Possession by A. S. Byatt ~ Book Club Online for June

[ginny]

The Book Club Online is  the oldest  book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone.  We offer cordial discussions of one book a month,  24/7 and  enjoy the company of readers from all over the world.  everyone is welcome to join in.

Week V: Metaphors and Endings       
 

Interview with A.S. Byatt on Possession Submitted by Jude S.

A Zest for Pastiche by John Mullan on Possession by AS Byatt. Week one:  Satire: (Possible spoilers within).  Submitted by Marcie

Characters and Plot : First Five Chapters by our Readers

Schedule of Discussion:

June 28-30  Chapters 24- end  (90pp)  

Week V: June 28-30  Chapters 124- End: Metaphors and Endings 

1. Chapter 24: What are some of the metaphors in this chapter that impressed you? What are Roland's primary thoughts and feelings at this time?

2. Chapter 25: What do we learn from Ellen Ash's journal? What do we learn directly from her thoughts to which the scholars don't have access?

3. Chapter 26: What transformations take place in Roland? What are some of the garden metaphors in this chapter?

4. Chapter 27: "We are driven by endings as by hunger. We must know...." (from the poem in the beginning of the chapter). "'All's well that ends well,' said Euan. This feels like the ending of a Shakespearean comedy--who's that chappie that comes down on a swing at the end of As You Like It?" What does the poem in the beginning of the chapter tells us. What about the reference to Shakespeare?

5. Chapter 28: What do you think of the grave robbing scene?
"Maud said,'We need the end of the story.' 'There is no guarantee that that is what we shall find,' said Blackadder. 'But we must look,' said Maud." How do you see the end of the story? What happens with Maud and Roland? Are there parallels with Christabel and Randolph?

6. Postscript: "There are things that happen that leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been." What do you think of the events we, the readers, see in the postscript?

7. What are your thoughts about the book? Did the last chapters and postscript change your mind about how any of the characters were portrayed? How did the postscript change the "ending" of the book for you?

8. If you've seen the film adaptation, what are your thoughts about it? Many of the characters were combined or left out. Did the film seem faithful to the "spirit" of the book?

Discussion Leaders: ginny & Marcie

[ginny]

 

"Information dumps."

hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, great one, Sally!  Looks like she did it again,  this new one's been widely panned.

When I first started this book I was blown away because I thought it was real. I thought Ash was real, I thought, like some Latin translation, you'd work at it and in the end, FINALLY, you'd find the pot of gold. But this is like some dog Latin I've seen, you might work like a dog but at the end there's nothing but information dump and a fine novel somewhere underneath. hahahaa Love it.

I can see why it won the Booker. They were afraid not to give it, truly, they thought it must be a work of great genius, which it may be, but they thought they would look like pearls before swine if they let it go by.

Information dump! hahahah Love it!

[ginny]

And don't you see, your own opinion is right? No matter what it is.  There's nobody in this thing who can tell you no, it's not that way.
"Something for everybody." Indeed.

Who is the "Mummy" in "Mummy Possest?"

Up until the other day I thought it was an Egyptian. hahahaa

[ginny]

Leonors Stern's  husband was a New Critic.

This way of looking at literature is the way I was (and I think most of us were) taught: from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Criticism

New Criticism is a type of formalist literary criticism that developed in the 1920s-30s and peaked in the 1940s-50s. The movement is named after John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism. New Critics treat a work of literature as if it were self-contained. They do not consider the reader's response, author's intention, or historical and cultural contexts. New Critics perform a close reading of the text, and believe the structure and meaning of the text should not be examined separately. New Critics especially appreciate the use of literary devices in a text. The New Criticism has sometimes been called an objective approach to literature.....

The notion of ambiguity is an important concept within New Criticism; several prominent New Critics have been enamored above all else with the way that a text can display multiple simultaneous meanings.

It's a way of making sense out of literature by analyzing it. So is structuralism.


This from BURGASS: Can anyone explain this?

A postmodern novelist has a problem with endings, as the narrator tells us (obliquely):  “Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable.  But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable.”  Byatt also provides two endings, both of them happy in their way.  She finds a compromise between coherence and  closure and the postmodern game.

The beginning of the end of the novel is marked by Roland’s discovery of his poetic voice in Chapter 26.  This chapter is headed by a long extract from Ash’s  The Garden of Proserpina, which describes an edenic age of language when there was no distinction between words and things.  “They made names and poetry/  The things were what they named and made them”  This is truly a mythic age for a poststructuralist, for whom the orthodox theory of language admits only an arbitrary relation between a word and the thing in the world it describes.  There is also a disquisition over several pages on the nature of writing and reading, the power of words.  Roland is a literary critic, who does not simply dissect, but admires.  As we have seen, this secondary and sometimes subvervient position, can dampen any primary creative impulse and Roland is also potentially inhibited by the dead-end of structuralist thought:  “He had been taught that language was essentially inadequate, that it could never speak what was there, that it only spoke itself.”  But Roland’s reading of Ash proves to be inspirational “What had happened to him was that the ways in which it could be said had become more interesting than the idea that it could not.”  The discovery of the poetic voice is crucial in respect to the central theme, possession.  Unlike Blackadder, whose creative impulses have been long since stifled, Roland acquires, through some mystical process, a poetic voice.  This is not a secondary critical voice, not even derivative of Randolph Henry Ash:  Roland “began to think of words, words came from some well in him…  He could hear, or feel, or even almost see, the patterns made by a voice he didn’t yet know, but which was his own.”  When Roland finally goes public about his initial theft of Ash’s letter to the assembled party at Beatrice Nest’s house, it is described by the narrator as “the moment of dispossession, or perhaps the word was exorcism,” but he can let go because he now owns his poetic voice.

Ok first off "edenic" means:

edenic

Main Entry: Eden
Pronunciation: \ˈē-dən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin, from Hebrew ʽĒdhen
Date: before 12th century
1 : paradise 2
2 : the garden where according to the account in Genesis Adam and Eve first lived
3 : a place of pristine or abundant natural beauty


This sentence, then:The Garden of Proserpina, which describes an edenic age of language when there was no distinction between words and things.    does not make any sense, does it to you? A snake is a snake is a snake. An apple is an apple is an apple. Can anybody translate THIS bit?

But it appears here that in order to try to understand this you need some background in structuralism or post structuralism. They appear to be a philosophy which can be applied to language and literature.

I had never heard the term until once in a book discussion a new person said, oh I didn't realize we were going to be de-constructuralists here.

I didn't know what they were saying.

They appeared to be saying this: from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-structuralism (I know, I know but the edu stuff is impossible to read):

The author's intended meaning, such as it is (for the author's identity as a stable "self" with a single, discernible "intent" is also a fictional construct), is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Post-structuralism rejects the idea of a literary text having a single purpose, a single meaning, or one singular existence. Instead, every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text.

To step outside of literary theory, this position is generalizable to any situation where a subject perceives a sign. Meaning (or the signified, in Saussure's scheme, which is as heavily presumed upon in post-structuralism as in structuralism) is constructed by an individual from a signifier. This is why the signified is said to 'slide' under the signifier, and explains the talk about the "primacy of the signifier."

Yes, well.

So for the construcurtalist  the author's meaning is secondary to what the reader perceives.  To the post structuralist every reader creates a new experience.

So Burgass says, not quite as clearly, to make her point about Roland, that through his approach to literature, his feeling rather than analyzing,  he's able to find his creativity: This is truly a mythic age for a poststructuralist, for whom the orthodox theory of language admits only an arbitrary relation between a word and the thing in the world it describes.

