all but not equal to men. There are plenty of examples that demonstrate this inequality. For example, women in the United Kingdom could not vote until after 1928.
Even today there are cases when women do not have the equal conditions as men – for example at work. They either earn less money than men working on the same position
12 or they are seen as not that productive and reliable as men because they have or will have children. Margaret Higonnet and Maria Elena de Valdes claim that “in terms of cultural history, any restriction of women to the biological roles of sexual partner and mother is to be deplored and perpetuates patriarchal blindness” (Higonnet and Valdes
134-5).
The feminist movement in the United Kingdom and the United States of America can be divided into three waves. The First Wave began in the mid-19th century and lasted till the beginning of the 20th century. In US, this wave ended in 1920 when the
Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was passed. This Amendment guaranteed all American women the right to vote: “The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation” (Todd). In Britain, women over twenty-one were granted the right to vote in
1928. The First Wave was mostly lead by middle class white women and is characterized by struggle to gain basic political rights.
The Second Wave of feminism appeared between late 1960s and 1990s (between the wars feminism was subsiding). In this period, the attention shifted from suffrage to other issues of inequality. Sarah New in Feminism and Popular Culture points out that lots of women during the Second Wave started to refuse their role of mothers and housewives and “worked towards a utopian society which valued them alongside the males of the species” (New). Black women were also taking part in the movement at this time as ending the racial discrimination became one of the central issues. Martha
Rampton, a professor of history at Pacific University in Oregon, says about this period:
“This wave unfolded in the context of the anti-war and civil rights movements and the growing self-consciousness of a variety of minority groups around the world. The New
13 Left was on the rise, and the voice of the second wave was increasingly radical. In this phase, sexuality and reproductive rights were dominant issues” (Rampton).
In the Third Wave that began in the 1990s feminists emphasize the „identity‟ of every individual and exalt the differences in class, race, ethnicity, etc. As opposed to the
Second Wave, women in 1990s built their uniqueness on their femininity. Sarah New points out that in 1990s “feminism took a different approach and witnessed the rise of
„Girl Power‟, pioneered by the Spice Girls” (New).
In the 1990s, the term „postfeminism‟ appeared, as opposed to the Third Wave.
Meanwhile Third Wave feminists tried to end all kind of oppression women were experiencing, postfeminism “obscures or makes invisible the many ways in which women are often fearful, subjected to rape and other kinds of violence, and politically and economically underprivileged” (Piepmeier). Postfeminism suggests that the feminist goals were achieved and there is no more need to devote our attention to that movement anymore.
Feminism and its ideas also penetrated into literature. What are the main features of feminist literature? Firstly, it is important to be aware of the fact that feminist literature does not mean literature written solely by women. Men writers can also produce a piece of work that has certain feminist features such as the case of the Norwegian playwright
Henrik Ibsen and his play A Doll’s House (1879). The play tells a story of Nora Torvald and her struggle for self-discovery. Conversely, not all writing by women can or should be labelled feminist.
One of the most important issues of feminist writing is the notion of the difference between sex and gender. As I have already mentioned above, feminists consider sex as a biological category whereas gender is culturally based and is conditioned by the society.
The main goal of the feminist writers is thus to describe the struggle of women, who act
14 as protagonists, for their rights and equality. These women do not accept their subordinate position within the society and they try to break free from their predestined fate. Barbara F. McManus in Classics and Feminism: Gendering the Classics says about this gender problematic: “Feminists believe that existing inequalities between dominant and marginalized groups can and should be removed. […] The goal is to revise our way of considering history, society, literature, etc. so that neither male nor female is taken as normative, but both are seen as equally conditioned by the gender constructions of their culture” (McManus).
Feminist criticism that appeared in the late 1960s began to revise the critical history of women‟s literature of the past and thus helped to re-discover certain neglected female writers as well as their literary works. The way of looking at women and their activities started to change and women were slowly gaining more and more interest and attention.
As Cheri Register puts it: “Feminist criticism has also given us new insights into the lives and works of women who have made it in the literary establishment” (Clauss 80).
The beginning of feminist literature can be traced in the 15th century with an Italian medieval poet Christine de Pisan. Even though we cannot talk about real feminism yet, her work contains certain feminist features such as women‟s self-discovery and struggle against old patriarchal stereotypes. Aphra Behn, an English Restoration writer of the
17th century, contributed to women‟s literature with her numerous plays and novels.
Among her female characters are also black women. Virginia Woolf emphasizes the importance of Behn for women‟s literature saying that: “All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds” (Wikipedia). A century later in 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman where she emphasizes the equality of men and women and sees the problem of women‟s subordination as a result of lack of
15 education. The last important writer I would like to mention in this paragraph is Jane
Austen, one of the most famous British writers. Her novels such as Sense and
Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813) with strong female characters as protagonists cannot be omitted from the list of contributions to women‟s or rather feminist literature. Naturally, there are more women writers in this „pre-feminist‟ period but there is not enough space to name all of them.
Now I would like to move to the mid-19th century when the „real‟ feminist movement began. Elaine Showalter divides the feminist writing into three categories: feminine, feminist and female (Lee).
The feminine stage dates from the mid-19th century till 1880 - the year of George
Eliot‟s death. This phase is characterized by the first attempts of female writers to penetrate into the men-dominated society. These women writers were torn between their desire to struggle for women‟s rights in their works and their deep-rooted sense of subordination and obedience. The use of male pseudonyms was typical for this period.
Women with male pseudonyms felt more self-confident and open to deal with the delicate women‟s issues and they knew their work would be treated more seriously. In her lecture on women and literature at the 1979 Women‟s Conference, Margaret
Drabble points out: “Some women did feel that they would be treated with more respect if they published under male pseudonyms” (Clauss 17). Among writers who used male pseudonyms are for example Mary Anne Evans alias George Eliot and the Brontë sisters who published under the pseudonyms Currer Bell (Charlotte), Ellis Bell (Emily) and
Acton Bell (Anne).
The feminist stage lasted forty years - from 1880 till 1920 – and is typical for its radicalism. However, the writers of this period focused more on the message than on the aesthetic quality of their works. They were more radical in attacking the social injustice
16 and inequality of women and they called for necessary changes. Among writers of this period are for example Mary Braddon, Florence Maryatt, Sarah Grand and Elizabeth
Robins (Lee).
The female phase began in 1920 and lasts till the present-day. It is characterized by the turn towards the inner-self and focusing more on private experience. Since the
1960s when the new wave of writing started, new topics and new ways of expression appeared in literature by women. Women writers of this period began to use a different kind of language, talk openly about sex, their inner feelings and frustrations and they describe their objections towards men without any hesitation or resistance. Writers such as Virginia Woolf and later Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, Margaret Drabble and A. S.
Byatt are among the most important writers of this era.
17 1.2.1. Feminism in the Novels: Are Byatt and Drabble
Feminist Writers?
Even though Showalter places Drabble and Byatt among the writers of the third stage of feminist writing, it would be quite inaccurate and misleading to claim them feminist. Both even deny their affiliation with the feminist writing and the feminist movement. Pauline Holdsworth points out in her biography of Byatt: “Byatt adamantly denies membership to the feminist literary movement. Her disdain for groups and for toeing the party line has given Byatt a rocky relationship with the feminist movement”
(Holdsworth). Drabble is less strict about this problematic. On the one hand, she refuses being a feminist writer as well; in the interview she gave in July 2011 to Andrew
Johnson from The Independent, she says: “That's how life was. […] It's realism, not feminism” (Johnson). On the other hand, however, her attitude changes. In the same interview she speaks about her recent collection of short stories: “I was surprised by how angry some of the middle stories were. They were quite feminist and I was a bit surprised because I hadn't thought they were” (Johnson).
Leaving aside the authors feelings about their „membership‟ in the feminist writing circle, I would like to have a look at the four novels this thesis is going to deal with to see if there are some feminist features or not.
As I said earlier, female characters are always protagonists in feminist literature.
Byatt as well as Drabble meet this requirement. The major female characters in Byatt‟s novels are Frederica and Stephanie Potter and in Drabble‟s novels Liz Headland, Esther
Breuer and Alix Bowen. All these women are independent, educated and self-confident and they try to get the best from life even though sometimes they have to overcome certain obstacles. The clash between old stereotypes and a new perception of woman can be seen in Byatt‟s works. Frederica Potter represents the new self-confident woman
18 who enters the previously male-dominated university world. She travels, enjoys her life and men. On the other hand, her sister Stephanie stands for an old stereotype of woman who became professional housewife and mother. Even though Stephanie is an educated woman with a Cambridge degree whose prospective career seems to be brilliant, she chooses the family life. She gets married, has two children and sacrifices all her talent to her family and household. Later on, Stephanie becomes frustrated about her situation; however, nothing can be changed anymore. The novels are set in the 1950s, in the time still not favourable for women. However, both Potter girls manage to get a university education. Thus, Byatt meets another feminist demand here as the possibility of equal access to education for women is among the central issues of the feminist movement.
While Byatt describes her female characters from youth, Drabble‟s women are already middle-aged. What I consider to be a feminist feature in her novels is her treating of women in general. All women are university educated, financially self- sufficient and they have interesting professional careers. Liz Headland, after the discovery of her husband‟s infidelity, starts a new life alone. Esther Breuer is an independent woman leading an interesting life full of travelling, affairs with men and excitement. Alix is a strong woman who managed to take care of her son when her first husband died. Later on, she re-marries. In my opinion, however, Alix is the least
„feminist‟ character. She is quite happy in her marriage and she does not have any exaggerated career ambitions.
Another important female character that appears in the book is Liz‟s sister Shirley.
Shirley represents a woman tied with old patriarchal stereotypes as she is a true housewife and mother, in comparison to Liz. She sacrifices everything to her family.
She is not that strong as Liz who is able to get rid of her responsibility and thus leaves
Shirley alone to take care of their old mother. However, in my opinion, Shirley is not
19 quite happy with her life and feels tied with conventions. When her husband commits suicide, however terrible it might seem, Shirley feels in some way relieved, runs away to France and enjoys a few days in the company of a complete stranger who becomes her lover. Naturally, this escape cannot last long and Shirley returns; however, it is the first time she feels free and independent.
To sum up, even though Byatt as well as Drabble do not consider themselves feminist authors, there are some features that make their works at least partially feminist. First, it is the necessary focus on female protagonists and all the female problematic that goes with that. As Drabble says in her lecture at the 1979 Women‟s
Conference: “I was writing about women with children, choices between careers and marriage, choices between marriage and children, choices between lovers and husbands, very female stuff” (Clauss 23). Second, all the protagonists are intelligent and self- sufficient women who break the old patriarchal stereotypes. These women are not subordinate to men anymore; they have their own identity. They have their own opinions; they decide for themselves and are responsible for their lives. Those who are married and have children demonstrate that it is possible to harmonize the life of wife and mother with a successful career. Thus, in my opinion, even though these novels are not manifestations of radical feminism in its purest form, they do possess certain feminist features.
20 2. AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS
2.1. Antonia Susan Byatt – Life and Work
A. S. Byatt was born on 24 August 1936 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, as Antonia Susan
Drabble. She is the oldest child of two Cambridge University graduates - an advocate and novelist John Frederick Drabble and a teacher at Quaker Mount School Kathleen
Marie Bloor. She has two younger sisters, Margaret and Helen, and one brother –
Richard. Margaret became a famous writer as well; Helen is an art historian and Richard a barrister like their father.
Byatt received her education at Sheffield High School and Quaker Mount School where her mother taught. Later on, she continued her studies at Newham College,
Cambridge. She remembers her time there: “We had fought, much harder than the men, who outnumbered us eleven to one, to study at Cambridge, and we were fatally torn…Men could have both, work and love, but it seemed that women couldn‟t”
(Holdsworth). After graduating from Cambridge, she did one post graduate year at Bryn
Mawr College in the United States and afterwards she began her Ph.D. program in
Oxford.
