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Among her short stories, Sugar and Other Stories is one of the most excellent one. Caroline Moore gave it very high marks “These stories are the product of a distinctive and powerful imagination…superbly satisfying.” (Byatt 260) Irish Times regards this collection as “beautifully crafted, supple and compassionate” (260). As Byatt’s first collection of short stories, Sugar and Other Stories tells women’s living conditions and circumstances. It includes ten short stories. Although the ten stories are different in themes and specific narrative techniques, they all reflect Byatt’s concern for women. In almost all of the ten stories, female characters are the hero or the center of attention. They range from teenagers, the middle-aged to the elder, from the west, the east to the kingdom of fairy tale, from intellectual women, village women to princess and syren, giving readers an all-round display of women’s living circumstance.
Some scholars have paid attention to “Rose-Colored Teacups” in this collection, such as exploring spatial displacement and fracture and analyzing specific images and colors in it. Many scholars have tried to analyze the deep meaning of the collection from the feminist view. They have criticized the unequal existence for women in the men-dominated society, exposing the decayed patriarchal system and examining social, cultural and psychological contexts of this collection. However, few scholars have done any research on the feminist narrative techniques in this collection. Female writers usually use requisition, indirection, fragmentation and silence as the forms to express their voice (Radner et al. 412). As a female writer, Byatt adopts many feminist narrative techniques to show women’s living circumstance. This thesis intends to choose three short stories from Sugar and Other Stories, which are “Racine and the Tablecloth”, “Rose-Colored Teacups” and “The Dried Witch”, to find their shared feminist narrative strategies. In “Racine and the Tablecloth”, Byatt tells a story about a girl called Emily who is repressed by her teacher Mrs. Walker and keeps fighting against such authority in the boarding school. In the beginning, Emily comes to the school as a substitute for Hodgie, who is ill. Paid no attention by all the classmates, Emily has no friend in the school and nobody is willing to walk with her. Due to the unreasonable regulation that “walking anywhere alone is an unthinkable and serious offence”, Emily has to receive the punishment for walking alone into the center of the cathedral city to go to school (5). She has to walk with Mrs. Walker. Mrs. Walker keeps blaming Emily for her dressing, lifestyle and behavior during this period. Finally, hoping to get good grades, Emily studies hard and gets in the final examination. However, her teacher believes she must cheat and orders her to make an apology. Although repressed by the school regulation and her teacher, Emily obtains strength from literary works and finally finds her own identity after experiencing identity crisis. “Rose-colored Teacups” tells the living situation of the three women of generations through Veronica’s memory. At the beginning of the story, Veronica recalls the scene that her mother sits in the room and does sewing. Veronica sees the rose-colored teacups and recalls the traditional lifestyle of both her mother and herself. Then, Jane, Veronica’s daughter, destroys the sewing machine. It reminds Veronica of the scene that herself is scolded by her mother for breaking a rose-colored teacup. Different from her mother, Veronica doesn’t blame Jane for destroying the sewing machine. At the end of the story, Veronica watches the door and fully hopes Jane can break away from the traditional lifestyle. In “The Dried Witch”, the heroine A-Oa is a marginal woman who has lost her husband and four sons. Holding the view that A-Oa can bring bad luck for them, the villagers all shun her. A-Oa feels that she is “a singleton on the edge of the circle” (105). Although being treated unfairly by people living in the village, she still tries to help cure their diseases by using her magic. However, in the end, she is put to dry the sun as a jinx. Women have no right to defend herself when all the people charge her. Although Byatt depicts an illusionary world filled with fantasy and magic, we can associate it with women’s situation in reality.