This is not a secondary critical voice, not even derivative of Randolph Henry Ash:  Roland “began to think of words, words came from some well in him…  He could hear, or feel, or even almost see, the patterns made by a voice he didn’t yet know, but which was his own.”  When Roland finally goes public about his initial theft of Ash’s letter to the assembled party at Beatrice Nest’s house, it is described by the narrator as “the moment of dispossession, or perhaps the word was exorcism,” but he can let go because he now owns his poetic voice. .

She is referring of course to the end of the book and what she describes as TWO conclusions. So she's talking about " She finds a compromise between coherence and  closure and the postmodern game." which I'd love to see, coherence and closure, and the beginning of the end of the novel being  Roland's development of his own creative flow.

We said at the beginning he was the protagonist of the book. We want to watch for the climax of the book. To me he's not well drawn enough to have a climax, and if it's that he develops his own voice…well….. I'll need to reread the end, it appears. We need to watch the MAIN plot carefully.

That's what I got out of this, what did you?

[Jonathan]

'Information dump'. Don't knock it. POSSESSION could serve as a crash course for someone embarking on a carreer in literary studies. For the rest of us it's a splendid short-cut to learning. And the posts to this discussion are proof of that.

So much to puzzle over. As for example, Ginny'squestion:

Who is the "Mummy", in "Mummy Possest"?

Who of us did not immediately think of Egyptian mummies? What a train of thought that led to. And on page 424 we find Prof Blackadder giving it some thougt while perusing THE SHADOWY PORTAL, Mrs Lees' autobiographical reminiscences. She's the medium at the seances. After a series of other associations, Blackadder, we are told:

...had reread Mummy Possest, which he had always thought anomalous in its hostility to its female protagonist and by extension to women in general. He asked himself now if this hitherto unexplained burst of bitterness was connected to the poet's feelings about Christabel LaMotte. Or, of course, his wife.

Of course? There have been a few 'of courses' along the way, but this one is puzzling.

[ginny]

Jonathan, surely the presence of an affair might carry with it, if a particularly vitriolic bit of writing which seemed to be prejudiced toward women surfaced, surely the possibility of all not being perfect at home might rear its head.

Cropper is speculating like he has most of Ash's life and works, inventing things or possibilities (or so I think)  which is his stock in trade and hoping he's not wrong by this new evidence.

Sally has sent me the Burgass! Thank you Sally, I'll return it when we're through, can't wait to see HER take on it. Am going to a conference in Winston  Salem tomorrow but will be here on laptop and hope to see lots of new comments, don't let this book defeat you!

Jonathan, I love your positive thoughts, I personally don't trust anything she says, but I do like the references to things like Melusina, which I had never heard of. I actually HAVE learned a great deal from this book, but unfortunately most of it has been my having to sigh and look it up. Still, they do say you remember best what you had to research  for yourself instead of just being told something.

  I still think she overshot her wad here, less is more sometimes. We were told (another old myth?) that the human brain can only assimiliate 7 new pieces of information before it stops, and of course here she's got 45937 in one paragraph.

 And of course there are  the footnotes in the next section, I hope nobody is taking them verbatim.

Does anybody know if the sailor and the miller's daughter is real or Byatt? I don't know any Breton myths.

[Mippy]

Ginny ~ you see a fine novel here.   I do not, having finished the book.   Too difficult for me

[JoanR]

I just finished the book!!  What an ending! What a book!  I enjoyed being sent chasing down allusions ( and illusions!) and didn't mind being made to look up unfamiliar words - and there were indeed a slew of them.  I've always been fond of myths and legends and they were here a-plenty.  Cropper came a-cropper and that was a good thing - loved what happened to his car! Ho Ho!  Leonora was one of my favorite characters -  larger than life - and wouldn't she be good for Blackadder if she could stay around longer!  All the loose ends in the story were tied up so neatly at the end - complicated though it was.  Even Roland, whom I was thinking of as a pretty weak character ( OK - a wimp) showed signs of a promising future.

I don't dare say much specifically since it may be that not everyone has finished the book but this has been a terrific discussion and I have learned a lot from it.  Thank you all and thank you, Ginny!

[Jonathan]

Joan,I agree. It's a dazzling ending to a most complex novel. Can we allow her to get away with it? Do we really get closure? Or will we be left with nagging doubts, to lose sleep over?

Take the Postscript, with its meadow full of hay, and all the summer flowers in abundance...and a child, swinging on a gate...humming to herself and making a daisy chain

Along comes the man,  tall, bearded, his face in shadow under  a wide-brimmed hat with an ash-plant in his hand...


and she asked him if could make daisy chains.

He can and does. And gets a lock of hair finely plaited,which he wound in a fine coil, and put into the back of his watch.

Long before this man pictured the child in his poem Mummy Possessed: the small son of the grieving Countess of Caregrove, who has come to Hella Lees seance, hoping to make contact with her lost child.

His small voice has been heard in broken sounds- / He makes, he says, perpetual daisy-chains / in wondrous meadows

What did Ash intend with his Mummy Possest?. Had Christabel deceived him into thinking the child was dead. With hindsight it becomes evident that she had everything carefully planned wit regard to the birth of  her child.

Blackadder concluded that  Mummy Possest was an 'unexplained burst of bitterness. I feel there was just as much anguish as bitterness in it. Just as there is anguish in Christabel's baby poems - The page of scraps of poems. Sent by Ariane Le Minier to Maud Bailey.411-413

My subject is Spilt Milk. Howe'er I wipe and wipe / Howe'er I frantic - scour / The ghost of my spilled mild / Makes my Air sour.

I found myself thinking of Lady MacDuff unable to wash the blood from her hands. And wondering if our two lovers will also be haunted forever by the consequences of their affair?

Hasn't it seemed like a ghost story at times?

Mummy Possest is a creepy poem. Mrs Lees is training an apprentice. Some of the seance are special effects, but the serve such a useful service. The object is to something to enforce Lady Claregrove's beliefs that her young son lives. Mrs Lees tells Geraldine:

Her (Lady C's) will to Faith's a good, and our small tricks / Our genial deceptions, strenthen that, / And so are good too, in their harmless way. / Here is a lock of hair - the housemaid's hair - As golden as her son's, and just as fine - Which at some aptest moment you let fall . you understand me - in her lap - or on her clutching fingers - that will do such good - / will give such happiness...

At another point, Mrs Lees says to her apprentice:

I hope you may remember who you are / And what you were, a pretty parlour maid /  Whose mistress did not like her pretiness / or soulful stare at  the young man o' the house/b]

Mrs Lees speaks the words, but it is Ash who wrote them.

[Jonathan]

Was it Bertha?

[Jonathan]

Kaum zu glauben, aber sie erzählt so schön. That's my reply, Ginny, to the difficulties and credibility problems of Byatt's style. Loosely translated the lyrical observation from a German song would be: hard to believe, but she spins it out so well.

She allowed herself a lot of poetic license, perhaps. No, that's not correct. Everything is so well documented. There are seventy or so items she pulls out of her dress-up box, and I can't point to any which doesn't some how add to the picture we get of researching the lives of people who have passed away but left a paper trail.

The story of the sailor and the miller's daughter, pages 386 to 392 ...is it real? Or Byatt?

We'll never know, unless we can imagine ourselves in the bleak great hall at the Manoir de Kenemet, with the logs burning in the great chimney - flaring and fitful.Listening to one of Gode's stories.

JBut when she tells, she will raise her hands, or throw back her head, or shake her shawl, and the long tattered shadows race across the ceiling into the dark of the unseen half of the room, or huge faces with gaping  mouths and monstrous noses and chins - our own, transfigured by the flames into witches and spectres. And Gode's  telling is a play with all these things, with the firelight and the gesturing shadows and the streamers of light and dark - she brings all their movements together as I imagine the leader of an orchestra may.

