WHY does this book sound so familiar? Has there been something else written similar to this? I just borrowed it from our local library and look forward to starting it soon. At this point, I am "into" Pears On A Willow Tree." See you in a few days.

Welcome ALF - and all others - to the discussion of this beautiful book. AS Byatt is a personal favorite of mine, so I was thrilled to have her Booker prize winner chosen as our selection.

I have posted a schedule up above. It is slow but sure; we can adjust if it's too slow. This is a book packed with things to discuss, so I hope a slow pace will work.

The book is available at all libraries, I'm sure, and in paperback. Would folks that intend to join in (or just read along with us) let me know you're out there?

See you on the 10th.

ALF - I don't know the answer to your question, but I suspect one of our brilliant posters will!

SarahT - I've got a copy and am looking forward to the discussion. It will be fine for me to have the pace be slow. That way we can savor the experience.

The "Additional Comments and Reviews" above dosen't work - can someone please fix it? I read this book about 7 years ago and loved it but it was slow going, at least for me. Maybe I'll join you and read it again.

Judy - the Additional Comments worked for me. Perhaps your browser is set up not to accept cookies? The link is to a Barnes & Noble site, and you may have to accept the cookies for that site; I'm not sure.

It's a bit slow, so be patient with it!

Let me know if you still have trouble.

I cannot access the additional comments either on my computer. An HTTP error comes up each time and specifies that due to a malformed syntax (what ever the hell that means) the request can not be understood. I have NO clue. I"m happy to see that there will be a few joining our discussion group, starting on the 10th. This is the greatest find yet , for me. Thank you again.

I'll have to get a copy and join the discussion again. Hope there are no storms and I loose my copy again as I did when Floyd came through. Have never heard of this book but am still looking forward to the discussion.

Hi there -

Just received the book from B&N.(haven't even had a chance to read the cover!

I look forward to starting the first chapters this weekend.

CU online then.

Louise

ALF and Judy - tell me what browser you use. I'll check with someone more expert than I on computer issues, and will try to fix the problem.

Welcome to you, and to Louise, and welcome back southcoast. So glad to have you here. Tell us a little about your experience (if any) with AS Byatt (if you'd like).

Anyone else thinking of joining in?

Probably, Sarah. I've had the book in my to-read pile a while and really do want to get started. Time may be a little on the short side, though, so all I can give you now is a "hope I can" answer.

Wonderful, readerdoc. Even if you can only read along with us, we'd love your participation.

Anyone else?

Sarah: The browser that I use is Netscape Navigator. I just started the 1st few pages of this book and hope that it isn't too "cerebral" for me. I am going to read along and give it a shot.

I checked the links this morning and found the one from the "Buy the Book" was incorrect. Have no idea how I came up with it. I also checked the "Additional Comments and Reviews" link and it is working properly. Sometimes you will get the HTTP error is the site is either not available or overloaded. Servers, like the one Barnes and Noble uses, can handle only so many hits at a time. Sarah, you may be correct on the cookies having to be accepted, but think you would be able to not accept it and still get to the site. I gave up a long time ago of not automatically accepting cookies from sites as it was just too annoying and they don't hurt anything. You can always delete your cookie folder if you want but it is reestablished the next time a cookie is sent if you accept cookies.

Larry

Link is working fine for me on this Thursday afternoon. AO 4.0 & IE

What a challenging novel to read. Am fascinated even though it is going to be slow going. I have been gathered up into it...then put it down...and again a few more pages. Wonderful descriptive talent.

---Marj

Two days to go until we begin our discussion. As you can see from the reading schedule, we'll read Chapters 1-3 during our first week of discussion. I found too that it was slow reading (I read it a few years ago), but that it grew on you as you went along.

Any other participants?

Anyone still having trouble with the links?

I have started reading this week. Find I am going slowly. Hope it will grow on me. Am looking forward to the discussion and what others have to say.

Sunday morning.... Good schedule Sarah.

....I am fascinated, the vocab is a challenge; try to get the gist of words from the context...do have some circles to dictionary-ize.

For a start: The scholarly persons, such as Roland, devoting their lives to study of literary characters , must in true life, also become so involved and overtaken. As the quote from Ash on p.12, "A man is the history of his breaths, and thoughts,........" so seems Roland is becoming.

---Marj

I found dear Roland extremly dull and borish, not unlike Ash. I had to reread the 1st chapter as my mind wandered away from the prose, when I began. Like Roland, tho, the library is my favorite place and I tried to LIKE him on that premise, at least. On the rereading, I enjoyed the 1st paragraph, " the book had been EXHUMED" from the locked safe." It seems as if Roland and Ash need a little revitalizing also. Why was he so interested in Ash? Why did he take pleasure in reading the sentences that Ash had read, touched with his fingers, etc? Did the adoration spring from the fact Ash liked his characters "over the edge of madness, or the fact that he wasn't lively either, living in his unruffled existance? Was this a form of vicarious living? He's SO passive and as the author points out, his silence is a form of AGRESSION. HE HAS NO PASSION. I feel distaste for him already. Can anyone tell me what the word "juddering" wakefullness means? I can't even find the word in my dictionary? How strange! What a concept. He thought of himself as an application form . How sad that his mothers wrath was the instrument of his great education and yet he still see himself as a failure.

Loved reading your post, ALF. Maybe it is like "birds of a feather" - Roland and Ash

Judder is in my AOL dictionary and not in my book dict.

...jud*der [1] (verb intransitive) [probably alteration of shudder] First appeared 1931 chiefly British : to vibrate with intensity <the engine stalled and kept ~ing --Roy Spicer>

-Marj

I am also finding this slow going. I read the first chapter and found myself trying to hurry; just trying to move my eyes over the page without really getting much out. So, I'll read it again.

I am also hoping to join this discussion but I have a teething baby, so I can't predict what will happen.

Hope to have something to actually contribute next post!

Welcome to the discussion of this wonderful, difficult, mysterious book. Sorry I wasn't here yesterday - modem kept kicking me off line.

ALF, MarjV, Ellen - keep the faith. I really think this book grows on you. I am reading it for the second time. The first time, I found it awfully difficult to jump into. This time, I was thoroughly engaged in the first chapter.

Lots of wonderful themes from the very beginning. ALF and MarjV - you point out the similarities between Roland and Ash. The Hawthorne poem before Ch. 1 also brings up the connection of the present and the past:

"The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romatic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us."

Roland feels this connection in the very first pages, as he walks through the dusty stacks of the London Library. I used to own a victorian house, and the sense of history was palpable. I remember waking up in the morning and wondering about the people who'd walked through the halls 100 years before.

The Browning poem is also provocative: "How many lies did it require to make the portly truth you here present us with?" Hmm. History as a process of "building solid fabric out of air."

There's academic intrigue: Blackadder in England vs. Cropper in New Mexico. And Roland's outrageous theft of the Ash letters to "Madam."

There's Roland's relationship with Val, and Roland himself. He and I are about the same age, so I can very much relate to his arriving "too late for things that were still in the air but vanished, the whole ferment and brightness and journeyings and youth of the 1960s, the blissful dawn of what he and his contemporaries saw as a pretty blank day." Anyone who came of age in the 1970s can relate to this feeling!!

Haven't quite figured Val out yet - but already I'm concerned for her. While at the beginning of their relationship "there had been poems she had liked" (including the gorgeous poem about Earth stirring in her winter sleep), later "when she argued, [she] offered [Roland] increasingly his own ideas." So the theme of a woman losing herself in a man is also present in these early pages.

And of course there's the great mystery - Madam. Who is she?

I found a wonderful web page about this book. It contains essays by Byatt, her bio, and lots of other good stuff:

http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/jwss.old/possession/

I found these interesting - and often obscure - questions in the publishers reading guide. We may never get to any of them, but I thought you might gain some insight from them (I have only reproduced 3 questions, as the others deal with later aspects of the novel):

1. What is the significance of the novel's title? Do you think it has more than one meaning? What does the concept of "possession" mean to the novel's various characters, both modern and Victorian? How can possession be seen as the theme of the book?

2. Ash is nicknamed "the Great Ventriloquist" but this sobriquet could as easily be applied to Byatt herself. Why does Byatt use poetry to give away so many clues to the story? Are the poems a necessary and integral part of the novel or would it have worked just as well without them? Do you find that the poems in the novel succeed in their own right as poetry?

3. All the characters' names are carefully chosen and layered with meaning. What is the significance behind the following names: Roland Michell, Beatrice Nest, Sir George Bailey, Randolph Ash, Maud Bailey, Christabel LaMotte, Fergus Wolff? (Clues to the last three may be found in the poetry by Tennyson, Yeats, and Coleridge cited below.) Do any other names in the novel seem to you to have special meanings? How do the names help define, or confuse, the relationships between the characters?

Byatt's interview actually reveals at least part of the answer to question 1. She states:

The beginning of Possession, and the first choice, was most unusually for me, the title. I thought of it in the British Library, watching that great Coleridge scholar, Kathleen Coburn, circumambulating the catalogue. I thought: she has given all her life to his thoughts, and then I thought: she has mediated his thoughts to me. And then I thought "Does he possess her, or does she possess him? There could be a novel called Possession about the relations between living and dead minds." This must have been in the late sixties. It was the time of the nouveau roman, of the novel as "text."

. . .     The next decisive choices came in the 1980s when I was teaching Browning and George Eliot, and also lecturing on Henry James and his father, Henry James senior, who had been a leading Swedenborgian. I had had the idea that the word "possession" involved both the daemonic and the economic- Kathleen Coburn had pulled off a notorious coup when she bought the Coleridge notebooks for Toronto. Reading the Browning letters made me see that "possession" had a primary sexual connotation, too. 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.

More food for thought . . . .

I was able to get a copy of this book at the library, (O wonder of wonders!) and I thought it looked really interesting. I must say, however, this is going to be some heavy reading--and already I'm forming a sort of antipathy to Roland, albeit his relationship with Val. This may change, however, once we sort out the who's who and go on. I will say it's beautifully written as far as vocabulary goes, but I can only hope it gets a little more interesting.

I feel like holing up and just reading all the references A.S. Byatt makes in this tome. Oh, to be so literate!

There's all kinds of interesting stuff on the Website. I'm glad you found it. I think that the essay on Byatt's use of colors is fascinating. I'm paying more attention to the colors, now, as I continue reading.

Ginny--don't you just love that word from Byatt's interview--circumambulating?

Barbara - she is frighteningly literate, isn't she? I think I told you that I met her here in San Francisco when she was on a book tour, and despite her impressive credentials, she was quite down to earth with the audience.

If you REALLY want to go crazy, here are some references the publisher recommends:

Poems that will enrich your understanding of Possession

Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," "My Last Duchess," "Porphyria's Lover," "Caliban Upon Setebos," "Bishop Blougram's Apology," "Mr. Sludge, the 'Medium'," "Andrea del Sarto," and "Fra Lippo Lippi"; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Christabel"; Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress," "The Garden"; Petrarch, Rime Sparse; Christina Rossetti, Poetical Works; Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Merlin and Vivien" from Idylls of the King, In Memoriam, "Maud," "Mariana," "The Lady of Shallott"; W.B. Yeats, The Rose.

Further reading on the Victorian period

Jerome H. Buckley, The Victorian Temper, 1951; Frank Kermode, Romantic Image, 1957; Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience, 1957; Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives, 1983; Lionel Stevenson, Darwin Among the Poets, 1932.

Suggestions for further reading

Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot; Anthony Burgess, Nothing Like the Sun; Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees and The Castle of Crossed Destinies; Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose; John Fowles, The Ebony Tower and The French Lieutenant's Woman; Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince and The Philosopher's Pupil.

Artemis - not sure Ginny's here, but hope she'll join us.

For those of you struggling to get into this book, I have a deep dark confession to make. When I first read this book, I skipped the poetry entirely!!! Didn't read a word of it. And I still "got" the book, enjoyed it, wanted to read it again. Now, I'm reading every word, slowly, and I really LOVE it.

My point? Don't feel you have to understand every reference - virtually no one does except perhaps other PhDs in English with long Oxford teaching careers. Don't even dwell on the poetry or the language if it bogs you down. The plot and story here are more than enough to sustain interest, I think.

Any comments on Roland's decision to steal the letters? Were you appalled? It felt as if he unearthed an ancient burial ground and stole the most precious artifacts before his colleagues got to see them.

Sarah--- even tho hard reading I do love it. And the references and quotes you've given are so helpful.

Found a page in the google search engine....http://www.google.com/search?q=a+byatt ; it has many sites.

Roland stealing the letters --- seemed part of his charachter. And he is "possessed" by his search. And his persona needs some boosting. Wasn't surprised.

The description of their apartment is wonderful What an old witchy character their landlady is...withholding entrance to the garden even for her pets. I laughed tho!!! Many thing to provoke laughter in this novel.

---Marj-----off to read the links.

Marj

Sarah--- even tho hard reading I do love it. And the references and quotes you've given are so helpful.

Found a page in the google search engine.... http://www.google.com/search?q=a+byatt ; it has many sites.

Roland stealing the letters --- seemed part of his character. And he is "possessed" by his search. And his persona needs some boosting. Wasn't surprised.

The description of their apartment is wonderful What an old witchy character their landlady is...withholding entrance to the garden even for her pets. I laughed tho!!! Many thing to provoke laughter in this novel.

-----off to read the links.

Interesting that it is the American character that is so competitive that stealing and hiding are his values - hmmm I wonder if this is hinting at Roland acting out the Ugly American theory - although in recent years, at least the last ten, Brits seem to have a love affair with Americans again. High Tech has sprinkled its wealth in England as much as it has changed the balance of wealth among the youth of America as well as, Britan.

Sarah, it was so interesting to hear the explanation of the title's relevance, and oh, how it fits. The two-way possession between subject and researcher. Keeping the word in mind to seek out other connections throughout the book provides one unifying factor.

I agree with all of you who find this intricate, literate writing a reading challenge. Here's something I do as a matter of course when I read almost anything---but I have to do it with challenging reading---I hear it being read--at a dramatically slow pace. Oh, I don't mean literally, by a tape. I mean a reader I "hear" who is performing this sentence, then the next one---sometimes with a British accent (try it with Dickens) but with careful, punchy diction. Sometimes, without meaning to, I end up being the "reader"--as if I have to get every last syllable pronounced clearly to someone who is listening. It works. Try it.

I don't remember when I started this but I think it was when I first started reading poetry and it was all running together until I started imagining "hearing" it read.

Betty

Sarah - Thank you, thank you, thank you! I really needed to hear your deep dark confession. The literary references are tough going for me. Now I feel I can relax a bit. Thanks

Readerdoc: in reference to your reading "method"...you would find it interesting to read in Sarah's reference site the article on the difference between our edition and the English edition...

I too like to "read aloud" passages in difficult books.

Also, the article there on the colours as used by Byatt enhances the reading. Thanks to Alf (I think) who mentioned it was included in that site.

--Marj

Betty - what a great suggestion! I've NEVER done anything remotely like that - how did you stumble upon that technique? Amazing. Do you find you picture the characters, the places, the scenes as you read? I find that if I attempt to do this, I lose myself in the story line much more easily.

No, that's not it, actually. It's unconscious - but once that unconscious habit "kicks in" and I'm really a part of the story, seeing the scene, hearing the characters' voices, seeing their surroundings, THEN I'm really lost in the book. It takes a quiet place to read, a nice stretch of time, and a comfortable seat!!

Before I move on to the actual BOOK (what a concept!), I wanted to confess my further embarassment at having IGNORED all of the poetry the first time round when I re-read the following question in the publishers' guide:

"2. Ash is nicknamed "the Great Ventriloquist" but this sobriquet could as easily be applied to Byatt herself. Why does Byatt use poetry to give away so many clues to the story? Are the poems a necessary and integral part of the novel or would it have worked just as well without them? Do you find that the poems in the novel succeed in their own right as poetry?"

Oh well. I guess THIS time the poems are at least an integral part of the novel - I'm really enjoying them - but maybe the novel works just as well without them.

Anyway . . . another thought. I am VERY troubled by Val in this book. I wonder if Byatt comes from an aristocratic background? Val clearly does not - she grew up in a "council flat" (i.e., housing project/public housing). Don't know Croydon - is it an industrial place? Anyway, I was bothered to hear that she gave up her studies to commence a series of "menial" (with emphasis on the word) jobs that required her to get sort of tarted up so she looked like someone a man might take to the Playboy club. Of all places.

There's a certain classism in this portrayal of Val, don't you think? She's smart, despite her background, but doesn't have the social skills to stand up on her own, and eventually just gives up and starts typing for a living.

Marj - thanks for the additional links. Folks, note that her links (post # 32) are now "clickable." Marj finds GREAT things in Google - a really good search engine (which I only learned of because of Marj's contributions here!!).

Barbara - how are you enjoying the book?

Marylou - ANYTHING to be of help!!

Ginny - are you out there?

ALF - Do you think Roland is "Possessed" by Ash? And if so, in which of the ways Byatt lists - for example, do you suspect the "posession" is sexual in some way? If only because of Ash's mystery "lover."

