Possession is the story of two romances, a twentieth century one, and a nineteenth century one. It is one of my favourite books.
Ronald is a young research associate working on the life and writing of a nineteenth century poet, Randolph Ash. He finds a fragment of a letter from Ash which suggests the beginnings of a previously unknown relationship between him and a female poet, who Ronald soon discovers to be Cristobel La Motte. He meets Maud Bailey, a feminist academic who is working on La Motte, and together they discover letters between the two, revealing their growing passion. Interspersed with the modern account of discovery, we are treated to some of what actually happened between Ash and La Motte. There are of course complications in both romances. Roland already has a girlfriend, Val, and Maud is avoiding relationships with men after an unhappy experience with one of Roland’s colleagues. Ash is married, and La Motte lives with a woman companion, and it has been assumed till now that she was a lesbian. And there is Cropper, the American collector of Ash memorabilia, who gets wind of the existence of the letters, Leonora, the feminist academic, and a whole cast of supporting characters. Together, they make an intricate and satisfying story.
This was a book, Byatt says, that had been germinating in her mind for years. ‘When I first recognise a thought as the germ of a novel or story, I form a shape, or file, in a corner of my mind, to which I add things that seem to belong to it, quotations, observations’. She had a rich background from which to accumulate such ‘things’. An acknowledged expert on the works of Iris Murdoch, she had also read and written widely on the thought and literature of the nineteenth century. She was intimately familiar with the work of Austen, the Brontes and George Eliot. She had also written about more popular romances, such as those of Georgette Heyer and Barbara Pym.
Over a number of years, Byatt added new ideas about ‘possession’ that her novel should contain. There would be ‘relations between living and dead minds’; did the scholar ‘possess’ knowledge of the writer, or did the writer ‘possess’ the scholar’s imagination? This question determined that the story would take place in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Then she had the idea that the word ‘possession’ involved both ‘the daemonic and the economic’, so the book could include Victorian ideas about spiritualism, but also twentieth century realities about physical ownership of literary artefacts. ‘Possession’ has a sexual meaning suggesting male dominance; feminism of course had to play a part. Then there was the fascinating fact that the love letters of George Eliot had been buried with her, and there were now proposals to dig them up; something based on this would add a Gothic touch. And there were the letters between the poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning; much of the nineteenth century story would be told through such letters, and also poems. She wanted there to be a ‘detective’ element, so the twentieth century characters would be trying to find out about the nineteenth century ones. Byatt believes that ‘the pleasure of fiction is narrative discovery’, so the book must tell a compelling story. And ‘It should learn from my childhood obsession, Georgette Heyer, to be a Romance’.
The book is sometimes called a ‘pastiche’; it contains a mixture of ordinary modern narrative, mostly from Roland’s point of view, nineteenth century style narrative, letters, journal entries, a fairy story, poetry and chunks of feminist literary criticism and theory. The story provokes questions such as when is a writer copying, when is it legitimate for an author to step outside the story, and even what is the nature of fiction? Ash’s poetry is an interesting example of the role of the writer. The poetry is a copy of the style of Robert Browning. Byatt initially agonised over her ability to copy effectively. When she began writing it, she says ‘I found I was possessed – it was actually quite frightening – the nineteenth-century poems that were not nineteenth-century poems wrote themselves, hardly blotted, fitting into the metaphorical structure of my novel, but not mine, as my prose is mine’. La Motte’s poetry is modelled on that of Christina Rossetti – though more ‘fierce’ than her’s. Some people don’t read the poems, and the story can be followed without them. Byatt’s American publisher initially suggested that they be abridged for the American edition, but they weren’t, and American readers don’t seem to have minded. Most readers feel the poems, and all the other different forms and the questions they raise, add to the pleasure of the book.
One of the times when the author intrudes into the story is in a Postscript. This tells the reader something about the nineteenth century lovers’ situation that the researchers never found out, and makes for a happier ending to their story – at least from Ash’s perspective. Some commentators don’t like this; they say it is unrealistic, possibly even meant to be a fantasy of Ash’s in his last illness. Others say it is a forced ‘happy’ ending, just because romances have to have happy endings. But Byatt makes it clear that she intended to let the reader into a secret at the end; ‘There is a nice irony about this’ she says; ‘- the writer and reader share what the critics and scholars cannot discover’.
Sometimes Byatt’s fascination with ideas can be a bit overpowering, but I don’t think this is the case here. Possession is a deeply satisfying story, and a most worthy winner of the Booker Prize for 1990.
A film has been made of the book, in which, unaccountably, Roland has been made an American researcher. Despite its good cast, (Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle), the film disappointed. But see it anyway.
Here are AS Byatt’s own comments on Possession:
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[…] an element of the Gothic. The first well-known one, and in my opinion probably the best, was Possession, by A.S. Byatt. I’ve recently reviewed two by John Harwood – The Ghost Writer and The Séance, […]
[…] this, I was reminded of A.S. Byatt’s treatment of spiritualism in Possession, where it is an acceptable social practice, particularly among middle class women. Many people […]
[…] beings’ from two inert lumps of wood , Ask and Embla, which they found on a beach. (Lovers of Possession will remember the fragments of Randolph Ash’s beautiful poems ‘Ragnarök’ and ‘Ask to […]