Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt Blew Me Away!

It was a slow start but I ended up head over heels in love with Booker Prize winner Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt.
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PART TWO ---- As I continued to read “Possession”, I felt the narrative’s centre of gravity begin to shift away from Roland, Maud, and the other present-day characters and move towards Christabel, Randolph, and the other people in their 19th century world. Even though I was only following their story indirectly through century-old letters and diaries, I still felt an increasing sense of immediacy about their unfolding lives and fortunes, accompanied by a strong sympathetic connection to them as people. I felt especially drawn towards Christabel as I read about her long, self-isolating sojourn with relatives in Brittany following the end of her relationship with Randolph. Then we learn of her pregnancy, her mysterious disappearance and sudden return, only to be left filled with dread uncertainty when the documentation recounting her story ends with no word of the fate of her newborn child. As her novel reaches its closing chapters, Byatt finally breaks through the temporal barrier and takes us back directly to November 27, 1889 to allow us to witness Randolph Ash on his deathbed. He tells his wife, Ellen, “I am not sorry. I have not-done nothing. I have lived-”. We might say the same of Christabel as well. By comparison, our modern characters, such as Cropper, Blackadder, and Leonara Stern, seem shallow and superficial, consumed only by their competitive drive to obtain Randolph’s and Christabel’s letters as trophies to hoard in their respective archives and institutions. They do not seem to be fully aware of their own existence or of the true heights and depths of life’s joys and sorrows. At least, that was my initial reaction to Cropper, Blackadder, and company; i.e., that they were not fully developed, self-reflecting characters. But then I reread Byatt’s Introduction to “Possession” and realized that it was never her intention to write a deep, meaningful novel about the human condition populated by believable human beings. Rather, it was to explore “the relations between living and dead minds”, between writers and their readers. As far as the idea of possession is concerned, Byatt writes that it was reading the letters of Robert Browning and his wife that “made me see that ‘possession’ had a primary sexual connotation”. Thus, in devising her story, “I made a decision there should be two couples, man and woman, one alive and one dead. The novel would concern the complex relations between these two pairs.” Furthermore, Byatt dismissed the idea of modelling her book on the “serious novels” of her time because, as she says, they failed in the main purpose of art which is to “give pleasure”. So instead, she turned to the model of the detective story. The choice was a natural fit for her narrative, as Roland and Maud clearly see themselves as sleuths tracking down the evidence that will reveal the truth about Christabel and Randolph’s relationship. The detective story format probably accounts for the slightly caricature-like quality of her secondary characters. The scenes in “Possession” that touch on the relationship between authors and their readers seem most relevant to the focus of Byatt’s novel. There are passages where both Roland and Maud display the humanity and sensitivity necessary to imagine the once living people behind the letters and journals they uncover. “I see,” says Maud the first time she reads the draft letters of Randolph’s which Roland stole from the London Library: “They’re alive.” She also believes that Christabel’s letters are less important as dead physical artifacts than they are as living testimony to the author’s thoughts and feelings. “It’s the language that matters, isn’t it,” says Maud, “it’s what went on in her mind-” To which Roland replies, “Exactly-" There is another extended passage in “Possession” where Byatt digresses on the writer’s ability to evoke sights, sounds, tastes, and physical sensations, all in the interest of giving pleasure to the reader. But going beyond this, she draws our attention to “the equally intense pleasure of reading … where words draw attention to the power and delight of words, and so ad infinitum …” Byatt also invites us to consider the private, one-to-one communion that takes place between the author and the reader. “Think of this-that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.” Moving along … years ago I became interested for a time in the Pre-Raphaelite movement in British art and literature. Two of the main proponents of this artistic school were Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister, Christina Rossetti. Rossetti was married to Elizabeth Siddal, and when she died young in February 1862, her distraught husband placed a notebook containing a large number of his unpublished manuscript poems in his wife’s casket to be buried with her. Seven years passed, and Rossetti came to regret his decision. He then arranged for Elizabeth’s grave to be reopened one night so that he could recover his poems. Byatt must have had this incident in mind when she wrote the cemetery scene at the end of her novel. One thing that puzzles me about “Possession” is why Byatt grants Roland such a monstrous happy ending. When we first meet him, Roland is a bit of a schmuck of an English graduate student with next to no expectations. But by the end of the novel, he has become famous for uncovering the secret life of two famous Victorian poets, and his one scholarly paper has achieved recognition in literary circles. When he applies for a trio of overseas teaching positions, he is accepted in all three, with the endorsement of respected English scholars. Moreover, Roland experiences a transformative moment where his feels his own powers of literary imagination blossoming within him, and he realizes he is a poet in his own right. Perhaps best of all, he and Maud Bailey-who comes across as an Ice Queen throughout the novel-realize that they have fallen in love, and so presumably live happily ever after. I suppose we should keep in mind that Byatt was writing a “parody”, as she says in her Introduction. Roland is not the only male character who comes out ahead by the end of the novel. In the “POSTSCRIPT 1868”, we see that Christabel and Randolph’s child survives infancy to become a thriving little girl who lives in a good home with a caring family in Brittany and goes by the name of May. Randolph is able to meet his daughter and see all this for himself, while still maintaining the public façade that he and his wife Ellen have a successful marriage back in England. Fate is not so kind to Christabel, who loses her housemate and possible lover, Blanche Glover, to suicide when she learns of Christabel’s affair with Randolph. Once Blanche dies, Christabel loses her financial independence and ends her days living frugally with her sister and writing poems to her dolls. Christabel suffers more cruelly from the affair than does Randolph. The “POSTSCRIPT” also shows us Randolph making his own attempt to contact Christabel by asking their daughter to pass on a message to her. But being a child, May forgets the mission she’s been entrusted with by this strange man, and so Christabel never learns that her ex-lover tried to contact her. Should we feel sad and wistful that this ‘might have been’ never happened? I’m not sure, but as far as May is concerned, I think it was fortunate for her that she didn’t find herself in the potentially emotionally fraught position of becoming a go-between for the two people she doesn’t realize are her parents. As with Val, I think it’s for the best that May escaped being drawn into the toils of the literary world which her parents inhabit, and instead was permitted to lead a more normal life.

