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

[nolvikarn]

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 III: Flora, Fauna, and Melusina
 

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  by our Readers

Schedule of Discussion:


June 14-20  Chapters 12-17 (102pp)             
June 21-27  Chapters 18-23 (123pp)
June 28-30  Chapters 24- end  (90pp)  

Week III: June 14-20:   WHAT a section! All our questions answered and more mysteries posed. What did you make of it?

1.  "Dearest Ellen," (page 277 among others).  We have Ash's letters to his wife.  "It would require  quite horrible self- control and dupliicity." (page 235).  What do you make of Randolph Ash's loving letters to his wife at home while he is passing with his second wife in Whitby? Which one do you feel is the more innocent, Ash or Christabel?

2. "I have done wrong in her regard. I have behaved less than well....I should have... " (page 252). Do you agree with Ellen Ash's assessment of her treatment of Bertha?  Why or why not?

3. Blanche Glover comes to see Ellen, what is the result? How does that compare to Fergus going to see Val?

4. This section contains some of the most beautiful writing of the book. Which passages struck you as especially fine?

5. "But Melusina sounds often as though he wrote it. To me. Not the subject matter. The style." (page 288). Can you tell a difference in Ash's poetry and Melusina? The entire Chapter 16 is an excerpt from Melusina. What did you see in it? Why did Ellen get so upset when she read it in the previous section?

6. "A clean empty bed. I have this image of a clean empty bed in a clean empty room, where nothing is asked or to  be asked." (page 290). What do you make of this dual dream of Roland and Maude?

7. Why do you think Blanche killed herself?

8. "He would teach her she was not his possession" (page 304). What does this mean?

9. "If he loved her face, which was not kind, it was because it was clear and quick and sharp....a disdain masking itself as calm." (page 302). Why does Ash see Christabel in this way?

Discussion Leaders: ginny & Marcie

 

[ginny]

Olle!! THERE you are! I've been wondering where you were and wondering idly to myself if you're reading this in  Swedish or English and now we know:


But it isn't easy for a foreigner to understand the older poems in English.

Well I hate to tell you this but it isn't easy for anybody to understand the "older" (which aren't), poems in English, either.

I can't imagine what a translator would make of this ....er...creative flurry of imagination and reference, HAS it been translated? I can't imagine trying to read it in another language, the language it's IN is difficult enough: kudos to you for even trying.

I got up this morning thinking (I like to reflect on what's been said here for  a while) do you realize that almost all of our reactions here to date have been of the "struggle to translate" variety, struggle to even understand what  she's even SAYING here?

I mean normally don't you discuss motivation or find something that you can relate to and talk about or larger issues, societal issues, what DO we normally discuss?

Here what do we relate to? Possession?  Having a hobby or obsession which overwhelms? Dysfunctional marriages? What? Are any of the characters to date so well fleshed out that we can say we actually can relate to any of them? I don't think Val's occasional sniping about her limited menial whatever is enough.  Roland seems the most likely candidate, I guess,  do we relate to him?

How about Christabel? Ephemeral and ...what?

What is Byatt  saying? The poems, the letters, obviously are clues. Too darn bad they are floating in a miasma of...Victorian imagination.

I'm thinking the whole thing is a fairy tale. Just a lark. I liked Olle's Da Vinci Code  reference,  and  I'm wondering if the characters can carry the premise of the excitement of the chase. I understand why the premise of the book, having read the interview  I put in yesterday from Marcie's link in the heading, she's recreating the Victorian style, they were interested in everything. Profuse writers. Furbelows, nearly fell over when I saw THAT word in the text, having used it. Good word to describe the entire book. Obfuscations.

If you have to reread a book to even understand what it's saying then it's deliberate, one has to ask why it's written in this way and what if anything it means.

I believe the poems and the prose all contain clues to the plot. Unfortunately the poems seem indecipherable, in and of themselves.

Mippy what a point about peeping thru the keyhole, a parallel to the Melusina poem!!!! Well done, I missed that all,  being obsessed myself with the colors of the bathroom for some reason. So in that case the poem came first in the book and so did the interpretation of the incident so what do we get from that?  Christabel is a monster with a tail in her bath?