In Oxford, she met her first husband, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt, whom she married in 1959. They settled in Durham and had two children, a daughter and a son.
Unfortunately, her son Charles was killed by a car on his way from school at the age of
11. The marriage was divorced in 1969 and in the same year she re-married to a financial specialist, Peter John Duffy. They have two daughters.
Between the years 1962-71 Byatt worked as an extramural lecturer at the University of London. From 1972 she continued her career for eleven years as an academic and senior lecturer at University College London. There is a symbolic relationship between the length of her job at the university and the death of her son. She says: “I taught for
21 eleven years […] I went on teaching for as long as my son had lived, and the moment
I‟d taught for that length of time I stopped” (Hensher).
Byatt started her literary career in 1964 when her first novel The Shadow of the Sun was published. In the novel, she deals with the topic of the family and the relationship between a daughter and her dominant father. Her second novel, The Game, dealing with the topic of the relationship between two sisters, was published three years later in
1967. The family issues are also the main topic of her tetralogy The Virgin in the
Garden (1978), Still Life (1985), Babel Tower (1996) and A Whistling Woman (2002).
Still Life won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen of Fiction Prize in 1986. Her most famous novel Possession, published in 1990, brought Byatt acknowledgement and fame. The novel won The Booker Prize and two other awards. In 2002 the story was turned into film directed by Neil LaBute. Two years after Possession Byatt published two novellas in a volume titled Angels and Insects. The first novella was also successfully filmed in
1996 by Philip Haas. Her most recent novel, The Children’s Book (2009), follows the lives of several families and draws from the life of a children‟s writer Edith Nesbit.
Byatt is also well-known for her collections of short stories Sugar and Other Stories
(1987), The Matisse Stories (1993), The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (1994, fairy tales), Elementals: Stories of fire and ice (1998) and Little Black Book of Stories (2003).
Apart from novels and short stories, Byatt is a distinguished critic. She wrote critical studies on Iris Murdoch in 1976 as well as collections of essays and she worked as an editor, too. She also contributed to several periodicals and newspapers such as The
Times and The Guardian.
A. S. Byatt was appointed the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 1990 and
DBE (Dame Commander of the British Empire) in 1999 as well as other international honours.
22 2.2. The Virgin in the Garden / Still Life – Plot Summary
The Virgin in the Garden is narrated in the third person omniscient. It begins with a prologue from The National Portrait Gallery in 1968 and then goes back to the year
1952 to narrate the story.
The novel is set in Yorkshire and it is a story of the Potter family – Bill, his wife
Winifred and their children Frederica, Stephanie and Marcus. Bill is a teacher and a
Head of Department at Blesford Ride School; he is a dominant and demanding husband and father. He wants his children to receive proper education and have prosperous future. His wife is already used to his temperamental behaviour; she seems rather submissive, just trying to keep peace in her family and home.
Their three children are all very intelligent. The eldest, Stephanie, successfully graduated from Cambridge and has an illustrious future ahead. However, Stephanie chooses to return home and become a teacher at a grammar school. Moreover, she falls in love with a vicar Daniel Orton and they soon get married. All this is very disappointing for her father, who imagined „something better‟ for his brilliant daughter.
The younger daughter, Frederica, is a seventeen-year-old girl full of life and expectations. She is in love with Alexander Wedderburn, her father‟s colleague and a playwright who arrives at Blesford at the beginning of the book. Alexander has written a play on the occasion of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II about Queen Elizabeth I and the rehearsals and staging of the play are the key event of the whole story. Frederica longs to act in the play and dazzle Alexander. She succeeds in the first one; however,
Alexander is in love with a married woman, Jenny, at the moment. He sees Frederica only as a child. Frederica, nevertheless, desires to grow up and be attractive for him.
During the story, she has a few encounters with men but she is still a virgin. Towards the end of the novel, she finally manages to make Alexander fall for her. However, she
23 is so nervous of disappointing him with her virginity and no experience that she prefers to get rid of her virginity with another man and thus be „ready‟ for Alexander. She finally becomes a woman; however, due to a couple of misunderstandings, Alexander leaves the town and they lose the opportunity of being together.
Finally, there is the youngest child, Marcus. Marcus is a sixteen-year old boy who attends the school where his father teaches. He is a mathematical genius but he is lonely and introvert. He probably suffers from Asperger‟s syndrome; however, Byatt does not mention this in the book. Marcus is just considered weird. He makes an awkward friendship with one of the teachers, mentally disordered Lucas Simmonds, with whom they carry out lots of physical experiments. Marcus is under Lucas‟s influence and he obeys him in everything. However, their friendship ends when Marcus is involved in a certain kind of sexual act with Lucas. After that Marcus‟s health condition deteriorates and psychiatrists reveal that his problems originate in the fear of his father. Marcus then moves in with his sister Stephanie and her husband Daniel to improve without the contact with Bill.
The title of the story is an allusion to the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I as well as to
Frederica Potter playing the role of Elizabeth being a virgin herself. It also alludes to the coronation of Elizabeth II as opening the new Elizabethan age.
Still Life is a continuation of the Potters‟ story in the mid-1950s. This time the novel begins with a prologue from the Royal Academy of Arts in 1980 and after that the story goes back to the 1950s.
Stephanie becomes a dedicated housewife and mother. At the beginning of the novel she is pregnant with a son; later she has a daughter, too. She loves her children and husband; nevertheless, sometimes she feels devoured by the routine of the domestic life.
24 She longs for intellectual work and maybe she is even envious of her sister going to university having all her life ahead. Towards the end of the story, Stephanie accidentally dies when she is killed by the unearthed fridge trying to save a bird. Daniel is desperate, he takes the children to Bill and Winifred and leaves. Bringing up their grandchildren gives Bill and Winifred‟s lives a new sense.
In contrast to The Virgin in the Garden, in Still Life Byatt does not focus that much on the descriptions of Marcus‟s sophisticated and complicated ideas. Marcus lives with
Stephanie at the beginning and is slowly improving. He takes part in the gatherings of young people from the parish and finds new friends. However, he witnesses Stephanie‟s death and feels guilty for not being able to help her. After her death he moves in back with his parents. The relationship with his father is healing step by step.
Frederica leaves for France as an au-pair before entering Cambridge where she accidentally meets Alexander and they become long-time friends. Alexander is writing a new play; this time about Vincent van Gogh named after his painting Yellow Chair.
Frederica is an open minded girl and she wants to live to the full. At the university she establishes several relationships with men; her crushes and interests being very changeable, though. Among the men of her interest are for instance a Cambridge don
Raphael Faber and the wealthy Nigel Reiver who courts her in a way she is not used to and to whom she gets married at the end of the novel.
25 2.3. Margaret Drabble – Life and Work
Margaret Drabble was born on 5 June 1939 in Sheffield, Yorkshire. She shares the family background with her older sister A. S. Byatt.
After graduating from Quaker Mount School, the same school both her sisters attended as well, she was granted a scholarship to Newham College in Cambridge.
There she studied English and received a double honour. Drabble recalls her time in
Cambridge: “I remember my first evening at Cambridge, people were talking about things that I didn't know about, and I was quite well educated and not totally socially inept, but still I felt there was a whole world here” (Allardice). During her years in
Cambridge, Drabble was fond of theatre and acted in several plays. She wanted to become and actress and in 1960 she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in
Stratford-Upon-Avon.
In Cambridge, Drabble met an actor Clive Swift whom she married in 1960. They have three children, two sons and a daughter. Joe has become a popular garden designer and a TV personality, Adam is a philosopher and Rebecca is a poet. However, the marriage was dissolved in 1975 and in 1982 she married the writer Sir Michael
Holroyd. Even though for years they preferred to live separately, now they share a household in London. They also own a house in Somerset.
Drabble has written seventeen novels so far. She began her literary career in 1963 when her first novel A Summer Bird Cage dealing with the theme of relationship between sisters was published. In 1965 her second novel, The Garrick Year, appeared followed by The Millstone (1966), Jerusalem the Golden (1967), The Waterfall (1969) and The Needle’s Eye (1972). The Millstone was awarded the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize in 1969 and served as a base for a film Thank You All Very Much shot in the same year in the direction of Waris Hussein. Jerusalem the Golden won the James Tait Black
26 Memorial Prize in 1967. The portrayal of friendship and the depiction of society is the theme of her trilogy The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989) and The
Gates of Ivory (1992). Her most recent novel, The Sea Lady, was published in 2006.
Drabble also published a collection of short stories in 2011 - A Day in the Life of a
Smiling Woman: Complete Short Stories.
Apart from novels and short stories, Drabble is the author of two biographies -
Arnold Bennett: A Biography (1974) and Angus Wilson: A Biography (1995). In 2009 she published a memoir The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws.
Here she describes writing as “a chronic, incurable illness. I caught it by default when I was twenty-one, and I often wish I hadn't. […] I didn't want to be a writer at all”
(Allardice).
She has also written several non-fictional works and works as an editor (e.g. The
Oxford Companion to English Literature, 1985). Drabble is also considered a distinguished critic; she published critical studies of Thomas Hardy and William
Wordsworth.
Margaret Drabble was appointed the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in
1980 and DBE (Dame Commander of the British Empire) in 2008. She was also awarded an honorary Doctorate in Letters by the Cambridge University in 2006.
Margaret Drabble and A. S. Byatt have rather a complicated relationship. Since
Drabble became more successful in writing at the beginning, Byatt did not feel very comfortable when she herself started to write. She claims: “I always felt as though somebody were sort of breathing on my heels and whatever I did was not quite good enough” (Holdsworth).
27 During their literary careers, each has written a novel regarding the problematic relationship between sisters – Drabble in A Summer Bird Cage in 1963 and Byatt four years later in The Game (Byatt recently apologised for her book).
Byatt feels that: “The reception of my early books was completely meshed up with the fact that my sister Margaret Drabble was a writer. [...] I just had this simple terror of being referred to as someone‟s sister” (Hensher). On the other hand, Drabble says: “I was the little sister who thought she [Byatt] was clever and wonderful, and she thought I was in the way all the time. I think it is so normal for an elder sister to resent the younger one. It's just unfortunate that we were interested in the same things”
(Allardice).
Even though their relationship has improved in the past few years as they had several enjoyable gatherings, they still see each other rarely and both say they do not read the works of the other (Walker).
28 2.4. The Radiant Way / A Natural Curiosity – Plot
Summary
The Radiant Way is narrated in the third person omniscient. It opens on New Year‟s
Eve in 1979 at a party organized by Liz and Charles Headland. All the guests or more precisely all the people in Britain are anxious about the new decade. What will the
1980s bring?
The principal characters are three women in their forties, all ambitious and self- sufficient – Liz Headland, Alix Bowen and Esther Breuer. They met during their studies in Cambridge and became long-time friends. In the novel, we follow their lives in the time period of five years.
Liz is a successful psychotherapist. Twenty one years ago she married Charles
Headland, a widower with three sons. Besides, they have two daughters together. Liz and Charles live an ostentatious life full of parties and official gatherings. They own a big house in Harley Street, one of the most prominent streets in London. Liz represents the modern type of woman who manages to harmonize her family with a prosperous career. She is proud of herself and of what she has achieved. However, all this is going to change at the party when Liz discovers her husband‟s affair with Lady Henrietta. Liz is rather shocked as she considered her marriage if not perfect, at least stable. The new decade thus begins for her with a divorce and new life on her own. Since Liz is a strong woman, after some time she is able to pull herself together and cope with the new situation. Nevertheless, there is one thing Liz cannot deal with – her mother. She left all the responsibility of taking care of her mother on her younger sister Shirley. Liz and
Shirley had quite a difficult childhood without a father and Liz tries to escape her past.
She sees her mother rarely and considers her some kind of burden and connection to her painful childhood in Northam city.
29 Alix Bowen is a happily married woman and a teacher in women‟s prison. After her first husband‟s death, she stayed alone with her son. She had to struggle for existence.