[@joangavrilik3009]

I read this about 15 years ago and loved it. I think it’s time for a reread!

[@NerdyNurseReads]

I fully support (and encourage) this reread

[@Elizabeth-Reads]

Oh gosh, I need to reread this! I have a gorgeous hardcover copy...read it years ago and adored it, but I know I'd get even more from it now, especially after your great review. (I've saved letters from college that I'll keep for the rest of my life, and when my dad died we found an amazing love letter he'd written to my mom. Will that happen in this generation?) I remember loving the movie too (despite Gwyneth Paltrow.)

[@NerdyNurseReads]

Perhaps I’ll check out the movie 🤔 I’ve seen some lovely copies of this floating around on the internet. I can honestly say I don’t like the one I have.

[@Showmeyourshelfie]

On my TBR! Perfect for February/ Valentine read! Thanks for sharing!

[@NerdyNurseReads]

I hope you enjoy it!!!

[@user-bn9kr6nz5h]

PART ONE ---- When I began reading “Possession: A Romance”, there seemed to be something significant about the names A.S. Byatt chose for her characters. The one thing they seemed to have in common was that they were all evocative of the Middle Ages; for example, the names of the fictional 19th century poet, Christabel LaMotte, and her modern-day descendant, Maud Bailey. Anyone familiar with medieval siege-craft will see these names and think of the motte-and-bailey type of fortification used in Europe during the early Middle Ages. Military engineers would dig a deep circular trench and pile the earth in the centre to create an elevated mound called the motte. Then a stone or timber tower, called the bailey, would be built on top. When we reach the end of the novel and read Christabel’s last letter to the poet Randolph Henry Ash, she wonders whether it would have been better if she had never met him, “if I had kept to my close castle, behind my motte-and-bailey defences.” It’s significant that Byatt has Christabel use that particular metaphor, and I think it’s her way of having fun with her readers. There’s a similar medieval connotation between the name Roland Michell and his girlfriend, Val. Roland brings to mind the medieval French epic poem, “The Song of Roland”, which describes how the heroic knight Roland dies fighting against the Moors in the year 778. The site of the battle was in the Pyrenees mountains at a place called Roncesvalles, the last syllable of which sounds the same as our Roland’s girlfriend’s name, Val. Mortimer Cropper brings to mind the prominent medieval English family of the Mortimers, who play such an important role in some of Shakespeare’s history plays. And it’s difficult not to think that Byatt had Rowan Atkinson’s BBC comedy history series “Blackadder” in mind when she came up with the name James Blackadder for one of her secondary characters. With regard to Roland’s girlfriend, Val, I’m afraid I don’t see her as the “truly terrible person” whom you describe in your video comments. After all, Roland admits she’s “the breadwinner” in the family, doing the many “menial” typing jobs that allow him to enjoy the life of a perpetual student researching the life of the Victorian poet, Randolph Henry Ash. I think Val makes a valid point when she confronts Roland one day about the amount of time and energy he’s devoting to “piecing together old Ash’s world-picture.” As she demands, “Only where does that leave you, old Mole? What’s your world-picture?” When Val poses her question, the world-picture she and Roland are sharing includes cat-piss seeping through their ceiling from the apartment of the elderly female ailurophile living above them. So I’m happy for Val when she meets the handsome, rich young lawyer, Euan MacIntyre, and decides to marry him. Val never shared Roland’s literary interests the way Maud Bailey does, and she’s not about to fall into the trap Ellen Ash did of playing the role of the longsuffering, dutiful wife, turning a blind eye to the fact that her husband Randolph’s heart belongs to another. When you say that some readers may find the opening chapters of the novel “a pretty slow start”, I think you’re probably correct. Myself, I found Roland’s theft from the London Library of a couple of previously unknown original letters by a Randolph Ash to be enough of a MacGuffin to keep me reading for another thirty pages or so until Roland is on the threshold of meeting the formidable Dr. Maud Bailey, after which the plot really begins to thicken. But I can understand how some readers might find the novel’s pace to be a little too slow. “Possession: A Romance” I found to be an easy read despite its 600-plus pages in my Modern Library edition. Byatt writes clearly and directly, and I share your admiration for her ability to replicate the tone and style of Victorian authors, though I thought her 19th century poems had a certain Victorian-lite quality to them. I also enjoyed the “Quick, Watson, the game’s afoot!” mood of the opening chapters. “Literary critics make natural detectives,” says Maud to Roland while they’re in northern England on the century-old trail of Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte, and I definitely enjoyed the early part of “Possession” when we’re still uncovering letters, diaries, and other clues about the hitherto unknown relationship between the two Victorian poets. The highlight for me was the scene where Roland and Maud visit Seal Court and persuade Sir George to escort them to Christabel’s dark and dusty bedroom, undisturbed for about a century, and located two floors above them in a remote part of the dilapidated, cobweb-strewn, castle-like old mansion. The crowning touch was finding Christabel’s three dolls, dust-covered and peacefully resting in their own miniature four-poster bed. Victorian dolls can be creepy in broad daylight, but the thought of three of them lying side-by-side in the dimly lit bedroom for all those years was definitely unsettling. But at least they had each other for company (and maybe even a deck of Uno cards). The thought of one single doll left alone and abandoned in that dark and dismal bedroom for a hundred years would have been almost unbearable. The same thought crosses Roland’s mind. When he, Maud, and Sir George leave Christabel’s bedroom, he brings the three dolls with him, “out of some vague fancy that it was cruel to leave them in the dark.” It may have been a “vague fancy”, but it also shows a degree of imaginative sensitivity on Roland’s part that becomes a saving grace for his character. He had felt something similar earlier during their search of Christabel’s bedroom and its furnishings. He was consumed by curiosity about what literary treasures he might find in this dead woman’s bedroom, but at the same time also “felt as though he was prying”. Roland is starting to awaken to the fact that these are real people whose lives he is meddling in.

[@NerdyNurseReads]

Thank you for your breakdown on the names. I didn't put motte (maud) and bailey together but now it seems so obvious! As for the scene with the dolls, I completely missed that and all the creepiness of that scene. I grew up in a house full of dolls bc my mom is a collector. I hate them but I'm also completely immune to them. I was also happy with Roland and Val split and found other people to make them happy. They were so completely miserable and Val in particular, really bloomed after leaving him.

[@user-bn9kr6nz5h]

I've been thinking about what you said about getting older on your recent Leonora Carrington video, and I've concluded that leaving longwinded comments on Booktuber channels has become one of my eccentric habits. @@NerdyNurseReads

[@NerdyNurseReads]

I love it!! Embrace the eccentricity!!!

[@carriedude]

You definitely reminded me of the things I like about this book but the poetry and heavy academic pieces just didn’t engage me. Glad you liked it so much ❤️

[@NerdyNurseReads]

I can’t definitely see why people might find this boring. But hey there’s more out there to read! We should be enjoying ourselves 💜

[@FrankOdonnell-ej3hd]

yes she passed away recently so I need to read this before I do too haha⚛😀

[@NerdyNurseReads]

Yes read it!!!