Review: Angels and Insects

Angels and Insects by A.S. Byatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Two novellas set in the Victorian era. Byatt has a writing style which is both enthralling, rich and at the same time obfuscating and difficult. The problem for me lies in the richness of additional literary sources in her texts. Often (as in the case of the second novella) the quotes and sections of poetry actually distract and clutter the pages, the actual story becoming buried under the nods to greats such as Tennyson and the tragic Arthur Hallam. In the second story - The Conjugial Angel - this is almost fitting as the characters themselves are in some cases almost literally buried under the poetic legacy of relatives and past lovers. The descriptions of the visions of the medium Sophie Sheeky were particularly captivating, and Byatt does a great job summoning the drawing room drama and paranoia of the Victorian age (complete with flatulent pug dog and pet crow on a ribbon).

The first story 'Morpho Eugenia' deals with a naturalist William Adamson, who has been exploring the jungles capturing and identifying insect life. He stays in the house of a collector, where he falls in love with the alluring yet unobtainable daughter. This was my favourite of the two stories, the character of Miss Matty Crompton was instantly likeable, a determined, shrewd and highly intelligent woman who has been stuck as a governess for years, she sees in the young man a chance for liberation and pursues it at all costs. There is a wonderful short story written by Miss Matty towards the end of the text, reminiscent of some of Byatt's fairy stories (which I highly recommend) with beautiful descriptions and references to the myth of Circe, also some wonderful analogies of the life of ants and the humans living together in the house. There is a quite shocking conclusion to the story, which explains the brutality and remoteness of some of the characters, and I felt it had a satisfactory conclusion.

Both these stories deal with the Victorian theological crisis, with life after death, and with a terror of the recent theme of evolution - a life without meaning, and the characters subsequently search out, or are seeking what they believe to be the truth regarding existence. Through Darwinism, the study of insects, through writing or through spiritualism and the writings of Swedenborg - they are all seeking meaning. Only some find it. Not easy reading, and at times the text is dense and impenetrable - yet thematically brilliant and worth persevering with.

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