Just for once, let's allow the storyteller to 'play with all these things.' There's a lot of shoptalk in the novel, and the author must feel she's fooling nobody. She tells it so well.

How humorous to read about Leonora and Blackadder preparing for their five minutes on television. Leonora, who Maud has told us, is the expert in achieving intimacy within a minute. Now that's not British.

[bellamarie]

Oh my heavens!  I just finished the end of the book and I am crying like a baby.  I would like to apologize for my days of absence, but life does go on in the Reinhart home, and so it was a bit hectic to settle down for a few hours to read.  I finally had a day to do nothing and spent it reading.  I must say when my husband and  I were out for dinner he asked about the book and I told him it was the most frustrating book I have ever read and was throughly fed up with it, mind you I was only up to chapter 23.  LOLOL  Now I still feel the book was extremely frustrating but I must say I am thrilled with the POSTSCRIPT 1868!  I will say NO more until we have be given the green light all has finished the book.

Ginny, it was not me who said the book had two endings, I was quoting another post.  I do not feel there was two endings.

My heart went out to Ash at the seance where he screams, what happened to the baby.  So he knew there was a baby.  How could she deny him of knowing?  At the seance I got the impression the baby lived rather than died because the shirt's sleeves filled.  I never cared much for Christabel's character, but I was furious to know she did not tell Ash of the baby.  She has lived her entire life self serving.  Not that I care any more or less for Ash.  They are a perfect match.  As for all the poetry, I have to admit I think Byatt put way too much of it in the book.  I agree with the editors who wanted some of it taken out.  I seriously almost gave up on finishing the book, but I kept hearing Jonathon's promise of laughter and tears.  Tears indeed!

I shall return once I have had a chance to digest this and read more of all your prior posts I have missed the past few days.  Until then.....Ciao! 

[marcie]

Jonathan, many thanks for your thoughtful and thought-provoking posts. I'm re-reading the sections you mention so that I can comment on your thoughts.

Bellamarie, thanks for letting us know you've finished the book and that you were moved by the ending. The book does in a sense have "two" endings....not two alternative endings--- but it ends and then there is a sort of postscript where we learn about a special meeting between Ash and someone else.

We are not scheduled to complete the book until this week--our last few days-- but I know that some of us are holding back until everyone has read the whole book. Has anyone not finished the book yet? We don't want to spoil it for you.

[bellamarie]

Marcie, Yes, you are correct in the fact it does end and then we have the postscript, which I feel gives us a new light and some closure.  I still have a few quesions for A.S. Byatt, but will hold off til we can discuss other topics.  I thought when the other post said two endings, it meant we could look at it and see two different ways the end would be.

I like Lenora and thought she may be a good match for Blackadder if he could handle such a large woman, and I don't mean stature.  LOL  Lenora was our humor, so colorful!

Now how coincidental shall we think it to be our Val should meet Euan and he know Toby and they all end up talking about the "Love Letters?"  A bit of "Six Degrees" I might think.  Hmmm...I see Byatt trying to bring this all to a happily ever after ending here.  Val has moved out, and moved on with Euan and is now happy.  Seems our Roland is a bit still confused as to what he wants and doesn't want. 
pg. 456 "Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable.  But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable.  "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearance of the world, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into the coherent plot.  Roland was troubled by the idea that the oppostite might be true." 

Is Roland afraid of committment and love?  With Val he did not have to give much of either.  Maud is a complicated woman, someone who would required so much more of him, if he were to be in her life.  He seems to struggle as to whether he is worthy of Maud and if he could fit into her world.  pg. 459 "He thought of the Princess on her glass hill, of Maud's faintly contemptuous look at their first meeting.  In the real world- that was, for one should not privilege one world above another, in the social world to which they must both return from these white nights and sunny days_ there was little real connection between them.  Maud was a beautiful woman such as  he had no claim to possess.  She had a secure job and an international reputation.  Moreover, in some dark and outdated English social system of class, which he did not believe in, but felt obscurely working and gripping him, Maud was County, and he was urban lower-middle class, in some places more, in some places less acceptable than Maud, but in almost all incompatible."

Aren't most romance novels, poems and love story's theme this?  Romeo and Juliet, and more modern day Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts the low class street hooker trying to fit into Richard Gere's high class wealthy, social life.  So will Roland have  his happily ever after like Val seems to? 

[Gumtree]

Was it Bertha?

Aha! Jonathan - that's exactly what I think - Bertha resurfaces at the seance.

and the lines: I hope you may remember who you are/and what you were, a pretty parlour maid/ whose mistress did not like her prettiness/ or soulful stare at the young man o' the house.

and wasn't Ash the man o' the house with 'young' being perhaps poetic license.

I still fancy Ash as the father of Bertha's child and the notion that Ellen knew about it and tried to do her best for Bertha on Ash's behalf and in his absence.

The Postscript with ' the child swinging on the gate' and the man that comes along was a sweet and pretty way to tie things up but in it's own way disturbing in that no one had told the child to beware of strangers and not to speak to strange men - even in that time and that place. I think it would have been more natural for her to run to the house to tell adults that the man was there rather than asking him to make a daisy chain and then allowing him to cut a lock of her hair - what would her mother and aunt think about that when they found out about it - as inevitably they would. 


 

[bellamarie]

Joan R...

All the loose ends in the story were tied up so neatly at the end - complicated though it was.  Even Roland, whom I was thinking of as a pretty weak character ( OK - a wimp) showed signs of a promising future.

I can't say I am at all pleased with the neatly tied up ending.  I have plenty of questions for Byatt.  I was thrilled with the postscript, BUT and I do say BUT.....I am not at all happy with the tidy ribbons.  Trickster indeed, throughout the book, yet predictable which was a huge disappointment for me.

Better said by Cropper, pg. 421 "I do not think you should allow yourself to be taken in by these ghouls and goblins who play with our most sacred fears and hopes, in the desire, often enough simply to enliven the humdrum with a frisson, or to compose, conduct and orchestrate as it were the vulnerable passions of the bereaved and the desperate.  I do not deny that the human and inhuman things are maybe made manifest at such times_tricksy little goblins may walk and tap and tremble inkwells_men and women in the dark may hallucinate, as is well known in the case of the sick and wonded.  We have all, my dear friend, an infinite capacity to be deceived by desire, to hear what we long to hear, to see what we incessantly form to our own eye or ear as gone and lost_this is a near universal human feeling__easy to play upon, as it is most highly__strung and unstable."

For me, this "Is" Byatt's admission, and a bit of pie in your eye to the readers.  Gotcha!!

[JoanR]

I think "pie in the eye" is directed at over-zealous and self-important followers of the new schools of literary criticism - post-modern, etc., etc. - not at the reader to whom she has presented a huge jack-horner pie of lovers, eccentrics, legends, descriptions of interesting places, tragedy and comedy.  Plenty to wallow in!  And at the end, the right Jacks have the right Jills!
I plan to read her newest book - more fairy stories in it, I suspect.  And it does have a lovely cover!!

[bellamarie]

Gumtree, I to think Ash was the father of Bertha's child.  What a hoot that Bertha could have been revealing at the seance TWO of Ash's children being born.  If the seance was to give us the impression that a baby died, maybe it was Bertha's baby. Now that's something to ponder.  As for the entire Postscript, I LOVED it!  I loved Ash knew of his daughter and took the time to go meet her.  I loved the entire repoir between Ash and Mai.  I loved this especially, "Tell your aunt, "he said," that you met a poet, who was looking for the Belle Dame Sans Merci, and who met you instead, and who sends her his compliments, and will not disturb her, and is on his way to fresh woods and pastures anew."