One more thing: I read this book a LONG time ago and remember VERY little of it - so don't worry that I'm going to give anything away or lead you down the garden path somehow. I honestly don't remember what happens next. My principal memories are sort of visual.

Haven't hit my stride yet Sarah - I will be here at my daughter's in SC till Sunday. I am relishing the constent literary references - I am having trouble seeing Roland as representative of Victorian Man dressed in 20th century mannerisms and yet when you think of the moguls of the ninteenth century maybe so - they were all depicted as ruthless and manipulators of men.

Green, green, green. It's everywhere in this book. I must go back and read those links Marjv tells us on color. Because I love the outdoors' green so much and at present am wondering how in the world I'm going to live without it if I leave Oregon, these green references are.....soothing, or something. Living, alive, inviting. I don't have the foggiest idea on symbol meaning, though---so must go read link.

Betty

Here's the essay, in case anyone's having trouble finding it:

+++++++++++

Color and Identity in A. S. Byatt’s Possession

by Stephen Dondershine

In Possession, A. S. Byatt speaks to the reader in a language of colors. Like a Pre-Raphaelite painter, she creates a setting rich in detail and texture—a world of prismatic images. Upon her canvas, colors flash with symphonic precision: lavender; crimson; jet; marine blue; peacock green; straw gold; plum. The pen-strokes from her palette are nimble, exacting, and articulate. She awakens the reader’s sensibility to the primacy of color within the landscape of the novel. Colors assume a conspicuous importance in Byatt’s writing: they capture personalities and essence; they express conflict and theme. Byatt’s colors are the sensual reiterations of her language — the novel projected into a rainbow. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to believe that Byatt’s use of color is in fact an attempt to create the literary equivalent of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. According to Raymond Watkinson in Pre-Raphaelite Art and Design, the Pre-Raphaelites' attainment of a new artistic sensibility was due most importantly to a "radical change brought about in responses to color":

One of the marks of the finest Pre-Raphaelite work was, and still is, the exciting and disturbing power of its colour — very much the least naturalistic aspect of the new painting. The painters of the Brotherhood, and their associates, went beyond the frank record of the green trees and grasses, the bright pure hues of flowers, and reintroduced into painting ranges and relations of colour unused in European art since the Middle Ages — an alarming array of blues, greens, violets, purples, used not simply because they were there to be painted, but chosen for their powerful emotional effect. It was not of course simply the colours, but their combination, that compelled and provoked these effects. (my italics,

Byatt utilizes color combinations to establish relationships between characters. Colors create a fluid stream of identity which connects characters separated by time and space. Like some universal mesmeric current, Byatt’s manipulation of colors unify the characters in the novel, revealing them to be the various protean manifestations of an elemental struggle between the sexes. In a sense, as in a painting, color in Possession is the essential substance of life: the pigments are the atoms of a canvas world.

In Possession, color is an integral facet of identity. Byatt paints with encomiums of color. The old woman in the Whitby box shop wears "a large apron covered with purple and grey florets, over a skinny black jumper." She has "a small hard, brown- skinned face under white hair drawn into a bun." Her eyes are "Viking blue" (280). Although Byatt further describes her in non-color diction, color dominates our initial impression. Indeed, the old woman seems almost made of color. Earlier, a sea-anemone is described as "the colour of a dark blood-blister" which lives "under a pitted ledge above a layer of glistering gritty sand, pink and gold and bluish and black" (274). Again, colors dominate the image. Even in passing metaphor, Byatt uses color to define: Christabel watches Ash like a "gold-eyed hawk" (303). This image is striking because of its color. Interestingly, Paola, Blackadder’s assistant — portrayed as "pale" and "colourless"— (31) is one of the flattest characters in the novel — a virtual non-entity. In her use of colors, the author reveals the essence of what she describes.

Although the entire work is vibrant with various colors, two predominant color schemes in Possession communicate the essential gender struggle which underlies the novel. Earth-tones — notably brown, gray, and black — are the quintessence of masculine power and identity. Vegetable tones — green and yellow (or sometimes gold), and white (sometimes silver) — are the quintessence of feminine power and identity. These two fundamental triads of color are imbued not only within the characters but within the very landscape of the novel.

The waterfall at Thompson Foss symbolically articulates the male limitation of female power exemplified in Byatt’s portrait of Victorian society and tested in the relationship between R.H. Ash and Christabel LaMotte. The terrain which configures the waterfall is characteristically engendered with color and form. Water — the female element—is guided, encircled and confined by earth (rocks) — the male element. Although there is an enormous precedent for these symbolic distinctions outside of the text, their validity can be determined purely on the basis of color-associations within Possession. The path to the Foss is surrounded by "boulders", and the water falls "amongst a naturally cavernous circle of rocks" (288). We know from the Melusina fragment which follows that this rocky cavern is "grey" (289). That the poem accurately describes these falls can be ascertained by Maud’s conviction that LaMotte "saw this. I’m sure she saw this" (289). If we have doubts, as Maud and Roland do, about the surety of the connection between scene and poem, we have no reason to doubt that Maud sees a correspondence between the physical details of these falls and the poem. In addition, much of the local ground consists of "that grey stone which to a northerner signifies reality" (263) or the jet-black stone famous in Whitby. And as that jet both contains and determines the form of the unmistakably feminine Yorkshire roses of Ellen Ash’s brooch (248), the grey stone of the foss encompasses the "the greenish-goldish-white rush" (289) of the waterfall.

Whereas masculine power is dead and confining — expressed in the subdued colors of the inanimate bones and dirt of the earth — feminine power is fertile and expansive — expressed in the vibrant colors of lush vegetation and the silvery ethereal milk of starlight. In the falls, contained female energy is "striving and moving upwards" towards freedom through any possible crack in the cage of rocks: "Wherever the refracted light off the water struck the uneven stone, wherever a fissure ran, upright or transverse, this same brightness poured and quivered along it, paleness instead of shadow, building a kind of visionary structure of non-existent fires and non-solid networks of thread inside it" (289). What seems a channeled enclosure of downcast water becomes a "fountain of cold fire" (290). This upward-rising and penetrating fire branches from a water once greenish and golden and whitish, but now as "startling white" as Maud’s fine pale hair in the "dusty" Whitby "light that took the colour out of things and caught only gleams and glancings" (282). The restless movement of feminine energy also manifests in Christabel’s mane—"so fine, so pale"—as it "shin[es] metallic in the" shadowy candlelight" (307) . Christabel’s hair glints within a cage of sexual entrapment while her feminine spark is winnowed into fiery "passion" by would-be-possession. Ash, attempting to claim her, "my selkie, my white lady," is engulfed in her flame; "it was like holding Proteus ... as though she was liquid moving through his grasping fingers, as though she was the waves of the sea rising all around him" (my italics, 308). As feminine fire streaks through their hair, identifying these women with the entrapped energy of the font, so the other predominant colors flow through characters and images in Possession, unifying a seemingly piecemeal novel. Whereas silver-white, representing a caged and thereby kindled feminine energy, is poignantly rare in Byatt’s images, green overbearingly dominates the feminine color-triad.

In Possession, green is the signature color of female identity. Maud Bailey is initially described in "green and white length, a long pine-green tunic over a pine-green skirt" and "long shining green shoes" (44). She drives an "immaculately glossy green Beetle" (44). Her beautiful long blond hair is coifed in "a green scarf" (283) pinned with a jet-black mermaid brooch. In a strikingly similar incarnation of colors, Christabel LaMotte is first portrayed as "very fair, pale-skinned, with eyes, not unduly large, of a strange green color which" elementally "transmuted itself as the light varied" (298). Her feet, akin to Maud’s, are "encased in a gleaming pair of laced boots in emerald green leather" (299). In studying Christabel’s hair, Ash notes that its "sleek silver-gold seemed to have in it a tinge, a hint of greenness, not the copper-green of decay, but the pale sap- green of vegetable life, streaked into the hair like the silvery bark of young trees, or green shadows in green tresses of young hay. And her eyes were green, glass-green, malachite green, the cloudy green of seawater perturbed and carrying a weight of sand" and even in Ash’s "imagination he always touched" her cheeks "with green too" (302). This final remark is possibly a Pre-Raphaelite flourish in Randolph’s mind and, ultimately, Byatt’s color scheme. Many of the Pre-Raphaelite painters tinged the female complexion with green. Ash himself even comments in a letter to his wife Ellen: "did you know that the old painters gave an ivory glow to a rich skin by painting on a green base — it is a paradox of optics, strange and delightful" (500). Perhaps he refers to the early Pre- Raphaelites? Perhaps Byatt is providing a clue to her own use of color? Such can not be determined. What can be determined is that the two women are linked together in appearance by the color green as ascertained by several narrators. As green associates the two women with one another, it also associates them both with feminine Nature — the green of the sea, the sap-green of plant life, and the golden yellow hue of the harvest.

In the opening pages of the novel, Roland recounts Ash’s description of Proserpina — a Goddess both "grain-golden" and "gold-skinned" (6). Ash equates her golden color to "apples of gold" meaning "ears of grain" "which must have been the first gold in the world while metallic gold was unknown" (6). Maud Bailey’s hair is blonde and metallic, a gold that might have existed before the discovery of precious metal: As she unbinds her mane "Roland saw the light rush towards it and glitter on it, the whirling mass, and Maud inside it saw a sea of gold lines, waving" (296). Although Christabel’s hair color (like Maud’s hair and the scintillating waters of the fountain) is metamorphic in hue, we have seen that it contains pale loops of silver-gold (301). The color therefore links these women, as does green, in reflecting an essential element of their feminine nature—fertility and vegetable growth; the life-force of earthly creation:

Mine the bright earth

Mine the corn

Mine the gold throne

To which you’re born

Lie in my lap

Tumbled with flowers

This is the song of the gold lady who wears a "queenly crown of gold, a filigree turret of lambent sunny gleams and glistering wires above crisping gold curls as heavy with riches as the golden fleece itself" (169). Based upon these parallels, we can conclude that in Possession, women’s wealth — their power and energy — lies in their hair.

Byatt uses colors to equate the parallel narratives of the R. H. Ash-Christabel LaMotte story and the Roland Michell-Maud Bailey story with a primal struggle between men and women. The cold fire fountain is to the Ash-LaMotte relationship what it is to the Michell-Bailey relationship: they are progressive, protean incarnations of the same conflict; they coherently reflect the theme of possession. Color is the link that binds them. The operations of engendered color in the fountain visually express the dynamic of Christabel’s relationship with Ash. Ash is described in the shadowy earth-tones and black of the masculine color-triad:

He was a handsome man, with a flowing head of very dark brown hair, almost black but with russet lights in its waves, and a glossy beard, a little browner, the colour of horse-chestnuts ... he had black brows, a little rough and craggy, under which very dark eyes looked out…the nose was clearcut and the mouth firm and settled.... (298)

His features are all hardness and rockiness, with the "lowering brow" of the rocks which encircle the fountain. His blacks and browns equate to the shadows within the font-cavern and the jet which both defines and contains the mermaid and Yorkshire-rose brooches. Although he is not here specifically described as grey, he leads Christabel into the grey reality of the northern rocks, the world of his Ragnarok poem, the ashen landscape of his imagination. Indeed, the poet’s greyness is refracted into the modern Ash-factory wherein Professor Blackadder — "a grey man, with a grey skin and iron-grey hair" — (34) spends his life consuming the charcoaled remains of the poet’s writings. Within the craggy realm of Yorkshire, Ash tries, unsuccessfully, to trap Christabel LaMotte — to make her his possession. Yet, like the fountain, she cannot be contained.

Colors reiterate the conflict of the of the cold fire font in the relationship between Roland Michell and Maud Bailey. In the twentieth century, however, the dynamic is inverted by the concept of the "liberated" woman. Roland and Maud’s journey to Yorkshire clearly parallels the clandestine sojourn of Ash and LaMotte. But Roland never attempts to entrap Maud. Instead, in the role of modern feminist — a role which subsumes traditionally masculine characteristics — Maud, in her desire to be a feminist, confines herself. Her hair is fully blonde and ripe, a flourishing "sea" (296) of feminine power (unlike Christabel’s flax which is gold silvered with cold fire). Maud conceals her glorious hair — "a kind of captive creature" (296) —in a peacock green scarf pinned with the Whitby-jet mermaid brooch. Paradoxically, one color of her feminine nature enshrouds another color essential to her femininity. And yet what pins and binds this denial is black—the most ominous color in the masculine triad. Black is the signature of Mortimer Cropper, himself a refraction of Ash’s black, "greedy," obsessive desire for "information, for facts, for details" (301). The conflict for Maud and Christabel, expressed in color, stems from their liminality.

Christabel struggles for masculine freedom in a socially repressive predominantly masculine environment. Maud struggles to accept her femininity in an academic environment wherein her beauty and sensitivity make her vulnerable. And yet, Maud is certainly more natural than a character like Leonora Stern who attempts to veil her own imbalanced gender-identity:

Leonora was a majestically large woman…all covered with orange and gold sunbursts or flowers. She had an olive skin, with a polished sheen on it…and a mass of thick black, waving hair, worn shoulder-length and alive with natural oils…Round her head was a yellow silk bandeau.... (336)

Leonora covers her burly mass with feminine gold and flowers. Her skin, unlike the ivory of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, is swarthy olive. And, most importantly, her gorgonian hair is thick and black—masculine according to Byatt’s language of colors. Leonora tries to hide this hair, a symbol of her masculine character, with artificially feminine yellow. Judging her colors, Leonora represents the cost of blindly and vindictively questing for absolute equality in a male-dominated world: she has lost her feminine identity. Her brand of militant feminism threatens truly feminine nature—green and golden and silvery-white—with prohibitions as restricting as any male repression. Maud’s confinement, therefore, although seemingly self-imposed, stems from the encompassing demands, the denial of femininity, associated with being a New Woman. Ironically, neither Maud nor Christabel acquire the freedom they seek in the course of Possession. Byatt’s makes no attempt to resolve the conflict of the fountain. Instead, she paints portraits which focus upon the struggle itself.

In the struggle between Ash and LaMotte, the balance of power is traced in a transfer and diminution of color. Emerging from their love-nest, Christabel seems partially possessed by Randolph, immersed in the rock of her lover’s northern world, swathed in Ash-grey: this "stone was a peculiar gunmetal slate, striated and flaking, dull with no sheen…the layers of grey were full of the regularly rippled rounds…her grey dress…blended almost into the grey of the stone" (311). Her female colors have vanished into Ashes. Indeed, Ash seems permanently and vampirically to drain Christabel. In the later painting of Ash by Watts, the poet seems invigorated with feminine colors and characteristics. His "eyes" are "large and gleaming" and his "beard" has become "a riverful of silvers and creams, whites and blue-greys, channels and forks…the apparent source of life" (21). His hair has acquired the silvery-white watery qualities formerly found in Christabel’s mane. And, even after fleeing Ash’s side, Christabel’s colors are permanently darkened by her affair with Ash. In stark contrast to her former attire, she arrives in Brittany wearing "a dark-checked woollen dress, black and grey" (372). She still wears green, yet a "dark green" with "black trim" (372). Her boots, likewise, are still "green" but she bears a "jet cross" about her neck. Her hair "is a strange color, silvery-fair, almost metallic in its sheen, a little like winter butter made from milk from cows fed on sunless hay, the gold bleached out" (372). She has clearly been tainted by her immersion in the masculine world, and the transformation of her colors indicate her scarred, fallen status.

Byatt communicates in color. Her self-conscious use of certain color schemes, notably the two triads I have mentioned, indicate a pattern of connections between characters and images. I have argued that the pattern indicates a relationship of continuous identity between the parallel narratives and the physical landscape of the novel. A full exploration of the significance of color in Possession would be a Herculean task outside the scope of this paper. What of Beatrice Nest’s and Blanche Glover’s whiteness? What of Val’s yellows and blues? What of Roland’s blacks and browns? I believe I have implied answers to some of these questions, but cannot evidence them fully. Certainly there are counter-arguments to my interpretation. Byatt’s inclusion of other colors such as red and purple in many encomiums seem to refute the neatness of my plan. In addition, why do I start with the fountain as the standard for defining colors? I have done so because it resonates with symbolic significance and consists in the "material reality" of the novel’s world. Of further concern is the potential for discrepancy posed by multiple narrative points of view. How do we know that the descriptions in the novel are not reflective of the narrator as opposed to the character described? We do not know. But I would counter that there is remarkable consistency in the color-schemes ascribed to major characters even between narrators. Lastly, given Byatt’s knowledge of Art History, why can we not attribute the preponderance of colors in Possession to a simple, random affinity for color? I reply, because she is an historian of art:

Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. (456)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Works consulted

Watkinson, Raymond. Pre-Raphaelite Art and Design. Greenwich, CT: NY Graphic Society, 1970. I read the Forward in this book to briefly familiarize myself with the Pre-Raphaelite style.