Later on, however, she meets Brian Bowen to whom she gets married and has one more child. Alix is more „ordinary‟ than Liz; her life is centred more on her family and less on parties and social events. She is a „romantic‟ politician and she believes in the possibility of changing things. Alix is fully devoted to her work in prison where she meets Jilly Fox with whom she maintains a closer relationship than with the other prisoners. However, after her release from prison, Jilly is murdered by the Horror of
Harrow Road who is later revealed as Paul Whitmore, Esther‟s neighbour.
Esther Breuer is a single art historian and a lecturer. She enjoys her single life, travelling often to Italy and doing research about an Italian Renaissance artist. She is having a long-time affair with a married Italian anthropologist Claudio Volpe. She becomes friends with his sister Elena and after Claudio‟s death she is preparing to move to Italy to live with her. Esther is the most extravagant and open-minded from all the women.
Besides these three major characters, there is also Shirley Harper, Liz‟s younger sister. She lives with her husband Cliff and her children in Northam, and leads an ordinary family life compared to Liz. She takes care of their mother Rita Ablewhite who dies at the end of the story.
The novel ends in June 1985 when all three friends meet at Esther‟s Somerset retreat. They are celebrating her fiftieth birthday; it is also a farewell party as Esther is going to live in Bologna.
In the title of the novel, Drabble refers to the children‟s primer as well as to the radiant way that Britain was following in the previous decades. However, in the 1980s, with all the negative aspects of modern life, this radiant way is lost.
30 A Natural Curiosity is a sequel to The Radiant Way. Drabble continues her story about Liz, Alix and Esther as well as the story of Britain in the 1980s. The novel covers the period of five months in 1987. The setting is now more or less shifted to Northam city in the industrial north.
Liz is settled in her new house without her husband Charles and she finally begins to feel easy and conciliated with the situation. The problem of her „dark‟ past is solved, too; the secret of her mother is revealed and Liz discovers that she and Shirley have a half-sister Marcia. Liz‟s ex-husband Charles divorces Lady Henrietta and goes to Baldai to save his friend from the hands of terrorists.
Shirley Harper experiences a huge change in her life. When she finds out her husband Cliff committed suicide, she behaves rather coldly and leaves for France. On the ferry she meets a stranger and they start an affair. Shirley feels like the chains that tied her during her married life broke free and she feels happy and independent for a while. After some time, however, she comes back to face the unpleasant situation and she stays with her newly discovered sister Marcia.
Alix Bowen becomes interested in the case of the murderer Paul Whitmore and she regularly comes to visit him. She is obsessed with him and tries to find out why such a nice and intelligent boy committed something so terrible; was it inside him since he was born or somebody else is responsible for his behaviour? Alix even manages to find
Paul‟s parents. She also works for an old writer Howard Beaver who asked her to edit his past.
Esther continues living in Italy with Elena; however, if at the beginning Esther wanted to escape from England and settle in her beloved Italy, now she longs to come back. At the end of the book, she decides to leave Elena and return to London. She also turns down her friend Robert Oxenholme‟s proposal and remains single.
31 3. DEVELOPMENT OF FEMALE CHARACTERS
3.1. A. S. Byatt – The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life
Frederica and Stephanie Potter are the major female characters in Byatt‟s novels I am going to analyze in this chapter.
Frederica Potter
When Virgin in the Garden begins in 1952, we meet Frederica Potter as a seventeen-year-old girl full of life and expectations. She is a brilliant student who inherited her devotion to language from her father, Bill Potter: “She had never, she realised, looked at a picture or a carving or even landscape without some immediate verbal accompaniment or translation. Language was ingrained in her. Bill had done that” (VG 134).
Frederica is not a prototype of a young girl of the 1950s - the period which emphasized the importance of women as primarily mothers and housewives. As Orna
Raz puts it: “In the aftermath of the war as fresh emphasis was placed on the nuclear family as a foundation of the new British welfare state, there was a concerted effort to re-establish domesticity as women‟s primary occupation” (Raz). Naturally, women still had the opportunity to work and build their career; however, “the typical pattern for a woman [in the 1950s] was to marry in her early twenties and finish childbearing before the age of 30” (Raz). Frederica Potter is different, though - marriage and family life are not important for her; she longs for more. She desires to escape from the limiting environment of a small town in the North and make her life different from the generations of women before her. She is extremely ambitious and competes to become always first: “She had to be first. […] She knew the teachers did not like her, but justice required that she comes first on any academic list. […] She believed she should also come first on all dramatic lists…” (VG 90). However, what can be seen as
32 pretentiousness and arrogance is in my opinion only the fear of rejection and failure.
Frederica has not many friends and she knows people do not like her due to her temperament and open nature: “She wasn‟t liked at school, but believed she didn‟t mind that” (VG 419). But, as every person needs to be accepted and loved, Frederica is not an exception. She hides her insecurity and desires under the mask of self-confidence and a certain kind of impertinence. Thanks to her behaviour (even though it can be only disguise), she is not a typical „likable‟ character. There are situations in the novel when the reader does not agree with her behaviour or at least does not understand it.
Sometimes she seems too selfish, thinking only about herself. On the other hand,
Frederica must be liked or at least admired for her free spirit and courage to fight the old stereotypes.
As far as the theme of marriage and domestic life is concerned, Frederica assumes a definite attitude. In Virgin in the Garden, she openly expresses her negative feelings about this issue when her sister Stephanie gets married: “„I don‟t want to be loved because a man loves his own body, that‟s ridiculous. And all this about Christ and the
Spouse. Can you see any point in that? […] And all this about submission like the body to the head. It‟s horrible. It‟s degrading‟” (VG 358). She is determined to escape the old conventions and necessity to end up like a „servant‟ to her husband; she wants to pursue her professional career and be free and independent. Her will to overcome all the obstacles and fight against all the contempt is admirable. On the other hand, though, in
Still Life the reader discovers that Frederica is rather ambiguous about the marriage issue. When she leaves Blesford and enters the university world, the reader learns that however rebellious Frederica is, she is also a young dreaming girl: “[Frederica] believed unquestioningly, with part of herself, for instance, that a woman was unfulfilled without marriage, that marriage was the end of every good story” (SL 127). Firstly, she is under
33 pressure as all the girls around her desire to marry and they do so. Even though they are
Cambridge students, the old stereotypes are still present and Frederica realizes this fact.
Secondly: “she couldn‟t decide what to do with herself until that problem was solved”
(SL 127). Here we see her irresolution – she wishes to be independent and not being bound by the boring and stereotypical household life like her sister Stephanie.
Moreover, the example of her sister makes her even more determined not to end up like that. On the other hand, though, she does not know exactly what to do with herself.
Somewhere inside she knows sooner or later she will end up as a married woman as well and maybe she is even afraid that she would stay alone, that nobody would want her. Perhaps, she hopes her marriage will be different from those she sees around herself; her mother and her sister both submissive and sacrificing everything for the family. Does Frederica think her marriage will be more open, full of interesting experience without the „boring household‟ part? This is hard to say; nevertheless,
Frederica develops throughout the story from a resolute young girl to a more self- composed young lady who at the end of Still Life gets married to Nigel Reiver and her problem is temporarily „solved‟.
Another important issue that unfolds during the story is virginity and Frederica‟s desire to get rid of it. When the story opens, she is a seventeen-year-old girl and in love with Alexander Wedderburn, a playwright and her father‟s colleague from the English
Department. Their relationship evolves slowly from Alexander‟s resentment towards
Frederica into a long-term friendship. At the beginning, Alexander only considers
Frederica an unsightly nuisance and he is rather alarmed by her affection. He is momentarily in love with a married woman, Jenny, and Frederica scares him; however, later he falls for her without knowing properly how it happened: “He had found her attachment to him humiliating and embarrassing, had been afraid of its stifling domestic
34 implications, had seen her as some childish nuisance, dragging Bill‟s suburban proprieties behind her. He had no exact idea when this had changed” (VG 454).
Frederica loves Alexander (or at least thinks she loves him) but that does not prevent her from having contacts with other men. She desperately seeks somebody who will remove the burden of virginity from her. She is even willing to offer her innocence to the old Matthew Crowe, the lord of the manor where Alexander‟s play Astraea is being rehearsed. Luckily for her, Frederica manages to escape before the final act. Even though she later regrets her running away saying that “she should have stayed with
Crowe; if she had let him go on, she would have taken some definite step, made a purposeful move in whatever game she was playing” (VG 437), in my opinion she did the right thing. No matter how much she wants to become a woman, losing her virginity with and ageing man who just cares about his own pleasure, could be an unfortunate start of her adult life. Later on, Frederica does a hardly understandable thing when she goes to bed with her friend Wilkie instead of with Alexander. She finally makes the decisive appointment with Alexander, everything seems in order; nevertheless, at the last moment she leaves with Wilkie. Alexander is disappointed and he and Frederica will never get a new chance of being together. The point is; why did Frederica do it?
Since the beginning she was obsessed with Alexander and she desired to be with him.
Throughout the whole first novel, she directed all her actions towards getting
Alexander. And when she finally succeeds, she makes a strange decision and loses her opportunity of fulfilling her dream. Thus, instead of losing her virginity with somebody she loves, she spends the important night with her friend without love. Frederica herself explains that “it had been important to her to have an impersonal initiation, in her own control, not overwhelming” (SL 63). Did she, then, just want to be „ready‟ for
Alexander? Was she afraid that she would disappoint him with her virginity? If so, then
35 it proves Frederica‟s immaturity. Instead of being proud of her innocence, she considers it as something annoying or even shameful. However, it seems like Frederica does not care much about the situation with Alexander. Of course she regrets her missed opportunity; but thanks to her experience with Wilkie, she discovers an interesting truth:
She had learned something. She had learned that you could do – that –
in a reasonably companionable and courteous way with no invasion of
your privacy, no shift in your solitude. […] It removed the awful
either/or from the condition of women as she had seen it. Either love,
passion, sex and those things, or the life of the mind, ambition,
solitude, the others. There was a third way: you could be alone and not
alone in a bed, if you made no fuss (VG 556/7).
Thus, Frederica not only gets rid of her burden but also understands that she can be an independent and successful woman on one hand and on the other enjoy the company of men without any commitment. When entering the university, she starts being promiscuous, being in „love‟ with plenty of men. Even though she is not a prototype of beauty with the “dangling, uncombed red hair, blue-shadowed chalky face, creased brow, cross stare” (VG 440), she possesses something inside her that attracts men. Her promiscuity can be considered something inappropriate and she can be denounced for it by the reader. Yet, all her experiences help to shape her personality and contribute to her maturation.
Frederica can be considered an alter ego of the author herself as they both share certain features. Byatt as well as her heroine celebrate their birthday on 24 August; just
Frederica is one year „older‟ (Skudlarek). They share the love for literature and writing
– Byatt being one of the most significant writers of modern English literature and
Frederica trying to satisfy her greed for words also by writing while being at the
36 university: “She decided to become a writer. It was almost inevitable, given the excessive respect paid in the Potter house to the written word, and given Frederica‟s own mastery of, and intense pleasure in, the school essay, that she should decide to become a writer” (SL 58). Both also studied at Cambridge in the time when it was still not common for women to receive a university education and thus they had to fight for their place in the male dominated university environment.