Talk about "pie in the eye", our dear Byatt was trying to let us believe Ash gave Christabel her just due, by wanting the child to convey, he not only knew of his daughter, but... he plans to go on to new pastures.

If only Byatt would have ended it with Mai having told her.  But.... then again, how cold she, there would have been no use for the buried letters, for the entire last chapters to play out and oh what fun that was, in tying up all the loose ends with ribbons, shovels, graveyards, storms and Lenora. lol

So....Christable thought she had denied Ash all these years of knowing he had a daughter, and Ellen thought she had denied Ash of knowing on his death bed, and the trick is......he knew all along, yet Mai did not give the message, so.. he too was tricked into thinking the message got to Christable.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!'[/b]  
Sir Walter Scott

[Gumtree]

If only Byatt would have ended it with Mai having told her.  But.... then again, how cold she, there would have been no use for the buried letters, for the entire last chapters to play out and oh what fun that was, in tying up all the loose ends with ribbons, shovels, graveyards, storms and Lenora. lol

And what a hoot that sequence was - I found it hilarious - but Byatt didn't tie up all the loose ends though - the grave was left open when they all scuttled back to the hotel. Desecrating a grave is a serious offence so there would be ramifications there for Blackadder and Co once the storm abated. The tree that fell across the grave was a nice touch.

Byatt has obviously used the Great Storm of 1987 when the elements combined to produce hurricane force winds which struck the south of England uprooting dozens of trees etc - in fact six of the seven oaks which give Sevenoaks its name were uprooted during that storm as well as historic trees in Kew Gardens and Hyde Park. Many lives were lost during the storm both in England and in France which was also battered by the storm. The storm was a once in several hundred years event. No wonder everyone downed tools and fled for shelter.

[bellamarie]

Gumtree, Wow!  The storm of 1987, how perceptive of you to figure that out. I agree with you, I did not feel Byatt tied up all the loose ends, I should have in my prior post said "attempted to tie up all the loose ends."  I am left with many questions. Not that it makes a difference for me to know or not.

What became of Fergus?  
Why were we led to believe in the very beginning that Ash had vanished.  pg. 24 "Roland had never been much interested in Randolph Henry Ash's vanished body; he did not spend time visiting his house in Russell Street, or sitting where he had sat, on stone garden seats; that was Cropper's style."
What became of Bertha, and her child.
Why did Ellen shrink in the corner on their wedding night, and not be able to haves sex with her husband?
What became of our dear Joan Bailey, other than Roland wanted to make sure she got her wheelchair.  
Why was Roland and Maud mad at each other in the end, yet fall into the bed and make love?  (That for me was so predictable and simple, after such a frustrating book. )
Why didn't Ellen throw an ASH TRAY at ASH when he confessed his love for Christable? lol
I'm sure there are more, but for now I will leave it to the rest of you.

Sabine was my favorite character of the entire book.  She could see through Christable.  I LOVED her being so truthful, and not accepting and falling all over Christabel.  I Loved how she got Dog Tray to warm up to her to spite Christabel. lol  She was a breath of fresh air, now I could see Sabine as a real leader for women's rights.  This was one of my favorite paragraphs of the whole book.  Sabine is challenging her father's opinion of Dahud, pg. 379 "Why should desire and senses be so terrifying in women?  Who is this author, to say that these are the fears of man, by which he means the whole human race?  He makes us witches, outcasts, sorcieres, monsters...."

Also she shows how Christabel realizes Sabine is intuitive and intelligent. pg. 379 "I will copy out some of Christabel's phrases which particularly pleased me.  I should in all honesty copy out also those criticisms she made of what was banal or overdone or clumsy__but these are engraved on my mind.

Some comments of Christabel LaMotte on Dahud La Bonne Sorciere by Sabine de Kercoz.
     "You have found, by instinct or intelligence, a way which is not allegory nor yet faux-naif to give significance and your own form of universality to this terrible tale.  Your Dahud is both individual human being and symbolic truth.  Other writers may see other truths in this tale (I do.) But you do not pedantically exclude.  
    All old stories, my cousin, will bear telling and telling again in different ways.  What is required is to keep alive, to polish, the simple clean forms of the tale which must be there__in this case the angry Ocean, the terrible leap of the horse, the fall of Dahud from the crupper, the engulfment etc etc.  And yet to add something of yours, of the writer, which makes all these things seem new and first seen, without having been appropriated for private or personal ends.  This you have done."

Sabine goes on to say, " I think it must happen to men as well as women, to know that strangers have made a false evaluation of what they may achieve, and to watch a change of tone, a change of language, a pervasive change of respect after their work has been judged to be worthwhile.  But how much more for women, who are, as Christabel says, largely thought to be unable to write well, unlikely to try, and something like changelings or monsters when indeed they do succeed, and achieve something."

I can see Byatt feeling this way after being awarded the "Winner of England's Booker Prize."  She has finally been validated, she has now proven she can and does write as well as her sister Margaret Drabble, and she now feels her equal, after growing up with a mother who forced them to compete with each other, rather than compliment and help each other believe in themselves, and each other, she has finally come to a time in her life where I remember her saying in an interview, they are now closer.  

As Christabel and Sabine found a mutual respect for each other's writing, so did A.S. and Margaret.

[Gumtree]

Why were we led to believe in the very beginning that Ash had vanished.  pg. 24 "Roland had never been much interested in Randolph Henry Ash's vanished body; he did not spend time visiting his house in Russell Street, or sitting where he had sat, on stone garden seats; that was Cropper's style."

Bellamarie:  I think Ash's vanished body simply refers to the fact that Ash is dead - the flesh and blood body is no more - and Roland doesn't go about following in the footsteps Ash took while he was alive.

    All old stories, my cousin, will bear telling and telling again in different ways.  What is required is to keep alive, to polish, the simple clean forms of the tale which must be there__in this case the angry Ocean, the terrible leap of the horse, the fall of Dahud from the crupper, the engulfment etc etc.  And yet to add something of yours, of the writer, which makes all these things seem new and first seen, without having been appropriated for private or personal ends.  This you have done."[/i]

I saw this as the Byatt's raison d'etre for using the fairy tales - telling the old stories in different ways. It is very important for any culture to keep alive the old stories which are the way of passing on the cultural memory -  in oral societies the storytellers have the task of memorising and passing on the traditions and stories to the young and training some to take on the role of storyteller. For us it is done by  writing, rewriting and retelling the old, timeless tales and it is for each generation to reassess and interpret the meaning and then rewrite the stories for their own time whilst at the same time keeping alive and polishing the simple clean forms of the tale which must be there and yet to add something of the writer which makes all these things seem new and first seen.

As a reason for using the fairytales Byatt is in clear water - but I doubt this can be seen as justification for bewildering the reader with such a plethora of often cryptic tales to be unravelled in order to see the parallels she draws throughout the novel.

I can see Byatt feeling this way after being awarded the "Winner of England's Booker Prize."  She has finally been validated, she has now proven she can and does write as well as her sister Margaret Drabble, and she now feels her equal,  

- Drabble has been short listed for the Booker but (from memory) I doubt that she has ever won it. so if that is the criterion by which we are to judge these sisters then Byatt is one step ahead. I think they each have their own literary voice and like apples and oranges can't really be compared one  with the other - however sibling rivalry is a very potent force in many families.

