The Feministing Five: A. S. Byatt

A__S__Byatt_2.jpgA. S. Byatt, or Dame Byatt as she’s officially known, is a Booker Prize-nominated novelist who writes stories about intelligent, complex women – in other words, the kind of women we love here at Feministing. Byatt has written almost a dozen novels and numerous short stories, but her best-known work is Possession: a Love Story. Possession, which she wrote in 1990, is a fascinating story about the interaction of gender, history, literature and love. It was named one of Time‘s Best 100 Novels of All Time, and is required reading in colleges and high schools all over the world.
In a 1995 interview with Salon, Byatt offered an explanation for her tendency to create educated, willful female characters. “I’m a political feminist,” she said. “I think women’s lives need quite a lot of improving, some of which has now happened. I’m interested in feminist themes, women’s freedom.” Despite her political leanings, however, when it comes to teaching literary history, Byatt has very little patience for the practice of reading women novelists simply because they’re women. “If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men… Women should be truthful and then it will be more often done by women, or as often done by women.” Given the quality of Byatt’s work, it would seem that this prediction has, in part, come true.
Dame Byatt is in the States promoting her new novel The Children’s Book, for which she received a Booker Prize nomination. She’ll be reading from it, and speaking about her work, this Thursday the 29th at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Tickets are $10 if you’re under thirty-five, and $19 for everyone else. You can (and should!) book a seat here.
And now, without further ado, The Feministing Five, with A. S. Byatt.


Chloe Angyal: What led you to become a novelist?
A. S. Byatt: I think I knew I wanted to write almost from the moment I learned to read. I write out of a passion for language and a belief that it is possible to describe things and say things. There are two single-minded characters in The Children’s Book with whom I feel sympathy – Dorothy who wants to be a doctor, and Philip who wants to make a good pot. I want to tell good stories and write good sentences.
CA: Who is your favourite fictional heroine?
ASB: My favourite fictional heroine is Anne Elliott in Persuasion by Jane Austen. She is put upon and treated badly by people on the whole much less intelligent than she is – but her patience and self-possession and essential independence are credible and very moving. She is half way between a fairy story (Cinderella) heroine and a new kind of thinking woman.
CA: Who are your heroines in real life?
ASB: My heroine in real life is Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. I am breathtaken by the calm determined way in which she became a doctor when there were no women doctors at all. I think my living heroine is Toni Morrison – though it was perhaps also Iris Murdoch, who imposed impossible standards of truthfulness and enquiry into things.
CA: What recent news story made you want to scream, and why?
ASB: The story I read in The New York Times of the coal fired power station which cleaned its emissions to the air by brushing and washing its products – and then dumped all the poisons in the drinking water supply and the river. I do not think we are clever enough animals to clear up the mess we have created.
CA: What, in your opinion, is the greatest challenge facing feminism today?
ASB: Maybe a dangerous sense that enough has been accomplished. Also a tendency to be courteous and considerate to societies that restrict and damage the lives of women. There are things – like female circumcision – that are simply wrong and should be fought.
CA: You’re going to a desert island, and you’re allowed to bring one food, one drink and one feminist. What do you pick?
ASB: The drink – as long as I had a water supply – would be champagne – Veuve Clicquot for preference. My food would be an endless supply of cooked green vegetables – beans, broccoli, asparagus – with slightly salted butter. One feminist (now deceased) is a not-well-enough-known one called Evelyn Sharp – Faber & Faber have just reissued her autobiography, which is both witty and full of interesting things – she had all her furniture confiscated in the First World War because she would not pay taxes without representation. The living feminist is Toril Moi, who is wise and sensible and continues to revisit problems as they change.

New York, NY

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia. She joined the Feministing team in 2009. Her writing about politics and popular culture has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York magazine, Reuters, The LA Times and many other outlets in the US, Australia, UK, and France. She makes regular appearances on radio and television in the US and Australia. She has an AB in Sociology from Princeton University and a PhD in Arts and Media from the University of New South Wales. Her academic work focuses on Hollywood romantic comedies; her doctoral thesis was about how the genre depicts gender, sex, and power, and grew out of a series she wrote for Feministing, the Feministing Rom Com Review. Chloe is a Senior Facilitator at The OpEd Project and a Senior Advisor to The Harry Potter Alliance. You can read more of her writing at chloesangyal.com

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia.

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