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Identity In A S. Byatt's A Stone Woman

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A S Byatt is one of the leading short story writers, whose thematic concerns revolve around female issues and their ever evolving notions of identity. One such unique and different presentation is in form of 'A Stone Woman ', where the protagonist undergoes certain transformations in her biological frame work and thus recieves certian innate changes in her identity that makes her static, stony instead of a living.

Key words
Transformation, Metamorphosis, grief, embodiement, petrification, woman, identity , growth, self, Ines, gems, stones, change,stone woman, iceland, Byatt, self, silence, stone,solitude,
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Ines who lost her mother and then losses her own physic to a sudden unacceptable transformation which is difficult to accept. Here in this story, Byatt wallows in close description and beautifully conveys the connection of man and culture, " I have problems", Ines admits, but turning to stone ultimately is not a problem but something she eagerly embraces, odd but compelling. Here, she chooses a role thrusted by the age old customs and gives it a different diamension and wavelength. She begins to accept her metamorphosis as a mode of development and her petrification seems to symbolize her liberated self. The concluding note in the last movement if Ines 's metamorphosis and so of her life, is not of melancholy or desolation, but of happiness," she now saw ...figures, spinning and bowing in a rapid dance on a huge, lithe, stony legs...she jigged a little as though gathering momentum, and then began dancing run, into the blizzard."(156) At the same time, one questions that why an essentialised, romantic Iceland is the only rational "other" location that can be concieved as a home for the new Ines. She might aspire for a better place , but the story is still in the

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