Wildman, Stephen. Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection, England. Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 1995. Convinced that I would find Byatt's prominent color-schemes largely founded in Pre-Raphaelite painting, I searched this book for visual evidence to support my thesis. Indeed, as represented in this text, many paintings do contain luscious greens and lustrous golds, pink and ivory feminine complexions, grey, black , and brown rocks and crags, royal purples, ostentatious yellows, and slashes of scarlet. However, as all of these colors are themselves founded in nature and fair-game to artist's from every time-period. Although I found myself sorely-tempted to adduce these paintings as evidence in support of my own theory, I realized that my observations were probably proscriptive and based upon an ignorance of Victorian artistic conventions. I have therefore de-emphasized the Pre-Raphaelite connection in my paper using it merely as a suggestive hook in my introduction. One note: there is no question that greens frequently appear as a base or highlight in female complexions. Green is a conspicuous color in both the complexion, hair and attire of Christabel LaMotte's various incarnations. As I mention in my paper, this similarity would be a strong starting-point for further, more comprehensive investigation of the connection between Pre-Raphaelite style and Byatt's imagery in Possession.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Dondershine is currently a graduate student in the English department at San Jose State University. This essay is based on paper he wrote for an Engl 256: Twentieth Century British Literature seminar in the fall of 1997.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ © 1998 Stephen Dondershine. All rights reserved.

Did any of you see the film adaptation of Byatt's Angels and Insects? That too was so vividly colorful. Really stunning.

Sarah - thank you for printing all that - it was so beautifully written that in not only added understanding to Possession but it was an essay in it's own right that was just glorious to read. Now I want to read everything Byatt wrote.

This so spooky how I am reading with y'all a book made richer by an author's art background and this morning my daughter spent and hour and half with the 3rd and 4th graders in my grandboy's school helping them learn about texture and creating collages as it relates to the book they are currently reading. The solving of conflict between the children as they chose their group expression and the collages all further explored the story that included conflict and verbal association to feelings, that the children could interpret as texture. Prickly feelings made visable by a rubbing of tree bark etc.

Barbara....I like reading about your daughter's experience with the children. Thanks.

"Angels and Insects" is on video. Fantastic. So rich in color and symbolism. Watched it several years ago and as I write I can see some of the scenes. Didn't realize Byatt was the author for that book until now.

---Marj

Wow, what a discussion, what an assemblage, I'm here, but have not read the book, been frantic elsewhere but it sure looks fabulous and so do the "discussants," (is that a word)?

Artemis, hahahah, yes, that does sound like terminology right up our alley, is the rest of the book like that?? hahahahaa I must find the book and try to start, am not very good with difficult reading tho, think this discussion is truly in the best hands, you are all going to get a world out of this one and everybody's talking about it.

Ginny

...such a dullsville person. No wonder he is possessed by this search. I think as a character he wants to experience the sensuality and hints of life that are missing from his journey...at least thus far in our reading calendar...

--off to read chap 4 & 5---I am reading ahead and then coming back to reread .... that way I am finding what I miss the first time and it is much richer.

--Marj

We are now into Chapters 4 and 5. We meet Maud Bailey, the Christabel (interesting name) LaMotte scholar. I was instantly puzzled by her - and especially by Roland's reaction to her. First, he's annoyed that she sent him just a curt postcard telling to take the train to Lincoln. After he meets her, he immediately is put off by her: he "consider[s] the pale incisive mouth with a kind of hopelessness," and "wishe[d] he had not come."

But then, oddly, he confesses to her his discovery of the letters - and even his theft of the originals!!! Why would he do this? Just trying to impress her?

We also meet Blanche Glover (another interesting name; sounds like "white glove"). The first shock is that she was "unfortunately drowned in the Thames in 1861." (Isn't this also how Virginia Woolf died - a suicide?)

Given the Byatt quotes I inserted earlier, I suspect the Glover/LaMotte relationship is a lesbian one. Do you?

Then we have Glover's diaries of the letters Christabel begins to receive, and then the Prowler. Any ideas who this is? Is Ash the Prowler? Is there actually a Prowler at all - or just someone pressing in on Blanche and Christabel's life together.

There is something in Blanche's sense of worthlessness that reminds me of Val. Blanche recalls her previous existence with "an allowed place at the extreme corner of someone's drawing-room carpet, a Servant's garret or no better." Val, similarly, wallows in her menial work.

The use of color persists. With Maud, all is green, from her pine-green tunic and skirt to long shining green shoes. She drives a glossy green Beetle. Her copy of LaMotte's Tales for Innocents is in scuffed green leather; her guest bed holds pillows in emerald green cotton cases. Her bathroom is a "chill green glassy place," with green thick glass shelves, green-trellised towels.

Those of you who know color and its meanings (Barbara, are you out there?), what is the significance of all of this?

Back to the theme of "possession." Each of the characters we've met so far is possessed in at least one of the ways Byatt refers to.

Roland is possessed by his study of Ash.

Blackadder (another truly strange name) is as well; indeed, he is even more far gone than Roland: "There were times when Blackadder allowed himself to see clearly that he would end his working life, that was to say his conscious thinking life, in this task, that all his thoughts would have been antoher mans's thoughts, all his work another man's work."

That's actually kind of sad.

Maud Bailey is possessed by her study of Christabel LaMotte.

Blanche Glover is possessed by her love for Christabel.

Ash, we are now learning, is possessed by Christabel as well.

None of these characters seems particularly healthy emotionally - except perhaps Christabel herself.

I was going to remark that Byatt was cynical about feminism in general (and "women's studies" in particular) because of her description of the Christabel LaMotte scholars as not liking men (and of these as mostly being American). Then I caught this quote by Byatt in one of the links posted above:

"Of course I am a feminist. But I don't want to be required to write to a feminist programme, and I feel uneasy when this seems to be asked of me. I am a bit too old to be a naturally political animal."

Quote or no quote from Byatt, she's cynical all right. What extreme and off-putting pictures she paints of what she must think of as feminists. No wonder she bristles at questions of being one. Where is the warmth and connectedness and rally-cry for acceptance of men's and women's wholeness, without false limitations? No wonder these same old stereotypes continue to thrive.

Oh but, look when this book was written and published - we are coming along so quickly that as far as feminine issues this book is really dated.

Cristabel, of course, is the title of one of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poems. I'm not sure how this pertains to the book, am always interested in why authors title characters certain names.

Here's something from a major Coleridge site: "Coleridge was quite surprised at his ability to finish a work of this superior quality and magnitude, and this achievement bolstered his confidence which allowed him to compose three of his most famous poems in the wake of "Ancient Mariner." These poems were "Cristabel," "Kubla Khan," and "Frost at Midnight" (Bate 65). Unfortunately, "Cristabel" and "Kubla Khan," like many of Coleridge's poems, are only fragments. Coleridge's complete visions, images, and ideas were never committed to paper. "Cristabel," started directly after "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," is a narrative on the subject of medieval times, and "Kubla Khan" is most likely Coleridge's interpretation of a few lines of Purchas's Pilgrimage, by Samuel Purchas, which he happened to be reading during an opium dream (Bate 76).

Here's the poem itself, pretty long for just a fragment: Cristabel .

Does the book explain the literary references?

Ginny

Ginny - thanks for explaining the reference. No, the book does not link the names to their literary namesakes, and I don't know Coleridge's work so I never would have made the connection. Any other references you can pick up on would be most welcome. (Welcome to you, by the way.)

Readerdoc and Barbara - the book isn't THAT old!! (9 years). And the cause of feminism is regressing, not progressing, in my view. You're right that Byatt is a bit of crusty cynic, but I'm curious, especially for you, readerdoc, why you feel this so strongly.

Have we lost everyone else? Is anyone liking this book? I really like it a lot, but I find it defies discussion in a way that more "straightforward" books do not. The plot line is relatively simple, and it's the internal struggles, the parallels to the past, the "possession" each character feels with another person, that are most at work in the novel.

Sarah, it is lovely to have a legion of posters but this is not one of your easy throw off in a night read. The story line is heaped in so much literary detail and scholastic competition it all provides for me a slower read. There is almost a darkness, an interior something, that reminds me so of the chosen cover graphic. Sarah for this read rather then a legion you may just have a cadre that will be in training together.

I'm curious without digressing to much - how do you and Readerdoc see feminism regressing in the last 9 years? I know State legislators have been chipping away at Roe vs. but I see the work place less a mine field of harrasment and woman's incomes have been increasing so that I find more young woman now able to qualify for a home loan.

Ginny, thanks for the Link - the poem Christabel is beautiful - I've always wanted to read the Kubla Khan and I have this precious video that I'm saving for my grandboys of the Ancient Mariner

Once again, all I wish as I read Possession is that I could play like Joseph Campbell and hole up for a year with nothing to do but read and fill notebooks with questions and understandings as a result of this seclusion. Possession has Possessed me.

Sarah....well, I had to stop and think on your question. I think I'm able to view books/authors who present strictly traditional gender roles with much more patience than books/authors who slide into a characterization of contemporary (changed) women as narrow, one-dimentional, strident man-haters. Those pinched face women. Or a portion of that. I begin to hear the old complaints in the language of the 1950's and '60's. "See what happens when women stop being good mothers?" "See what happens when you let women take all those jobs away from men?" "Most womens libbers are lesbians, you know." (Hey, those sound so dated, don't they! Cool.)

I'm afraid I read this book's narrow descriptions of (only some) women as defensive. (Traditional role being defended.) So, when I read the author's quote that rang with defensiveness, it confirmed for me the author's radical perspective of (some) contemporary women.

What's odd (for me), however, is that my enjoyment of the book hasn't diminished. From long practice of assuming ignorance or disinterest on the part of an author, I can note what I think of as faulty characterizations and move on, enjoying the author's talent in other things. Let's face it, there is much wonderful literature whose era or characters or plot don't involve contemporary women (and men), and even some that do whose authors have made such obvious attempts to "get it right"---even if it doesn't quite make it. If I limited myself to Virginia Woolf or Amanda Cross mysteries (literary mysteries by real name Carolyn Heilbrun) or Jane Smiley and her contemporaries, well, I just can't, that's all. I felt like a little girl, saying that.

Ambivalence is a given when, after spending half my adult years with a research interest in gender issues, my participation in any literary gathering is always a balancing act. Balancing sheer enjoyment of reading with knowing when to allow myself to feel frustration with an author or a book, or very, very rarely, another reader. What's so wonderful about SeniorNet book groups is that I'm rarely alone in an observation. So, I get to selfishly read on, feeling less inclined to get myself and others sidetracked on issues that can drain away energy from the discussion. (Even though...and I'm grinning as I think this...I'll bet some readers here must think that's all I do. Oh, if they only knew. I can't comment on everything I notice, or I'd drive myself crazy.)

I am with Barbara...possesed by this book...I find my self thinking about it at the strangest times....or looking at more of the greens as our trees are changing here.

Readerdoc...we could each of us write a book on issues just from these two current chapters!!!

Anyone want to comment on the tale at the end of chap 4.... why it was included. Mostly irritated me to read it thru.

Absolutely loved the description of Christabel's room, the furniture and especially the dolls. The poem Maud recited spurred my imagination the first time...started me as well. The room is a very mysterious and vivid scene.

And in the letter ... where Christabel describes herself as a spider. Very eerie feeling there even tho she calls herself the fat and self-satisfied spider. I wonder if we shall come upon the spider poem she sent to Ash????? I do like spiders and webs. They spin to catch their prey..and are not very nice about munching on them. Did she spin a web for Ash???

I certainly think there was a lesbian rel. between Blanche and C.

---Marj

MarjV - I was sort of charmed by the little fairy tale at the end of Chapter 4. I don't know why it was there, though. Although the poem at the very beginning of Chapter 5 - by Ash this time - is somewhat reminiscent of the LaMotte fairy tale in its title ("The Incarcerated Sorceress" - sort of like the princess incarcerated in the glass coffin). Evidence, perhaps, of similar themes in the work of both writers - and of their secret relationship.

Maybe LaMotte was trapped in a glass coffin by Blanche, the "black artist" and Ash was the little tailor who came and rescued her.

I must say I love the use of language in the tale, especially the animal references (I am a true animal lover):

"In a rocking chair stood a brilliantly coloured cockerel and his pure white wife. In the fire-corner stood a black-and-white goat, with knobby little horns and eyes like yellow glass, and on the hearth lay a very large cat, a multi-colored, mazy-patterned brindled cat, that looked up at the little tailor with eyes like cold green jewels, with black slits for pupils. And behind the dining table was a delicate dun cow, with milky breath and a warm wet nose and enormous soft brown eyes."

She so captures the essence of these animals, it makes me smile with delight to read this.

I also especially love the fairy tale's reference to the "tall grey hound with the saddest face I have ever seen on any creature."

On the feminism issue, readerdoc and Barbara:

Barbara, I think feminism is seen as a dirty word these days. Younger women see the fight as unnecessary. I don't see much progress for women being made in the board room, or in the partnership ranks of large law firms, or in politics - the "year of the woman" was many many years ago, what was it 1992??

I also have to agree with you, readerdoc, on the generally negative way in which Byatt draws the female characters in this book. Val as sloppy, unambitious shrew; Glover as clingy, obsessed lover without a live of her own; Maud as cold fish; Lady Bailey as flighty old lady; LaMotte as repressed, mediocre writer.

But are the male characters any stronger in this story?

On another issue:

I have trouble with the ethical issue that arises in Chapter 5. Roland and Maud discover Christbel's hidden correspondence with Ash. Clearly, she did not intend for these to see the light of day - or maybe she did? Given the publication and sale earlier this year of the JD Salinger letters by Joyce Maynard (their recipient) and other similar events, this issue is very timely.

When is it appropriate to publish (or even READ) an artist's most private papers? Would you want your private correspondence opened for all to see (she asks rhetorically)? I am struggling with this in my own life as I have just discovered my father's journals, which I wasn't even aware he kept.

How are you finding the discussion schedule? Is it too slow? Just right? Too fast? Help here, please

ALF, marylou, Lorrie, Artemis, Ellen - where are you? Have you given up on this book? I REALLY believe it gets easier as you get used to it!

There is this amazing list of annotations to virtually everything in the book - including many of the literary references, the obscure words, the latinisms, etc, here (it's even alphabetized!):

http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/jwss.old/possession/fr-annot.html

On the topic of skipping all of the poetry, fables, literary references etc etc (as I did a lot of when I first read the book), note AS Byatt's own thoughts on the matter:

Byatt's following statements on the production history of the novel demonstrate:

When the [American (HN)] editor first proposed to buy Possession she told me that the book would have to be very heavily cut for the American market - "You have spoiled a fine intrigue with extraneous matter" "most of the correspondence, journals etc will have to go" "there must be few poems and those there are short." [...] I said this was unacceptable, and she said she wd edit 100 pages and send them to me [...] I waited for several months and then the 100 pp came. She had decided that Roland was not "sexy" or sympathetic enough to appeal to "our American audience" and that I was to amend the descriptions of him. The whole project made me quite ill. At this point however it became clear that the book was selling in Britain, and then it won the Booker Prize. So I told my agent we wd find a publisher in the USA who would publish what I had written, and the editor sent a fax saying that I could have my book as I wished, though she did not think it wd sell. She insisted on retaining the one concession - the description of Roland25 - I had made, and also insisted on changing the line ordering and paragraphing, which she said was "eccentric". [...] There were attempts to substitute American words for English ones - paper route for paper round, which I resisted, and something or other for radiogram, wch I may have accepted, as radiogram means something quite different in American.26 She proposed sex between Maud and Roland where I had avoided it, and kept writing in the margin "You have missed a great opportunity for a climax!!!" (Byatt 1996; her elisions)

I agreed to expand on Roland's thoughts27 as an act of self-destructive desperation, not because I thought it improved things - I thought it was redundant and nonsensical - but because I am naturally good mannered and it was the only one of the editorial suggestions I felt even partly capable of accepting. That was one of the places (as I remember) where the editor had made the comment that I had missed a good opporunity for a climax, which I don't think she even saw was ambiguous or funny. (Byatt 1997)

They printed ca 7000 and sold ca 110000, largely because readers liked the book, wch makes it into a kind of editorial fairy story. In defence of the editor, it must be said that she was the only one prepared to take on the book at all in the US. [...] I am sure the quotes are more or less exact - they are burned on my memory. (Byatt 1996)

Sarah...I must say when I read thru the prose that you have quoted from regarding the American edition...I was quite disgusted with the American editor...I would always want to read the book as written...how in the world can you really get into an author if they edit like that.

And #2, I was surprised. I have always assumed that translations were edited. But not books originally written in the English language. Good for Byatt.

As to her character descriptions...later on when Byatt gets to Ash's grandmother...she is fascination and appealing...at least as far as I've read ahead. Who knows where all that will go.

---Marj

Have sort of caught up, at least thru Chapter 5 and will try to get the new section today. We had delightful weekend guests, nearly burned the house down with incendiary blaze and generally ran around like chickens with heads severed but a great time on the farm.

Last night I sat down with a nice normal fire and read the first five chapters, now I have to read all your comments, have only read the last 12, am very impressed with your posts!!

Jeepers, so many dilemmas here.

The prose is very difficult to read, isn't it? I marked one passage so full of capital letters it looks like a list, read the sentence aloud to houseguests and they said it WAS a list. What IS it about capital letters which stop you in your tracks? Clumsy prose.

