Abstract
In her tetralogy that comprises The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman, A. S. Byatt meditates upon the destiny of irrational desire as it comes into conflict with rational culture. The novels dwell on the failure of scholarship to contain and express the voice of passion, which seeks equal status with the voice of reason. The Biographer’s Tale and The Shadow of the Sun show characters hovering on the edge of transformation as they attempt to evolve beyond Enlightenment consciousness. Byatt finds, in evolutionary psychology and neurobiology, new slants on being, and her novels work towards an articulation of the possibility of syzygy. Syzygy is an existential condition symbolised by the hermaphrodite — one who transcends gender by conjoining reason and passion (traditionally associated with maleness and femaleness, respectively) into fully realised humanness that is different from and greater than the sum of those parts.
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For Further Reading
For a list of A. S. Byatt’s works, see the British Council website: <http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/>.
Chodorow, Nancy, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
Creed, Barbara, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1993).
Dinnerstein, Dorothy, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise (New York: HarperColophon Books, 1977).
Hays-Gilpin, Kelley and David S. Whitley, Reader in Gender Archaeology (London: Routledge, 1998).
Marian, Stanton, ed., Fire in the Stone: the Alchemy of Desire (Wilmette: Chiron Publications, 1997).
Young-Eisendrath, Polly, Gender and Desire: Uncursing Pandora (College Station, Texas: A&M University Press, 1997).
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© 2005 Katherine Tarbox
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Tarbox, K. (2005). Desire for Syzygy in the Novels of A. S. Byatt. In: Acheson, J., Ross, S.C.E. (eds) The Contemporary British Novel Since 1980. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73717-8_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-73717-8_16
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