To summarize, Frederica Potter is a young rebellious girl who tries to fight the old patriarchal stereotypes. As Pauline Thomas claims: “Women's magazines [in the 1950s] encouraged women to stay at home after the Second World War so that men were in full employment after being demobbed from the forces. Her role [woman‟s] was to be the perfect Stepford wife” (Thomas). Frederica, however, does not want to „bury‟ herself in a small Yorkshire town taking care of a husband and a couple of children. She is intelligent and ambitious; sometimes she even seems selfish and egoistic. As Miloslava
Vaňharová puts it in her thesis The Family Saga of A. S. Byatt´s Tetralogy: “Showing openly her numerous passions and quite exceptional, uncompromising intelligence, she
[Frederica] is often seen by others as an irritating, superficial and ambitious high-flier who cares only about herself” (Vaňharová 58). Thanks to her determination, Frederica manages to escape from the environment that is not favourable to her and she enters a whole new world at Cambridge. During her years there she slowly grows mature and changes her then radical opinions. Her character is shaped by numerous disappointments, rejection and failure. As she is a quite strong person, she is able to recover from all her misfortunes. However, in certain aspects she is still naïve; as the story unfolds, she learns the real life. Thus, from a revolting but still innocent girl with rather skewed ideas about the world, Frederica develops into a strong woman who is able to fight for her independence and cope with numerous tough moments in her life.
37 Stephanie Potter
Stephanie Potter is the eldest child of Bill and Winifred Potter. She is “a mild, soft, blonde girl with large breasts, elegant legs, and a rather too tightly rolled pageboy hairstyle” (VG 34/5). In comparison with Frederica, she is more level-headed and calm; not being so rebellious and challenging. Stephanie is more concerned about others which makes her a more likeable character than Frederica. On the other hand, the two sisters share the love for language, they are both highly intelligent and they are both in love with Alexander Wedderburn.
At the beginning of the novel, Stephanie is a young girl with a Cambridge degree who returns to Blesford (to the big disappointment of her father) to teach at a local grammar school. As I have already said, in the 1950s there were not many women with a university education. Thus Stephanie, being among those few, has a brilliant career before her. However, she chooses to come back to her hometown, to live again with her family and to do quite an ordinary job. Why did she do that? Was she homesick? Or did she just lack the courage to stay on her own and build her career? These questions are hard to answer; nevertheless, in my opinion, Stephanie (in contrast with Frederica) just lacks ambition. She does not dream about world recognition; she just wants to lead a peaceful life with her family and her books. Her return can also represent a certain kind of revenge on her demanding father: “Stephanie tried not to listen. It did no good, no good at all, listening to Bill. Though as his voice rasped eloquently on she thought her fantasy of a silent entente with Alexander was to do with Bill, that she had clanged the gates of the Cambridge gardens behind her so the noise would resonate in Bill‟s ears”
(VG 89). Stephanie offers her own version of why she returned home: “She had come back, she admitted, partly because of the young men, because she was always so very glad to get out of their beds. She couldn‟t have kept that up. Nor could she have kept up
38 refusing what they seemed to want or need, on the other hand. She felt used, and that if she was, it was her own fault” (VG 205).
When Stephanie falls in love with the local curate Daniel Orton, her fate is sealed. It is actually the beginning of her end. Daniel loves Stephanie passionately and he longs to marry her. Stephanie, on the other hand, is not so determined; she is not sure what the right way for her is. She loves Daniel, there cannot be doubt about it; however, she feels that with marriage her life will enter a new dimension and she is at a loss if this dimension is what she wants: “She could not imagine living with Daniel. Or, it was true, without him” (VG 238). Moreover, Stephanie has to defend her love against her father who is against the marriage not only because of the institution of marriage itself but also because he cannot stand Daniel who is a religious person as opposed to Bill. In the end,
Stephanie decides to marry Daniel but she remains confused and worried: “What she thought she thought, weeping a little, consciously and decorously, was that she should not marry, she had lost, or buried, a world in agreeing to marry, she should go back to
Cambridge and write a thesis on Wordsworth‟s fear of drowning books” (VG 332). The marriage changes her. She can no longer be a girl who spent as much time on reading as she wanted; now she has to take care of her husband and her new household. Stephanie becomes an ordinary housewife who fulfils her daily duties and who lives a monotonous life. The question arises here – is she happy? In my opinion, the answer is no.
Throughout the whole story, the reader has an impression of something lost, buried, and ruined. Maybe it is not the marriage itself what makes her uncomfortable; maybe it is
Daniel. No matter how much he loves her, he cannot satisfy Stephanie in the field of books and literature. He is an earthy man meanwhile Stephanie lives in the world of fantasy and words.
39 When Frederica receives the admission letter from the university, Stephanie feels nostalgic as she fully realizes that now, being married and pregnant, her life has permanently changed and that there are no opportunities for her anymore: “In 1948 she had opened almost identical telegrams. What had she felt? A great lightening, even if only temporary, of the burden of her father‟s inexorable expectations. She had not realised how heavy the burden had been till it was lifted” (SL 20). Now it is Frederica who has everything before her; the world opens for her and she can take advantage of whatever life offers.
The only thing that cheers Stephanie up is her books. She reads in the queue waiting for a gynaecologist examination and she needs her books even while delivering her first child. Furthermore, she names her son William after her favourite author, William
Wordsworth: “„I – thought of it – for Wordsworth. All those hours – when they wouldn‟t let me have my book – I walked up and down – it made them very cross – and in my mind I thought “William” because of Wordsworth‟” (SL 97). Motherhood brings joy to Stephanie; she loves her children and finds contentment in taking care of them.
Nevertheless, her struggle for identity in everyday life continues. Stephanie misses the environment of literate people; her need of sophisticated dialogue is immense: “„I‟ve been thinking. I suffer from having to use a limited vocabulary. All the time.‟ […] „And your poor old Mum,‟ she said steadily, „and most of the people in this parish, wouldn‟t understand most of the words I really care about if I were suddenly to say them, right out, out of the blue. So the words become ghosts. They haunt me‟” (SL 306).
Byatt solves Stephanie‟s inner struggle by letting her die. Stephanie is struck by an unearthed refrigerator while trying to save a bird. It is ironic that she dies in the moment of showing her good heart and compassion. The point is: why did Stephanie have to die? Does Byatt want to punish her for the way of life she had chosen? Perhaps her
40 death is symbolical; it symbolizes her intellectual death. Does Byatt want to show us that Stephanie lost her fight for identity and was already „dead‟ before? And that the real death just ended her sorrow? In any case, Stephanie‟s death has a great impact on her family; Frederica is deeply struck by this shocking event and she carries the memories of her sister throughout the other two volumes of the tetralogy.
To sum up, Stephanie Potter is a well-educated young girl with a promising academic career. However, against all the expectations, she decides to return back home and she starts teaching at a local grammar school. Later on, she gets married to a local clergyman Daniel Orton and has two children. However, the role of a wife and housekeeper does not satisfy her. She finds the life of a married woman unchallenging and stereotypical. As a highly intelligent woman, she feels the loss of her identity and of the opportunities that once had lain before her. Throughout the two novels, the reader witnesses Stephanie‟s struggle to find her place in life. She is torn between her love for
Daniel and her children and her craving for a world of education and literature. She finds temporary relief or even happiness in solitude, taking care of the church; however, the moments of pure happiness are very rare in her life. Stephanie‟s sudden death leaves her family in despair and her legacy continues in the two subsequent novels. It cannot be said that Stephanie ruined or lost her life; she loved and was loved which is very important. Nevertheless, in her short life she slowly developed from a happy and cheerful girl into a gloomy and unfulfilled woman: “Stephanie she [Winifred] thought did not look well. The gloss had gone from the blond hair, the face was sharper” (SL
44). Perhaps, her choice to marry should have come later, after satisfying her academic needs. Anyway, it was her choice and it was she who had to struggle hard with the consequences of that decision.
41 In her novels, Byatt creates a connection between the realm of words and the world of painting. All her major characters are fascinated by language and words – besides Frederica and Stephanie, there are also Marcus, Bill and Alexander whose lives are based on words. In Still Life, particularly, Byatt deals with the ways of expression in language as well as in painting. Via the correspondence of Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, and via Alexander‟s new play The Yellow Chair which is actually an allusion to van Gogh‟s famous still life, Byatt invites us into “the debate about the power and limitations of words and the possibilities of expression at a painter‟s disposal”, as Milada Franková puts it in her Postmodern Bravura of A. S. Byatt
(Franková 109). And she continues, claiming that according to Byatt “we all can use words, while a painting carries the imprint of an individual vision of things, a more individual seeing of the world” (Franková 110). It is true that there are more limitations in language than in art. It can happen that we are not able to find appropriate words to name certain objects or situations whereas a painter is able to express them in a more comprehensive way thanks to his imagination and a wide range of colours. This fusion of words and artistic expression is omnipresent in Byatt‟s novels.
42 3.2. Margaret Drabble – The Radiant Way and A Natural
Curiosity
The major female characters I am going to analyze in this section are Liz Headland,
Alix Bowen and Esther Breuer. Liz‟s sister Shirley Harper will be discussed as well.
Elizabeth Headland
At the beginning of The Radiant Way, we meet Elizabeth Headland, née Ablewhite, as a well situated middle-aged woman who is quite satisfied with her family life as well as with her professional career. She lives with her second husband, Charles Headland, and their five children in a sumptuous house in Harley Street – one of the most prominent streets in London. Her marriage is rather ordinary – after twenty one years of living together one cannot expect love or passion; however, Liz and Charles manage to keep their marriage in a pleasant and stable way. At least Liz thinks so: “Twenty-one years, unique in the circle of their acquaintance. Battle and bloodshed and betrayal lay behind them, and now they met peacefully in this large house, and slept peacefully in their separate rooms, and met at weekends over the marmalade. […] A modern marriage. Charles and Liz Headland” (RW 9). Liz is rather trustfull and naïve concerning her marriage – she hopes all the bad things that happened between them are gone and now they are moving to another quiet and peaceful stage of their bond. She works as a psychotherapist and she finds her job fulfilling. Liz is self-confident, ambitious and self-supporting. She has a Cambridge degree, two best friends and it seems like everything is perfect in her life. Even her growing age, a thing that scares many women, does not haunt her and she accepts her new wrinkles with grace and dignity: “Her glasses amused her. So did the amusing little sag of her incipient double chin, the veining on her cheeks […], the slight plump soft dimpling of her upper arm, the raised veins in the backs of her hands, the broadening of her hips, the decreasing
43 flexibility of her joints. These signs of age, of the ageing process, she greeted and greets with curiosity, with a resolute welcome” (RW 14/5).
The novel opens with a New Year‟s Eve party of 1979 organized by Liz and
Charles. Steven Connor in his English Novel in History points out that it has just been
“a few months [since] the Conservative government [was] elected to power in 1979”
(Connor 64). The turn of the decade is expected with hope and desire for better future by the guests at the party. However, these expectations will remain unfulfilled as
Connor continues:
[The novel] measures and is in a sense structured around the tension
between the postwar ideals of a national common culture, as they were
embodied in the Welfare State and in economic, educational, arts and
broadcasting policies more broadly, and the marked return to laissez-
faire1 economics and the corresponding abandonment of such
assimilatory cultural ideals from 1979 onwards (Connor 64/5).
And it is at this time when Liz discovers her husband‟s infidelity and thus her new life begins. Liz, at the beginning so self-assured, is dismayed by the notion of Charles‟s affair. No matter how stereotypical and boring their marriage life could have been, she would not expect anything like this. She now understands that the big party they are organizing is not a celebration of their long-standing marriage but it is a farewell to her.
Moreover, Charles‟s betrayal is twice as big when we take into account that Liz married him as a widower with three sons and she took care of them as their loving step-mother and devoted all her life to them. Now it looks like Charles used her „services‟ when he needed her and once the children are grown up, he leaves her behind. Or maybe he just simply suffers from the midlife crisis. Thus, completely unexpectedly, Liz is thrown in
1 An environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies. The phrase laissez-faire is French and literally means "let do" (Wikipedia).
44 a new life alone. Will she make it on her own? What will happen to her social status without Charles? So far, she has built her life on the image of „perfect family‟, success and wealth. Her life is considered by her friends and acquaintances an example of accomplished dream. Naturally, as a divorced woman, she will partially lose this status.