The poetry is awful, just awful, to me. Any doubts I might have that Ash was real were totally dissolved (watch him be REAL). There's, I know, an ASHBERY, Joan Lawrence but he dates from 1927 and wrote obscure, demanding verse.

I can't decide if the entire book is a conceit, a fairy tale or a genuinely exciting piece.

I find myself irritated to death by some inconsistencies: Roland (note the name, Guys) goes to the library and the librarian, wihtout even asking for his credentials takes him to secret and precious files long unopened. We know this because after ascertaining his credentials the librarian leaves him alone with them. Thus his theft. When was this supposedly written, I'm sure it could not happen today, what's the time line of the Roland story?

I understand the theft stuff is quite common and would be surprised any librarian would allow anybody to stay alone with uncatalogued treasures.

---

But the premise is exciting, and the coincidence of finding the couple out in the wilds too too, I thought.

---

I like the parallel stories, and unlike a lot of you I understand Roland, a man of the mind only, devoid of feeling and emotion except when it comes to scholarship. I thought Byatt did a good job of indicating why he was that way. He's remarkably insensitive to Val, whose scholarship was ridiculed, and who has to pay the bills with horrendous associations, I thought. But that's some academics, makes you wonder why people find that type attractive, but many do. I myself once thought such a person might be everything one could wish for, good thing I grew up.

---

The "fairy tale," is badly told, in my opinion, perhaps deliberately.??? After all, this is supposed to be an obscure writer.

---

Am vaguely disappointed in the lack of literary reference, true literary reference, so far we've got Proserpina and Arachne, and a huge list of authors, and works which do not pertain, so far as I can see, to the plot or characters, or has Byatt made more of a puzzle of this than I can see?

Will have to reread your posts to see if you all did the Proserpina and Arachne stuff, not essential by any means, I find that annoying this morning.

---

The end of Chapter Four? What was it about that that disappointed except that it was badly told, but it was poor from the outset. Did you feel it was anticlimactic?

---

I do like ending the first section with Chapter 5, that's good thinking, Sarah, well done there! Of course Roland is not going to be totally honest (tho he went further with Sir George than I thought he might) after his filtching of the letters. That whole thing was too drawn out to be plausible. Just happened to be untouched since 1929 or whenever, how lucky for our two researchers.

On the one hand you really can get caught up in the romance of it and I like that, a romantic journey, almost a Herculean adventure or fairy tale itself, I must reread the Chanson de Roland and see what he actually DID.

On the other hand, it's a zoo of literature and if it's not handled well, it's going to be a three ring circus, am actually quite excited to see what Byatt makes of it.

---

I notice, by the way, a tendency for the Victorian authors to capitalize every other word or key words in sentences. Remember GOODBYE COLUMBUS where the progagonist makes fun of his girlfriend's father's writing, every other word capitalized (an unschooled man). Isn't it interesting that perhaps that tendency has roots in possible Victorian expression? Do any of you know anything about this??

Ginny

Ginny - you amaze me. You see things I would never see - and then when you say them, I think - Of course, that's exactly right. You are a genious!! I'm thrilled to have you here.

You're absolutely right about the fairy tale at the end of Ch. 4. It just ends with a whimper. The little tailor just gets to fulfill his need to be useful by spinning strands of silk. So? And? What's the point? But I thought it was a cute little story along the way. It was actually one of the only stories/poems I read the first time around.

You're right about Ash's poetry. It's god-awful. Somewhere along the way, I read/heard Byatt talk about the poetry and she deliberately made it BAD BAD BAD. I read so little poetry I'm not capable of discerning what is truly good and what is truly bad, so when I first read the book I thought - maybe it's just me. Maybe this poetry is supposed to be just brilliant - but I HATE it and I'm just not going to read it at all. When I heard Byatt say it was supposed to be bad, I was so relieved!!

Great to have you.

Sarah, you keep that up and you'll have a friend for life! hahahahaha

Here's a little Purcell to get us in the POSSESSION mode: Purcell .

You don't know how glad I am to hear you say that she deliberately wrote it badly, I, too, thought it was me. I started to read the first one respectfully and it was dreck, to me. And I thought, OK what do you know and tried the second one.

Started skipping the poems. When it got to the fairy tale I was really excited as I've just bought a complete Grimms, but alas, it was bad bad bad, gosh. Then I thought well, the writer is supposed to be bad, but hey. You can just jerk the reader around enough times before he starts to get edgy.

This thing is a lot of work, and it makes people feel intimidated.. You can't tell who is real who is not what's a reference to what and you do feel extremely unlearned, sort of a swine before whom the pearls have been dropped.

Yet IS this a pearl, that's what WE need to decide and WE are the final arbiters here, not the awards committee who might themselves have been intimidated.

Am running a LOT behind but am catching up slowly. The myth of Arachne is particularly fine. Let me go reread everybody's posts so I can see if you've told it.

Who was it that called Cristabel that?

Ginny

Have just reread all your posts and you've really done a great job here and I do see Marj referring to Christabel's calling herself a spider! The story of Arachne, which is one of the two myths constantly referred to is marvelous.

Arachne was a mortal who wove a fine tapestry, so fine she bragged that even the gods could not equal her. Minerva heard this, disguised herself as an old woman and gave her one more chance to relent. However Arachne said, bring the goddess on, I'm not afraid.

So they entered a weaving contest. Minerva wove the scene of herself competing with Neptune, all 12 heavenly powers, and put incidents repersenting what happens to mortals who disobey the gods in the corners as a warning. Arachne filled her web with stories of the failing and errors of the gods, Leda, Danae, Europa, even Minerva admired it, before smashing it and touching the forehead of Arachne who then felt shame and guilt and hung herself. Minerva pitied her when she saw her hanging by the rope: "Live, guilty woman, and that you may preserve the memory of this lesson, continue to hang, both you and your descendants to all future times." Spiders are of the Arachnida family today.

Spenser and Garrick retold Arachne's story in verse.

---

Proserpina, (Persephone), ( Rape of Proserpina by Bernini ) a beautiful maid, was minding her own business when Pluto saw her and carried her off. Her mother was Ceres, from whom we get the word cereal, (Demeter in Greek), who presided over agriculture.

Ceres, sorrowing, sought her daughter all over the world, with marvelous adventures (if you can get a copy of Bulfinch, please do, it's marvelous). She came at last to a river where Pluto had crossed with her daughter but the river nymph, in fear of Pluto, would not tell her anything. Ceres blamed the soil by mistake and cursed it saying "no more shall you enjoy my favours." "Then the cattle died, the plough broke in the furrow, the seed failed to come up; there was too much sun, there was too much rain; the birds stole the seeds," and the fountain Arethusa told Ceres she had seen her daughter in the underworld with Pluto: "the powerful bride of the monarch of the realms of the dead."

Ceres went immediately to Jupiter and told the whole story, and said she wanted her daughter back, and Jupiter said Proserpina could return, provided she had not eaten during her stay, otherwise the Fates forbade her release. But Pluto had cleverly given Proserpina some pomegranate seeds. This hampered her full release, but a compromise was made, by which she was to pass half the time with her mother and the rest with her husband.

"The story is considered an allegory for the seasons, Proserpine signifies the seed corn which, when cast into the ground, lies there concealed (carried off by the god of the underworld). It reappears--(that is, Proserpine is restored to her mother). Spring leads her back into the light of day. Milton, Hood, Homer, Ovid, Claudian, Tennyson, and Bridges mention Persephone and the changing of the seasons."

More on Roland tomorrow and that's really all the significant references so far, surprising, isn't it?

Ginny

Just got back from DC, visiting the in-laws...happy to be back.

I did get started on Possession and am in chapter 6. I agree, the poetry is awful, awful, awful. I've never really liked much poetry except Walt Whitman. I agree, it's difficult to know what's real and what isn't. I have a guide to English Literature I keep referring back to.

This book really got better for me when I read the first chapter the second time. I'm caught now...I'll have to keep reading.

I also find Val pretty...disturbing? Her referring to herself as "menial." The menial who supports the Great Scholar who can't get a job?

I'm also going back and reading posts. Looking forward to discussions (and definitions)!

Ellen, I'm so glad to see you back, our Sarah is going to be off for a little bit so I'm going to try to help out here.

I love your use of the word "definitions" as I found self looking up a lot of vocabulary words! Was that off putting to any of you?

Fess up! DID you have to look up any definitions of words?

I'm always challenged if I read a book and find a word I'm not sure of. If there are two of them I'm bemused. If there are three of them I'm in awe. I make a list in the back cover with the definition of the new word. If there are four of them I begin to be slightly uneasy. If there are five of them I begin to wonder if I've lost it and if there are more I begin to be vaguely angry.

So far in the first five chapters I've looked up:

pantechnicon

anglepoise

flageolet

glaucous

greaves

dimity

I love a book which expands your mind while at the same time provides a neat sort of enclosed fairy story. I find myself , when I can get OVER my horror of the flood of literary reference, enchanted and I look forward to picking the book back up.

The author's statement on page 10, tho, seems to me to fortell something, "He could not identify the Fairy Topic, either, and this gave him a non uncommon sensation of his own huge ignorance." hahahahahaha. Yes, indeedy.

Now, since I've put up the Proserpina and Arachne myths I wish you'd tell me how, if at all, they actually pertain TO what we're reading. Proserpina went underground for 6 months (6 pomegranate seeds eaten) and above ground for the same. Are we supposed to make some connection to the main characters' being unearthed? Likewise Arachne's sin was the pride of hubris, why would Cristabel refer to herself as Arachne, a spider.

Marj, I like spiders, too, we have lots of them here on the farm, did you know if you shake the web of one of those big garden spiders with the yellow Z on the abdomen that they become enraged and literally jump up and down on the web? I didn't know that but had a biologist out here once who demonstrated.

Ginny

Ginny--first I will say, I didn't know about the Z spider..never have seen one. Secondly , we have a lot of tunnel spiders..they weave this sort of thick tunnel web and sit at the bottom waiting for prey to wander by.

Thanks for posting the Arachne tale...had forgotten how it went. Perhaps C. thought herself guilty of hubris: exaggerated pride. I think we will see later on. Or perhaps because she could spin a web and draw someone in??????

Yes, pretty awful poetry.

I must say the poem at the beginning of chap 6 sure does describe the very acquisitive Mr Cropper, even if you only consider his camera work!!!!

The visit to Mrs. Wapshott is wonderfully "shot"...the bathroom scene and the breakfast scene. We are there!

Interesting; Cropper is another who does not know who he is...p 110. "he tended his body, the outward man, with a fastidiousnenss that he would have bestowed on the inner man too, if he had known who he was, if he did not feel the whole thing to be thickly veiled." And then Byatt begins his biography.

I think Granny Priscilla is quite the woman as we learn abouto her in Croppers bio.

Hello Ellen.....

Ginny, you mention your farm....and where would that be????

Now back to read about Prosperina.

---Marj

I think someone not too far back posted the question of when Roland's story is. I found a reference in what I read today; it said "She [Beatrice Nest] lived, in 1986, and had lived for many years, in a tiny house in Morelake." (p. 129).

I'm with you, Ginny...I feel overwhelmed by the references and by the vocabulary. Are we supposed to? How much time do you suppose Byatt spent with her thesaurus to get the words?

Something just struck me...the name of "The Ash Factory." I wonder if Ash is supposed to represent the worst of what are referred to as "Dead White Guys." Or maybe that's a conclusion the rest of you reached without me? The really bad poetry, the overwrought, overwritten letter he wrote to Cropper's grandmother? And how shrilly he told her that she shouldn't talk to the dead? His poems are not just bad...they're dead.

Then, Christabel's poem at the beginning of Chapter 7. I hear shades of Emily Dickinson. I actually don't find this poem as bad as Ash's (possibly because short and no vocabulary words?). Someone back in the postings referred to gender roles in this book; I think this poem is pretty informative on that point. Christabel says that men are racing about all kinds of interesting places, and may end up martyred; women have to stay at home in the dark room, no place to go, and no chance of an exciting (fast?) death. I'm dashing this off quickly; maybe haven't put as much thought into the poetry as I should. (One of the reasons I don't like poetry.)

At my in-laws I talked to two people who have read this book. Both of them read it over 4 years ago but still remember it. One skipped the poetry and the letters; the other read every single word. Both of them still felt that they had connected with this book. No point to this...just rambling on worthwhileness of the reading.

By the way: at the end of Chapter 6, Cropper talks about his own ways of sublimating? Is this pornography or am I missing the point? Could this have anything to do with the pictures Val tells Roland about earlier? Don't want us to lose our "G" rating or anything; I just find this disturbing.

Ok Found this interview with Byatt in Salon, a Book Review Magazine on the Net:

Your first novel, "Possession," is about a young woman,18 or19 years old, with vague literary ambitions, whose father is an immensely famous writer. Was it a metaphor for the whole situation of a young woman daring to entertain literary ambitions in English culture?

Yes. I think what one should say is that there have always been great women writing the English novel since it began, and it is different in that way from most other cultures' novels. But it makes peculiar problems for literary feminism in England, because people keep saying you have to prove yourself, and actually the novelists were there. It began with Jane Austen, there was George Eliot, there were the Br&oumlntes. I grew up with Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, who were already working and were already successful.

I think what the father in "Possession" stood for was the fear of the goodness of good literature, this terror of the great past. Though I left it open as to how good a novelist the father was, I think he did represent the terror of everything that has been done when you're just starting, and the feeling, when you're a woman, that you start with one hand tied behind your back, despite George Eliot and the Br&oumlntes and Iris Murdoch.

I think on some other level it's a novel about a kind of battle between D.H. Lawrence and (the famous literary critic) F.R. Leavis, about a battle between criticism and actually wanting to write. Because if you've come out of the university with an English degree, the desire to write, at least in my country, is quite heavily knocked out of you. You have become timid and afraid and overwrought, and also told constantly that it isn't your business. I had a supervisor of a Ph.D. I was doing in Oxford, and she said, "My dear, every young girl with a first class degree expects to be able to write a good novel. None of them can."

Do you think maybe Byatt was trying to dazzle with her first novel so that she would be read and accepted and therefore, threw in every literary reference she could find - even the obscure??!!

I must say when you converse with anyone that graduates from the British public schools they are far more grounded in the classics and literature then the majaroity of US collage graduates.

Gosh. Gosh what great stuff, I'm in awe, floundering around as I am with greaves, etc.

Listen can we call a moratorium and hold on Chapter 7, just get thru 7 for this week for a bit? Change the schedule and just go thru 7 till we all get caught up I want to pause over your thoughts.

Marj: Spiders which make thick dark tunnels? Do you have a camera and can take a photo of that? I've never seen it!! What kind of spider is that, how spooky!

OK so you think Christabel's referring to herself as spider could be the pride or the spinning a web (of bad fairy tales)! Let's get these comparisons nailed down in the heading, hold on till later today.

The farm? We live in South Carolina and have a vineyard also and sell the grapes. In fact, we're in the closing days, thank goodness, am going insane. Giving out of grapes, Friday is our last day and the gates shut till next year. I have enoyed this year more than any other in the last 19, tho, love the people, love visiting with them.

I love your quote on Cropper, that's just a fabulous point, thank you so much for bringing it up.

---

Ellen, I love your points.

Are we supposed to be overwhelmed by the vocabulary and references? Did you notice Barb's quote? Do you see any great vocabulary there? Interesting. How could we help but be overwhelmed? It reminds me of that book a couple of years ago with all the Latin untranslated in it that everybody went off about, seems like all it takes is to sprinkle here and there and people go ape. I think everybody's looking for substance but it's not always where we think it is.

Did the people you talked to in DC (welcome back I bet it was horrendous travelling with a baby that young, I remember my own on the plane, screamed the entire way, poor things, needed something to chew on I guess, mothers now know more than we did or know it differently), say WHY they felt they connected with the book? So far I'm totally standing in the sidwalk but I love the atmosphere of the thing and the premise.

I must read Chapters 6 and 7 today if possible so I can understand about the subliminating and the possible porn.

But O, Ellen, the Ash Factory and the Dead White Guys!!! OH!! Did I figure that out, NO MA'AM!!!!! NO and I never would have, and that's the joy of our book groups, thank you very much, very much indeed, how fabulous!!

Poems dead too, marvelous, well done there!

---

Barb, thanks so much for that interview, note the language and the supposed intent of the book? I'm not getting that at all, guess I'm not far enough into it.

Do I think she was trying to dazzle and threw in every literary reference extant? I don't know why she did it, but she sure threw in everything BUT the kitchen sink, is it necessary?

It IS a rich experience but a vaguely troubling one. I have total confidence in my ability to handle lit crit, think of how somebody feels who is tentatative or not having any interest in or background in English Lit, think of how they must feel? I know they are reading this discussion, I wish they'd say. For instance, how does it strike, to be specific, a non English major who was curious about what all the shouting was about? Do they enjoy it or not?

I do agree with Byatt that a grounding in English Lit would be daunting to a would be writer, you'd be too critical of your own offereings to write well, maybe her prose is a sort of self protection, a way of saying well, HEY, don't criticize me, look at all these references!