And Cropper and his "photos," we've already had  Val talking about another set of photos found at the office, I think it was.

Even tho this is a flight of imaginative fantasy full of real and imagined legends and allusions to critical works which don't exist, I do think the incidents and poems reference the plot.

I'm going to work on #6 in the heading, back in a sec....

Welcome, Olle, please explain this to us! hahaha

[Mippy]

Ginny posted ~ (is) Christabel is a monster with a tail in her bath?
Nope, don't think so.  
Perhaps we as readers are bouncing off  a reference to the Victorian conflict about good women and bad women, do you think?   Good women or ladies, more correctly, are the ones desired as wives, and they are supposed to be a pure as driven snow  (ah ha snow reference) and by implication, those ladies don't enjoy sex.   The bad women are who the men cavort with when they want a romp in bed.  

So the woman who is pure might (in the bath = bed) transmutate into a bad woman,
having the tail of a mermaid only figuratively, meaning having an underside or bad side, which is hidden from view.   Only by peaking through a figurative keyhole does a man find out.
    Who knows?  just guessing.

Regarding the capitalization in the letters, I think lots of Victorians wrote that way, but cannot find a source.   I think even the great Darwin had a lot of unnecessary capitalized words in his essays and letters.   There was less standardized English usage in that century.

[ginny]

BellaMarie:  We are so proud that you are at last able to read and discuss books with us here!


Is this light? What a question! It may just be exactly that, in a different way from which we've known "light."

Jonathan:

Cropper knows all there is to know about Randolph Ash. If only he knew as much about himself. He has made several attempts at autobiography; but it always leads to, and ends with the letter from Ash to Cropper's very own great-grandmother. And what a letter. Written when Ash was an old man. What strong feelings Ash has about attempts at communicating with the dead. How indignant he becomes at the thought of Coleridge

...of this bright spirit, having made his painful way out of our weary and oppressive earthly life, being constrained to heave mahogany tables, or float partially embodied, through firelit drawing rooms...

I have not read that much Victorian prose, has anybody here? I know from EF Benson's prose however that ghosts (he wrote several volumes about ghosts) spirits, mediums,  gurus (that memorable sequence of the fake guru in the Mapp and Lucia series) were hot in Edwardian times.

But why should they not be? In 2010 it's vampires, the undead. With the Romans it was ghost stories told around the dinner table. I like  Ash here for the first time, being worried about poor Coleridge being condemned to float about the medium table like a parlor trick. Obviously HE didn't want to be a parlor trick, took himself seriously, did Randolph Henry.

Kidsal and Marcie, what an interesting discussion on the egg. I would never have made an interpretation of either, I just threw up my hands when I came to it ( another obscure reference, now we're doing chickens where we were doing insects) and moved on! hhahaa

I have completely skipped Dr. Mesmer, I can't see what he has added so far anyway to the  plot.

Mippy, I can't get any kind of feel for Christabel, she's in her self imposed tower too well.

I'm not sure on who has stolen her letters, would that be Blanche? So Blanche is jealous?

On the capitalization, why in her letters and not in her prose or poetry?

I am sure there's no answer but I wanted to know.

I think I have caught Byatt up, I THINK she has used a phrase IN the "old" sections which was not in use in that time but would you believe I've lost the book (again...is that subliminal) and will have to find it along with Ash's somehow seeming to say that it's all about HIM even their romance, she's somehow a projection of his. I may have read that wrong, it's near the end of this section.

Is everybody madly reading to catch up?

I love all of your ideas about the romances and parallels. I just wish any of them were real enough to get into. Strangely enough I found the  Cropper chapter the least doze offable. hahahaaa Bella, we're completely different on that one. Perhaps she'll bring out each character so we can actually see them beyond the gauze. The quote you've given is quite interesting, BellaMarie and your question just how far did  Ash go in those letters?

What do you all think is the attraction of Ash to Christabel? Really?

