Women petrified: how and when women turn to stone from Shakespeare to Byatt
Abstract
Dr Alice Langley explores a range of texts in which women petrify – turning to stone – and explores their petrification as a result of the shaming male gaze. Langley uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the grotesque body to frame her textual analysis; it is the anxious pressure from the male characters analysed, including Leontes from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and Pygmalion, both in Ovid and Madeline Miller’s retelling, that seals and therefore silences the most problematic of female orifices – the mouth.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Literature: history
themes
analysis
Modernist Literature and Criticism
Thomas Hardy Literature Studies
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Textual Practice
- Pages
- 1–17
- Publication date
- 10 January 2026
- Language
- EN