Landscapes, Women, and Art in A. S. Byatt’s “Crocodile Tears” and “A Stone Woman”

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the fascinating yet intricate relationships between women, art, and landscapes in A. S. Byatt’s two short stories, “Crocodile Tears” and “A Stone Woman”. By engaging in intertextual studies of two Renaissance texts and Byatt’s two short stories, this article aims to re-interpret the ambiguities at the core of these short stories and highlight authorial tones which are otherwise misread. In “Crocodile Tears”, Patricia reconsiders her relationship with her husband within the framework of Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra. Her failure to imitate Cleopatra signifies her moral ineptitude and emotional apathy. Ines in “A Stone Woman” becomes a cogent symbol of the Icelandic landscape, whose prototype is Spenser’s Dame Nature, personified nature, goddess of fertility, a monster, a beauty, and a union of opposites. Her precarious conditions at the end of this story suggest a recurrent motif that runs through Byatt’s entire oeuvre: Ars longa, vita brevis.