Marcie's introduction of the word solitude is quite interesting. I have to wonder what Christabel's solitude, which she seems quite protective of and desirous to keep (we've explained how it was unusual for a woman to have that position) makes me wonder the source of her income, it can't be from poetry or writings, as she's relatively unknown? Inheritance? Did I miss that?

I wish she had put an outline of the plot first hjahahaa.

[bellamarie]

Ginny...."Is everybody madly reading to catch up?"

Yes, indeed I do feel like I am trying to constantly catch up.  I think I have finally read enough to be caught up, just to realize I'm not!  I take notes to remember points I want to make and where I found them for future reference, and that slows me down. As my dear Italian Nonna would say when she was frustrated, Momma Mia!  Ok back to read some more.

[Jonathan]

Bellamarie I dozed off myself, in chapter six. And had a wonderful dream. I found myself at the Fontaine de Vauluse, where Petrarch had lived in solitude for sixteen years, contemplating his ideal love for Laure de Sade Along came Ash with his love Ellen, for whom he had waited almost as long. Then in Ash's footsteps came Mortimer Cropper, alone. He does not appear to have had a true love, although he wrote a daily letter to his mother on his travels.

We are then treated to several pages from Cropper's biography of Ash, telling us  what he knows to be the facts of Ash's life. There's nothing to indicate the curious extra-marital events in Ash's life. And we realize why Roland was so excited to find those stray notes in the Vico book.

But just look at these interesting observations about poets and their loves which proccupy Cropper's mind:

Ash always maintained, unlike many of his contemporaries, notably Professor Gabriele Rossetti, father of the poet, that Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, along with Fiametta, Selvaggia, and other objects of Platonic courtly affection, were real live women, chaste but loved in the flesh, before  their deaths, and not allegories of the politics of Itlaly, or the government of the Church, or even of their creator's souls. Petrarch saw Laure de Sade in Avignon in 1327 and fell immediately in love with her,  and loved her steadily, despite her fidelity to Hugo de Sade. Ash wrote indignantly to Ruskin that it was a misunderstanding of the poetic imagination and of the nature of love to suppose that it could be abstracted into allegory, could not in verity spring from "the human warmth of an individual embodied soul in all its purity and mortal." His own poetry, he added, began and ended with "such incarnate truths, such unrepeated unique lives."

This abstract is just chockablock with information vital to the plot. Just so, the wideawake reader must admit to himself. How wonderful that the realization came while I was dreaming. What a literary thriller this is turning out to be!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jonathan]

Cropper had published his biography -THE GREAT VENTRILOQUIST - in 1969, taking his title from one of Ash's teasing monologues of self-revelation or self-parody. Before doing so he had undertaken all  Ash's major journeys, visiting Venice, Naples, the Alps, the Black Forest and the Breton coast. 

Some curious places in their. I wonder if Byatt got it right from the text she was using. Nothing about the Yorkshire Moors. Isn't it interesting what authors do with texts.

[marcie]

Olle, I am glad you are joining us. It may be that your struggle with the English language in this book will spur you to insights that those of us who are native English speakers will miss. I look forward to your thoughts.

Jonathan, in your dreaming state I think you have hit on something very important. I hope you'll share more of your dreams! Thanks very much for pointing our attention to the following excerpt from the Cropper chapter:
"Ash always maintained, unlike many of his contemporaries, notably Professor Gabriele Rossetti, father of the poet, that Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, along with Fiametta, Selvaggia, and other objects of Platonic courtly affection, were real live women, chaste but loved in the flesh, before  their deaths, and not allegories of the politics of Italy, or the government of the Church, or even of their creator's souls. Petrarch saw Laure de Sade in Avignon in 1327 and fell immediately in love with her,  and loved her steadily, despite her fidelity to Hugo de Sade. Ash wrote indignantly to Ruskin that it was a misunderstanding of the poetic imagination and of the nature of love to suppose that it could be abstracted into allegory, could not in verity spring from "the human warmth of an individual embodied soul in all its purity and mortal." His own poetry, he added, began and ended with "such incarnate truths, such unrepeated unique lives."