Probably, she will not be invited to the snobbish parties anymore as usually only couples are suitable for the invitation. She will also partially lose her financial abundance as since now, she will be living on her own. Consequently, she will not be able to financially sustain their big house in Harley Street and she will have to leave this prominent address. Thus, from the point of view of her neighbours and acquaintances, she will descend the social ladder. Liz knows all this and she is full of questions. There is a long way before her to be able to find the answers: “It is ridiculous, Liz knows it is ridiculous, but she feels that Charles‟s abandoning of her for a more ancient lineage threatens her solidity, her survival. He has withdrawn his approval, and she has become nobody” (RW 184). However, this experience – at the beginning so painful – helps Liz to understand who she really is and who her true friends are. She realizes that she has to stand for herself from now on and that she cannot rely on her husband anymore. She is also worried what will happen to the relationship with her step-sons; will they leave her, too? Will she be abandoned by everyone so suddenly? Luckily, these fears show as completely pointless; her step-sons love her as their mother and they express their support. Also the meetings with Alix and Esther bring Liz comfort. Thus, she slowly recovers from the shock Charles „prepared‟ for her and as the story unfolds, her sorrow slowly vanishes, too. Liz also realizes that her previous life with Charles was in many ways superficial. In my opinion, the divorce, even though painful and devastating at the beginning, helped Liz to find her inner self within a period of few years.
45 The roots of Liz‟s ambitious and purposeful character can be seen in her childhood and her relationship with her mother, Rita Ablewhite. Liz and her sister Shirley grew up without a father and Liz was always dreaming about her father coming for her as a hero and saving her from the dull life she was leading in Northam. Both sisters have a complicated relationship accusing their mother of everything bad that was happening to them while not knowing the truth about her past and about their father at the same time.
Liz‟s only wish was to escape from the suffocating environment of their house in
Abercorn Avenue and to fill her life with success, money and people. She was absolutely determined to reach her aim and thus she focused on her studies, seeing the university as a mean towards her new and better life. The problematic mother-daughter relationship is partially based on Drabble‟s own experience. Neither did she have a trouble-free relationship with her mother, Kathleen Marie Drabble. Brian W. Shaffer says in his Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945-2000: “In her „Afterword‟ to
The Peppered Moth (2001), her most complex dissection of matriarchy, Drabble speaks directly of that difficulty [her relationship with her mother]: “I think about my mother a great deal, uncomfortably. Night and day on me she cries” (Shaffer 424). Nevertheless, the attitude Liz adopts towards her mother, cannot be approved. No matter how bad mother Rita Ablewhite was, she was still Liz‟s mother. What would happen to her if there was no Shirley? Would Liz put her in some nursing home? Would she ever come to visit? Towards the end of the story, the truth about Rita is revealed and the reader learns that she had a hard life herself. Moreover, it was she who set Liz on the way towards Cambridge. Nevertheless, Liz does not want to see her old mother, she considers her a burden and she seems rather cruel in her statements: “And how was her mother? God knows, said Liz, as you both know quite well, I wish she‟d die” (RW
364). How can a daughter wish her mother to be dead? Is Liz really so cold-hearted? In
46 my opinion, she is quite unfair; however, nobody can say how much her not ideal childhood marked her. I suppose, she just wants to forget her past completely and her mother reminds her of what she wants to displace: “Liz, by some immense, visionary effort had invented her own mercy, under cover of obedience, had drawn up a secret map of escape, and had departed. […] How could these things be? How could it be that
Liz, so young, had known her way out of the maze?” (RW 60).
As a young girl Liz decides she must run away from home and she works hard to reach her target. While her sister Shirley is enjoying her youth going out with her friends, Liz is sitting at home surrounded with books determined to succeed in her future. She denounces the way her mother lives and she dreams of the opposite – wealth, people, parties, children, etc. Her stubbornness and determination pan out and
Liz gets all she wished for. After her first short unsuccessful marriage she meets
Charles, has five children, fulfilling job and enjoys all that she dreamt of as a girl.
Nevertheless, after the divorce she is back at the starting line and she has to fight for existence again. And she succeeds again; thanks to her strong character and determination she is able to overcome the weak moments and gain back her self- assurance: “She would remember no more. She would no longer gaze at the past, she would no more question her own wicked heart. On she would go, relentlessly, into the dark-red sun, down the radiant way, towards the only possible ending” (RW 389).
However, if Liz feared to be like her mother, these fears were justified. As the time goes by, she not only starts to resemble her mother physically as her sister Shirley noticed but also her daughter Stella experiences the same desire to escape from home as
Liz did when she was young. At the end of the second volume, Stella travels to New
Zealand and she “is happy. She has got away. She has gone to the other side of the world. She could go no further. She is free” (NC 300). The question arises here, why
47 Stella wished to be free? She definitely had better childhood than Liz full of people and financial sufficiency. She grew up surrounded by people who loved her – her parents and her siblings. She had a father. Then why she experiences happiness when she is far from her family at the opposite end of the world? Perhaps, what Liz considered best for herself, was not best for her daughter. Maybe Stella did not share the love for the life
Liz was leading. Maybe she had enough of the way of life her parents were leading and she wanted to be on her own and independent somewhere far where nobody knows she is the daughter of Liz and Charles Headland. Perhaps, she just simply wished to travel and know the world on her own as it was quite common and fashionable for young people in the 1980s as opposed to the time of Liz‟s youth. Anyway, it is ironic that Liz as a young girl experiences the same desire as her daughter some time later.
Another thing Liz shares with Margaret Drabble besides their complicated relationship towards their mothers is the love for theatre and the wish to become an actress. As I have mentioned in the chapter about Drabble‟s life, she was fond of theatre during her years in Cambridge and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960. Liz
Headland‟s student‟s years were similar: “Liz also dabbled with acting, and played several roles rather well. […] Her social world, in Cambridge, was largely theatrical”
(RW 91).
To summarize, Elizabeth Headland is a middle-aged woman who is successful in her family life as well as in her professional career. She is confident, self-assured and also proud of what she has achieved. However, her life changes when her marriage is divorced and she has to search for her identity under the new circumstances. At the beginning, the self-pity overwhelms her and she feels lost without her husband. Thanks to her inner strength, nevertheless, she manages to start her new life with dignity and later she even finds satisfaction in her new situation. Throughout the story, the big
48 trouble that haunts Liz is her past and her relationship with her mother. This is the issue that Liz is not able to cope with and her behaviour towards her mother is rather insensitive. Liz experiences an inner struggle as on one hand she is a successful psychoanalyst whose task is to help other people to overcome their problems and cope with their past. On the other hand, however, she cannot help herself. She is aware of this fact but she is not able to deal with her mother and with her painful memories. Franková uses a term „an injured healer‟ for Liz. As we meet Liz already as a woman in her mid- forties, her development within the story is not that significant and apparent as in the case of Byatt‟s characters. However, it can be said that after the discovery of her husband‟s infidelity, Liz develops into an even more self-confident and independent person than she used to be. She learns to live on her own in her new house without relying on any other person, finding comfort while playing with her cat. She is able to forgive Charles, which is admirable as not every marriage is dissolved peacefully. They manage to deal with each other without hatred and reproaching. Except for her knotty relationship with her mother, Liz as a person can be admired for her ability to overcome the unfavourable conditions she had at the beginning of her life. She can serve as an example of how determination and diligence can change one‟s life for the better.
Alix Bowen
Alix Bowen, a middle-aged socialist, lives quite a happy life with her husband Brian and her two sons. She comes from a left-wing orientated family and this political belief is deeply rooted in her. Alix is quite different from her friend Liz. Unlike Liz, Alix is more compassionate and more interested in other people‟s lives; she “feels sorry for almost everybody. It is one of her weaknesses” (RW 3). On the other hand, the wealth and property is not of such an importance for her as for Liz.
49 Alix married for the first time at the age of twenty-one; however, her marriage was not satisfying and moreover ended up with Sebastian‟s accidental death. Alix, staying alone with her son, had to fight for her existence: “She had to find her own way, in the damp, in the shadows, by the light of forty-watt bulbs, in the solitary evenings” (RW
99). Alix shows her strong character and determination as she manages to maintain herself and her son in those hard times. Even though she realizes she did not love
Sebastian, still his death must have meant a shock and a huge change of the standard of living for her and it is admirable that she did not give up for a moment. Alix wants to prove that a single woman can achieve happiness and success in life as well as a man.
She can be considered a mild feminist. She works hard to support her son and she never fails: “Alix, old-fashioned, had been hopelessly, conventionally punctual and conscientious throughout her not very distinguished career, never staying off sick, never taking a day off when Nicholas [son] had been ill, attempting to prove single-handed that women were as reliable, more reliable, than men” (RW 153). Life must have been hard in that time for a widowed mother, especially from the financial point of view.
Even though Alix is not a single mother as her son Nicholas was born in a marriage and thus she does not carry the „stigma‟ of an unmarried mother, she meets the similar difficulties. As David Kynaston points out in his article A portrait of love and marriage in the very different world of Fifties Britain: “Single mothers found it hard to find work and landlords didn't want them as tenants. It was not until the late Seventies that council waiting lists were opened up to them” (Kynaston). Alix must have received a widow pension as “in 1946 the National Insurance Act was passed which […] provided sickness and unemployment benefit, retirement pension and widow and maternity benefit” (BBC). Nevertheless, she must still work hard to be able to support two people.
Yet, Alix manages to survive this unfavourable time.
50 When she meets Brian Bowen, her life turns to better and she continues living a satisfactory life by his side. She loves her sons and she admires Brian for his diligence.
They match together as they both come from the same working-class background: “Alix
Bowen is a sentimentalist about class, it has been alleged. This is why she found herself teaching working-class children in Newham, and prisoners in Garfield; why she talks to drinking men on park benches; why she married Brian Bowen” (RW 168).
Alix‟s career and well-being is not that distinguished as Liz‟s; however, she loves her job and she finds it satisfying. She teaches literature in a women‟s prison in Garfield and she establishes rather a close relationship with one of the prisoners, Jilly Fox. Alix plays a role of a „saviour‟ in the novel – she tries to help Jilly to return to the normal life after her release from prison, later on in the second volume she serves as a psychologist to a mass murderer Paul Whitmore who actually killed Jilly, and she also helps the old writer Beaver to sort out his correspondence and memoirs. She also tries to help Liz at the time of her divorce. Alix is a type of „mother‟ and thanks to this the reader feels quite close to her. When she regularly visits Paul in prison trying to establish his damaged relationships with his parents, one feels admiration towards Alix. She is actually doing all this out of her own conviction, she does not get paid for it and she even risks her life while meeting Paul‟s mother. Why Alix devotes so much time to a mass-murderer who killed women in an especially brutal way and who probably does not deserve any kind of attention? Is she so kind and compassionate? I suppose she really is. As Robert Brown puts it: “A good-hearted, well-minded person, Alix Bowen feels compelled to discover how a man of Whitmore‟s intelligence could possibly commit the horrible crimes that he did. Drabble also forces the reader to sympathize with Alix Bowen, and to understand her obsession” (Brown). In my opinion, Brown is right in his statement about Drabble‟s „manipulation‟ of the readers to like Alix. For me
51 as a reader, Alix is the most ordinary of the three friends at first sight; however, she is very kind-hearted and not selfish like Liz and Esther who primarily think of themselves.
She does not see Paul as a monster; she sees him as a young intelligent man who made a fatal mistake and she tries to find an explanation for his behaviour. Perhaps, Alix is doing all this partially for herself; maybe she wants to give a sense to her life by being useful and helpful to somebody who is all alone in the world.
Concerning her friend Liz, Alix likes her very much, naturally; however, she does not approve her behaviour towards her mother. Alix denounces Liz‟s lack of interest in her mother‟s well-being: “Liz had treated Shirley, her mother, and Abercorn Avenue badly. Alix agreed with Shirley‟s unspoken proposal that this was so” (RW 377). This again shows Alix‟s concerned and compassionate character.