[JoanR]

Gum has reminded us of something very important:

Quote: "It is very important for any culture to keep alive the old stories which are the way of passing on the cultural memory -  in oral societies the storytellers have the task of memorising and passing on the traditions and stories to the young and training some to take on the role of storyteller. For us it is done by  writing, rewriting and retelling the old, timeless tales and it is for each generation to reassess and interpret the meaning and then rewrite the stories.."

This also important on a smaller scale :  the family stories that the older members of a family tell and re-tell at family gatherings go on down
being re-told to the next generation with additions from each group as they go.  This makes for a cohesive family and gives us a place in this world.  I hope that this is not dying out!

[Jonathan]

The Great Storm of 1987.

Brilliant, Gum. And it's a brilliant use Byatt makes of it, bringing the wrath of heaven down on Cropper's head, for disturbing the peace of Ellen and Randoloph in their country churchyard resting place. I've had the feeling all through the book that the author was out to get him. She permits Cropper to live, hoping, no doubt, as a sadder and wiser man, revising a lifetime's work. And bemoaning his demolished Mercedes. Which he had left parked in the yew tree's shade. I know it was 1 AM, but it would have been in the shade if the sun had been shining.

We've come to the end. Two in fact. But, as for Cropper, so for the whole scholarly crowd we've gotten to know - a new beginning. Page 526:

...these letters have made us all look - in some ways - a little silly, in our summing-up of lives on the evidence we had. None of Ash's post -1859 poems is uncontaminated by this affair - we shall need to reassess everything - the reasons for  his animus against the spiritualists is a case in point.

Ash turns spirit himsel. Engaged in his prowling habit? Let's begin with Ash's appearance in the meadow in the postscript, which gives the book its second ending. Along with the first we get the perfect bitter-sweet ending. My guess -  this all took place in his head as he lay dying. The wreath of hair must have come from Christabel's head, many years earlier. The passion lasted a lifetime. It's an ending with a lot of misery, beneath the surface.

Chapter 25 is heartbreaking. What a nightmare honeymoon at the Fontaine de Vaucluse so many years ago.

[marcie]

I love all of your thoughtful posts. They give me new perspectives on the book. Bellamarie, Gumtree and JoanR, I think that the following statement by Byatt is related to the statement you quote: "It is very important for any culture to keep alive the old stories which are the way of passing on the cultural memory..."

 In an interview, Byatt said, "I see biography a rather the opposite of writing a novel. You might think that you know a lot more about somebody in a biography than you will ever know about somebody in fiction. But, of course, the opposite is true. And I think that what fascinates me about biography is the way human beings always escape their biographers."

Two key episodes in the book are "hidden" from the scholars who are trying to learn more about Ash and Lamotte. They are told only to the reader when Byatt uses the "omniscient narrator" (rather than letters or poems or other evidence that the scholars find and read). One instance is when Ellen forces herself to recollect her marriage night and the fact that her marriage with Ash, while loving, has never been consumated (yes, a heartbreaking passage, Jonathan). The other instance is the last "postscript" when it's revealed to the reader that Ash did meet his daughter once and forever after carried a strand of her hair in his watch.

We, the readers, know more about the characters than the scholars in the book who are researching their biographies.

The book also has a quite a few threads that are not fully flushed out. Again, it seems that this supports Byatt's view that much of historical fact is hidden from us but that an imaginative novel can provide us with "truth," even when we don't know all of the historical facts.

 I think that the narrative of Bertha is one of these incomplete threads. Bertha's plight can also serve to prefigure Christabel's situation in society--an unmarried woman pregnant with a child. A woman in that situation didn't have a lot of choices. I don't think that Ash is the father of Bertha's child. Ash imposing himself on his servant would destroy the seemingly loving and contented relationship that exists between Ash and Ellen at the end of his life and would lessen the passionate affair that he had for a very limited time with Christabel. His passion for Christabel started with a meeting of the minds. I don't believe that the Ash that Byatt has created would impose  himself on an uneducated girl in his household.

Jonathan, that's an interesting plot twist that you propose---that the postscript of Ash meeting his daughter is a dream on Ash's deathbed. It's possible, of course, but it seems to me less in keeping with Byatt's storytelling style. The scenes set in the past do have a dream-like quality to them.

[marcie]

We've put a few questions in the heading if you'd like to consider them. Pick one or two or just bring up anything of interest to you in the last chapters or the whole book. We're in our final few days now. We'll be ending this discussion on Wednesday so that those of you interested in Frankenstein can begin that discussion on Thursday.

I've watched the film, POSSESSION, and enjoyed it. I thought that Jennifer Ehle (Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice) and Jeremy Northam (Mr. Knightly in Emma with Gweneth Paltrow) were very good as Christabel and Randolph. I thought that the adaptation was good even though many characters were left out or changed.

[ginny]

What fabulous questions in the heading and what wonderful thoughts you've all put here. Pearson, welcome, you can say whatever you'd like at this point.

Imagine the frustration of being at a Conference and looking IN and being able to READ but not post, the thing jumped all over the place as if it was truly POSSESSED, because it knew what I was going to say.

I printed out 19 pages of your thoughts, my goodness aren't you sharp, I would never have thought of Bertha (who was it whose body turned up with stones sewn in the pockets) at the seance, couldn't wait to get home and reread that. The flood of 1987? Was that the one which took all the copper beaches out of the Hyde Park in London? They were the most magnificent things I ever saw, now gone.

And biography and truth are apparently most important, at least in Byatt's mind, you've all nailed it. But still some issues and questions remain, for the reader especially.

 I fear to try to add anything to what you've said, it was so good. I guess my biggest question is:

HOW did Ash know he had a baby? Who told him?

As for his turning up at the end, yes it was boffo, yes it was WOW, but I don't buy it, the Postscript? How did he find out about the little girl?

Nah, doesn't hold up but is in true sisterly fashion with her sister, mysteries at the end and things tied up which may not be. I like the analogy of him seeing this on his death bed in his dreams, because otherwise there's a LOT kept from us here in this pat ending of the little girl and the stranger.

What of Ellen keeping Christabel's letter from him? So if she did not tell him, and Christabel didn't tell him,  (why are all the women in his life so secretive) who did?

I disliked Ellen for that. Did you? Man is dying, put aside for once your own pride and give him the letters.

 Sally sent me,  as I said,  Catherine Burgass's Reader's Guide to Possession.  It looks exactly like the one we had for Ishiguro and I wish we had included  Burgass in this discussion.

 IF you liked this book and admire the dazzling display of learning, you might want to get this book because Burgass is a lecturer on 20th Century literature at the University of Liverpool. It's a short book, you can read it in an evening,  and it is told from the standpoint of the literary richness of the book, and there are a lot of things in it one wouldn't suspect. I recommend it for the final touch to the discussion. I'm going to watch the movie tomorrow and hope to comment before Thursday.

Burgass also asks several interesting questions. Here's one:

5. The American publishers originally wanted to cut substantial quantities of the invented Victorian poetry, though in the end the text remained uncut. Byatt has also said in an interview that she wrote the novel with the reader's attention span in mind. . Did you "skip" parts of the novel and, if so, which parts? Did you feel obliged to read the poetry, but feel frustrated that it halted the narrative action? If you read the poetry did you enjoy it as poetry or read it for the light it threw on the rest of the narrative?

My answer: until the end I forced self, thru eyes which seemed to keep closing,   to read every word of the poetry to find the answers, which I hoped would be there.

I skipped the poems which begin chapter 26 and 27 in their entirety. What did I miss?

That leads me to the question: can you remember ANY of the poems of Randolph Ash?

Could you restate them?