I too am wondering if the following thoughts of Ash shed light on how he thought about his love for LaMotte and what it might say about their relationship (later in the book). "Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice were ... real live women, chaste but loved in the flesh" and that "it was a misunderstanding of the poetic imagination and of the nature of love to suppose that it could be abstracted into allegory, could not in verity spring from "the human warmth of an individual embodied soul in all its purity and mortal." His own poetry, he added, began and ended with "such incarnate truths, such unrepeated unique lives."

[marcie]

Ginny, I agree that there are many, many themes and metaphors running through this book. I think that one of the main ones is the position of women in society. In LaMotte's time, women had to mostly live through men and were subservient and beholding to a father, brother or husband, financially and socially. Most women were not given the educational and cultural opportunities that men had. Many who were writers even chose a male alias in order to find a publisher and readership.

I'm sure that a woman  in those days who had a strong spirit, intelligence, passion, sensitivity and talent would have to struggle a lot to create some form of independence for herself within the boundaries imposed by society. It's still true in some cultures today.

I think that Ash was attracted to that kind of woman in LaMotte and saw her as a fellow poet, extremely sensitive to language and eager to create and recreate life and worlds in her poetry.

[marcie]

Mippy, you made a reference to Victorian ideas of good and bad women. I was also thinking about Ginny's question about the characters and motivations in the book. So far, I don't find any characters that are bad guys, which you often find in a "quest" book. Cropper is probably the closest for me. He seems to have a number of negative traits...he's seen by his competitors as crassly commercial in how he bulldozes his way to getting every artifact related to Ash. Some of his practices (making copies of documents and probably some of his deals to acquire items) are definitely shady. However, he seems to have a genuine appreciation for many of the items he collects. He comes alive in their presence. I don't think he's entirely despicable. In Ash's poem, The Great Collector, which prefaces Chapter 6, Ash says of the collector, upon finding something he was looking for:

"And then his soul was satisfied, and then
He tasted honey, then in those dead lights
Alive again, he knew his life, and gave
His gold, to gaze and gaze..."

I'm wondering of you other readers, is there any character that, as we know him or her so far, that you dislike?

[ginny]

What a good question! I think, speaking personally, that none of the characters so far is strongly portrayed enough for me TO like or dislike them.

Our knowledge of them is sketchy. On the one hand the omniscient narrator has told us of Cropper but of Ash all we have is the occasional comment and so far his own overwrought Victorian hysterical prose, dancing all round in a smoke cloud (no wonder the  Victorians had such active passionate lives under all that propriety, their letters practically STEAM before even they meet). I'm not surprised that LaMotte said that there was shyness or awkwardness when they first met. hahaha

BUT the "Love" in the letters came later, but it did come. So he was having a love affair. I'm not sure why this would be a surprise as he was a married man, so was obviously attracted to things not always of the mind.

The internet is a lot like this correspondence, actually, in some ways. people say and do things on the internet they might feel quite shy about in person. The difference in the written word versus the spoken word.

Very few people write letters today like they did in Ash's day, in his case I think it's OK.

So I don't have any feelings for any of them. Do you all? They are not living characters, to me,  they are not strongly drawn enough to engage with. I'm trying to think what there IS to engage with.


_____________________________________

What is the main feeling YOU all get from this book so far?

I have a feeling that people are afraid to say what they think for fear it will somehow be wrong. Here's this THING as bloated as a...what? I lack the metaphors. An explosion of images, a mayfly, and one struggles to find whatever path may be thru this enchanted paper forest.

What is there to cling on to? The search for letters and the truth.  Hansel trying to find the crumbs.

Somebody somewhere will know what it means, we reason. I'll wait for that somebody to come along, we reason because even tho I'm reading English I am not sure what she's saying other than the bare bones plot with all this versifying and fairy stories. The READER must be the final judge, and hopefully together we can say what it seems to be saying or not.

__________________________

We hope to ignore the poems? The entire 11th chapter IS a poem. At least it's not in italics.

I reread Swammerdam the poem again. I reread again the real  Swammerdam's biography. They are different. Swammerdam the real was a physician, who wrote and did important things. He did fall out with his father. He was a  microbiologist. Many papers written.

