Context--"The Pink Ribbon"

In Greek mythology, Dido was the daughter of king Belus of Tyre whose brother Pygmalion killed her husband Sichaeus. She escaped to North Africa with her people, and bought land from the native king Iarbus. On the land she founded Carthage where she became queen but killed herself when Iarbus threatened with war if she did not become his wife.

Another version says that she fell in love with the Trojan prince Aeneas who had been shipwrecked outside the coast of Carthage after fleeing his sacked city. He left her later to go to Italy, where he became the founder of Rome, and the heart-broken Dido committed suicide. Eventually they met again when Aeneas visited the underworld, but she refused to speak to him.
________________________________________________

“Who are you?” he said, in a tired old voice. “Why are you here?”
“Don’t you know?” she said kindly. “I am the Fetch.” (234)

Fetch:
n. Chiefly British
1. A ghost; an apparition.
2. A doppelgänger.

Doppelganger:
n. A ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshly counterpart.

Article taken from About.com: Paranormal Phenomena

Do you have an exact double somewhere in the world? Can a person be in two places at once? There are many intriguing accounts throughout history of people who claim to have either encountered apparitions of themselves - their doppelgangers - or have experienced the phenomenon of bilocation, being in two separate locations at the very same time.

"Doppelganger" is German for "double walker" - a shadow self that is thought to accompany every person. Traditionally, it is said that only the owner of the doppelganger can see this phantom self, and that it can be a harbinger of death. Occasionally, however, a doppelganger can be seen by a person's friends or family, resulting in quite a bit of confusion.
In instances of bilocation, a person can either spontaneously or willingly project his or her double, known as a "wraith," to a remote location. This double is indistinguishable from the real person and can interact with others just as the real person would.

Emilie Sagée
One of the most fascinating reports of a doppelganger comes from American writer Robert Dale Owen who was told the story by Julie von Güldenstubbe, the second daughter of the Baron von Güldenstubbe. In 1845, when von Güldenstubbe was 13, she attended Pensionat von Neuwelcke, an exclusive girl's school near Wolmar in what is now Latvia. One of her teachers was a 32-year-old French woman named Emilie Sagée. And although the school's administration was quite pleased with Sagée's performance, she soon became the object of rumor and odd speculation. Sagée, it seemed, had a double that would appear and disappear in full view of the students.

In the middle of class one day, while Sagée was writing on the blackboard, her exact double appeared beside her. The doppelganger precisely copied the teacher's every move as she wrote, except that it did not hold any chalk. The event was witnessed by 13 students in the classroom. A similar incident was reported at dinner one evening when Sagée's doppelganger was seen standing behind her, mimicking the movements of her eating, although it held no utensils.
The doppelganger did not always echo her movements, however. On several occasions, Sagée would be seen in one part of the school when it was known that she was in another at that time. The most astonishing instance of this took place in full view of the entire student body of 42 students on a summer day in 1846. The girls were all assembled in the school hall for their sewing and embroidery lessons. As they sat at the long tables working, they could clearly see Sagée in the school's garden gathering flowers. Another teacher was supervising the children. When this teacher left the room to talk to the headmistress, Sagée's doppelganger appeared in her chair - while the real Sagée could still be seen in the garden. The students noted that Sagée's movements in the garden looked tired while the doppelganger sat motionless. Two brave girls approached the phantom and tried to touch it, but felt an odd resistance in the air surrounding it. One girl actually stepped between the teacher's chair and the table, passing right through the apparition, which remained motionless. It then slowly vanished.
Sagée claimed never to have seen the doppelganger herself, but said that whenever it was said to appear, she felt drained and fatigued. Her physical color even seemed to pale at those times.

Famous Doppelgangers

• There have been many cases of doppelgangers appearing to well-known figures:
  Guy de Maupassant, the French novelist and short story writer, claimed to have been haunted by his doppelganger near the end of his life. On one occasion, he said, this double entered his room, took a seat opposite him and began to dictate what de Maupassant was writing. He wrote about this experience in his short story "Lui."
  
• John Donne, the 16th century English poet whose work often touched on the metaphysical, was visited by a doppelganger while he was in Paris - not his, but his wife's. She appeared to him holding a newborn baby. Donne's wife was pregnant at the time, but the apparition was a portent of great sadness. At the same moment that the doppelganger appeared, his wife had given birth to a stillborn child.
  