---

DH Lawrence? FR Leavis? HAH?? I don't know beans about either? THAT'S WHAT THE BOOK'S ABOUT?

---

So Roland is living in 1986?? Wow. Thanks, Ellen, I can't assimilate that into what I'm trying to understand. Surely by 1986 librarians were more circumspect about letting unknown people handle precious artifacts from authors, but that may well be my own ignorance showing.

---

Sorry for the long post, I'm delayed in getting in here. What are we going to DO about the DH Lawrence stuff?

Ginny

Like you, I never read D.H. - I saw where his appartment was located near Big Ben and of course saw the magnificient movie Lawrance of Arabia and evidently he must have had a running commentary or maybe even war with this literary crictic named F.R. Leaves. That commentary must be part of the focus of this book. Oh how I wish these authors had web sites that handled questions from serious readers?

Or maybe the author would do us pitiful readers a little favor and annotate, for Pete's sake! It's like untranslated French or Greek in a work. I keep having the feeling that the author is really saying, "All educated and knowledgeable people read French and Greek so I won't be bothering translating this." Irritating, that.

Ginny

And of course if you attended British Public School you did! Remember Public school in Britian are the private schools. I know today our schools do not require the Latin and French that was required in my day much less, what is usual in European schools. I've heard that there is too much for children here to learn and our history is only what 300 to 400 years were as European children know their history for a 1000 years as well as the ancient civilizations.

This is one of my hot buttons - how woefully behind we as a nation are in our casual knowledge of the history of man and the stories and cultures of our past along with a good grounding in literature. Ginny it is just maddening isn't it and I always feel so humbled when abroad or for that matter tuning into the SAP channel and picking up the BBC. Even there the British guests are so at ease and knowledgable and when ever one of our, really very esteemed, guests are being interviewed it is like a light weight McDonalds experience in comparison.

Barbara, I'm not sure I am in total agreement about the British system of education. There's a wonderful series of documentaries called 7-11-14 or something like that, in which some British filmmakers, determined once and for all to prove class distinctions, followed a pretty big group of children from their first primary years in the British school system thru their adulthood, and they're still following up on it.

It's fascinating. The upshot was that there seems to be this thing called A levels or something and if you don't do well in HS, you don't proceed, you more or less get shoved into vocational. Higher education is not for everybody like it is here. It's fascinating. Maybe someday we could view and discuss the tapes.

I, too, have noticed a very high knowledge displayed on the BBC, and about the most minute subjects, too. If you pick up one of their gardening magazines, tho, you can find out why immediately, they EXPLAIN everything from the word go, in such a way that you are hooked and you become a mini enthusiast yourself.

On the tiniest most arcane subject.

And Helene Hanff was so enamoured of the British system of education in Literature she bought the book of Arthur Quiller Couch's lectures on literature, and I did, too, and she was right, he was fabulous, everybody should read them.

They do seem to read British authors well tho.

The funniest thing, you're totally right about the common knowledge there, tho. I bought, the last time I was in England, a beautiful old matched set of Walpole. I wasn't familiar with Walpole, other than having heard of him, (another dead old white man, I guess) and was enthusiastically telling my friend who lives in Little Corby near Carlisle, England, (somewhat haughtily I must admit) that I had bought a set of Walpole. Know what she said?

"Which one?"

Silence.

Dear Gussie, there's more than ONE? Ummmm. Errrr. Ummm.

"Horace, Robert or Hugh?"

Ummmmmm. (Books in transit, how do I know?)

Errr. emmmmm.

HUGH!

"Oh good, then, he's much the best writer."

hahahahahahahahaaaaa

On second thought, you're right, Barb! hahahahahah

---

Got up thinking about Ellen's date. 1986, well then Christabel dates from 18-- something, right? You don't suppose we're looking at some kind of mirror effect here, do you?

---

And why do I keep on about Proserpina? "And Roland was looking for sources for Ash's Garden of Proserpina ."

Missed that, Ash titled something Garden of Proserpina. hmmmmm

---

Roland (or ORLANDO) !!??!! is an old name in literature. According to legend, Roland was the nephew of Charlemagne. He was the "most perfect type of the devotedly loyal and courageous knight who sacrifices himself in service to his king." (READER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA).

His story entered French ballads by the 9th century and his CHANSON DE ROLAND (Song of Roland) was a "chanson de geste"-- a medieval French epic in rhyme about heroic deeds of historical and legendary knights.

The CHANSON DE ROLAND has 4002 lines of adventure, betrayal and his refusal to blow his horn for help until it was too late. I'm interested to see if there's any horn blowing in this one to parallel?

There's also a CHILDE ROWLAND in an old Scottish ballad, which is interesting in that in that one, "Guided by the enchanter Merlin, Rowland undertakes to bring back his sister from Elfland, whither the fairies have carried her, and succeeds in his perilous exploit."

(That READER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA, which I got free in some book club is REALLY handy!)

So now, here's another fair damsel sprited off, just like Persephone (Proserpina) and here's another Roland going after her, interesting, hah?

Ginny

Then there's CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME, a poem by Robert Browning. The title is taken from Shakespeare's KING LEAR (Act III, iv, 173). "This masterful and enigmatic nightmare poem was apparently one result of a resolution made by Browning in 1852 to write a poem a day." (THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO LITERATURE IN ENGLISH) another freebie!

Interesting, no?

Ginny

Wow - The only Roland I automaticlly thought of was the French knight although, I was not sure of hiw exploits.

On page 115 we have another planchette!

Back to that first chapters - there is some beautiful imigery that I just love rereading,

...ferny foliage, to the left and right, enclosing a watery open space in which rosy and silver fish shone between pondweeds. The effect was partly to set the poet amongst the roots of a wood or forest.

...two very old arm-chairs with curvaceous rolled arms and head-rests, plum and ;lushy and dusty,...

The clock ticked, motes of dust danced in sunlight, Roland meditated in the tiresome and bewitching endlesness of the quest for knowledge.

Well we now know from the interview piece there is a father figure in all of this. i think this book could be read through quickly, as some that have posted said they did, just to get the story and then go back and relish the joy of all the referenced characters and literary pieces. And that may be me wondering now just how much of all the referenced material is like the usual key to understanding or are they like confetti just sprinkled in, not doing any harm only, furthering the picture that these are characters wrapped up in the literary world.

I must say I am enjoying this relaxed pace though - Byatt sure hasn't bored me!

I also like this slower pace...I feel like we can spend as much time as we need visiting issues.

Just out of curiosity the other night I kept track of references. In 5 pages I had a full-page list and I'm sure I didn't write them all down.

I opened the book to the first pages today to look through again and got caught by the first poetry excerpt, Ash's Garden of Proserpina (dated 1861). It refers to a lot of stories (the Garden of Eden, Perseus, 12 labors of Heracles) but not one of them has anything to do with Persephone. I also notice that Proserpina is the Roman version of the name, but Herakles is Greek. Significant, or just my mind wandering?

All these different versions of Roland; the one that jumped into my mind was Song of Roland. I am eager to see how this is going to play out, and which Roland he's going to be.

I stopped at Chapter 7...but it was hard.

Ginny, well, I'm hopelessly behind in the reading, but caught up with reading the POSTS today and had the best outloud laugh at your Walpole story. "Which one?" cracked ...me...up

Barbara, your wonderful quotes from the book may force me to squeeze time out of my other reading to try to catch up here."...two very old arm chairs...plum and lushy and dusty." Then, "...a watery open space in which rosy and silver fish shown between pond weeds..." This is half the reason I read. The word "rosy" changes everything.

On the obscure and endless literary and foreign references, you have made me stop and wonder why these don't bother me. Do I understand most? Oh, brother, that could start another laughing outbreak. Not at all! My only holdovers from college french cover green beans, n'est pas, potato (apple of the ground?--pomme de terre?)what time is it, and a few others. The literary references "click" far fewer times than I'd ever want anyone to know, but my mindset for the last few years is roughly equivalent to feeling like I am IN COLLEGE learning as I read, so I EXPECT to run across the unknown references, can puzzle out one or two, look up one or two. More than anything, though, it feels as if now that I am reading, reading, reading, the references will gradually become more known to me. It never occurs to me to be put out with the author (well, it might START occuring to me--thanks to you, hahaha) but if the narrative or theme or whatever I'm paying attention to is hanging together, even with a few unknowns, I suppose I expect the unknowns to gradually decrease over time. My favorite reading is the kind where there is so much to enjoy visually and where the difficulty level is just one notch beyond my comfort level. What irritates me to death is when an author has never heard of the "less is more" and goes on and on until I want to scream, enough already! (As I fully expect some people do when I AM going on and on.)

Betty

Betty, that was beautiful! I'm delighted that you're here and I love your take on how every book is an education and now am on fire to see which of your ideas you feel pertains to THIS book, the latter or the former?

I admit that I have this abiding thing with minutiae (ARTEMIS, where ARE YOU?????) that comes from close analysis. I expect everything to be in a book for a REASON, and so become terrifically anxious when there's so much piled on!

Like Ellen said (Ellen, you're good for the mind, your posts are like electric shock! I keep thinking, OH NO I MISSED THAT, and have to go back!) Anyway, like Ellen just said, "In 5 pages I had a full-page list and I'm sure I didn't write them all down."

That's a lot of reference, but I'll shut up till we get further to see how you all perceive it, perhaps it becomes more familiar as we go.

Certainly the book is rich and one you look forward to opening, as I do today, I'm still behind and hope to finish Chapter 7 today.

Oh, but wait now!! Everybody, please understand it's not a READING schedule to stop at Chapter 7 for this week!!! Read what you want, continue at YOUR own pace and enjoyment level!!!!! Just asking that you don't discuss beyond Chapter 7 till some of us get caught up! Feel guilty asking that.

Here's another startling observation from our Ellen of the Piercing Mind (we can have our OWN characters here)! (What IS that rule on the punctuation and the bracket? Am tired of worrying about it? In or out? I know what it is with quotation marks, punctuation always within the mark except in extreme circumstances, but what of the parentheses? In or out!!)? ?)

"I opened the book to the first pages today to look through again and got caught by the first poetry excerpt, Ash's Garden of Proserpina (dated 1861). It refers to a lot of stories (the Garden of Eden, Perseus, 12 labors of Heracles) but not one of them has anything to do with Persephone. I also notice that Proserpina is the Roman version of the name, but Herakles is Greek. Significant, or just my mind wandering?"

THIS is the kind of thing which blows my mind. Here I am trying to catch up, assimilate all the references, read that like a flash (bad bad poetry bad bad skip bad awful, (god-awful as Sarah said) bad skip and WHAMMO! Ellen quietly points out it's not ABOUT Persephone or Proserpina in Latin and no wonder everybody's confused!

Back to the GARDEN (what GARDEN?) with Persephone!!

Back later!

Confused again.

This is like a NY TIMES crossword puzzle isn't it - I really want to disassociate from all other activities and get into these many references. But, whow is me, I have this demanding 10 week class I've been in and we are only on week 4 as well as, it looks like Annotated Alice is being shipped early from B&N. Ginny how do you accomplish so much??!!

Thank goodness Ellen and Ginny y'all are attempting to research this and list what the references are. Not only Thank goodness but Thank You!

Ellen stated:"By the way: at the end of Chapter 6, Cropper talks about his own ways of sublimating? Is this pornography or am I missing the point? Could this have anything to do with the pictures Val tells Roland about earlier? Don't want us to lose our "G" rating or anything; I just find this disturbing"

Seemed to me it was definitely pornography he was "into". We don't know his desires; but he was discussing Ash's ability to sublimate thru the extreme number of writings.

Sublimate(2) : to divert the expression of (an instinctual desire or impulse) from its primitive form to one that is considered more socially or culturally acceptable

Ginny said: "It IS a rich experience but a vaguely troubling one. I have total confidence in my ability to handle lit crit, think of how somebody feels who is tentatative or not having any interest in or background in English Lit, think of how they must feel? I know they are reading this discussion, I wish they'd say. For instance, how does it strike, to be specific, a non English major who was curious about what all the shouting was about? Do they enjoy it or not? "

I am enjoying this book tremendously. I am not an Eng lit major, I like reading, I like entering into the novel, I like a reading challenge, the many references don't have a specific meaning for me but I gather the gist, and I gobble up the vivid descriptions. And where will this novel go next???

--Marj

I read this book quite a few years ago. I am a writer, and I would like to say that I consider A.S.Byatt one of the foremost writers of this century.

Perhaps if I have time, I'll go through my library of books and catch up to where you are.

Mal

Oh Mal would you please, please, join us, we are buried under all the literary referances. Oh yes, I should be polite and say WELCOME but Mal, you have no idea how welcome. Your positive words about the author echo what we feel but, we are also, overwhelmed and we agree the poetry is just awful. Was that your take also? Please join us Mal, we could use the shot in the arm your thoughts and memory of reading Possession would provide.

I must have missed the reason for the folk tale inserted in chapter 4... It is one of the classic themes that appears in most cultures.

Yes, we need all hands on deck here to help us with POSSESSION lest it possess us all, back later today, I hope, running "flat out!"

Welcome, MAL!!

Ginny

I've found my copy of Possession, and because of the literary allusions in it, it will take me some time to refresh my memory of the book. I did, however, find this morning an interview with A.S.Byatt on the web which might be useful. If this is a repetition, forgive me, please. I haven't had time to check all the posts here. I'll put it on the next post.

Mal

[Note from Mal: This book should be read with Possession in one hand and a dictionary in the other. I found this interview on the World Wide Web. I also learned that Byatt hated D.H.Lawrence. I think this should be kept in mind when reading this novel.]

Interview:
Your first novel, "Possession," is about a young woman,18 or19 years old, with vague literary ambitions, whose father is an immensely famous writer. Was it a metaphor for the whole situation of a young woman daring to entertain literary ambitions in English culture?



Yes. I think what one should say is that there have always been great women writing the English novel since it began, and it is different in that way from most other cultures' novels. But it makes peculiar problems for literary feminism in England, because people keep saying you have to prove yourself, and actually the novelists were there. It began with Jane Austen, there was George Eliot, there were the Brontes. I grew up with Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark, who were already working and were already successful.


I think what the father in "Possession" stood for was the fear of the goodness of good literature, this terror of the great past. Though I left it open as to how good a novelist the father was, I think he did represent the terror of everything that has been done when you're just starting, and the feeling, when you're a woman, that you start with one hand tied behind your back, despite George Eliot and the Brontes and Iris Murdoch.


I think on some other level it's a novel about a kind of battle between D.H. Lawrence and (the famous literary critic) F.R. Leavis, about a battle between criticism and actually wanting to write. Because if you've come out of the university with an English degree, the desire to write, at least in my country, is quite heavily knocked out of you. You have become timid and afraid and overwrought, and also told constantly that it isn't your business. I had a supervisor of a Ph.D. I was doing in Oxford, and she said, "My dear, every young girl with a first class degree expects to be able to write a good novel. None of them can."

I see that I posted an interview already here. Sorry. I must admit that I immediately thought of Pre-Raphaelite artists, especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti, when I began reading this book so long ago. You might be interested in taking a look at his painting of Prosperina.



Rossetti

I misspelled Proserpina. Sorry. Had my mind on Prospero.
I haven't had time to re-read much of this book, but when I was in my car on the way home from doing errands this morning, the thought came to me that a clever writer always drops clues along the way. This is my take at the very beginning of the book. Once again, if I'm repeating previous statements, I apologize.

In Browning's poem at the very beginning, there is a line which reads, "The real world through the false,----what do you see?" For whatever reason, this seems important to me. On the cover page for Chapter I, Byatt quotes from The Garden of Proserpina by Randolph Henry Ash. I quote the first line and the last. "These things are there. The garden and the tree...." The two lines read "Until the tricksy hero Herakles Came to his dispossession and the theft."

You say you are skipping the poetry, and I personally don't think it's a good idea. Perhaps. I don't really know, but I think Ms Byatt is dropping clues about the plot in the poetry and folk tales she puts in this book. It's a fairly common device among writers.

More in a while.

Mal

Apologies, I think I misunderstood...I don't have an English degree, but I am certified to teach it. You'd think I would pay attention!

Did anyone want me to post the references and the works/stories/etc. that they refer to? Or are we going to save that for when we actually have something to say about the references?

I am reading most of the poetry and all the letters and folk tales. I've never been able to work up much enthusiasm for poetry so if I'm not in the mood I skip it. Should I just plan to post the references that seem less obvious?

Ellen, I would personally be interested in any and all references that you are comfortabel posting - this is teriffic - if others would prefer less references then please Ellen would you email me what ever you are comfortable typing out. This story feels like I've stepped into a magic world and I love reading it but the associations and analogies are not coming to me as easily as most reads.

And Mal, although we had a clickable to the interview you brought it to life. How wonderful of you to find the link to Rossetti. He, as an artist, and William Morris is what comes to mind even reading. There seems to me to be a darkness as I read, not an omenous darkness but more like walking into a world of these richer darker colors with dramatic lines and shapes and vague depiction of the medieval world, used by late Victorian artists.