Ash's poem, which is full of eggs, just absolutely FULL of eggs, yolks and egg references (is that the  Christabel influence?) (or perhaps her insect poems?)  has him destitute eating maggot ridden bread.  He actually died of malaria at 43 I think.

Ash's poem with the eggs dares to suggest (does it) that  , well you tell me:

I ask myself, did Galileo know
Fear, when he saw the gleaming globes in space,
Like unto mine, whose lens revealed to me---

Not the chill glory of Heaven's Infinite--
But all the swarming, all the seething motes
The basilisks, the armoured cockatrice,
We cannot see, but are in their degrees
Why not? to their own apprehension--
I dare not speak it--why not microcosms
As much as Man, poor man, whose ruffled pride
Carnot abide the Infinite's questioning
From smallest  as from greatest?

Ok what exactly here is he saying? Is he saying that an insect (reminds me of that documentary about insects taking over the world) and their little microcosm are as important as Man?

?

Oh and look at this: cockatrice ( ) n. Mythology A serpent hatched from a cock's egg and having the power to kill by its glance.


The whole book is full of cockatrice references and behold the above.

And then the poem ends desunt cetera normally translated "the rest is missing."  Literally "the other things are not here, are lacking."

The poem apparently is either incomplete or left to the reader's imagination.

Kind of like the book so far, so much up in the air.


On the style: BellaMarie and Jonathan: I daresay with no disrespect intended, I found myself dozing off through this chapter. Me too, absolutely cannot concentrate, read the same lines over and over again, why?

Marcie seems to have the romance down and understand the characters, particularly LaMotte in her isolation. I still wonder what sustains the household? What financial means allows her to write; even in Victorian times women needed a source of income. ESPECIALLY in Victorian times.  Must have been a legacy from her father?

The Threshold (chapter 9):  Question in the heading: What did you make of it?  A super question. Again no italics. The Childe. What are the Childe legends we need to compare it with? Childe Roland? Childe Harold?

We have three choices, gold, silver and dull armor. What do they symbolize?

The Childe seems to be  on a quest to bring his father the Herb of Rest to end "as only that might, his long agony." So he rejects the gold and silver ladies for this darker herb, it really looks to ME like drugs? But apparently this is a dangerous course as even the horse "called out in alarm," and the Childe started down the dark and hard to navigate path with the flowers blowing "dust" at him (opium powder?) into a perpetual unchanging light.

So!

What do you all see in this?

I really am beginning to see the entire book as a farce,  a lark, whatever bottle floats to the surface, whatever memory or connection something suggests, heck bring it on. The author is a creative person, steeped in literary background, just write a poem about it  or a fairy tale.  When you view it like that it's like a funhouse, what's exciting and creative  around the next corner, in fact it would make a good fun house ride, a Literary Fun House, but I am beginning to think as I did initially , it's a giant joke making fun of a lot of things, most particularly those who deal with, teach,  and write  literary criticism. Maybe throw in Victorian excess for seasoning.

[marcie]

Ash and Lamotte lived during the time of Darwin and the emergence of the theory of evolution. Darwin published Voyage of the Beagle in 1839 and The Origin of Species in 1859. Many people were amateur botanists and zoologists, walking around the countryside and seaside, collecting specimens. They debated ideas of science and reason versus the supernatural. The educated Victorian mind was eclectic.

Byatt says in an interview: ""For the Victorians, everything was part of one thing: science, religion, philosophy, economics, politics, women, fiction, poetry. They didn't compartmentalize -- they thought BIG. Ruskin went out and learned geology and archaeology, then the history of painting, then mythology, and then he thought out, and he thought out. Now, if you get a literary theorist, they only talk to other literary theorists about literary theory. Nothing causes them to look out!"
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/06/13/specials/byatt-possessed.html

I think that explains the scope of genres and topics that Byatt includes in the book and also your idea, Ginny, that much of the book is ironic. In the same interview, Byatt is claimed to have said that much of the top-heavy allusion is meant to be humorous.