In fact which poems or stories in this book can you recall? The only one which stuck in my mind is the sailor and the miller's daughter. Since Byatt changed almost every single myth, legend, folk tale and story she relates, even IF this is a Breton legend, it won't be the same, so it's not preserving something....unless you count preserving the notion that stories are important.

The footnotes in Chapter 25 are all spurious.  Why are they there, do you think?

[ginny]

Some points Burgass raises which we need to consider:

1. Possession: "As the title suggests, the novel is about possession, and in line with its complex from dramatizes multiple aspects of this theme, exploring the nature of possessive love and the contrary impulse to self preservation; superficial possession-- of things--and supernatural possession by ghosts, literal and metaphorical; the quest for knowledge (intellectual possession) against the capacity of literary tests to exceed interpretation and of historical events to evade attempts to uncover them. "

I liked this too: "The novel also argues, implicitly, for the superiority of fiction in revealing a kind of truth over criticism, biography, or history, whose access to facts is always  only partial."

The whole book is like that. Anyway, she says the major themes are:

1. Love and Romance
2. Biography (the act of researching another person's life and work-- incorporates an analogous double aspect of possession...
3. Victorian/ Modern Biography
4. The Problem of Knowledge (The novel maintains...that even a sympathetic textual scholar is unable to gain full access to the truth, that any interpretation of documentary evidence is provisional).
5. Parallel Plots
6. Ventriloquism: "By serving as a medium for the  Victorian voice [Byatt] can make it "live" for the reader in a fictional context in the way that a critical commentary could not."
7. Folk/ Fairy Tales
8. Morals and Endings

I think we've pretty much touched on all of those.

On the "two endings" she says the first is  when Blackadder and Maude construct from "their incomplete understanding" an ending which is "far more tragic conclusion than was the case, assuming from Christabel's final letter that Ash never knew of his daughter.  The postscript reveals a different ending to the story. So finally both Byatt and the reader have the best of both worlds:Byatt reminds the reader of the provisional nature of historical knowledge by creating imaginative access to a fictional truth."

 But here I demur, what fictional truth?  HOW does  Ash know? Who told him? How can we have a pat ending with no "evidence" at all to support it? May as well have aliens fly down and deliver him in a space ship? hahahaa

She also says and I won't go on and on but if you like or admire this book you really want Burgass:

The poets as well as their poems, are loosely based on "Victorian originals. Ash is modeled most closely on Robert Browning.....Christabel is modeled on Emily Dickinson and Christina  Rossetti."

Now in answer to question 7 in the heading:

 What are your thoughts about the book? Did the last chapters and postscript change your mind about how any of the characters were portrayed? How did the postscript change the "ending" of the book for you?

Yes I thought Blackadder and Leonora both took on a different persona, I was half afraid they would waltz off in the sunset like the others. Blackadder became a lot more likable, to me. Cropper was just too over the top, the robbing of the grave, my goodness, that would not be easy to do!  The running into his car and the events of the ending make for good Hollywood but they don't hold together,  but very dramatic, just fun. I think she had fun with it and apparently did a lot of research to find the "Victorian voice."

Maybe if I read it again I'll see something different. That's not likely to happen.

The Postscript left me gasping in disbelief, and it can't work.

But what's YOUR opinion? How do you rate this book?

[bellamarie]

Marcie...

"Ash imposing himself on his servant would destroy the seemingly loving and contented relationship that exists between Ash and Ellen at the end of his life and would lessen the passionate affair that he had for a very limited time with Christabel. His passion for Christabel started with a meeting of the minds. I don't believe that the Ash that Byatt has created would impose  himself on an uneducated girl in his household. "

With all due respect Marcie, you have seen a better side of Ash than I have throughout the book.  He was a very selfish and self serving man.  The marriage was a lie.  He was an adulterer, regardless, if it were a meeting of the minds in the beginning, and then became a  meeting of the bodies.  He was a cad!  Once he knew he had a daughter why did he just walk away, and leave a message to let Christabel know he is off to new pastures, and knows of Mai?  I disliked Ash and Christabel throughout the book, and I resented Byatt insulting "MY" intelligence by wrapping the ending up as a happily ever after, like any other novel.  

It would be easy to consider Bertha's child could have been Ash's.  I don't see him "imposing himself on her." He lived in a sexless marriage, many marriages even in Biblical times, the husband would sleep with the hired help and slaves to impregnant a woman, when the wife was barren.  The marriage seemingly, loving, contended marriage was destroyed when he went off to have an affair with another woman and wrote to his wife as though he were alone.  

I resented Byatt concocting a reason for Christabel giving her child away to her sister because she feared Ellen and Ash might take her.  BALONEY...where did she come up with that?  Afterall, Ash walked away from Mai after meeting her.  Poppykosh, he makes her a crown and snips a lock of her hair.  So that was good enough for him?  No explanation for his deciding to leave his child.  I know Byatt wants us to think she is better off with the parents she has been led to be her biological parents and siblings.....but...is that a good enough reason to walk away from your child?  Nothing could keep me from my child.  But then Ash and Christabel never showed much committment, it was always what suited their needs at the time.  Were we suppose to feel sorry for Christabel, the spinster aunt watching her child, who seemed not to like her much? Again, sorry but I couldn't find any sympathy for her.  Okay, so back then she would have had to face the shame of an unwed mother.  Well, would that have been any worse than her being branded for running off with a married man, and she did consider her actions when she expressed that running off with Ash would ruin any chances of her being successful in her writing?  

 Romantic and touching as it may seem, after digesting the postscript I am furious!  Ash, Ellen and Christabel were all deceitful, and used others for their own selfish desires and wants.  I could have had more compassion for Ellen's conditon revealed in chapter 25 if Byatt would have given us a reason for her not being able to have sex.  I was reading and waiting for an explanation......nothing!  How can I attach my sympathy to the character when I have not been given an explanation that is deserving of my attachment?  

I still think the title should have been "Obsession" rather than Possession.  They were all obsessed in some self driven way.  A romance, I think not.  I personally do not see myself reading another book by Byatt.  As confusing, frustrated, lengthy and show offy, this one was, I could barely force myself to finish this book.  I wanted to throw it across the room and say, Finite!  The ending left me, the reader, feeling cheated.  For someone as brilliant as Byatt, I expected so much more.  Okay, I'm done with my rant.

Gum, when I said Byatt would finally feel equal to her sister, it was from her interview, her words not mine.  She speaks of never feeling to measure up to Margaret.  The link of the interview is in one of my prior posts.  They are both brillant writers.  I would rather not rate the book, it won an award so many saw much in it, its just not my cup of tea, as the English say.    

[marcie]

Bellamarie, I think we could consider that both Randolph and Christabel were thinking of the interests of the child and not themselves. I don't think it was her own shame that would have concerned Christabel but the position of her daughter. The girl had been raised thinking that Christabel's sister and husband were her mother and father. I think it would have been more selfish of Randolph to try to claim her then. We don't know whether or not Randolph kept tabs on the girl from afar after that meeting.

There are a lot of details we are not told. It seems more of a fairy tale or allegory than a biography or mystery where we find out who did what. I think reading it with the expectations of the Robert Browning poem at the beginning of the book...."How build such solid fabric out of air? How on so slight a foundation found this tale..."

Some of us have pretty different reactions to this story. It does seem to have raised some strong reactions!

Ginny, thanks for giving us those insights from Burgass.

You mention that the Postscript seems to have no evidence to support his meeting his daughter. In Chapter 25, Ellen finds a letter that Randolph wrote to Christabel but never sent (p. 494 in my paperback edition). He says that he went to her family's home in Kernemet on a hunch she might have gone there (after not hearing from her for some months). He says he found out from her cousin "what all at Kernemet knew" (that she was pregnant). But at the time he wrote that letter (undated) he didn't know what happened to the child.