Completly missed this reference, "The real world through the false,----what do you see?" For whatever reason, this seems important to me. On the cover page for Chapter I, Byatt quotes from The Garden of Proserpina by Randolph Henry Ash. I quote the first line and the last. "These things are there. The garden and the tree...." The two lines read "Until the tricksy hero Herakles Came to his dispossession and the theft."

Well this is great because now I'm more confused than ever, the mythology is not making sense and the references may refer to something coming but ....jeepers. I feel like I'm in the new puzzle Pandora's Box. (YES ouch, I know that's a reference too.)

OK let's take ONE thing, just one. Ash's poem about Proserpina or Persephone. Why is Hercules in it?

Mal: that's a gorgeous painting, love the pomegranate.

Am spinning in my shoes here, help!!

Ginny

Finally caught up, and firm with resolution! Have finished Chapter 7 at last.

Have reread the excerpt of Ash's Garden of Proserpina

Note Ladon and Herakles.

For the record: "The Apples of the Hesperides" was the Eleventh of the Twelve Labors of Hercules. " Hercales forced Nereus to tell him the way to the garden of the Hesperides, and having slain Ladon, the dragon that guarded it, carried off the apples. According to another version he induced Atlas so fetch the apples, holding up the sky in his place while he did this. Some say that Atlas then refused to resume his burden and had to be beguiled into doing so." (THE OXFORD COMPANION TO CLASSICAL LITERATURE).

---

The marvelous thing about our reading groups here is our ability to each bring to the table our own perspectives of the book and thus we can be enriched by the perspectives of others.

I have decided, for my own part, to treat this book like a Victorian Fairy Tale, or, in the words of the author, "It's terribly long winded and impenetrable. Gothic, you know, Victorian Gothic…" (page 132).

I think if I concentrate on the plot: Roland and Val, their counterparts in Ash and LaMotte, with the supporting cast of Cropper and Bailey and Blackadder, I might yet make sense of it. I still think it's a conceit.

For my part, I will be very grateful when the mixed mythology is explained. Just for a moment there reading Proserpina's story intermingled with that of Hercules, it seems we have Adam and Eve, doesn't it? "These things are there. The garden and the tree
The serpent at its root, the fruit of gold
The woman in the shadow of the boughs.
"

Ellen, if you'd like to list all the literary references, please do, if you feel that would be your own labor of Hercules, we can certainly understand your reluctance, it would make me pale to think on it.

In Chapters 6 and 7, once again we see a shift in the writing, Roland's story is told in a more straightforward method, while Cropper's is all caps. I can't describe how the proliferation of capital letters irritates me, but it's OK to have feelings about a book and the author seems to want to confine it to her Victorian settings.

As for Cropper and his "own ways of sublimation," good point, Ellen and Marj: boy, life imitates art, doesn't it? Did you see the Curator of the Library of Congress on television last night with his collections? There were the 45s, thousands of them it appeared and then in the basement, there was his…..porn? Collection?? Lovingly assembled? Felt like I was in the book, he'd be a good character there.

Shall we go on? What would you think of doing Chapters 8 and 9 by this weekend? I'm afraid if we pause to puzzle out arcane references we'll hit a dead end.

It's possible that Byatt is making a reference by placing Hercules in Proserpina's Garden, to Roland and his attempts to snatch what he considers the Golden Apples of Ash's relationship with LaMotte. It's also possible but a bit of a stretch to consider that Pluto's domain might be considered Proserpina's Garden, as she became his bride. Not sure on the time sequence there, which came first, Hercules or Proserpina. If that IS the case, then Byatt, by calling Pluto's realm Proserpina's Garden, (two incongruous images) may be, by naming the downplayed female influence over the more famous or more powerful male's, drawing a parallel with Roland and Val and Ash and LaMotte, not sure.

Ginny

That was a surprise. I thought it was Wednesday. Must have lost that day somewhere. Since I read this book quite some time ago and am re-reading it in a different, more analytical way now, I am far behind where the rest of you are. It did occur to me last night that Byatt, obviously a scholarly, knowledgeable person of academia, could possibly be teasing readers of this book. I can almost see her sitting back and laughing at what we are doing here as we try discover in a very brief time what took her years to learn. She is writing in a more or less Victorian style, using references people of that era were far more familiar with than we are today. Parts of this book remind me of research I did in college and later. Byatt is using term paper and thesis stuff to flesh out her story. In other words, she has taken her own research and added it to her plot or used it as a springboard. Keeping that in mind, for myself anyway, I am going to take the lofty results of her research in a lighter way.

I did find a couple of things early on about Prosperina. "(Vico's) Proserpine was the corn, the origin of commerce and community. Randolph Henry Ash's Prosperine had been seen as a Victorian reflection of religious doubt, a meditation on the myths of resurrection." Byatt then mentions Lord Leighton's painting of Proserpina, "distraught and floating". Just for fun, I'm going to try and find that painting on the web. If I do, I'll post the link.

Those are my early morning thoughts.
Mal

Return of Persephone by Lord Frederick Leighton

Ginny - would it be possible - could you put these wonderful links in the heading along with links to either your posts or the original stories of Hercules, Roland, the poem to Christobal, Proserpina's story etc. I try to keep the post numbers on a notepad but it is inconvienent. I think y'all are creating our group annotations and this if not making the story more understandable is certainly making it a richer experience.

Does Merlin have any relationship to this story line do you think? A woman, isn't she Proserpina, enticing a dying Merlin - maybe entreating Merlin to accept the growth of women as capable of his wisdom??

This art work is dreamy - there is something about brown tones that again makes me feel wrapped in a blanket of awe. For me, I can't help repeating, this is the most visable story I have ever read other then children's literature. Maybe it is the fairy tale theme. I am being transported by mood and colors that I visualize like no adult book I can remember reading in 30 or 40 years. As much as Hemingway annoys me , he is so patriarchel, his books could do that for me.

I can't help it; I prefer the Greek names (sorry, all you Latin scholars...maybe it's just that I speak about 100 words of Greek).

I think The Garden of Persephone is the Garden of Eden. All the imagery is of Eden, even though the characters are Greek and Roman. This is furthered by my referring back to Edith Hamilton last night; she says that Herakles considered himself to be equal with the gods, even to the point that when the Delphic oracle refused to answer his question, he stole her tripod and said he would set up his own oracle. He fought with Apollo and Zeus had to intervene. I assume that is the theft referred to in the poem.

The style of the poem reminds me, in a funny way, of The Faerie Queene (Spenser...I think 16th century), which is also mythology but is full of references to Christian characters. Anyway, I think we are supposed to get the idea that Ash was an over-educated bad poet...just another Dead White Guy.

Barbara--the woman who enticed Merlin was Nimue (sometimes Vivian). She stole his power and trapped him underground for a thousand years in White. A definite parallel to Persephone, I think.

Ginny--it would indeed be a labor of Hercules to document all the references. I thought I'd try for some of the ones that are maybe more obscure (if I recognize them; seems daunting) picking up with Chapter 8. Will plan to start posting these this week, teething baby permitting (we're getting awfully close on the tooth; we can SEE it!).

Ohhh, ah so, on Merlin and Nimue - I'm so glad you've joined us!

The Fallen Nature of Narrative and Knowledge --
Fragmentation and Byatt's Possession



Katherine Lesch '97 (English 168, 1996)



A. S. Byatt's Possession(1990), Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda (1988), and Graham Swift's Waterland (1983) all take place in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and they seek to reconcile the nineteenth- and twentieth-century views of the nature of narrative. Byatt's own "People in Paper Houses," quotes B. S. Johnson's claim that "'the nineteenth-century novel' was finished by the outbreak of the First World War...Its wrongness is that it tells a story -- and 'telling stories is telling lies'" (19-20). In the nineteenth century, Romanticism celebrates the wholeness of vision gained by exploring the fantastic and the supernatural; in the twentieth century, postmodernism insists upon the fragmented narrative as a more accurate reflection of unruly life. Byatt, Carey, and Swift compare these two narrative traditions in light of one enduring archetypal narrative: the fall from innocence to knowledge.



A. S. Byatt's Possession considers the fall from innocence as a state of imaginative possession. In this moment of possession, the writer's imagination becomes other by fusing with the world exterior to the writer: "No longer a feature of the passive mind, the tabula rasa of Locke and Hartley, the imagination is here the active agent, shaping the world as it finds it, creating it anew with each vision" (Miyoshi 47). According to Jill Clayton, the nineteenth-century Romantic writer understood this moment as crucial to creativity but also acknowledged its destructive, demonic aspect:



As Coleridge puts it, the imagination "dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create" (Biographia Literaria1:304)...In its disruptive phase the Romantic imagination can usurp all the other elements of the poet's world, but such moments are necessarily brief. The "light of sense / Goes out," Wordsworth writes in his most important comment on the visionary power of the imagination; "but with a flash that has revealed / The invisible world." (Prelude 6.600-2). (Clayton 5)

This flash illuminates narrative: "when a narrative becomes 'other,' it grows vivid, concrete" (13). This incarnation of the imaginative idea is Byatt's chief objective in Possession.

Byatt depicts the imaginative possession of two university scholars like herself, Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, who uncover the secret love affair between two Victorian poets (Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte) whom they eventually imitate by falling in love themselves and in Roland's case, by beginning to write poetry. Byatt becomes the last link in a chain along which the act of creative possession is enacted and deferred. Byatt initiates this series in the distant past of pagan myth: Possessionbegins with Randolph Ash's "The Garden of Proserpina," the first of Byatt's ventriloquist acts within the text.



Byatt inflects the myth of Proserpina with a dual symbolism. Intellectually, the instant of imaginative possession enables a creative synthesis; physically, the instant of sexual possession incarnates the idea of simultaneous destruction and regeneration. In "The Garden of Proserpina," Randolph Ash sets the stage for both of these moments:



At the old world's rim,
In the Hesperidean grove, the fruit
Glowed golden on eternal boughs, and there
The dragon Ladon crisped his jewelled crest
Scraped a gold claw and sharped a silver tooth
And dozed and waited through eternity
Until the tricksy hero, Heracles,
Came to his dispossession and the theft.



Byatt dispossesses the past and blends it with the present in her novel, thus creating a cyclical time scheme. Like Proserpina, Byatt rises from the "old world's rim," the garden of the underworld, to the present, only to descend once more (Proserpina rises from the underworld every six months and therefore she is associated with springtime and regeneration).

In Possession, the cyclical exchange of past and present and generation and destruction represents a fall from the Victorian conception of linear time:



[Michael] Young argues that Western ideology has shaped a "metronomic society," stubbornly linear and perceiving cyclical time as a threat which robs us of our sense of progress and individuality...This linear bias, as Walter Houghton recognizes in The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830 to 1870, particularly emerges in the metronomic narrowness of the Victorian age: never before had men thought of their own time as an era of change from the past to the future.



Darwin's theory of evolution and Auguste Comte's philosophy of Positivism "rang the death knell to the ages of theology and metaphysics and proclaimed scientific sequential order as the new religion of humanity" (168). The Victorian rise of the scientific sequential order causes a fall in the individual's conception of life: the "linear certainty of death as our 'real' future overshadows the cyclical, thereby hiding the vital, iterative part of its own constitution (Young 5)" (Shinn 167). Byatt conflates this Victorian moment of fragmentation with contemporary postmodern conceptions of narrative.



At risk of losing "our sense of progress and individuality," Byatt renews the cyclical conception of time and thus renders the conflation of past and present a positive moment instead of a negative one. Randolph Ash's view of his time is indeed postmodern in its "linear exhaustion" and its lack of a unifying grand narrative:



The truth is -- my dear Miss LaMotte -- that we live in an old world -- a tired world -- a world that has gone on piling up speculation and observations until truths that might have been graspable in the bright Dayspring of human morning...are now obscured by palimpsest on palimpsest, by thick horny growths over that clear vision...The scribe of Genesis did well to locate the source of all our misery in that greed for knowledge which has also been our greatest spur -- in some sense -- to good. To good and evil. We have more of both those, I must believe, than our primitive parents.



In PossessionByatt downplays Ash's perception of the "smutty" accretion of knowledge and instead emphasizes his sense of the enduring dual nature of knowledge ("our greatest spur...To good and evil"). To accommodate this dual nature of knowledge within her text, Byatt resurrects the Romantic narrativity of Coleridge.



Coleridge's poem Christabel, which gives Byatt's Christabel her name, appropriately unites the creative and sexual moments of possession. Christabel casts the moment of possession as an instance of discursive paralysis. Although "Coleridge defines the imagination as a power that blends and unifies discordant qualities".



the balance is a delicate one: the more baffled the poet, the more desperately he reaches for oneness, and the tighter he holds to his vision, the greater his awareness of discrepant reality. In an unfortunate irony, it is this Romantic atmosphere of apparent fusion of all being that refracts the poet's vision and breaks his self-image in two.





These moments are "necessarily brief," but they represent the ability of idea and incarnation to cancel each other out at the height of their powers.



In Christabel this ability has important ramifications for narrative. "In extreme cases, the connection between visibility and otherness can make the world of a novel seem not merely visible but opaque". In Coleridge's poem, Christabel is possessed of the spirit of Geraldine, who symbolizes the destructive a

In Coleridge's poem, Christabel is possessed of the spirit of Geraldine, who symbolizes the destructive and regenerative power of knowledge (and hence the idea) and momentarily erases Christabel's power of utterance. Geraldine's presence usurps Christabel's narrative space. At the same time, Coleridge portrays Geraldine as a nurturing presence, "a mother with her child". After the moment of self-obliteration has passed, Christabel finds that she has acquired the knowledge of wholeness. She has encountered the power of imagination and understands it as good and evil: "Such giddiness of heart and brain / Come seldom save from rage and pain". The union of opposite forces carries the promise of wholeness and the threat of self-effacement. Incarnated on a sexual level, the ambiguity of this union accounts for Roland's and Maud's fear of possession.



Like Alfred Lord Tennyson's Maud, Byatt's Maud is "icily regular, splendidly null." Although "sexual encounter is the traditional metaphor for knowledge" and "the apprehension of unity is the act of imagination" (Watson 189), Maud stubbornly separates sexuality and knowledge. In Roland's and Maud's study of Ash and LaMotte, Maud also feels "urged on by some violent emotion of curiosity -- ...curiosity, more fundamental even than sex, the desire for knowledge" (Byatt 92). In one scene before Roland and Maud fall in love, Roland proves the intensity of this desire. In order to prime himself for conciliatory sex with his girlfriend at the time, Roland fantasizes about Randolph Ash's wife Ellen. Thinking about her own last lover, Maud recalls their unmade bed as an "empty battlefield" and agrees with Freud that "desire lies on the other side of repugnance" (63). At the price of her own wholeness, unwittingly rendering herself "null," Maud only acknowledges the self-obliterating aspect of sexuality and fiercely dissociates her physical attractiveness from her intelligence: "She considered her perfectly regular features in the mirror...The doll-mask she saw had nothing to do with her, nothing" (64). Like her ancestor Christabel, Maud's character is possessed of the fairy Melusine and the goddess Diana, both of whom are commonly considered as emblems of female self-sufficiency.



Yet Byatt interrogates this self-sufficiency. Forever aware of her own fictiveness, Byatt parodizes the moment when both Melusine and Diana strike down men who have seen them in their bath. As Maud comes out of the shower, she catches Roland peeping in the keyhole. As a postmodern re-visioning of Melusine and Diana, Maud represents her society's eagerness to "possess the Past, while the contemporary level of Byatt's novel reveals that instead we are possessed by that Past". Like postmodern society itself, Maud meditates on her own fragmentation:



Narcissism, the unstable self, the fractured ego, Maud thought, who am I?...It was both a pleasant and an unpleasant idea, this requirement that she think of herself as intermittent and partial. There was the question of the awkward body. The skin, the breath, the eyes, the hair, their history, which did seem to exist.



Maud realizes eventually that she must consent to a mutual possession in which her past and present assert equal claims to each other, as do she and Roland.



As Byatt restores the cyclical conception of time to her narrative at the cost of the narcissistic linear conception, she risks and enriches her characters's selves by transforming "dialogic confrontations [with the past] into conversationswhich expand the understanding of each participant by exposure to the 'other' perspective". Interestingly, Beatrice Nest, one of the most self-effacing characters in the text, uses this word as well: "Beatrice hated writing. The only word she was proud of in this correct and dull disquisition was 'conversation,' which she had chosen in preference to the more obvious 'dialogue.' For such conversation Beatrice would have given everything, in those days". Maud finally participates in sexual conversation with Roland. Byatt conflates their lovemaking with Heracles's theft of the apples from the Garden of Proserpina, thus cyclically ending the novel where it began:



In the morning, the whole world had a strange new smell. It was the smell of the aftermath...a tart smell, which bore some relation to the smell of bitter apples. It was the smell of death and destruction and it smelled fresh and lively and hopeful.