When looking at Alix‟s marriage, it seems quite ordinary but happy and satisfactory for both sides. Nevertheless, it happens even to Alix that she falls in love with another man - Brian‟s friend, Otto Werner: “She could not tell Esther and Liz that she was in love with one of her husband‟s closest friends, Otto Werner. As she could not tell Otto or Brian this either, she had to keep it to herself” (RW 364). To her credit it must be said that even though in love, Alix is able to resist the temptation and stay faithful to
Brian. This proves her strong and rather rational character. Moreover, she follows Brian to Northam where he finds a new job and to her surprise, she settles in quite easily.
To sum up - if in The Radiant Way the focus is mostly put on Liz, in A Natural
Curiosity the attention shifts to Alix. She becomes the main protagonist as Liz and
Esther withdraw partially from the scene. Alix is a woman in her mid-forties who lives quite an ordinary life with her second husband and two sons. She seems the least ambitious in comparison with Liz and Esther; her life seems boring and not exciting except for her job in prison. However, the more the reader learns about her, the more
52 she becomes an interesting and remarkable character. As Judith Grossman puts it in her review called What Do You Think Will Happen to Shirley?: “Alix Bowen, and to an extent Liz, are stroked into life as characters by Ms. Drabble's sympathetic, even indulgent identification with them” (Grossman). Alix develops from a rather sidelined character into a major protagonist. Her behaviour towards Paul raises lots of questions; however, as not everybody would be able to do what Alix is doing out of her good will and sympathy, she should be admired and appreciated for it. She reveals the psyche of the murderer to the reader and thus helps him to overcome his prejudices. Her love towards Otto can be seen as the only „slip‟ of otherwise decent and just Alix; nevertheless, Alix is able to keep her bond to Brian as she knows Brian is the man of her life and any possible affair with Otto would destroy her long-time happy marriage. I suppose, Alix is the closest to the readers because she seems to live the same ordinary life as ordinary people do. Naturally, visiting a mass murderer in a prison is not quite common; except for this, however, she seems like a common neighbour of yours. She lacks Esther‟s extravagance and eccentricity and Liz‟s selfishness and snobbery.
Therefore, the female reader can easily identify with her.
Esther Breuer
Esther Breuer is the third major protagonist of Drabble‟s story even though in the second volume her role diminishes and as I mentioned previously, the attention shifts mainly to Alix and also to Shirley, Liz‟s sister. Esther is rather extravagant and eccentric in her behaviour as well as in her lifestyle. We meet Esther for the first time at
Liz‟s New Year‟s Eve party: “There she sat, in her familiar party outfit, an eccentric, much-worn, embroidered Chinese garment, her neat, solidly cut, smartly sloping black
53 hair as tidy as a doll‟s, looking perhaps faintly Chinese rather than Jewish, diminutive as she was, and with those high cheek-bones” (RW 23).
Esther is a daughter of Jewish immigrants who managed to leave Germany at the dawn of World War II and settle in Britain. Currently she works as an art historian focusing on the Renaissance period and she is in love with Italy. She travelled there as a young girl for the first time and since that time she is deeply connected to this south
European country full of art and historic monuments. Throughout the whole story
Esther is somehow connected to Italy and later on she even moves there for a while.
Even though Esther‟s job is not profitable and she lives in a small flat in Ladbroke
Grove, she loves what she is doing. This is the way of life Esther has voluntarily chosen; she is satisfied with her career and she does not long for materialistic things like
Liz: “Esther reflects on the reasons why she is so little attracted to the notion of owning property, when she is so interested in the visual aspects of the material world, so attached to the details of her own immediate environment. Maybe it is merely a continental aberration, a Viennese inheritance, an unsettled, refugee spirit, an un-
English spirit” (RW 193). Esther is a highly intelligent and intellectual woman who prefers the beauties of the world, travelling and learning new interesting things to owning a property and thus being controlled by it. Her spirit is free and unstable and her character is more open-minded than those of her two friends. She is adventurous and courageous, not being interested in superficial surface of the things but in their depth.
However, her intimate life is kind of weird. She is still single having no children and since college she maintains relationships with two men – “the married satanic anthropologist and the married hard-drinking architectural journalist, frequent suspicious occupants of her college room” (Sedláková). Why did Esther never marry and does she maintain rather hopeless relationships without a future? Did she never long
54 to settle and found her own family? I suppose her way of life did not make space for a traditional stereotypical model of a family life. Since youth Esther has been quite a freethinker with the need of feeling free. In my opinion, family life was hardly attractive for her; that is why she stayed single enjoying her intellectual life. Moreover, as
Drabble explains, “Esther Breuer was quite well aware of the fact that her emotional relationships throughout her life had been based partly on her desire to avoid normal sexual intercourse” (RW 346). Is she lesbian then; or bisexual?
Her relationship with Claudio Volpe, “the married satanic anthropologist”, brings her closer to Italy again. And after Claudio‟s death, she surprisingly moves to Bologna to live with his sister, Elena. What kind of relationship do these two women have? Are they just living together as friends or as lesbians? Drabble never explicitly describes their cohabitation; however, according to the extract above, we can guess that Esther and Elena are maintaining some kind of intimate relationship. Nevertheless, if before
Esther desired to move to her beloved Italy, at the end of the second volume she starts missing London. Perhaps, she also does not want to continue living with Elena anymore. In addition, she gets proposed from her friend Robert Oxenholme. Esther happens to find herself at the crossroads of her life now not knowing which decision to take: “If she marries Robert, will life proceed smoothly, well attended, into old age and the next century, the next millennium? […] Esther has never been married. She cannot imagine what it would be like. The risk-taking part of her, the Bohemian freelance part of her, is attracted, perversely, to this gamble, to this gamble of security. […] Shall she not take the greatest risk of all?” (NC 185/6). If she accepted Robert‟s proposal, her life would change tremendously. Being single till her forties, she developed quite a solitary and independent way of life. And suddenly a man would enter her old-maidish environment. On the other hand, she would finally settle down and make her own
55 „family‟. Esther is trying to solve her dilemma and finally she decides to maintain her independence. Her decision is to leave Elena and Italy, move back to London and reject
Robert‟s proposal.
Donna Rifkind in her review of The Radiant Way claims an interesting point:
Esther, as a matter offset, is an entirely disappointing character.
Drabble wants us to believe that Esther has pared down her life so that
she gets by with only the most necessary human attachments, that she
wants little from life and offers little of herself to anyone. What we
feel as a result, however, is that Drabble does not seem to care much
about Esther and has therefore emptied her of most sympathetic
qualities (Rifkind).
I suppose, Rifkind‟s point is not entirely objective. She is right in claiming that
Esther seems a little undemanding and not ambitious concerning the materialistic things and that Drabble definitely devotes her the least space in comparison with Liz and Alix, and even Shirley. However, I would disagree with the statement that Esther is a disappointing character. To me, on the other hand, she seems close and likeable thanks to her attitude towards life – with her love for art and history and not materialistic view of the world. She is by all means a freaky individual, caring more about her potted palm than about the fact that she shared house with a mass-murderer; nevertheless, it does not make her a disappointing person. It is her way of life and we should respect her as one of the protagonists of the story. In addition, if Drabble wanted to make Esther an unlikeable character without the sympathetic qualities, she would not create her as one of the major protagonists of her trilogy.
In brief, Esther is the third major protagonist of Drabble‟s trilogy; however, in the second volume she withdraws from the story almost completely and „her place‟ is taken
56 by Liz‟s sister, Shirley Harper. Esther, as an immigrant to Britain, does not feel so close to the national politics and she does not care much about political issues. She is earning her living “from odd lectures, odd articles, a little teaching” (RW 23) even though with her education she could aim higher. The biggest step for Esther in her life is the decision to move to Bologna; however, after some time she realizes she misses her home –
London. Esther gets a chance to change her life with Robert‟s proposal; nevertheless, she turns down the offer and thus remains single and unsettled at the end of the second volume. Drabble definitely prefers her other two characters than Esther – that can be the reason why Esther‟s line within the story is suppressed in A Natural Curiosity. Despite that, Esther represents the antipole to snobbish Liz who mostly cares about her social status and her well-being and to politically orientated Alix who lives quite an ordinary family life.
Shirley Harper
In this chapter I would also like to briefly comment on the character of Shirley
Harper, Liz‟s younger sister. Even though she plays a secondary role in the first novel, in A Natural Curiosity she is given more space. Shirley is also the character that, in my opinion, undergoes the most striking development throughout the story.
Shirley Harper, née Ablewhite, was always Liz‟s opposite – meanwhile Liz, determined to escape from home as soon as possible, was studying hard to fulfil her desire, Shirley enjoyed her life as an ordinary young girl. She “had been the rebel, the self-willed, the unappeasing. She had lied and deceived, she had painted her lips with toxic red paint from a box of water colours […] She had visited coffee bars with boys.
She had been to the cinema with boys. She had left school against her mother‟s wishes, had married against her mother‟s wishes” (RW 49). Shirley marries Cliff Harper and
57 later becomes a mother of three. Her role is fixed – Shirley turns into a full time housewife. She devotes her life to her family and lives a rather stereotypical domestic life.
We meet Shirley for the first time at New Year‟s Eve 1979; meanwhile her sister
Liz is organizing a grandiose party, Shirley spends this time at home and partially at her mother‟s. It is Shirley, actually, who takes care of Rita Ablewhite. As we have seen before, Liz tries to get rid of the responsibility for her mother and all she does is calling her time to time. On the other hand, Shirley, who still lives in Northam, has to bear all the responsibility and all the difficulties concerning her mother: “Yet while Liz, the good daughter, the dutiful daughter, was taking a deep hot bath on New Year‟s Eve before changing for her party, Shirley the rebel was serving up a hot meal for her mother in the old house in Abercorn Avenue before rushing back […] to see what was happening in her own oven at home” (RW 49). Shirley knows it is her duty to take care of her mother. Despite the imperfect childhood, Shirley feels responsible. She could not imagine leaving her mother behind like Liz did. Whatever happened in the past, Rita is still her mother.
Nevertheless, even though Shirley loves her family, she feels like there is nothing waiting for her anymore; her life seems dull and unfulfilling to her. What is waiting for her – a housewife in her mid-forties? Even her relationship with Cliff is deteriorating, partially thanks to the omnipresent economic crisis and partially thanks to the long-time marriage where all the passion and desire have already vanished. At this point of the story, Shirley feels frustrated, exhausted and desperate having no interests and no sense of life: “She [Shirley] was bored. Underemployed, bored. She herself no longer read books. Books seemed irrelevant to her life. They portrayed other people, other lives, other worlds. They bored her” (RW 149).
58 However, all this is going to change as Shirley is going to undergo a huge life changes. Although it may seem cruel, what helped Shirley to feel „alive‟ again is Cliff‟s suicide. When Shirley finds her husband dead, she does quite an incomprehensible thing
– instead of calling an ambulance or police or doing something about his body, she takes her car and leaves. Was she in such a shock that she acted so oddly or contrary – was she feeling free and independent finally after all those years? Actually, what she feels is anger instead of sorrow: “She was quite angry with Cliff. […] How dare he land her in such a mess? Whatever was she supposed to do now?” (NC 96/7).
No matter how Shirley behaved, the way Drabble portrays her makes the reader feel sympathy and support towards her. On the ferry to France, Shirley meets Robert
Holland, a man with whom she will experience a short affair. Shirley completely leaves behind her past life and everything that happened and behaves like a footloose.
However, somewhere inside she feels this is not going to last forever and once she would have to return home and face the situation there. The affair with Robert is just an intermezzo between her past and future life; however, these few moments make her feel self-confident again.
During her „running away‟, Shirley reflects on her previous life and on her marriage with Cliff. She realizes that in the last years they were living together like two strangers, just sharing the same house and bed. Drabble does not make it clear for the reader how
Shirley feels about all what happened: “Is Shirley shocked by her own behaviour, is she surprised to find herself making love to a stranger in a strange city, less than a fortnight after her husband‟s death? She is not quite sure. On balance, she thinks not” (NC 179).