[ginny]

Marcie I appreciate that background on the age of Darwin and the enthusiasm for things botanical in the Victorian age. The way you put that almost makes me want to live then too but golly what we have now with the flick of the internet! I also am glad to hear that the over the top allusions are intended in a fun way. They are fun, the fairy stories are fun, and a lot of people think like this. Word association. If  we had to write down everything that flashed thru our minds when we saw a certain sign we'd amaze ourselves (not to mention those who saw the list. hahaha)

Mippy that was an interesting point on good women/ bad women and the mindset of the day.  I also liked your explanation of looking thru the keyhole, what a strange thing the whole  mermaid  idea is. This is supposedly about feminism, do you see that in this piece yet?

I guess Christabel and Maude could pass for feminists, or could they? What do you all think? What WAS a Victorian feminist?

Jonathan, you're as enigmatic as this piece is . What did you mean by this? I wonder if Byatt got it right from the text she was using. Nothing about the Yorkshire Moors. Isn't it interesting what authors do with texts.

Do you think Ash had a parallel in real life? It kind of makes you wonder, some of this.

What outstanding questions remain to us as readers of the plot? I've got some.

I have some questions about our hero Roland. For instance Sir George and his wife obviously are seriously in need of money. They are living in that giant house Seal  Court with not the money to run it and she's in a wheelchair and they have almost no fire, etc, they are cold. Yet here are the letters, the treasure as Christabel says her solitude, her actual private being, and Roland KNOWS that should Cropper or Blackadder get them Sir George would get money yet he doesn't mention that perhaps somebody might want to buy them. Neither does Maude. In fact had it not been for Maude,  Roland,  who apparently wasn't 'keen on sharing the contents, would never have seen them at all. He'd never have been in Seal Court at all. Like Sir George says, she's family and all.

Here's our hero (and heroine) themselves possessed by this quest and possessing the letters to the point that their sense of what? Decency? Keeps them from saying a museum or XXX would love to have these and pay for them. Sir George thought nothing of Christabel's verse or her and it would make their lives a lot easier. I don't see Roland moving in any way in this direction, will he later on?

In this he's like his Randolph Ash.

And the Lady of Shalott is referenced here also, by Christabel. I wonder why she would choose that image, it's not the positive slant she's put on it: "Think of me if you will as the Lady of Shalott---with a Narrower Wisdom--who chooses not the Gulp of outside Air and the chilly river-journey deathwards---but who chooses to watch diligently the bright colours  of her Web--to ply on industrious shuttle-- to make--something--to close the Shutters and the Peephole too---

You will say, you are no threat to That.....I know in my Intrinsic Self---the Threat is there." (page 205).

I love the Lady of Shalott. I have wanted for us to read it here forever.

The Lady is  in a tower and can only see the world thru a mirror, she can't look directly on it, and one day a knight, Sir Lancelot,  riding to Camelot,  has a beam of light glance off his armor and she sees it and deliberately turns to look and that's her doom. Her choice to join the world is her doom. But look how parallel the plots are, especially about the weaving:

1852 Edition by Tennyson:



(Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse's hangs in the Tate in London).

There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.

And then she turns and looks directly at life instead of through the mirror (of her art? her writing? her weaving?)

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces through the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She looked down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror cracked from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shalott.

And that's the end of her. And that's what Christabel keeps trying to tell Ash.  But HE won't listen. What's his attraction here? He was initially attracted because he thought she "understood" him. He asks her directly, "could the Lady of Shalott have written Melusina in her barred and moated Tower?"

She's telling him it will destroy her if she leaves her own self built "tower" but he perseveres, a little mocking there on his part too. Then they meet, and now Christabel has changed. She says on page 218 (after he makes some lame bit of Governor Sanford stuff about discussing his wife, I mean...really)....she says "I was sufficient unto my self---and now I range---busily seeking with continual change. I might be less discontented if my daily Life were happy.....it is not good....then we would be free together---whereas now----caged?"

So she was IN her own Tower but unlike the Lady she was free, now she's not.

