Preview of The Virgin in the Garden Summary:

Some of the important themes of the novel are suggested in its title, The Virgin in the Garden. A number of possibilities for the identity of the virgin and of the garden are offered in the novel; secular, mythological, and historical readings of the phrase are all possible. In Elizabeth I's day, Byatt's playwright character says, there was a richness of symbolic meaning, and people thought in symbolic terms. His play about the...