Angels and Insects by A. S. Byatt

First published: 1992; includes Morpho Eugenia and Conjugial Angel

Type of work: Novella

Type of plot: Historical

Time of plots: 1860-1863 and 1875

Locale: Bredley Hall and Margate, England

Principal characters

• William Adamson, an entomologist
• Eugenia Alabaster, an Alabaster daughter
• Edgar Alabaster, Eugenia’s brother
• The Reverend Harald Alabaster, Eugenia’s father
• Lady Gertrude Alabaster, Eugenia’s stepmother
• Rowena Alabaster, Eugenia’s sister
• Matty Crompton, governess to the younger Alabaster children
• Sophy Sheekhy, a medium
• Lilias Papagay, Sophy’s benefactor
• Captain Arturo Papagay, Lilias’s lost husband
• Arthur Henry Hallam, a poet
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a poet
• Captain Richard Jesse, a séance attendee
• Mrs. Emily Tennyson Jesse, Captain Jesse’s wife, who had been engaged to Hallam
• Mr. Hawke, a minister and spiritualist
• Mrs. Hearnshaw, a séance attendee and a grieving mother

The Story:

Morpho Eugenia opens with entomologist William Adamson watching a ball hosted by his benefactors, the Alabasters. Adamson watches the ball as his mind jumps back to the last ten years he spent collecting natural items as well as traveling about South America and the eventual shipwreck that lost most of his collection. He dances with Eugenia Alabaster and is entranced by her delicate beauty, but he also notes her unhappiness. Adamson learns that Eugenia’s fiancé, Captain Hunt, has recently committed suicide.

Eugenia’s father, the Reverend Harald Alabaster, who has in the past purchased Adamson’s collections of exotic butterflies, moths, and other insects, offers to provide Adamson the job of sorting his extensive collection of specimens. Despite wanting to go on another expedition to South America, Adamson accepts the job because he is penniless, and because the reverend promises to fund Adamson’s next trip.

Adamson dislikes sorting through the reverend’s disarrayed collection, but he is happy to be part of the Alabaster household to catch glimpses of Eugenia. He falls in love with her but hesitates to tell her because of their class difference, which makes marriage unlikely. When Eugenia’s younger sister, Rowena, becomes engaged, the Alabaster family worries about Eugenia’s already fragile emotional state, given that she should be married before her younger sister.

Adamson converts the reverend’s conservatory to a butterfly garden by carefully collecting butterfly and moth pupae. When they hatch and surround Eugenia, Adamson proposes. To Adamson’s surprise, the reverend consents and ignores the class difference between Adamson and his daughter, as long as Adamson agrees to engage in intellectual discussion on the topics of creationism and human origins. Adamson finds these debates monotonous because he disagrees with the reverend’s religious beliefs.

Adamson and Eugenia’s marriage begins a repetitive cycle in which Eugenia is seen only briefly by Adamson and disappears into what Adamson calls the “world of women” during her pregnancies and periods of confinement after the birth of each child. To fill the time and abate the loneliness, Adamson begins spending time in the schoolroom with the younger Alabaster children and their caretaker, Matty Crompton.

While working to create an indoor insect community, Matty and Adamson write a book chronicling the lives of the local ant population and soon develop a friendship. Matty also publishes her own collection of short stories.

Adamson is called to the house one afternoon by a servant who claims that Eugenia needs him. When he enters Eugenia’s bedroom, Adamson witnesses her having an incestuous relationship with her brother, Edgar. Eugenia explains that her relationship with Edgar stems back to childhood, and that despite trying to end the relationship when she became engaged to Captain Hunt, the relationship had continued. After learning about the incest, her then-fiancé, Captain Hunt, had committed suicide. Adamson now doubts that he is the father of his children, all of whom favor the Alabaster side of the family in physical appearance.

After confiding to Matty about Eugenia and Edgar’s relationship, Adamson discovers that Matty and the servants already know about it. In hopes of traveling to South America, Matty has already booked passage on a boat for her and Adamson to leave together. After some reluctance to take her, Adamson agrees. He leaves the Alabaster home without taking any compensation from the family. He feels a profound sense of freedom. Before leaving, he tells Eugenia that she must find a way to live with the consequences of having sex with her brother.

Conjugial Angel begins with séances led by the medium Sophy Sheekhy. In attendance are Sophy’s benefactor Lilias Papagay, Captain Richard Jesse and Mrs. Jesse, Mr. Hawke, and Mrs. Hearnshaw, who all hope to communicate with dead loved ones. Grief has shaped and directed the lives of all of the women who attend the séances. Mr. Hawke’s attendance is out of spiritual and intellectual interest based on his devotion to the teachings of the Swedish philosopher, theologian, and scientist Emanuel Swedenborg.

At one séance, Mrs. Hearnshaw receives a spiritual message, and the attendees determine that the message is from her five daughters, all of whom had died shortly after birth. The message reveals that Mrs. Hearnshaw is pregnant with a sixth child, a child that the spirits of her dead children claim will live. The spirits even provide a name for the new baby. Mrs. Hearnshaw has not yet told her husband of her new pregnancy, and the group eagerly attempts communication with the spirit world again.