In the postscript, he tells the child to "Tell your aunt that you met a poet, who was looking for the Belle Dame  Sans Merci, and who met you instead..." So it sounds like he traveled to her sister's house in search of Christabel but saw a little girl who looked like Christabel and who told him her name was Maia Thomasine Bailey. He put those clues together.

[ginny]

Bella, I like your reasoning!

Marcie you're such a good close reader: In Chapter 25, Ellen finds a letter that Randolph wrote to Christabel but never sent (p. 494 in my paperback edition). He says that he went to her family's home in Kernemet on a hunch she might have gone there (after not hearing from her for some months). He says he found out from her cousin "what all at Kernemet knew" (that she was pregnant). But at the time he wrote that letter (undated) he didn't know what happened to the child.

I wondered what Kernemet (does that word  mean anything?) was doing in the book! And her family suddenly appearing. And her mother for that matter, and here's the entire reason. So does it say (I think it's written in English and supposedly I also read it but apparently I need  a translator! Good thing you're in here)  haha, does it say how he knew she would be at the seance?

Kenemet, the hidden bread crumb. Can the reader be faulted if his eyes cross? Probably needed to take two months to discuss this thing, would we have had any readers left? I'm in AWR as the Sopranos used to say of our readers here who stuck it to the end,  and who can see anything in it: pat yourselves on the back, you're amazing!

I have to say I started a new book while on the trip, finally, by the author of Chocolat, and it's very similar to this one with one major difference: you can follow the plot.  You may not know what's going on but your speculations are fun and delicious as opposed to frustrating. The reader does not need a translator and does not have the distinct feeling that the "pearls before swine" metaphor uncomfortably fits.

 Marcie, I liked your suggestion  of an allegory,can you expand on that? What is being symbolized here?  I think you're right and she HAS written a modern fairy tale, a Victorian fairy tale and she took great pains to make it authentic sounding, but even Hansel and Gretel has a plot which can be followed.

My own analysis: it got away from her. Left as it is, naturally those not enamored of structuralism in any form love it, (Byatt hates structuralism, apparently), as there are many paths one can go down and much analysis to do, yet apparently she tried to create something which would stand with its own meaning apart from any lit crit, did she succeed? The reader has to decide. Burgass has a huge huge section on this very point.

And this book addresses each of us, perhaps uncomfortably, in our own reading style. I find that I am the much despised  (pity the poor)  "New Critic:" New Critics treat a work of literature as if it were self-contained. They do not consider the reader's response, author's intention, or historical and cultural contexts. New Critics perform a close reading of the text, and believe the structure and meaning of the text should not be examined separately. New Critics especially appreciate the use of literary devices in a text. The New Criticism has sometimes been called an objective approach to literature.....


The  problem for me with this book  IS that I can't separate, either because I'm reading too fast or not trying hard enough, the structure for the trees.  So when the reader comes up short and knows he or she IS short, the reader is not happy. One does not read to find out one is a shambling insensate mess.  Same with Drabble, she needs to be reread several times (unless you are as good a reader as Marcie).

Don't you just wonder what kind of childhood Drabble and Byatt had? hahaaaa, something VERY weird there happened.

What an experience this book is, was it a good one? To me, any time you are constantly thinking of an author, or she addresses you personally as you read, the book is diminished. I never stopped thinking of Byatt (what is SHE doing, why is SHE doing it) and the structure in the book and to me that's a major break in the willing suspension of disbelief, which I did not have.

What about the rest of you, what a GOOD and valuable discussion, I'm learning a LOT from the discussion and have to say I've learned a lot from the book, too. Not all positive.

What an experience this book is, was it a good one?

[bellemere]

I started out this book trying to take a literary criticism approach, starting with the idea of "pastiche" but really got bogged down .  I knew from my English major days that Ash and Christabel were not real.  And I never was a fan of flowery Victorian poetry.  But I decided to just fasten my seat belt and go on the ride  and I truly enjoyed it.  Not that I don't appreciate all the insights provided by others; they are great.  I especially share the delight in Sabine, the astringent little dose of cynicism about Christabel.  My favorite poem was Mumy possest with its echo of Browning monologues;' I went back and read My Last Duchess again and wondered if Ash was partly Robert Browning and Christabel was partly Christina Rosseti. 
I always felt that sooner or later Roland and Maud would untangle all their mixed feelings and find each other. All in all, it was a great choice. 

[bellamarie]

Marcie,

Bellamarie, I think we could consider that both Randolph and Christabel were thinking of the interests of the child and not themselves. I don't think it was her own shame that would have concerned Christabel but the position of her daughter. The girl had been raised thinking that Christabel's sister and husband were her mother and father. I think it would have been more selfish of Randolph to try to claim her then. We don't know whether or not Randolph kept tabs on the girl from afar after that meeting.

Marcie, I think we must agree to disagree, when it comes to our views on Ash and Christabel's choices and actions.  I see the two of them living their lives for their own self serving purposes, and I'm not so sure I agree giving Mai to Sophie was in the best interest of the child.  Byatt did not sell me on that.  You have seen Ash and Christabel in a much nicer light than myself.  No, we can not know whether Randolph kept in touch because the book ends, which is how Byatt left it.  But...because he said he has gone on to "new pastures," that left me feeling he was letting go of all things past.  I think each indvidual will see and feel differently about these characters. Not to say any one person is correct or wrong.  A fairy tale indeed!

Ginny, does it surprise me that once again I am in agreement with you...."  it got away from her." I felt this exact feeling, that is why I felt she tried to tie the ending up quickly and neatly, which did not hold true to the rest of the book.  But then again, she did call it a romance and don't most romance novels end in a happily ever after?  I do think Byatt managed to get in every little fairy tale from the Little Mermaid to Hansel and Gretal.  Pretty funny, she led us down the crumb path, under the sea, and up the hill, even into a graveyard.  Wow weeee..what a hoot, we even experienced the great storm!  I have no regrets reading the book, and I am glad I finished it.  Sabine, Joan Bailey, and Lenora deserved our attention, as for the rest of the characters for me...not so much.  As always it is so much fun discussing any book with this wonderful book club.  We don't leave a stone unturned, and manage to always learn new things, and share such neat and exciting views and ideas.  I do plan to get the movie and watch it, but not before I take my week vacation to Harbor Springs, Michigan to experience a Thomas Kinkaid city on a hill.  I'm taking along a very light read for sitting by the pool there.  

Marcie and Ginny, the two of you did a superb job in keeping us on our toes and when we slacked a bit I loved the Ollie, Ollie, oxen free.  We can all come out now!  LOLOL  You are so much fun, thank the both of you for being our moderators.  Excellent job ladies.  

[Mippy]

Marcie and Ginny ~  You both did a wonderful job with a difficult book.  Alas, I did not have the energy to parse it as you and others did.   But I did learn a lot about poetry and literature.  Thanks to everyone!

[kidsal]

I have learned a lot from this book -- mainly that I need to know more about literary theory.  Perhaps the August book about fairy tales will enlighten me.  Enjoyed the book after I gained some understanding of where the poetry, etc. fit in. 

[ginny]

Thank you  Mippy and Bellamarie!  I do think you've all  done an amazing job with it this go around at whatever level we feel we've managed to attain,  and I also got a lot out of it. I agree, Bellmere , it was (as it turned out) a good choice. Not an easy one but a good one and as Sally says,  you can't help learning something.