• Percy Bysshe Shelley, still considered one of the greatest poets of the English language, encountered his doppelganger in Italy. The phantom silently pointed toward the Mediterranean Sea. Not long after, and shortly before his 30th birthday in 1822, Shelley died in a sailing accident - drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.
  
• Queen Elizabeth I of England was shocked to see her doppelganger laid out on her bed. The queen died shortly thereafter.
  
• In a case that suggests that doppelgangers might have something to do with time or dimensional shifts, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the 18th century German poet, confronted his doppelganger while riding on the road to Drusenheim. Riding toward him was his exact double, but wearing a gray suit trimmed in gold. Eight years later, von Goethe was again traveling on the same road, but in the opposite direction. He then realized he was wearing the very gray suit trimmed in gold that he had seen on his double eight years earlier! Had von Goethe seen his future self?

Context--"Raw Material"

In “Raw Material” Cicely Fox writes about her an experience in her childhood in “How We Used to Black-Lead Stoves.” At the end of the story, she boldly asserts that “we all still go into the oven. Then, it was back to the earth of which all these powders and pomades had been so lovingly extracted” (175). This ironic statement brings many inquires about the state of Miss Fox’s living conditions while in Sheffield and Manchester. Here is some information about the toxic living conditions that children had to endure at that time.

Many poor children were exposed to hazardous conditions in factories, although by the middle of the l9th century, just breathing the air could be dangerous, depending on where one lived. The tuberculosis rates in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, and Sheffield were twice as high for women and five times higher for men, compared to those who didn't reside in factory towns. This is partly due to the excessive burning of pure coal, to power the factories and heat the homes. In 1829, the consumption of coal in England and Wales was 3.5 million tons for manufacturing and 5.5 million tons for household use, and this was still just the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Tuberculosis was contagious and further aggravated by the poor respiratory health common to the men, women and children who sometimes spent 14 hours a day in factories. And while T.B. was more fatal to young adults than children, the harbored bacillus in a child would usually cause a far more severe reaction later in life. Poor air quality also increased the incidence of childhood asthma.

Taken from www.victoriaspast.com/ChildMemorial/childmemorial.html

Context-- "Body Art"

Daisy created a work of art that “represented the goddess of Kali” (88). Below you will find pictures of the goddess Kali and information about what she represents. After reading this, I think you will find it both interesting and ironic that Daisy places Kali in a “17th century birthing chair, below which, under the hole into which the baby would drop, was a transparent plastic box full of a jumble of plastic infants and plaster mothers . . .” (88-89).

The name Kali comes from the word "kala" or time. From my personal inquires, I found that there are varying views for what Kali truly represents. Some feel that Kali is the Hindu goddess symbolizing sexuality, dissolution, and destruction. This version portrays her as rather fearsome with baleful eyes, a protruding tongue, and four arms. In her upper left hand she wields a bloody sword and in her lower left hand she holds the severed head of a demon. With her upper right hand she makes the gesture of fearlessness, while the lower right hand confers benefits. Draped around her is a chain of severed human heads and she wears a belt made of dismembered arms.
Taken from www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/5229/kali/kali.html

Others feel it is partially accurate to say the Goddess Kali Ma is a goddess of death. However, she brings the death of the ego as the delusional self-centered view of reality. Nowhere in the “scriptures” is she seen killing anything but demons nor is she associated exclusively with the process of human dying like Yama the Hindu god of death.
Out of all the Devi forms, Kali is the most compassionate because she provides moksha or liberation to Her children. She is the counterpart of Shiva. They are the destroyers of unreality. When the ego sees Mother Kali it trembles with fear because the ego sees in her its own eventual demise. An individual who is attached to his/her ego will not be able to receive the vision of Mother Kali and she will appear in a fear invoking or "wrathful" form. A mature soul who engages in spiritual practice to remove the illusion of the ego sees Mother Kali as very sweet, affectionate, and overflowing with incomprehensible love for her children.