Whatever, a new Shirley returns home after her escapade in France. It is clear that she is happy again at least for a moment and that all that happened made her stronger.
Shirley finds out that the life has not ended yet and that there are still lots of things
59 waiting for her. She realizes that even though she was isolated from the outside world for years, she is still pretty and able to establish relationships with other people. In my opinion, the journey made her life interesting and exciting again.
At one moment, Drabble makes herself distant from the character of Shirley, like if it is not she the author who created Shirley, and she also directly addresses the reader:
“Shirley‟s behaviour for the past month has been highly unlikely. It astonished me, it astonished her, and maybe it astonished you. What do you think will happen to her? Do you think our end is known in our beginning, that we are predetermined, that we endlessly repeat?” (NC 251/2). Drabble thus involves the reader in the story and gives him a unique chance to intervene in the narration. In my opinion, then, nothing much will happen to Shirley anymore. She will come back to her previous life; perhaps she will find a new husband. Her life would seem dull and boring again but she would be happier I suppose. Two big burdens are lifted from her shoulders – her husband and mother being dead – and her children grown up already, she will have time to draw the attention to herself now. For years she was sacrificing her own dreams and wishes to her family and now she can finally take care of herself. She is free to do whatever she wants and the only thing that can limit her is the old conventions of Northam.
Moreover, her inner change is apparent even in her physical appearance: “Shirley is very thin, but a faint hectic flush lightens her pallor. She looks very attractive. Her eyes are dark, sunken, huge. Liz is fascinated by this new, unknown Shirley” (NC 242).
Shirley, thus, develops from a typical middle-aged housewife who thought her life had ended into a more self-confident and independent woman who managed to find her identity and is at the verge of a new life at the moment.
60 3.3. Comparison of Female Characters in All Novels
While comparing and contrasting all the major characters, I would like to focus not only on their similar or different fate but also on the features in their behaviour and thinking.
The major female characters (with the exception of Shirley) I have analyzed in the previous two chapters share one important thing – their education. All went to the university in the time when the male dominated university environment was not favourable to women. Byatt sets the plot of her novels in the 1950s whereas we meet
Drabble‟s characters at the end of the 1970s. However, as Drabble‟s „women‟ are already in their forties, it is clear that they must have conducted their studies in the
1950s as well. Even though, then, Liz and her friends are already adult matured women in contrast to the young Potter sisters, if we place them in the same time period, they would belong more or less to the same age group. The Potter sisters as well as Liz, Alix and Esther are all highly intelligent and sophisticated women. They graduate from
Cambridge with honours and their prospective successful careers lie ahead of all of them. Moreover, as Connor says about Liz, Alix and Esther: “As their lives develop, and as they move inwards to the geographical and cultural centres of British life, their interrelationship, and the web of further family and professional relationships that ramifies from and between them, is offered as a pattern of British life” (Connor 65).
Liz Ablewhite shares most of her features with Frederica Potter. They both have a problematic childhood and puberty. Frederica always fights with her dominant and demanding father meanwhile Liz has a complicated relationship with her mother whom she blames for everything, especially for the absence of a father figure. Frederica and
Liz want to escape from home and change their lives for the better. As Frederica puts it when she finishes high school: “„I can get away from Home – and Them – and the
61 weight of it all. I‟m free […] I‟m a grown woman. I just want someone to know that this
– all this stuff – has been a burden and nothing but a burden from start to finish, and that
I feel no twinge of regret at coming out of that place, and that I shall never go back into it, ever” (SL 21, 24/5). Their determination to escape from home is very strong and the instrument they use to reach their target is studying; they both study hard and with honours and both know that going to the university will bring them freedom and independence. Cambridge means a big step in their lives as it offers them a whole new world, full of people and enjoyment so different from the life in the small town in the industrial north. Both are also a little bit selfish in their behaviour towards other people, as we have seen in Liz‟s relationship towards her mother and Frederica‟s attitude towards people in general. Nevertheless, we can forgive Frederica considering her youth and inexperience; on the other hand, Liz‟s behaviour towards her old mother is rather controversial. Both women share a strong character and the ability to recover from misfortunes rather easily. As we have seen in the case of Frederica, she does not consider anything a tragedy. Her disappointing affair with Alexander as well as Crowe‟s harsh critique of her physical appearance and her theatrical abilities do not knock her down. Whatever happens makes her stronger and more mature. Liz also has to overcome a few tough moments in her life, especially her painful divorce with Charles.
Even she, however, manages to overcome this period of her life and is able to open herself for a new life and new experiences. Frederica and Liz also share their love for theatre – Frederica showing her affection throughout the whole story playing the role of young Queen Elizabeth; Liz in her university years: “Well, said Frederica, she had always wanted to be an actress. […] It was what she wanted, a career in the theatre”
(VG 520). “Liz also dabbled with acting, and played several roles rather well. […] Her social world, in Cambridge, was largely theatrical” (RW 91). Frederica is the major
62 character of the tetralogy being an alter-ego of A. S. Byatt; similarly, Liz is the one who is the closest to Drabble sharing her complicated relationship with her mother and the love for theatre.
What Frederica shares with Esther is a certain kind of extravagance, both being a little bit unconventional in their behaviour and their opinions. They share a rather open- minded attitude towards sexual relationships and sexuality – Esther keeping relationships with two strange men while being probably a lesbian; Frederica trying to get rid of her virginity at all costs and being rather promiscuous in her university years.
The early marriage is another issue that is common for most of the characters. With the exception of Esther, all the women get married pretty early. In addition, their marriages are not happy and end up sooner or later with disappointment or death.
Frederica is rejecting the institution of marriage for a long time seeing it as limiting and stereotypical. Nevertheless, as all her fellow students are getting married and Frederica does not know „what to do with herself‟, she enters a marriage with Nigel Reiver with whom she has a son. Later on, in the third volume, Babel Tower, we discover that they divorce and Frederica must fight for her existence as a single mother. Alix also remains alone with her son Nicholas after her husband‟s death. In Alix‟s case, the death of her husband solves their relationship problems as they were not happy together. Perhaps, if
Sebastian did not die, their marriage would have ended anyway. Thus, Alix similarly to
Frederica stays alone with her son; nevertheless, she meets her second husband Brian with whom she establishes a happy relationship. Liz shares a similar fate with Alix; even she married very young and her marriage was dissolved. With her second husband
Charles she lives happily for twenty one years being a mother to Charles‟s three sons from his previous marriage and two daughters from this marriage. In contrast with Alix, however, her marriage does not last due to Charles‟s infidelity and Liz must come to
63 terms with this situation and start a new life on her own in her mid-forties. The issue of death connects the marriages of Stephanie and Shirley. Both women get married early, too; Stephanie exchanges her promising career for a marriage and domestic life. Shirley marries Cliff after finishing high school as she does not see her fate in going to university and becomes a full time housewife. Both suffer in their relationships as well.
Stephanie is torn between her love for her husband and children and her desire to get more from life. She feels trapped not being able to read her beloved books and lead academic debates. Shirley, even though not university educated, shares the same feelings. She loves her family; however, she is frustrated and bored with domestic life.
She feels her life has ended and nothing will ever happen to her anymore. In the story of
Stephanie and Shirley we, as readers, feel the sense of something lost, of unfulfilled desires and „imprisonment‟. Stephanie dies at the end of the second volume and her story is thus finished; she is „free‟, finally. Shirley experiences death too as her husband commits suicide and Shirley can finally taste independence. The issue of marriage, or rather unhappy marriage and a sense of patriarchal conventions, are present throughout all the novels. Byatt as well as Drabble deal with this topic similarly – they solve the unhappy relationships of their heroines with either divorce or death. Perhaps, they both gain from their own experience as both of them currently live in their second marriage.
Another similarity can be traced between Alix and Stephanie; they share the same jobs as they are both teachers. Alix teaches English literature at Garfield prison and
Stephanie the same subject at girls‟ grammar school. In my opinion, however, Stephanie does not find her job quite fulfilling. She is trapped between her desire to continue her studies at the university and her love to Daniel. Consequently, as she struggles with her inner self and her ideas about life, it is not possible for her to be wholly satisfied at work, too. On the contrary, Alix loves her job; she considers herself useful while
64 making the world of literature available to imprisoned women. She believes that she can transfer her love for literature to those women who are mostly ill-educated. The devotion to poetry and literature is also shared by Stephanie. She reads all the time and is particularly fond of William Wordsworth. We see her reading in the waiting line at the gynaecologist; she demands her books even while delivering her first child, in the moment that is so painful that it is hard to imagine how one could focus on literature.
However, for Stephanie, Wordsworth brings her peace and composure. She goes even so far as to name her son William after her favourite writer. On the whole, all the characters share the fondness for literature and art in general. As we have seen already,
Frederica likes writing and playing in the theatre as well as Liz; Stephanie and Alix particularly fancy literature and poetry; Esther prefers painting and especially the
Renaissance period. Even Shirley, who can seem not „fit‟ for culture, used to like books; unfortunately, the married life sucked all her devotion out: “She was bored.
Underemployed, bored. She herself no longer read books. Books seemed irrelevant to her life. They portrayed other people, other lives, other worlds. They bored her” (RW
149).
The theme of painting can be found in both authors. In Drabble‟s novels, it is Esther who is an art historian. In Byatt‟s story, the issue is touched upon in Frederica‟s several picture descriptions; more intensely, then, it is demonstrated in the second volume.
Alexander Wedderburn is writing a new play Yellow Chair based on the painting of
Vincent van Gogh. Byatt also provides the reader with a piece of conversation between
Vincent and his brother Theo. As Miloslava Vaňharová claims: “He [van Gogh] is a much considered person throughout the novel for his fate is interlinked with the life of
Frederica, the main character of the story. […] Byatt uses the symbolism of colours in his paintings as a part of her literary concept, her kind of intertextuality” (Vaňharová).
65 And Sue Sorensen adds: “She [Byatt] offers an intriguing alternative to accepted views of van Gogh. Her views on him also help us understand and evaluate her preoccupation in Still Life, an investigation of the fusion of verbal and visual language” (Sorensen).
Both authors also touch upon the issues of Jewish immigration. Byatt presents this theme in the character of Raphael Faber, a Jewish university teacher Frederica is in love with for some time. He is deeply marked by the Second World War as the majority of his family was killed by the Nazi regime. On the other hand, there is Esther Breuer in
Drabble‟s story, also a Jewish immigrant. Yet, Esther is luckier; her family managed to survive and leave Germany in time. There is not much evidence of Esther being marked by the war.
So far I have discussed the similarities between the characters and the novels; now I would like to mention some basic differences. The most striking difference is the different time setting – Byatt‟s Virgin in the Garden beginning in 1952 meanwhile
Drabble‟s narration in 1979. Consequently, the age of the main protagonists is different as well. We are comparing young Potter sisters – Frederica being just seventeen and
Stephanie in her twenties – and middle-aged women in their forties. As I said before if we synchronize the novels, we would realize that the characters are more or less of the same age. Let‟s „move‟ Frederica and Stephanie to the year 1979 and their age would be similar to Liz, Alix and Esther. However, this is just an „if‟ and the actual setting does not allow any changes. At the moment of reading the novels we are dealing with young girls on one side, and mature middle-aged women on the other.
The last thing to mention is that meanwhile Byatt describes the story of two sisters and thus introduces us to just one big family, Drabble tells a story of three friends with different family backgrounds. Such a variety of major characters makes us familiar with more different life stories.
66 3.4. Comparison of Byatt and Drabble's Portrayal of
Female Characters
Byatt as well as Drabble portray their characters on several levels. First, both provide the reader with the possibility of visualizing the heroines thanks to the description of their physical appearance, age, size, height, state of health, sexuality, etc.
