In Her Own Words: The Image of Ice, Snow and Glass in A. S. Byatt’s Possession

Abstract

In “Ice, Snow, Glass”, a beautifully-written essay included in On Histories and Stories, A. S. Byatt discusses how stony and frozen images have triggered her own imagination, which include the undisturbed whiteness of Snow White, the power of mathematical reason and beauty of Snow Queen, and the at once dead and not dead queen Hermione as an art in itself in The Winter’s Tale. The image of ice, snow and glass could be a distance as well as an intimacy, as a way to protect art from biological cycles or repetitive generations. I will explore how the image of ice, snow and glass are depicted and represented in her celebrated novel, Possession, and argue that readers can get closer to her literary landscape with reference to her own thoughts on images.