Ma Kali wears a garland made of 52 skulls and a skirt made of dismembered arms because the ego comes out of identification with the body. In fact, we are beings of spirit and not flesh. So liberation can only prevail when our attachment to the body comes to an end. Therefore, the skirt and garland are trophies worn by her to represent the liberation of her children from attachment to the finite body. In two of her hands, she holds a sword and a freshly severed head that is dripping blood. This represents a great battle in which she defeated the demon Raktabija. Her black (or sometimes dark blue) skin represents the womb of the unmanifest from which all of creation is born and into which all of creation will eventually return. Goddess Kali Ma is depicted as standing on a white skinned Shiva who is lying beneath her. His white skin is in contrast to her black or sometimes dark blue skin. He is showing a blissful detached look on His face. Shiva is pure formless awareness sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss) while she represents "form" eternally sustained by the underpinning of pure awareness.
Taken from www.goddess-kali-ma.com/


For more information:
http://www.kalimandir.org/homepage.asp

Context-- "A Stone Woman"

Metaphysical and Mystical Healing Properties of Crystals and Stones

In “A Stone Woman”, Ines is transformed into many different types of stones and crystals. Some believe that certain stones and crystals have supernatural powers for emotional and physical healing. I have listened some of the stones that Byatt lists in this mystical story. Obviously, I am able to list information for all the stones mentioned; however, if you so desire to inquire, I have provided some links that will take you to an enormous listing of stones, crystals, and minerals.

“Pearls were interesting. They were a substance where organic met inorganic, like moss agate” (125).

Pearl
Pearls eliminate emotional imbalances. They help one master the heart chakra, aid stomach, spleen, intestinal tract & ulcer problems. Pearl is said to help one see themselves and help improve self-worth. As an emblem of modesty, chastity and purity, the pearl symbolizes love, success, and happiness.

Moss Agate
Moss agate is sometimes called the "gardener's stone" due to its properties of helping ensure a full crop. In addition to a full crop, moss agate brings general abundance, success, and prosperity. It can also help one gain peace with extreme or excessive duties in life and brings self-confidence and higher self-esteem. Moss agate is also a protective stone, as are all agates. It can reduce the difficulties associated with overcoming addictive behaviors. Moss agate is associated with the heart chakra, and is a stone of compatibility and friendship. It is also believed to help improve circulation, enhance healing of all types, overcome digestive or intestinal disorders. Green moss agate is said to assist in finding hidden treasure, and is a stone of prosperity.

“She stood there and let the thick streams of water run over her body and down inside her flimsy garments, streaking her carnelian nipples and adamantine wrists” (124).

Carnelian
Carnelian is an agate class of chalcedony that is a stone of creativity, individuality and courage. Like all agates, it has protection energies. It can aid memory, including recall of past lives. It can assist one in finding the right mate. It is also a stone of protection in general and from anger, jealousy and fear. In addition it can help with manifestation of one's desires, and brings good luck. Carnelian can help ease or remove sorrows. It also helps stabilize energies in the home. It is sometimes called the "actor's stone". Carnelian is associated with the root and sacral chakras. Physically, carnelian has been used to heal open sores, rejuvenate tissues and cells, rheumatism, kidney stones and other kidney problems, gall stones, colds, pollen allergies, and neuralgia.

“He showed her samples of new stones as they sprouted in and on her body. The two she loved most were labradorite and fantomqvartz” (137).

Labradorite
Labradorite (also called Spectrolite sometimes) is a considered by mystics to be a stone of transformation. It is said to clear, balance and protect the aura. It is purported to help provide clarity and insight into your destiny, as well as attract success. It is used in metaphysics for dream recall, and finding ways to use dreams in daily life. Mystically, energies of stress and anxiety are reduced by labradorite. Labradorite is said to increase intuition, psychic development, esoteric wisdom, help with subconscious issues, and provide mental illumination. Labradorite is associated with the solar plexus and brow chakras.

For more information:

http://www.shimmerlings.com/

http://www.metastones.com/

www.crystalsandjewelry.com/metaphysical_healing.html

http://www.electriclollipop.ca/

Context--Byatt's Paradoxes and Ambiguous Themes

par·a·dox
n.
1. A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true: the paradox that standing is more tiring than walking.
2. One exhibiting inexplicable or contradictory aspects: "The silence of midnight, to speak truly, though apparently a paradox, rung in my ears" Mary Shelley.
3. An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.
4. A statement contrary to received opinion.

am·big·u·ous
adj.
1. Open to more than one interpretation: an ambiguous reply.
2. Doubtful or uncertain: "The theatrical status of her frequently derided but constantly revived plays remained ambiguous" Frank Rich.



Themes of Paradoxes and Ambiguity in Little Black Book of Stories:
(Just a few I came up with)

"The Stone Woman"
A paradox can be that people can't become stone. It's an impossible occurrence. The main character slowly metamorphosis's into stone. Also, I think it's funny how women can be referred to as "cold" or "stone" because they're prudes or what have you. This woman actually did turn to stone. She actually seemed to be liberated by this experience.

