But its purpose is serious: to unsettle her much younger interlocutor to put the audience off balance and to insist that the fundamental purpose and orientation of her work does not lie where the interviewer is looking for it.Ī number of critics have attended to the ‘spirit’ of Fitzgerald’s work in trying to articulate its ‘prevailing or typical quality or mood’ ( OED). 1 The exchange, as Byatt recounts it, sounds characteristic of Fitzgerald: high-handed, cagey, and slightly mischievous. ‘Fitzgerald’, we are told, ‘corrected her she hoped the readers would be interested in her spiritual beliefs’. Byatt recalls Hermione Lee once asking Fitzgerald in an interview ‘if she would say anything about her feminist or political beliefs’. Penelope Fitzgerald wanted her readers to attend to the ‘spiritual’ meaning of her work, but what exactly did that mean? A.
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