Byatt follows this sexual possession with a postscript: Randolph's and Christabel's illegitimate child Maya (the name of the Hindu goddess of illusion) ironically represents the shattering of her parents's enchanted world. Maya (who prefers to be called the more down-to-earth May) unwittingly meets her father in a cornfield and forgets to relay her father's poetic message to her mother (whom she believes is her aunt). Byatt's postscript shows this symbolic Persephone in her cornfield. May represents springtime and the starting and ending of Byatt's cycle -- the reversion to innocence after the fall.

"Ears of grain were called apples of gold, which must have been the first gold in the world while metallic gold was unknown. . .So the golden apple which Hercules first brought back or gathered from Hesperia must have been grain; and the Gallic Hercules with links of this gold, that issues from his mouth, chains men by the ears: something which will later be discovered as a myth concerning the fields. Hence Hercules remained the Deity to propitiate in order to find treasures, whose God was Dis (identical with Pluto) who carries off Proserpine (another name for Ceres or grain) to the underworld, described by the poets, according to whom its first name was Styx, its second the land of the dead, its third the depth of furrows. . . It was of this golden apple that Virgil, most learned in heroic antiquities, made the golden bough Aeneas carries into the Inferno or Underworld."

Mal I just printed this out to read and study - This is so spooky how here on SeniorNet we have several times, independently, chosen to read books that relate to the same historical time. Only last week I typed out Daniel J. Singal's discourse on the difference between Victorian and Modernist thought and than Modernist thought as it played out in the South for the Faulkner Bio. discussion. Now, here we are again delving deeper into understanding Victorian Romanticism. I've just spent much of the day preparing the discussion for Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition and again we are into the nineteenth century.

Mal, who is Katherine Lesch?? Is this a paper written in more depth that you have so graciously copied excerpts or is this a complete paper? Also, is any of this on the Net?

And off the subject - how old is your little one? Girl or Boy? What do moms do to help babies today when they are teething? I am remembering zwiback, hard toast like cookies shaped almost like a bisquoti (spell). Have you been able to use your Eng. Lit major to advance your income opportunitites or have you found it has been an an opportunity to survey life through the eyes of literature?

Again, I am so glad you found us and this discussion. Thanks for your interest, this is wonderful.

Here's where I found that paper. I think it's out of Brown University.

Byatt and Possession

Are you talking about me when you mentioned English Lit. major and babies? The only baby in my life is Leah Paris Freeman, age one month, who is the daughter of my son, Christopher and his wife Serena who live near New York City. My lucky daughter, her son, and my 24 year old granddaughter, daughter of my other son, Rob, will see Leah over Thanksgiving weekend at Dorian's father's house in Massachusetts. Dorian is the daughter with whom I rent a house in NC. Son, Chris, tells me Leah looks like her grandmother here and in the delivery room, Chris held her in his arms not long after she was born and sang Blue Skies to her and told her the song came from her musician grandmother, me.

I studied music at the New England Conservatory while in high school, majored in music at Smith College, both scholarships for me, and have done a lot of reading and studying of languages, but never took a degree in English, rather, was a performing musician. Now I write novels and publish three electronic magazines, two of which contain original writing of writers from all over the internet and the world, original artwork, classical fine art and music. Here's a link to one of them. Sonata magazine for the arts

I have no idea who Katherine Lesch is. Perhaps graduate student of a few years ago?

All for now.
Mal

ahha - grandma Marylin - well, when you spoke of a teething baby - now we know. Babies always make life feel a little more satisfying don't they. Hope your NC house was not affected by the flooding. My sister is on the Outer Banks and my daughter moved a year ago summer to Greenville SC. Have cousins outside Chappel Hill and north of Hendersonville.

The graphics on "Sonata magazine for the arts" are almost celtic - I love the colors. An amazing group of links. An all day project reading the magazine - looks like there is a small group of you keeping up with this project.

Mal thanks for the link to Byatt - Grand!

I am just south of Apple Chill, as we call it. That's a festival we have in the Fall. Wonder if I know your cousins?

I do all the editing and publishing of Sonata, the m.e.stubbs poetry journal and The WREX Pages by myself, as you will see if you read the Greeting from the Publisher page. I create all of the pages on my html program, search for the art and music, upload them, and put them together as magazines. At first I used only writers from the Writers Exchange WREX, which is a discussion group here in SeniorNet Online and began in SeniorNet on America Online. Then I began to seek out other writers and artists. Now writers and artists come to Sonata to be published. Sonata's third anniversary is in December. The third issue of the poetry journal will go on the web this month. There are poets from this country, Canada, Australia and Israel in that issue. Thank you for visiting Sonata. I hope you will go there again.

Mal

Whow, m.e.stubbs poetry journal is linked to some pretty powerful rings. And there is Charlotte, and Jim and others whose names I've seen and posts I've enjoyed on SeniorNet. I am impressed!

Mal, Barbara-- I'm the one with the teething baby. I'm 32 and Teddy will be five months tomorrow.

I am a B.A. in history, concentration American, with departmental honors, passed comps with distinction, from Sewanee. I also have 15 hours in English Lit. When I took my M.Ed. from Univ. of Massachusetts, this was enough for me to be certified in history, social studies, and English, all 7-12. I taught for 2 years and am now a stay-at-home mom.

I don't have family in NC but did have friends whose house was stolen by Hugo. Hope all is well there now!

HAhahehehe I love it - talk about a spoof or mix-up - OK Ellen, back to my original question, now that we have the original mom with teething baby - what do moms use to help babies these day when they are teething?

Ellen, are you finding it a challenge as a stay-at-home mom? It's years now, but I remember feeling actually angry that I was educated and trained just as the boys for a public life, with no clue, readiness, guidance or support how to independently schedule every hour of my day, with no annual reviews, and searching for ways that I could actually feel a pat-on-the-back. It was nice to have my husband say nice things but, I really didn't want to accept him as my boss or manager! I remember though, after my babies were born, it was so much easier and more satisfying since their smile and later good cheer were my pat-on-the-back and their needs helped create a schedule that I could build on. I had so much fun just playing with my children and now my grandboys. Children are my favorite people.

Ellen, one more - Did you teach in Mass.?

Our pediatrician recommended Baby Orajel. But you have to put it on just right or the baby's lip will go numb. He hates that...

You can also give them all kinds of teethers, including hard plastic keys, soft rubber shapes, or just a cold, wet washcloth. He chews anything that gets close enough--like my arm. He gave himself a hickey on the back of his hand yesterday.

It's funny--when we go out and I mention that he's teething, people have all kinds of remedies. One woman said to pour a shotglass full of whiskey, dip one finger in and rub it on the baby's gums, then drink the rest (she was joking--but I have to admit it was tempting). Someone else told me about some homeopathic tablets you can get at the drugstore.

I never taught in Massachusetts--I taught one year in Hobbs, New Mexico and last year in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Jobs are very tight in Massachusetts, or were at the time, and we were leaving to come here anyway.

I actually find staying home fun so far. It's true that every bit of my time is taken up by the baby, so I don't get much else done. I consider it a successful day if I manage to feed myself twice before my husband comes home! It's been hard for us too; the whole notion that my husband is more or less my manager. That took me by surprise but we are getting better. Teddy doesn't take 1 long nap during the day, but he sleeps well at night, so I figure it's a tradeoff. I think part of this is that I waited so long to have a baby; consequently I'm pretty mellow. I am hopeful that I can get him to settle down for a few hours' nap every day so I can do things like read and quilt. He's sitting on my lap now watching me type and chewing on a teether--but he's not patient with this kind of thing for long!

If you read the paper I posted by Katharine Lesch and follow the link I posted, you will discover that the premise of A.S.Byatt in this book is a discussion of Victorian attitudes to sexuality and the attitudes of more recent times, especially among women. There is considerable discussion about the marriage between Ellen and Ash, for example. Ellen found that sex detracted from her romantic idea of "holy love". Ash found things different with Christabel LaMotte, who, I believe is described as a depiction of Proserpina. How does this apply to Roland and Maud? What is his true relationship with Val? If Roland is the alter persona of Ash, is his relationship with Maud the same as that of Ash and Christabel? What conclusions does Byatt make with these comparisons? First Maud is introduced by the statement that Blackadder met her at "that Paris conference on sexuality and texuality I went to." He goes on to say he had a brief affair with her. He ends his verbal introduction of Maud to Roland by saying in answer to his question, "Will she eat me?" with the response "She thicks men's blood with cold."

Prior to that there is talk about Christabel's poem about Melusina's story. Blackadder says, "....but the new feminists see Melusina in her bath as a symbol of self-sufficient female sexuality needing no poor males." Is that significant?

Rather than continuing on this vein, I'd like to talk about how A.S.Byatt writes. In this time in the United States the most popular books are those that "show", don't "tell".

For example:

"'You'll never get me!'

"Burt grabbed the gun, fired one shot, missed, then felt the sting of the bullet across his right thigh. Aiming again, he pressed the trigger and smiled when he saw Davenport's blood spew from his chest.

" 'Oh, yeah?' He grinned, backing away and walking down Fifth Avenue among a crowd of shoppers who couldn't care less."

The above is a poor fiction on my part, but you know what I mean. Byatt, on the other hand, tells the story more than she shows it. This is a Victorian technique, but I ask you the questions: Does it work for the American reader? Do her characterizations satisfy you? Do you see a reason for what has been said here about Roland's boring nature?

Something for you and me to think about on Friday.

Mal

So I'm posting the paper on which I based some of what I said this morning.

"A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Critique of the Victorian Omission of Sexuality



Timothy Farrell '97 (English 168, 1996)



Like the narratives of Graham Swift and Peter Carey that function to subvert Victorian notions of progress and religion, A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance questions a dominant Victorian construction--female sexuality. Possession is a novel about a pair of young scholars who trace the correspondence between a well-known male Victorian poet and a lesser-known female poet. The novel is a patchwork of letters, poetry, and narrative. In her depiction of the Victorian past, Byatt recognizes Victorian culture's elision of all discourse surrounding sexuality. Byatt depicts Victorian marriage--represented by the poet Randolph Ash and his wife Ellen--in the same way a Victorian would have represented it, as evacuated of sexuality. Yet one of Byatt's projects in Possession is to valorize the sexual act itself. To accomplish this, she must look outside of Victorian culture to find a way of representing the sexual act.



In her representation of Randolph Ash's marriage to Ellen, Byatt follows the Victorian tradition of displacing the sexual act from the marriage relationship. We learn that Ellen Ash marries Randolph after she has already lost her youth, implying that she has also lost her sexual attractiveness. She thinks back on her life, "A young girl of twenty-four should not be made to wait for marriage until she is thirty-six and her flowering is over". Her memory of her wedding night reveals her terror over the sexual act.



She did not remember it in words. There were no words attached to it, that was part of the horror. She had never spoken of it to anyone, not even to Randolph, precisely not to Randolph. . . An attempt. A hand not pushed away. Tendons like steel, teeth in pain, clenched, clenched. The approach, the locked gateway, the panic, the wimpering flight. Not once, but over and over and over. When did he begin to know that however gentle he was, however patient, it was no good, it would never be any good?. . . The eagerness, the terrible love, with which she had made it up to him, his abstinence, making him a thousand small comforts, cakes and tidbits. She became his slave.





The marriage between Randolph and Ellen is thus characterized by its lack of sexual intimacy. Ellen, the quintessential Victorian woman, does not enjoy the sexual act itself. For her, the sexual act is a brutal experience, incompatible with marriage. Marriage, according to Ellen Ash's construction of it, is frightening close to a master-slave relationship. By removing sexual intimacy from the marriage of Ellen and Randolph, Byatt is drawing on typical Victorian notions of female sexuality and marriage.



Victorian writers often depict the marriage relationship in the same terms as Byatt in Possession. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in her novel-poem Aurora Leigh, likewise evacuates the relationship between Aurora and Romney of all sexual interest. For Aurora, marriage has very little to do with sexuality or desire. She imagines marriage as the final step in becoming a complete woman and a complete artist. Whereas in Book II, Aurora refuses Romney's marriage proposal because she cannot imagine herself dependent on a man, in Book IX she changes her mind.



Passioned to exalt
The artist's instinct in me at the cost
Of putting down the woman's, I forgot
No perfect artist is developed here
From any imperfect woman.
. . . Art is much, but love is more.
O Art, my Art, thou'rt much, but Love is more!
Art symbolises heaven, but Love is God
And makes heaven.



Aurora claims that, because she is not a wife, she is not a perfect artist. She believes hat love must inform the artist, since love finds its origin in God and the artist's task is to create an art that is infused with spirituality. The defining characteristic of Aurora's marriage to Romney, therefore, is their love, which has its roots in the divine love of God. Barrett Browning's text elides any discussion of sexuality. We can infer from this omission that, for Barrett Browning at least, the sexual act itself is subordinate to the sublime love the husband and wife feel for one another.



Since the Victorians did not have a way of discussing sexuality within the context of marriage, Byatt must locate Randolph Ash's sexual encounter outside of marriage. Likewise, since Victorian culture presumed sexual activity outside of marriage was sinful, Byatt is forced to look to other traditions to describe Randolph's sexual encounter with Christabel LaMotte. Byatt draws on the medieval courtly love tradition in her depiction of Ash's affair with LaMotte. That the relationship between the two poets develops by way of their written correspondence is one characteristic of the courtly love tradition. In this tradition, literature often has the power to seduce the (usually female) individual. A second characteristic of the courtly romance is the furtiveness of the relationship. The novel revolves around the secrecy of the poets' relationship and around Maud's and Roland's attempt to figure out precisely what went on between them. Third, Randolph's imagining of LaMotte as the hidden princess connects Byatt's description of their relationship with the courtly love tradition. Byatt describes Ash's thoughts as he and LaMotte travel together on the train. "All the way from London, he had been violently confused by her real presence in the opposite inaccessible corner. For months he had been possessed by the imagination of her. She had been distant and closed away, a princess in a tower, and his imagination's work had been all to make her present, all of her, to his mind and senses." Byatt is clearly drawing from a pre-Victorian tradition in her description of the affair, since Victorian culture cannot give her the terms to discuss sexual intimacy in an affirming way.



In contrast to the Victorians' omission of discourse concerning sexuality is the twentieth-century's hyper-theorization and discussion of it. Maud and Roland recognize this as they search for clues together. Maud says to Roland,



"Do you ever have the sense that our metaphors eat up our world? I mean of course everything connects and connects. . . I mean, all those gloves, a minute ago, we were playing a professional game of hooks and eyes--mediaeval gloves, gaints' gloves, Blanche Glover, Balzac's gloves, the sea-anemone's ovaries--and it all reduced like boiling jam to--human sexuality. Just as Leonora Stern makes the whole earth read as the female body--and language--all language. And all vegetation in pubic hair." Maud laughed, drily. Roland said, "And then, really, what is it, what is this arcane power we have, when we see that everything is human sexuality? It's really powerlessness."





As much as Byatt finds Victorian constructions of human sexuality limited, she suggests that twentieth-century fascination with sexuality and sexual theorizing is equally limited. We come to find out that Leonora Stern, who reads LaMotte's poetry as a mapping of the female body, has in fact misread LaMotte's texts. Her training in French feminism has limited her ability to read texts accurately. Byatt's text thus casts a critical eye on the utility of modern theories of sexuality. We can read Possession as critiquing both the Victorian system, with its omission of sexuality, and the modern one, with its intense analysis of sexuality. Significantly, one of the final images of the novel is the sexual encounter between Maud a

Mal, I am a Real Estate Broker and some days start at 7: and don't finish till midnight - other days start at 10: and are over by noon - today was a long one and I have more calls to make as well as, put stats together yet tonight. A past client called - they are considering putting their house on the market, I need to meet them tomorrow. I will read your very welcomed posts and get back with you tomorrow after my appointment.

Sorry this discussion has become so quiet - I know how lonely that can feel - Sarah has been ill (Sarah usually takes on the discussion leadership for Prized Fiction) and many of us are putting together the details for our annual Book Gathering to be held in Chicago nextweek.

We will all return with energy and curiosity and the enthusiasm to delve into our authors a week from Sunday. In the mean time I will be sponging up what ever you post as well as, doing my best to keep up and post with thoughtful responses.

Your research has made this book finally understandable other then, reading between the lines and just following the mystery of what is going to be done with the stolen letter. My head is spinning with the difference between Victorian mores and our acceptance of woman's right to power today. This is almost like my own life passing in front of me. I'm used to men still retaining this Cavalier Victorian view but Roland's behavior does not match the Cavalier tradition. At times he seems passive agressive which I do not see as Modernist behavior either. I need time to get into all this - tonight Mal, tonight -

Significantly, one of the final images of the novel is the sexual encounter between Maud and Roland. Here Byatt offers a valorization of the sexual act on its own terms. Byatt's Possession thus conflates the Victorian past's omission of sexual discourse with modern discourse on sexuality only to subvert them both and to claim the significance of the sexual act itself.

I don't mean to push you. I thought there were many more coming into this folder. I have a tendency to go overboard when I start this kind of thing, then become timid about what I've done!

Mal

Oh no please do not be timid - in fact your posting is the kind I'm often feeling I've overwhelmed others with all this research - I am in hog heaven that someone else has this bent to really roll up their sleaves and get into it. I just wish you were experienceing a discussion more like those we have been experiencing all summer and early fall. You deserve that kind of experience but everyone is stretched thin just now. Please hang in there with us - we will not disappoint you - and your thoughts attached to the research are great!