"The Thing in the Forest"
Penny and Primrose both saw a huge worm, monster sort of thing in the woods. Woods are always associated with bad or scary happenings. It's not very real that a huge worm is in the forest that eats humans. Plus, Penny and Primrose don't really seem to be sure if their experience was real.

"Body Art"
I thought a paradox was that Daisy had been to the hospital or institution that Damian worked for abortions in the past but she was decorating the place for the holidays. She had a rather depressing, traumatic experience but is making the place look "happy" for the patients or clients. Also, she ended a life to begin with there and she meets Damian and creates another one. Things just seem kind of opposite of what they should be.

The title of Little Black Book of Stories
A little black book suggests personal, scary, or secret subject matter. The stories and material Byatt chose to put in this book. It's an interesting connection. Paradox and ambiguity seem to kind of go hand in hand. The title brings up connections to both terms.

Discussion Questions

"The Thing in the Forest"
1. Was the thing in the forest real? Did Primrose and Penny's experience really happen?
2. What do you think about Primrose and Penny's parallel lives? Childhood? Career Choices?
3. It wasn't revealed until close to the end of the story that Alys was eaten by the thing in forest, but what was her significance? Did this surprise you?

“Body Art”
4. Why do you think Damian gave into Daisy? What was his attraction when we could really tell that he wanted to be with Martha?
5. What are your thoughts on the end where Damian, Daisy, and Martha are in the delivery room and Daisy is holding their new daughter? It was evident that she wanted the baby and to be a part of her life as well as Damian. What do you think came of the situation?
6. Damian frequently refers to his “lapsed religion.” How does this shape him as a character?
7. Discuss the various ways that Damian has detached relationships. Also explain why you think he is so distant with those closest to him.

"The Stone Woman"
8. What did you think about Ines gradually becoming a stone woman? How did this affect her?
9. The stone cutter helped Ines. He took her to his land where the stones were alive. What did you think about the ending? Ines was left there. What do you think became of the situation?
10. How do the stones define or help the reader to understand the depth of Ines’s metamorphosis? Hint: See context
11. During her transformation, Ines comments that she is not like Lot’s wife (the biblical woman who turned to salt) and does not relate to being a “pillar of salt” (140). For those familiar with this biblical story, what makes Ines different from the biblical woman. For those not familiar, the story is found in Genesis 19 if you would like to read it.

"Raw Material"
12. The teacher in "Raw Material had taken a liking to Cicely Fox's writing. Why do you think he favored her over the other students?
13.Did the ending surprise you when the teacher found Cicely Fox dead? What do you think caused her to be killed? How did this affect the teacher?
14. How do you think Miss Fox would have reacted to the news of winning a writing contest she was involuntarily entered in?
15. Jack says that “you should always respect other people’s privacy. Creative writing teachers had something in common with doctors” (160). How does Jack Smollett compare to Damian in “Body Art”?

"The Pink Ribbon"
16. What is the significance of the title "The Pink Ribbon"?
17. Do you think James was ashamed of his wife Mado?
18. What did Dido represent? Was she a real person or a ghost/doppelganger (see context)?
19. When James asks Dido when he will see her again, she replies “That depends . . . you know. That depends” (253). What do you think she means by this? Will James “choose” to see her again?

Overall Questions
20. What are some paradoxes you noticed from the book? Also, feel free to elaborate on the ones posted under “Byatt’s Paradoxes and Ambiguous Themes.”
21. Discuss ambiguous themes from the book or elaborate on the definition and connection to the book?
22. In “A Stone Woman”, Byatt writes that “life runs in very narrow stereotyped channels, until it is interrupted by accidents or visions” (99). How is this idea played out in each of the stories in the collection?
23. When considering the each story in the collection, how is the title “Little Black Book of Stories” appropriate or inappropriate?
24. Do you feel that each story is connected by a common theme? If so, please elaborate. If not, please explain why you feel the stories lack commonalities.

