The idea of what is female throughout history has changed, as Byatt so perfectly illustrates with her story of the guide and Gillian at the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations. The guide tells her that the first peoples “loved fat” because it meant “strength and good prospects of children and living through the winter,” meaning that “fat was life to them”. The guide points out that he is not sure why this female ideal has changed and he laments that “we like [women] to look like young boys” in our current culture. While Gillian does not appear to receive this narrative from the guide, it is evident as the story progresses that she clearly is effected by the narrative that women should look a certain way, as her first wish from the Djinn is to have her former body. He returns to her to her 35 year old body, one that she had “really liked”. Indeed, all three of the wishes that Gillian is granted have to do with bodies. Not only does she request her former body but she wishes that the Djinn would love her, which is both emotionally and physically has an effect on her body. Her final wish is for the Djinn to be free, which releases his body from the vessel he has been imprisoned in for centuries, just as she wishes to be truly free from the narrative of the ideal female form. I believe that Byatt uses these wishes as a way of, once again, making concrete connections between the art of storytelling and the narrative of bodies, especially on the female form. I believe it’s important that Byatt establishes the fact that this narrative is ancient but that it can still be effected and changed if we chose for it to be. Gillian is making that change to the narrative in every action she makes in this story.
I believe that A.S. Byatt clearly demonstrates throughout the title story of her book “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” that there is a strong connection between the art of storytelling and the narrative we believe about bodies and women’s bodies in particular. Byatt draws constant connections between the narratives regarding bodies and the way that we accept or change those narratives through storytelling. The character of Gillian is able to face the image of the perceived narrative she has about herself and challenge that narrative by changing her personal story. We are left wondering if the Djinn existed at all or if the changes that Gillian makes to her narrative are exacted by her alone. In this way, Byatt reasserts the notion that the past ideals of bodies are not concrete, and we can change that within ourselves and our culture.