So sorry to be so late getting back in here! Am, as you may know, hopelessly behind in this discussion and racing to catch up with the rest of you.

I hope I can now post something somewhat sensible about the first of the wonderful excerpts you posted here, Mal, so grateful for that. I think we need to make them html pages and clickable so we can refer to them when we've completed the entire book and see if we actually agree with the writer's perspectives and opinions.

As I've only read through Chapter 7 at this point, I can't really have an overview of the entire book so I'm actually quite excited about comparing my own ideas with those in the texts given.

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Let's try to start Chapters 8 & 9 (discussing them, anyway) by Sunday?

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Ellen that is one precious baby, you must let me put a clickable to him, at least, here, our youngest Bookie!!

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OK, I've now reread the first excerpt, Mal, that you put here, 4 times. I wanted to be sure I was not missing the point or misunderstanding the point of it, much meat there to discuss to add to our understanding of the book as a whole. I hope to get the second or larger excerpt read this afternoon, have printed it out. I appreciate your attempts to help, I admit I've been stuck.

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May I dare to say I don't necessarily agree with the author of the piece? I'm not sure that I agree that "sexual encounter is the traditional metaphor for knowledge." Obviously this is a paper, somebody's graduate thesis on sexuality in POSSESSION. I like very much the different "possessions" noted and the "dual symbolism" of Proserpina's Garden: intellectual and physical, that's good. Also like the "fall from innocence as a state of imaginative possession." Love that. Interesting to read about the Victorian sense of time and the Romantic movement, of which I know nothing. Also great. Thanks so much. Perhaps a tad overfond of the word "conflate," which, for those whose dictionary doesn't include it, means "to bring together, fuse, confuse...to combine( as in two readings of a text) into a composite whole." Nice new word this morning, and I always respect somebody who uses what for me is a nice new word.

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I cannot, however, find any rationale for the Garden of Proserpina Fracured Fairy Tale quoted on page 6.

Just rereading it again gives me a headache.

I'm torn here between being a nice cheerful person and being totally honest, and since our discussions here are about our own opinions of a book, I need to say that Ash's Garden of Proserpina so far, to me, is a total ruin.



"Ears of grain were called apples of gold, which must have been the first gold in the world while metallic gold was unknown. . .So the golden apple which Hercules first brought back or gathered from Hesperia must have been grain; and the Gallic Hercules with links of this gold, that issues from his mouth, chains men by the ears: something which will later be discovered as a myth concerning the fields. Hence Hercules remained the Deity to propitiate in order to find treasures, whose God was Dis (identical with Pluto) who carries off Proserpine (another name for Ceres or grain) to the underworld, described by the poets, according to whom its first name was Styx, its second the land of the dead, its third the depth of furrows. . . It was of this golden apple that Virgil, most learned in heroic antiquities, made the golden bough Aeneas carries into the Inferno or Underworld."

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"Proserpine (another name for Ceres or grain) " No, that's not so. It was Ceres (Demeter) who was Proserpina's mother, or is Byatt saying they are one and the same? The Christabel thing? HAH??

"to the underworld, described by the poets, according to whom its first name was Styx, " No, that's not so either, the Styx was the main river of the underworld, there were levels of the underworld, but the Styx was not one of them.

What on earth are we suppposed to make of that? I know I keep harping on this, so sorry, if you have finished the book you probably KNOW what Byatt means by this and think I'm pitiful, so sorry but that's such a mess I can't deal with it?

"It was of this golden apple that Virgil, most learned in heroic antiquities, made the golden bough Aeneas carries into the Inferno or Underworld."

Oh for Pete's sake. Virgil now? The golden bough, the golden apples, everything but the golden arches. This is just mind boggling, I can't deal with it and don't know why it's there, the first paper does NOT explain it to me, does it to you?

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I MUST get off this and move on, it's like watching a movie of WWII and seeing Patton grappling with the Japanese. NOT!! But it bothers me, nonetheless. To me, whatever language you use to say something, in the end you need to SAY something? The Garden of Proserpina story says sloppy scholarship and everything but the kitchen sink, to me?

How are the rest of you taking the Garden story and how do you see it fitting in to the book as a whole?

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Yes, Barb, I will get all the links up, how nice to have them and the two excerpts up in the heading as html pages, am so grateful to you all for your research as I simply have no time at present. Maybe after Chicago!

Ginny

Ginny, thanks for making Mal's research clickable. I want to compare my thoughts with it, too, but I'd like to wait until I've finished the book and meanwhile didn't want them to intrude on my reading. Oh, and feel free to post a clickable of Teddy--I don't know how to do it (but I'll learn...)

I finished Chapter 9 last night and thought I would go ahead and start posting on the references.

Chapter 8: Kelmscott glass--does anyone know what this is? I don't! Rose tree, red roses, white roses, and blood-red fruit: refers to Snow White and Rose Red. I found this story online at http://www.taurussoftware.hostings.com/meghan/swrr.html Maud being at home in the cold: seems to be a reference to The Snow Queen. I thought the descriptions of Seal Court sounded like something out of Wuthering Heights (this probably isn't a reference; it just struck me) City of Is (I've usually seen it as Ys): Maud explains in a few pages. Ys was built below sea level and had strong sea-walls. It was built for Dahut by her father, Gradlon. Dahut was very attached to the Celtic gods and accused the bishop of the area of making her city dull and too well-behaved. So, she gave a dragon to each of the people of the city, which made it the most prosperous city of Brittany. Dahut also had a custom in which she had a different lover every night; they had to wear a silk mask. In the morning the mask turned to iron and killed the man, who was then thrown from the city walls. Then a prince dressed all in red came to the city, and Dahut fell in love with him. He turned out to be the Devil, who had been sent by God (!) to destroy the sinful city. Dahut stole the key to the lockgates from her father for the Prince, who then opened the gates and let the sea into the city. Everyone was drowned, except King Gradlon, who rode out of the city on his horse with Dahut behind him. Gradlon was struck by Saint Gwenole and forced to abandon Dahut, but he reached the shore alive. It is said that you can still hear bells ringing on that part of the shore. It is also said that someday the city, which was only flooded, will be rebuilt better than ever. (I found this story on a website but forgot to bookmark it; if I run across it again I'll post it) Sapphic Press--publisher of Christabel LaMotte poetry. Sappho was the first woman poet that we know about. She had a small settlement on the Greek Island of Lesbos, which is where--you guessed it--we get the term lesbian. We don't know if Sappho was a lesbian but my memory is that her love poetry was addressed to a young woman.

Part 2 of Chapter 8 later! Ellen

I don't know whether you have this information I found, but I put it on a web page for you to look at.

A Guide

About the Little Tailor story. I believe the tailor is a symbol for Roland who is on a "scholarly quest". The tailor is given a glass key which leads him to a beautiful woman, i.e knowledge. This book is openly about a search for knowledge. It also is, as I thought when I first read it, a comment on Victorian and present day attitudes about sexuality. Witness the fact that entry to the garden is forbidden. There are scholars who say the snake in the Garden of Eden represented knowledge. When Adam and Eve took bites from that apple, they gained knowledge, not just of their own sexuality. Note also references in the poetry to the golden apple. Mention of the devil and the River Styx are references to sin, very prevalent in the mind of Victorians about sex, especially Victorian women. I think the quest for knowledge refers not only to scholarly and intellectual knowledge but to a knowledge of sexuality in this book. I believe that every poem or story used as reference in Possession is used for the same reason, to clue the reader into the "quests", both intellectual and sexual. Byatt used Melusina, who needed no man, as the Sapphic or lesbian symbol of the wholeness of women, in my opinion.

You haven't answered my questions. Does the book work from a literary standard? Does Byatt create suspense early? How does she follow through with conflict and resolution?

Mal

My goodness - this discussion has really come alive. Thank you to our Ginny for filling in for me while I was "out of the office." I need to do some catching up with the book and your wonderful posts - but I'm back.

And it's great to be back.

Another page about Possession I set up:

More about Possession

Mal - thank you so much for all of the material on Possession. I must confess, however, that I'm now thoroughly confused by what Byatt was hoping to accomplish with this book.

Was she attempting to depict notions of Victorian sexuality, and the restrictions on women in that era?

To resurrect old myths, retell biblical stories?

I'm lost.

What do YOU think Byatt is trying to do here?

One thing I found among your posts was a wonderful statement from readerdoc/Betty to the effect that she most enjoys books that allow her to visualize the characters and the scenes - and books that stretch her abilities just a bit.

I think we have both the visual richness and the intellectual challenge in this book.

Ellen - my niece will start teething very soon, so I'm sure we'll be talking!

Barbara - thank you SO much for hanging in there with this discussion - and have a wonderful time in Chicago. Please keep us posted on what happens.

How is everyone with the current schedule? It has us discussing Ch. 8-9 until November 13.

MarjV, are you still out there? Artemis? Others?

I have posted what I thought when I first read this book some years ago. I have also posted that I am reading it in a different, more analytical way now. Since I am a writer, I read everything with an eye and ear out for form, suspense, conflict, resolution, flow and rhythmic sound of words. Byatt breaks this book up with so much poetry that the flow is interrupted and often slow. She also uses a "tell the story" method which is not precisely what American readers like. I read that when first approached by American publishers she was told to remove quite a lot of the poetry because it was felt the book would not sell as it was written here in this country. Then it won the Booker Prize, and there was no question about its publication here. This kind of thing interests me. As for her aim, I still believe Possession is about a quest for knowledge, which includes current and Victorian romantic ideas about sexuality, especially for and among women.

I think Byatt is an enormously fine writer. Her descriptions are unique and sometimes incredible. However, I sense in her a professorial, academic superiority which is bothersome to me as a reader. She is exactly the sort of academic which I have spoofed in some of my writing. Perhaps that is because I am originally from a sometimes sparsely-worded and thrifty New England of many years past.

Thank you for posting the links to my three electronic magazines at the top of the page. Those came up in casual conversation and really have little to do with Byatt's Possession.

Now to continue reading.
Mal

I don't know who posted those links above but am very grateful and here's Ellen with that strange and wonderful story of Dahut and the bells still ringing today, gave me chills, never heard that one. If you can find it, Ellen, do post it or maybe the Ghost of Possession who posted the links can make it an html page, I think POSSESSION itself is possessed!!

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Now, first things first! Is this, or is this not the cutest baby you ever saw?? Here is our Ellen's TEDDY and he's just precious, want to bring him home with me!

Teddy: Our Newest Books & Lit Member!

Precious, and just LOOK at that intelligence in his eyes. I'm going to post Master Teddy in the Library, too!

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And here's that reference to Kelmscott glass which I also never heard of, I do like a discussion where you learn things, and we're learning plenty in this one!!

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OK, Mal, as to my attempts to answer your questions:

Does the book work from a literary standard?

By the way while I'm speaking to Mal, that SONATA is beautifully done, love the music, love the presentation, you have every right to be proud of that! It's gorgeous, we need to have it in the heading of the Authors thing for a start and I do see our Lorrie in there twice. Some nice comments on it in the Chicago discussion!

OK I'm still on Chapter 7, not sure I can say from 7 chapters whether or not it "works," which literary "standard" are you holding it up to? It does seem to have a plot, the descriptions are rich and lush, so far the plot seems to hold, the characterizations are varied, the voice.....whose IS the voice?....and it is interesting.

Does Byatt create suspense early?

Yes, I'd say she's done a pretty good job of creating suspense early with the discovery (a tad fortuitous, don't you think?) of the LaMotte/ Ash connection, exciting, the further facile discovery of the papers in the doll thing, I think the plot itself is quite exciting and lushly described. So kudos to Mal for getting us or me back on track.

If a person were the type to be distracted by minutiae, or obsessive about each little word, that person would be dead or dropped out by now, tho.



How does she follow through with conflict and resolution?



She hasn't by Chapter 7 and that's all I can now relate to.

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I'm leaving Wednesday for Chicago and am taking the possessed thing with me. They say the Blackstone Hotel has plenty of ghosts so it won't be a stretch to read it there. Where should we be on the 15th when I get back, Sarah? What should we have read up to or be ready to discuss????

I think Byatt, if her purpose was to show scholarship can be exciting, has done a good job of that, and I'm enjoying that part of it. I know nothing about sexual mores in the Victorian era, was that the time when they "died for love?" Lord Randall? Must go research some of this stuff, it's beginning to ring old dull long silent bells. More later,

Ginny

Sarah, I don't know either what Byatt intended with this book, it might be fun when we finish it to say what we thought she achieved! She has certainly brought out the excitement that does occur in scholarship but again I think it's just too easy and too fortuitous, the discoveries, but I guess she had to have something to turn the plot on.

If you all are the least bit interested in how exciting scholarly research CAN be you want to run to the library and get a copy of KING OF THE CONFESSORS, by Thomas Hoving, a true account of his "discovery" and the exciting chase of the Bury St. Edmund's Cross. It's truly one of the best books I ever read and led to our meeting with him in NYC last December. It's almost hold your breath time as you read it.

But this is a work of fiction and I'm not sure whether the issue is the inclusion of poetry which American audiences don't like or the fact that she deliberately made the poetry so bad nobody would want to read it? Not sure, it's bad, that's for sure.

Ginny

Possession: the secret of sex

Teddy is adorable and makes me want to see my new little granddaughter more than ever. Very little chance of that, though. Poor-As-A- Churchmouse Marilyn here doesn't travel very far. I'm smiling. Unlike Victorians and some people in our era, I do not believe there's a stigma attached to poverty. How can I when I have the richness of Sonata and my other publications in my life?

Thank you for visiting Sonata, Ginny. It is a beautiful, high quality literary magazine. I'm prejudiced, of course, because it's mine, but I do believe it's true. Lorrie and other people I see in here have work in the Holiday issue. Charlotte has a poem in the current issue of the m.e.stubbs poetry journal and there will be more of her poetry in the third issue which I'll put on the web this month. That's lower case because it is the name I was given when I was born. That was a long, long time ago!

Off to work with time, I hope, to read more of Possession.

Mal

I guess for me the most interesting explanation of the book is the one Mal posted about Victorian sexuality. I recall thinking when I first read this book - So what? What's the big deal? Christabel and Ash had a secret relationship. And?

But in the Victorian era, such a thing was scandalous, I suppose. And had to be approached very delicately. All the poetry, the subtlety, was the only way these two could express themselves.

I wonder if there are real examples of brazen sexuality from the Victorian era. It almost would be MORE interesting for Roland and Maud to have discovered a secret cache of explicit correspondence between Christabel and Ash. To have found this rather tame exchange is sort of - anticlimatic.

Okay, I'm no expert in this, but the Victorians weren't nearly as Puritan as we think of them (neither were the Puritans). The Victorian era had lots of sex scandals, including Charles Dickens/Ellen Terney (Dickens set her up in a house and then wrote a letter to the newspaper denying he was having an affair with her); Charles Parnell and Kitty O'Shea; and Lloyd George, who regularly attacked the housemaids. It was the Victorians who created the "Grand Tour," when young men toured Europe to finish their educations. Everyone knew that the tour would also include trips to famous brothels (and there were numerous guidebooks to these brothels).

Queen Victoria herself wasn't hung up about sex or drinking. She liked to drink claret diluted with whiskey. When her husband Albert died, she took a companion a few years later. A movie called Mrs. Brown was made about this relationship not too long ago (I haven't seen it).

During the Victorian era there were moral crusades about prostitution, child labor, drinking, etc. Newspapers reported on these problems in matter-of-fact, frank manners. So the Victorians did, as far as we know, discuss sex and other topics we'd usually think they were too reticent to discuss.

Christabel and Ash would still have been considered scandalous, though. Everyone thought Dickens was a scandal.

Ellen - thank you. I was hearing the wind in here for awhile. I'm afraid my remark dragged this discussion to a grinding halt!

Mrs. Brown was a very good movie. And you're right that the Victorians weren't as repressed as they seemed. Nonetheless, the sort of in-your-face affairs that one might have in today's society just couldn't be revealed then. Hence the need for the sort of secrecy that Ash and Christabel engaged in??

It is now November 16 and I must confess to being a bit behind in my reading. (I started a fun and exciting new job yesterday). Therefore, I have extended our discussion of Chapters 8-9 through next Monday, November 22. Just don't feel ready to tackle "The Correspondence" (Ch. 10) just yet!!

Good idea... I think we all got a little behind playing in Chicago..

I have e-mailed everyone who ever posted in this discussion - and the unanimous decision is to end this discussion at this time.

Please finish the book on your own; it's truly worth it in my opinion.

As a book club discussion piece, I'm afraid the book has not worked here. I attribute much of this to my own crazy schedule, and for that I apologize.

The future? There is a proposal floating to have Prized Fiction books rolled into the general "BC Online" discussion, and to discuss approximately 2 prize winners per year. I think this is a great idea! That discussion will also feature best sellers, non-fiction, biography, author participation discussions, and other wonderful things.

So do not despair; we'll meet again next year.

Much love, and Happy Thanksgiving,

Sarah