Genre- Little Black Book of Stories

Her dark materials

Bleak but brilliant is Ali Smith's verdict on AS Byatt's Little Black Book of Stories Saturday December 6, 2003The Guardian
Buy Little Black Book of Stories at Amazon.co.uk

Little Black Book of Storiesby AS Byatt 280pp, Chatto, £12
AS Byatt loves a good, dark, short story. She's been writing them now since Emily, the too-clever schoolgirl protagonist of the very first story of her first collection, Sugar (1987), looked up from analysing Phèdre and saw "creatures gesticulating on the fringed edge of her consciousness like blown ghosts trying to pass over the Styx". That story, "Racine and the Tablecloth", about the places, subjects and lives that a good old-fashioned English education suggested girls and women shouldn't go near, has, like all Byatt's fiction (and especially her short fiction) a calmness in tone, a lightness in the handling and an underlying sense of threatened explosion - all typical of her talent for the airy, daring distillation of so much scholarliness and imaginative brio into so few pages.
She loves a paradox; a simple, crucial, endlessly complex co-existence. To Byatt, this world is full of literal otherworldliness and, as a character puts it in an earlier story, "black is the colour of light". Little Black Book of Stories, her fifth collection, is a Byatt paradox in itself. The colour of the cover, unlike the fierce French pastels of Elementals (1998) and the bright eastern fairy-tale mosaics of The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (1994), is eponymous black. Its five stories are self-consciously dark, full of ghosts and fetches, grieving creatures and "dark things made of common materials" which lift "the corner of the blanket that covered the unthinkable". Yet it is a delightful collection. It is her sparest, and her richest. It is bleak then surprisingly funny, very dark indeed then full of inconceivable sources of light.
The first and last stories frame it as a book about war, madness and, interestingly, a kind of quintessential Englishness. It opens with "The Thing in the Forest", a chilling and perfectly pitched fable of how we protect ourselves from the dark - and how we can't. Penny and Primrose, two wartime little girls, meet on an evacuee train and desperately claim each other as friends as they chug through blacked-out country villages whose namelessness, they sense, is somehow their fault, "because they were not meant to know where they were going or, like Hansel and Gretel, to find their way back".
Billeted for the night in a stately home they wander into the nearby forest and see a "Thing": a massive, foul-smelling war-maggot, its face "a cross between a monstrous washerwoman and a primeval dragon". Byatt first used this war-worm in her Sarajevo short story, "Dragon's Breath"; this is its English incarnation, and it is, the girls find, no story-book monster. It trails not just "obliteration and destruction" after it but bits of dishcloth and old pan-scrubber and it claims, as sacrifice, the rest of the story and the rest of their lives, in a story about the very nature of story, what it does and what it's for.
The funniest and by far the sneakiest story here, "Raw Material", is a double-edged analysis of writing-as-therapy; the tale of a down-at-heel creative-writing teacher and his awful class, all hopeless writers who write laughable, thinly veiled autobiographical fiction - all except for the new student, an old lady, Cicely Fox, who writes, to the teacher's astonishment and relief, disassociated, beautifully modulated and decorous pieces about the past: "How we used to black-lead stoves". But Byatt knows a dark decorum when she sees one; the colour of this foxy story is of course "blackest black" and its unexpected denouement leaves the taste of cinders and ash in the mouth, as in the mouths of "bad children in fairy tales".
"It was not nice." As always with Byatt, art is shockingly - and somehow always unexpectedly - visceral. Life haunts it, just like it haunts life. Other stories here deal with loss, of loved ones, babies, love, and the darkness of losing your mind - the main character in the last story, "The Pink Ribbon", once a war intelligence operator, now has a brain full of nothing but "moth-eaten knitting" and nothing to distract her but the terrible infantile über-colour of the world of the Tele tubby. Not surprisingly, she longs for black night and the end.
But the collection's linchpin is a homage to all the beginnings paradoxically inherent in ends. In "A Stone Woman" an etymologist, deep in mourning and probably dying, gains a new flinty navel, and starts shedding stone-dust. Her limb sockets become marble balls in marble curves. She meets a stonecarver who introduces her to his northern home, where the landscape never stops renewing itself. She turns into stone, then into story.
In this fable of returning to source, Byatt discovers and taps into an uncanny, totally natural fertility in the stoniest of places. It is characteristic of her generosity, which also makes her tales read as expert and witty yet unencumbered by interruptive personality, as if she is a finder of story that was there all along. But she can write a simple, beautiful sentence like "the light was lovely in the leaves", then a moment later produce a miniature symphony of word-strangeness: "pyro-lusite, ignimbrite, omphacite, uvarovite, glaucophane, schist, shale, gneiss, tuff". Little Black Book of Stories is tough and good, stony in all the best ways, vitally not nice. It is her finest collection yet.
· Ali Smith's The Whole Story and Other Stories is published by Hamish Hamilton.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,6121,1100998,00.html