The second spiritual message is received as segments of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam (1850). The group assumes the messages are directed at Mrs. Jesse, whose dead fiancé, English poet Arthur Henry Hallam, is the subject of Tennyson’s poem. The group interprets the message as an accusation from Hallam that Mrs. Jesse had been unfaithful to him by marrying Captain Jesse after Hallam’s death.

After receiving this message, Mrs. Jesse is overcome with guilt about her marriage to Captain Jesse. Hallam’s family has maintained friendship and financial support of Mrs. Jesse, even after Hallam’s death. Despite having waited nine years to marry Captain Jesse, she has been labeled as insensitive and unappreciative. She struggles with her fear of loneliness. She also has begun to realize that Tennyson’s grief over Hallam’s death had been stronger and longer lived than her own grief.

At the end of the séance, Mr. Hawke escorts Mrs. Papagay and Sophy home. Once there, Mr. Hawke begins to propose to Mrs. Papagay, who has been expecting the proposal. Mrs. Papagay still loves her assumed-to-be-deceased husband, Captain Arturo Papagay, who had been lost at sea. A marriage to Mr. Hawke would remedy her loneliness and her financial problems. Mr. Hawke, however, botches the proposal by falling on Mrs. Papagay, and he leaves awkwardly before she can respond.

Alone in her room at Mrs. Papagay’s home, Sophy enters a trance and is joined by the suffering spirit of poet John Keats. She comforts the anguished spirit and recites poetry. She sees a vision of a hand buttoning a nightshirt, and the story switches to the perspective of Tennyson. Now an old man wrestling with his feelings for Hallam, Tennyson relives his emotions and tries to understand the deep connection he had with Hallam. Tennyson tries to convince himself that he had felt only a keen sense of friendship and had not been romantically attracted to Hallam, despite referring to himself as Hallam’s widow and acknowledging that his attachment and feelings had been returned by him.

The group assembles for the next séance. Sophy receives a message for Mrs. Jesse from a spirit assumed by everyone to be Hallam. The spirit claims that he and Mrs. Jesse will be united in death. Mrs. Jesse furiously rejects this idea, surprising Captain Jesse, who has always felt that Mrs. Jesse does not love him as much as she had loved Hallam. Mrs. Jesse moves past her grief and guilt over her marriage by rejecting the idea that she will be joined to Hallam after death, and decides to end the séance.

On the way back to their home, Mrs. Papagay and Sophy are followed by an unidentified man. They stop and are joined by Captain Papagay, alive and well despite being presumed dead. Sophy pictures each of her séance attendees moving past their grief, noting that sometimes, literally, there is life after death.

Bibliography

Adams, Ann Marie. “’Reader, I Memorialized Him’: A. S. Byatt’s Representation of Alfred, Lord Tennyson in The Conjugial Angel.” LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory 19, no. 1 (2008): 26-46. Explains the role of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as both character and poet in Byatt’s The Conjugial Angel.

Alfer, Alexa, and Michael J. Noble, eds. Essays on the Fiction of A. S. Byatt. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. For the advanced student of Byatt. This volume includes at least one essay on each of her major works. Includes an index and a select bibliography.

Kelly, Kathleen Coyne. A. S. Byatt. New York: Twayne, 1996. Part of a well-established series of introductions to literary figures, this volume includes a chronology, an annotated bibliography, a biographical sketch, and a commentary on Byatt’s individual works, including the novellas in Angels and Insects.

Levenson, Michael. “Angels and Insects: Theory, Analogy, Metamorphosis.” In Essays on the Fiction of A. S. Byatt: Imagining the Real, edited by Alexa Alfer and Michael J. Noble. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. Discussion of the prominent themes of the work. Part of a collection of essays exploring Byatt’s fictional works as types of realism.

Pearce, Margaret. “Morpho Eugenia: Problems with the Male Gaze.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 40, no. 4 (1999): 399-411. An explanation of the issues of gender and feminism raised by the male narrator who presents himself as the center of the story.

Reynolds, Margaret, and Jonathan Noakes. A. S. Byatt: The Essential Guide. New York: Random House, 2004. Provides a close reading of Byatt’s novels and novellas, a well-developed interview with Byatt, and a thorough discussion of themes and techniques.

Shuttleworth, Sally. “Writing Natural History: Morpho Eugenia.” In Essays on the Fiction of A. S. Byatt: Imagining the Real, edited by Alexa Alfer. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2001. An examination of the role that naturalism plays in Morpho Eugenia. Part of a collection of essays exploring Byatt’s fictional works as types of realism.

Williamson, Andrew. “’The Dead Man Touch’d Me from the Past’: Reading as Mourning, Mourning as Reading in A. S. Byatt’s The Conjugial Angel.” Neo-Victorian Studies 1 (2008): 110-137. Explores the séance as a motif that correlates spirituality with reading and writing.