Thus, Byatt gives us a hint how to imagine Stephanie Potter, for instance: “She was a mild, soft, blonde girl with large breasts, elegant legs, and a rather too tightly rolled pageboy hairstyle” (VG 34/5). Drabble uses the same procedure in order to present us her major characters. Let‟s look at Esther Breuer: “There she sat, in her familiar party outfit, an eccentric, much-worn, embroidered Chinese garment, her neat, solidly cut, smartly sloping black hair as tidy as a doll‟s, looking perhaps faintly Chinese rather than
Jewish, diminutive as she was, and with those high cheek-bones” (RW 23). Thanks to these descriptions, it is easier for the reader to identify with the characters and it gives him the opportunity to use his imagination. However, every reader would probably visualize Stephanie or Esther differently. It is not possible to imagine the same face as each description can be understood differently by a different reader. Unless Byatt or
Drabble draw their characters, no two people would visualize Stephanie or Esther identically.
Another level of how to portray a character is to provide the reader with the character‟s background, his family and the place he or she comes from. Byatt and
Drabble both give us this information. We learn that Frederica and Stephanie come from Blesford, a small town in the north, and that they live with their parents and a younger brother. We are witnessing the problems their family encounters and the influence of their dominant father on their behaviour and actions. In Drabble‟s novels we, too, get to know something from the heroines‟ past; moreover, in the case of Liz
67 and Shirley, Drabble creates a mysterious plotline that keeps the reader curious and tensed. If the description of physical appearance helps us to visualize the characters, the information about their past and family background reveals more about their behaviour, attitudes towards life and political views.
Another important point is the role of the narrator. The story can be narrated either from a character‟s point of view – in the 1st person – or there can be a third person omniscient narrator as in the case of Byatt and Drabble‟s novels. Thus, the character does not present himself to the reader; he is presented by the narrator – the author. As
Jerry Bauer puts it in the case of Margaret Drabble: “Drabble‟s omniscient narrator gives the reader a sense of place, a sense of location and history, without forcing the characters to bear the burden of carrying all that perception in their minds. It frees the characters to notice only what they perceive within the confines of their personalities, for there is a narrative voice to create the density of the social and physical scene”
(Bauer). This means that the characters are not responsible for the whole story; in their direct speeches they reveal how much they consider proper and the rest of the information is provided indirectly by the narrator. This way of storytelling does not put so much pressure on the character and creates thus a synthesis between the character‟s own expression and the author‟s voice. In the case of Byatt, for example, it is the information provided by the omniscient narrator that gives us the notion about
Stephanie‟s inner thoughts and her struggle with herself. Of course, Stephanie expresses herself too in this sense; however, the puzzle about her life can be completed only with the narrator‟s help. For instance, Stephanie reflects about the British people: “The
English are ugly. Stephanie thought, not for the first time. […] They were the faces of people concerned predominantly either with what people thought about their behaviour, property, social standing, or with their own judgement of other people‟s behaviour,
68 property, social standing” (SL 42). This piece of information is what Stephanie thinks and what is her attitude towards her county-fellows; nevertheless, without the narrator‟s voice we would not obtain this kind of information about her. The author/narrator can also add more information about the character and she can also offer her subjective view of the literary hero. Thus, the way the narrator portrays her characters makes us incline towards some of them and reject the others. This is, however, a bit subjective and what one reader can consider a character‟s flaw, an other can think of as positive or at least neutral quality. So one can feel a little distant from Liz Headland due to her snobbishness; the other, on the other hand, can esteem her for her determination and ability to overcome her unhappy childhood and become successful in her adult life.
Thus, Byatt as well as Drabble, using the third person omniscient narrator in their novels, offer us a „double‟ view of their heroines‟ lives, thoughts and attitudes.
Both authors also use their „advantage‟ as narrators and directly address the readers.
This enables the reader to become more involved in the story and „actively‟ participate on the characters‟ development. In Still Life, Byatt enters the narration with her own voice: “I had the idea that this novel could be written innocently, without recourse to reference to other people‟s thoughts, without, as far as possible, recourse to simile or metaphor. This turned out to be impossible: one cannot think at all without a recognition and realignment of ways of thinking and seeing we have learned over time. We all remake the world as we see it, as we look at it” (SL 108). Byatt, thus, offers us an insight into her original ideas about the novel and proves that she as the „inventor‟ of the story has right to intervene whenever appropriate. As Franková says: “In Byatt‟s view, a writer is not a mindless machine producing an intertext in an intertext, but on the contrary has in her/his text an indispensable role to play. […] Although A. S. Byatt is herself also a literary scholar and literary critic, she clearly disagrees with the modern
69 critical theories that disregard the author” (Franková). To compare, Drabble uses the same method to draw the reader inside the story: “It is evident to Liz Headland herself, as well as to the reader, that she is concealing something from herself. But what is it?
Does she know what it is? Do you know what it is? Do I know what it is? Does anybody know what it is?” (RW 145). Here, Drabble asks a rather rhetorical question; she asks
Liz, the reader as well as herself as an author. She incorporates the reader in her narration and thus makes him an important part of the story. The reader is not excluded; on the other hand, he is a part of the story and is allowed to take an active part in the characters‟ lives.
Margaret Drabble, in her two novels, portrays her main characters as strong self- sufficient women who already achieved a certain position within society and who already accepted certain beliefs and attitudes. Except for Esther, she describes women who are able to harmonize their traditional role of mothers and housewives with their professional life. She creates a new kind of female voice; voice of women who try to break themselves free from the old conventions and patriarchal traditions. As Bauer claims: “Drabble seems to be able to evoke not only the female point of view but also the cadence of the female voice. Her ear for speech rhythms is exceptional, and each central female character has a distinct speech pattern and cadence. […] Perhaps
Drabble‟s artistry in portraying the sound of the female voice is among her most significant accomplishments” (Bauer).
A. S. Byatt‟s characters, Frederica especially, are young and at the beginning of their life journey. They are only shaping their personalities and meet the first life experience. Joan Campbell in her book A. S. Byatt and the Heliotropic Imagination points out: “In The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life, she [Byatt] excels in her portrayal of real people living with pain and joy in a real world” (Campbell). This is
70 true not only about Byatt but also about Drabble. They both portray real people with their everyday problems and delights. These characters experience similar obstacles on their life journey as common people – readers, be it for example an unhappy marriage, motherhood, divorce or death. That is why the reader finds these characters so close to him; the sense of reality is omnipresent. Byatt also shares with Drabble the same attitude towards the traditions and limiting power of old conventions. We see it mostly in the issue of marriage which Frederica refuses so vigorously and which „imprisons‟
Stephanie. Another important issue for both authors is motherhood. It plays an important role for all the characters, except for Esther. All characters-mothers love their children and they are willing to sacrifice their own life for them. Stephanie cannot flee from her marriage because she is responsible for her children; she loves them and she knows they need her and Daniel. Alix, being a widow with a small son, has to struggle for their existence, which is definitely harder than to be on one‟s own.
In short, Margaret Drabble and A. S. Byatt portray their characters in a very similar way. They show them as realistic as possible so the female reader can identify with them easily. Perhaps, such a realistic portrayal is possible thanks to the authors‟ femininity and their own experience. They both depict their heroines to the depth of their inner selves, offering thus a complete study of human, particularly female, individuality.
71 Conclusion
The main aim of this thesis was to analyze the major female characters and their development in the novels The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life by A. S. Byatt and
The Radiant Way and A Natural Curiosity by Margaret Drabble.
I have divided this thesis into three parts. In the first theoretical part, I aimed to offer the reader a brief introduction into my theoretical approach. I was dealing with the general role of a literary character within a story as well as with the issue of feminism. I tried to answer the rather tricky question whether Byatt and Drabble are feminist writers. I found out that even though both authors refuse to be considered feminist writers, their novels possess certain feminist features.
In the second part of this thesis I provided the reader with general information about the authors‟ lives and their works and I also briefly commented on the plots of the four novels mentioned above.
The last part focusing on the analysis of the major female characters is the core of this thesis. In this section, I tried to describe and analyze the particular heroines in detail and I also focused on the comparison of all the characters in the novels as well as on
Byatt and Drabble‟s portrayal of the major protagonists. I drew an interesting conclusion; even though Byatt and Drabble have rather a problematic relationship and they try to avoid reading each other‟s novels, their characters have a lot in common. I would assign this resemblance to the fact that they are sisters who share the same family background and who were brought up in the same environment and the same values.
Thus, both authors created strong self-confident individualities that have to overcome certain obstacles on their life journey. Byatt as well as Drabble try to bring a new insight in a woman‟s role within society. They challenge the traditional role of woman as a mother and housewife and foreground the importance of education. The education
72 plays an important part in the gradual change of women‟s position in the male dominated society as it helps them to realize their own place and value. Once educated, the woman is offered more opportunities in the job market and she slowly gains her personal as well as financial independence. Thus, Byatt and Drabble try to prove that women are as strong as men and are able to harmonize their domestic and professional roles. Naturally, all the women in the novels must fight hard for their existence; however, except for poor Stephanie who meets her death, they all more of less succeed in finding their place in life.
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77 Summary
This thesis deals with the analysis and development of the major female characters in the novels The Virgin in the Garden (1978) and Still Life (1985) by A. S. Byatt and
The Radiant Way (1987) and A Natural Curiosity (1989) by Margaret Drabble.
The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part is conceived as theoretical and it discusses the role of a literary character within a literary work as well as it touches upon the issue of feminism. There is a brief introduction to the history of feminist movement and also a subchapter focusing on the authors – whether they consider themselves feminist writers or if there are at least some feminist features in their novels.
The second part of the thesis deals with the lives of the authors and it also contains the plot summaries of all four novels.
The last part analyzes the major female characters and their development in the course of the novels. This part is divided into four subchapters. The first subchapter discusses Frederica and Stephanie Potter from Byatt‟s novels; the second focuses on
Drabble‟s heroines – Liz Headland, Alix Bowen, Esther Breuer and Shirley Harper. The third subchapter compares all the protagonists and finally, the last section compares
Byatt and Drabble‟s style of portraying the female characters.
78 Resumé
Tato diplomová práce se zabývá analýzou hlavních ženských postav a jejich vývoje v románech Panna v zahradě (1978) a Zátiší (1985) spisovatelky A. S. Byattové a
Zářivá cesta (1987) a Přirozená zvědavost (1989) Margarety Drabbleové.
Práce je rozdělena na tři hlavní části. První část je teoretická a zabývá se úlohou postavy v rámci literárního díla a také otázkou feminismu. Čtenář se zde seznámí jak s historií feministického hnutí, tak s krátkým pojednáním o samotných autorkách - zda se samy považují za feministické spisovatelky a zda jejich díla vykazují alespoň nějaké feministické rysy.
Druhá část práce pojednává o životě a díle autorek a krátce seznamuje čtenáře s obsahem všech čtyř románů.
Poslední a nejobsáhlejší část analyzuje hlavní ženské postavy a jejich vývoj v rámci příběhů. Tato část je rozdělena do čtyř podkapitol. První podkapitola pojednává o postavách sester Frederiky a Stephanie Potterových z románů Byattové. Druhá podkapitola se zaměřuje na analýzu a vývoj postav Liz Headlandové, Alix Bowenové,
Esther Breuerové a Shirley Harperové z románů Margarety Drabbleové. Třetí podkapitola srovnává všechny zmíněné protagonistky a zaměřuje se na jejich podobnosti a odlišnosti. Poslední část pak srovnává styl a způsob, jakým Byattová a
Drabbleová vykreslují své hrdinky.
79 Appendix
A. S. Byatt Photo by Alexander Varty
A. S. Byatt circa 1971 Photo by Fay Godwin
80
Margaret Drabble Photo by Steffan Hill
Margaret Drabble in 1966 Photo by Guardian
81
The Virgin in the Garden (1978) Still Life (1985)
The Radiant Way (1987) A Natural Curiosity (1989)
82