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ABSTRACT
British writer A. S. Byatt employs alchemical imagery substantially in her Tetralogy. She redefines god as an androgynous being in the four occult narratives, and the four gods represent virginity, life, death, and rebirth, the four stages of an alchemical process, which also symbolize the life stages of the main character, Frederica Potter. The alchemical structure serves at least a double purpose for Byatt. First, she successfully brings her heroine's sex versus intellect conflict into a metaphorical scheme already constructed by Jung. Second, she successfully creates a whole repertoire of female visionaries whose prototypes are crosses between fertility goddesses and alchemical divinities, and by so doing, she underlines the importance of intellectual pursuit for her female artists.
KEYWORDS:
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Notes
1 Byatt, “Fiction Informed by Science”, 296.
2 Sikorska, 81–100; Szonyi, 405–23; Meakin, 138–97; Ziolkowski, 188–228; and Lembert.
3 Meakin, 173.
4 Hart, 86.
5 Barry, 345.
6 Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 3.
7 Byatt, “Fiction Informed by Science”, 295.
8 Byatt, On Histories, 113.
9 Byatt, “The Conjugial Angel”, 285.
10 Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 319.
11 Byatt, The Virgin, 163.
12 Byatt, The Virgin, 191.
13 Ibid.
14 Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 484.
15 Byatt, The Virgin, 395.
16 Ibid., 311.
17 Ibid., 397.
18 Byatt, Still Life, 206. Frazer discovers two opposite attitudes towards sex during important farming activities. Some primitive tribes would indulge themselves in sex while other tribes usually abstained from sexual pleasures. However, the diametrically opposite views can be accounted for by the same reason. Frazer speculates in The Golden Bough : “In various parts of Europe customs have prevailed both at spring and harvest which are clearly based on the same crude notion that the relation of the human sexes to each other can be so used as to quicken the growth of plants”(170).
19 Byatt, Still Life, 70.
20 Ibid., 100.
21 Ibid., 101.
22 Byatt, The Virgin, 397.
23 Byatt, Still Life, 101.
24 Byatt, Babel Tower, 257.
25 Ibid., 258–9, 267.
26 Jung, Alchemical Studies, 337–41.
27 Byatt, Babel Tower, 136.
28 Ibid.,262. Snails as alchemical symbols are Byatt's own coinage. She is greatly inspired by the alchemical symbol of concentric spheres and says in her article “Fiction Informed by Science”:
I realized, one idle morning, that a snail in Latin is helix. And a snail's shell is in the form of a spiral. Later I discovered that there were two species of snail, Helix hortensis and Helix nemoralis (the snails of the garden and the grove), that could be fitted into both my paradise garden imagery and my realist scientific tale (295).
29 Byatt, Babel Tower, 266.
30 Byatt, A Whistling Woman, 125–6.
31 Ibid., 311–4.
32 Byatt, “Fiction Informed by Science”, 294.
33 Cox, 139.
34 Jung interprets in his Aion: “In alchemy Mercurius is male-female and frequently appears as a virgin too” (252).
35 In his Psychology and Alchemy, Jung says that the alchemical process is marked by four stages: an initial state of prima materia, a union of opposites in the fashion of a union between the male and the female, death of the product of the union, and the soul released being reunited with the dead body (219–20). On another occasion, he explains in Alchemical Studies: “ … the opus is a life, death, and rebirth mystery … ” (338).
36 Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 218.
37 Ibid., 343.
38 Byatt, The Virgin, 396–7.
39 Ibid., 404.
40 Byatt, Still Life, 375.
41 Sorenson Paragraph 37.
42 Byatt, Still Life, 375.
43 Byatt, Babel Tower, 266.
44 Ibid., 267.
45 Ibid., 268.
46 Byatt, A Whistling Woman, 403.
47 Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 213.
48 Ibid..
49 Byatt, “A. S. Byatt and Stephen Frosh”, 150.
50 Todd, 40.
51 Franken, 93–8; Wallhead, 124.
52 Byatt, “Fiction Informed by Science”, 294.
53 Boccardi, 42.
54 Byatt, A Whistling Woman, 421.
55 Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 390–2.
56 Ibid., 221.
57 Byatt, A Whistling Woman, 420.
58 Ibid., 421.
59 Byatt, A Whistling Woman, 420. In his Alchemical Studies, Jung tells the reader that alchemists believe that the universe is composed of concentric circles (316).
60 Jung, The Archetypes, 275.
61 Ibid., 275–89.
62 Byatt, “Fiction Informed by Science”, 294.
63 Byatt, The Shadow, ix.
64 Ibid..
65 Byatt, Possession, 34.
66 Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 539.
67 Byatt, The Shadow, xv.
68 Byatt, On Histories, 158.
69 Ibid., 120.
70 Byatt, “Art Work”, 89–90. In his Psychology and Alchemy, Jung interprets the mandala symbolism as an expression of what he calls “individuation”, the same as alchemical symbolism (206–13).
71 Byatt, Possession, 33.
72 Ibid., 174.
73 Ibid., 174.
74 Byatt, Possession, 171. In his Psychology and Alchemy, Jung says: “Alchemy applied the Edem-motif to Mercurius, who was likewise represented as virgin above, serpent below. This is the origin of the Melusina in Paracelsus” (292 footnote).
75 Byatt, Possession, 196.
76 Byatt, The Virgin, 451.
77 Byatt, Babel Tower, 263.
78 Sikorska, 82.
79 Byatt, On Histories, 111.
80 Byatt, The Shadow, xvi.
81 Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis, 539.
82 Jung, Aspects of the Masculine, 178.
83 Ibid., 103.