I watched the movie last night. If you like the book, you would very much, I think,  like the movie, it's beautiful:  beautiful music, beautiful scenery, it's one of those movies they used to show for Lady's Matinee's, very nice. No poetry, (well, he's shown at the beginning reciting a couple of lines at a lecture) no legends, almost no mystery.  Half the characters gone. Fergus has dark hair. Focuses on the characters of Maud and Roland, Ash and Christabel (who looks like Melanie in Gone With the Wind). There is no flood.

It starts by explaining why anybody would care about Ash in the first place,  (which was a major issue with me personally: why all the fuss, this is Victorian poetry which was apparently known generally according to Burgass  to be less than good): he was Poet Laureate to the Queen, he was having his 100th or something retrospective, his picture in banners over the museums, etc. THEN it makes sense. Along the way they add this or that explanation, the movie makes sense.

Our heading here, the illustration, is beautiful but I was not sure where it came from in the book, I know now: it's in the movie. There is a meadow in the book in the  Postscript and a child swinging on a gate and sitting and talking, and eventually running off with her brothers,  but in the movie the running thru the meadow is a pivotal scene of the movie, the last scene and they added  a twist on the Ellen/ Ash story which is not in the book, but I liked it.  I won't give it away. I think if you can get your hands on it you'd enjoy it, having done the work here.

Ash is very sympathetically played; once you've seen Jeremy Northam you can't forget his take on it, and the cast with the exception of Joan  Bailey is perfectly cast. The person playing George Bailey is the guy in the Waiting for God series, he's perfect.

Ash asks Christabel three times across the seance table what have you done with the child. She responds you have made a murderer out of me.

That one stumped me,  unless she's referring to Blanche. Blanche and she are somewhat portrayed as homosexual, but the  Roland character says maybe she was bisexual. Maybe so, it would appear from their take. I didn't get from the book they were having a lesbian relationship. Christabel in the movie is somewhat hateful to Blanche and so is Ellen, dramatized so that Blanche's sewing the rocks is more understandable. I felt sorry for Blanche at Ellen's reception of her, and it's clear what the item was that she should not have kept.

Is the movie better than the book? Those of you who have seen it, what do you say? I don't think so. It's different, and it's understandable but it's a sort of minor movie.

If I had watched the movie first, I would have understood the book much better from the movie perspective. But I would not, I think, have understood the book as it's written any better, but rather overcast with the movie sympathetic Ash, whom I don't see in the book, so it's six of one and a half dozen of the other or as they say in old Pauline's Legends and Stories of the  Deep Woods..... There once was a reader who wandered deep into the labyrinth of the dark forest....ooops, that's for another time and discussion.  hahahaa

Thank you all for taking this hazardous fairy tale journey with us, I hope you can follow the crumbs back out to the real world. I will take with me the sailor and the miller's daughter as a cautionary tale. I think you've done a yeoman's job with it, and I enjoyed very much reading your perspectives on it which were so much sharper than  mine.

[Gumtree]

Ginny - a few days ago you asked - can any of you remember any of the poems of Randolph Ash. Could you restate them

It's odd that before this discussion was mooted you put up one of Ash's poems in the Library. As I read it I thought 'I know this' and when I saw that it was by R H Ash - I knew him too - it took a minute for the penny to drop that I knew it from having read Possession. So in that sense at least I can remember. But am I able to restate them ? The jury's out on that.

Then you say the only one which stuck in my mind is the sailor and the miller's daughter -  I think that gets right at the heart of the problem with this book - the poems and stories just don't stay in the mind. As reader I had to backtrack constantly to  sort out the parallels being drawn instead of being able to just nod wisely and say to myself 'just so' or some such.

I saw the film years ago but haven't watched it again so really can't comment beyond saying that I didn't much care for it when I did see it.
I had just read the book and wanted more of the poetry etc - perhaps to help me to  better understand the novel.

I've learned a lot from the discussion and the points of view expressed by everyone but I'm dissatisfied with my own personal reading of the novel - I guess I still have unfinished business with it but I probably won't pursue it any further.

Thanks to all the posters for sharing their thoughts - you sometimes saw things I missed and I'm grateful to you.

I'm full of admiration for both Ginny and Marcie  - it can't have been an easy discussion to conduct and yet you came up trumps every single day. Thank you both - your efforts are truly appreciated.

[marcie]

I do like some of Randolph Ash's poetry and would read more of Ash based on the poems Byatt wrote for him. I think that The Garden of Proserpina is sensuous and mysterious. I like the first poem before Chapter 1.

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
The running water and the grassy space.
They are and were there. 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.

I like his romantic poem from Ask to Embla in the beginning of Chapter 14

They say that women change. 'tis so, but you
Are ever-constant in your changefulness,
Like that still thread of falling river, one
From source to last embrace in the still pool
Ever-renewed and ever-moving on
From first to last a myriad water-drops
And you--I love you for it--are the force
That moves and holds the form.

For me, Randolph Ash was a symbol of love of knowledge--all knowledge--and passion for LIFE. In the "fairy tale" story of Randolph and Christabel, I think Randolph saw Christabel as a creative, aware, source of LIFE. Christabel was the keeper of mysteries. He wanted to share in, and possess that life force with her. Of course, there would be consequences to the possession of life, as there were in the Eden-like garden.

[marcie]

I think this discussion was better for our different approaches and responses to the book. I appreciate everyone sharing your  struggles and insights. Your thoughts and questions made me a better reader.  Thank you!

Like a few of you, I'm going to read more Byatt now (lol, I think some of you are going to run from her). This is the only book of hers I've read so far.

[Jonathan]

...an attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us. Hawthorne

I feel Byatt succeeded beautifully in her attempt. Obviously POSSESSION is not everybody's cup of tea, and isn't that one of the finest English metaphprs. I found it entertaining and haunting from first to last, charmed by the author's light touch in taking us through such a maze of literary artifacts, including Cropper's spurious footnotes. I always intended to pay more attention to the poems and tales featured in this scholarly journey, but I was always too keen on the narrative. No doubt there are many significant clues and insights in there somewhere.

I'm reminded of being in a small poetry class many years ago. We were given a few dozen lines of graphic images and intense emotions, making no sense at all. Until one of us pointed out that they were the poetry of a newlyborn infant. And it all just came together.

I've enjoyed Ash's poetry, but I'm bowled over by his last words as he lay dying. Those last months. Page 491:

It was one of his bad days. He had moments of clarity, and then he could be seen to wander, his mind wandering - where?

"Odd thing - sleep. You go - all over. Fields. Gardens. Other worlds. You can be - in another state - in sleep."

Ellen: Yes, dear. We don't know much about our lives, really. About what we know."

Randolph: "Summer fields - just in a  - twinkling of an eyelid - I saw her. I should have - looked after her. How could I? I could only - hurt her -

What are you doing?"

"Making a bracelet. Out of her our hair."

"In my watch. Her hair. Tell her."

"Tell her what?"

"I forget."

His eyes closed.

That made the Postscript inevitable, and so meaningful.

But my heart goes out to Ellen and her sad memories of the honeymoon at the Fontaine de Vaucluse.

I was impressed at the way the author left all judgments to the reader.

[marcie]

Jonathan, those are very poignant passages. In my perception you've pointed out some of the essences of the book in your posts. Yes, the author has left all judgments to the reader. Very well said.

I hope you and the other brave participants in this discussion will join us in the FRANKENSTEIN discussion that starts tomorrow.  It's a story within a story (and not about the monster of most film adaptations). It shouldn't be as complex as Byatt. http://seniorlearn.org/forum/index.php?board=91.0