They agree to meet at the church at the end of 10 (11 is the poem Swammerdam) and she says she is angry. At whom?  What did you make of that?

Don't you want to scream at her: go back! Go back into the tower where you were happy, this way is death.

I sure do.

What is Cleopatra's "hopping?" by the way?

And I think I have caught Byatt with the use of the word "shape shifting," when was that coined (she said eagerly?) I am hoping it's later than Victorian, it's on page 208. I'm not talking about the concept of metamorphosis, I'm talking about the term.

A sovereign for your thoughts!

[ginny]

DRAT! Just missed it. I was so SURE I had her:

 Websters:

Main Entry: shape–shift·er
Pronunciation: \?sha-p-?shif-t?r\
Function: noun
Date: 1887

: one that seems able to change form or identity at will; especially : a mythical figure that can assume different forms (as of animals)


The Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from June 1837 until her death on the 22nd of January 1901. ...

DRAT!!

[Jonathan]

Momma Mia, what a book! What is Byatt up to in this strange novel? It deserves a metaphor and Ginnyis searching for one. Your 'lark' is a good one I think. But isn't the whole book an investigation of and search for metaphor. As Marciepoints out, 'there are many themes and metaphors running through this book'. It's a preoccupation for these scholars. They even have international conferences on 'the metaphor'. Maud and Fergus are working on their papers.

Marcie, that's a good quote from the Byatt interview:

Now, (in Byatt's words) if you get a literary theorist, they only talk to other literary theorists about literary theory. Nothing causes them to look out.

Look out of what? Of course. Their very own Ivory Tower. There is real life out there, and Byatt gets a lot of it into her story, in many small ways. Ash is a very down to earth man. So much so that he even writes that indignant letter to Ruskin, taking him to task for misunderstanding the poetic imagination. Almost like asking Ruskin, you don't believe everything you read, do you? And adds that his own (Ash's) poetry begins and ends with 'incarnate truths'. Sooner or later, we should get to a living proof of his passion.

Perhaps the book is a search for the real Christabel. Like Ollesays. The book is both complex and simple. Perhaps it's what each of us makes of it.

[marcie]

What interesting points, Ginny and Jonathan. I think we all can make a lot of this book as we share our different viewpoints.

Some disjointed thoughts:

The Lady of Shalot offers a lot of imagery in her tower. The tower metaphor keeps reappearing throughout the book.

Ginny, I think that Christabel is angry with Blanche for intercepting and keeping (or destroying) the letters from Ash. That seems to be what pushes her to meet with him.

You also asked a while back how Christabel and Blanche afford to live. In the beginning of Chapter 4, we learn from the book that Roland is reading on the train that Christabel lived with her parents until 1853 when a small independence was left to her by a maiden aunt.

I think that some of the feminist views of Leonora and Maud about Christabel are meant (by Byatt) to be over the top. They are partly the result of erroneous or incomplete information about Christabel that doesn't account for her relationship with Ash. Another major theme of the book seems to be about how "truths" are conveyed by biography/nonfiction and how fiction might provide greater insight into "truth," as Jonathan's recent post might also convey.

Ginny, it sounds like you don't approve of the Ash character. Does everyone think he's a selfish opportunist? (not that you said that, Ginny)

[marcie]

Several of you have brought up some of the bathroom scenes. There is a pretty funny review of Possession at http://www.pa2rick.com/bathroom/possession.html about how the main theme of Possession is really about bathrooms.

[ginny]

AH!! A "small independence." That's handy, and something most Victorian women did not have.

Oh Jonathan!~ The Ivory Tower! Who else is known for being in an Ivory Tower?

Just caught that!

 What a delicious romp this thing is, allusions and parallels  all over the place but  HEY we can interpret them any way we'd like.

Byatt may well have  intended, she may have thought she did this or that,  it's what the reader reaps (hey I can mix metaphors too) that matters, unless she wrote this for a cockatrice. Often  what the author intended and thought he or she was producing turns out quite differently.

Marcie, moi? Did I say Ash  was a "a selfish opportunist?" Self serving? me?

She's done a good job obfuscating both of her parallel male characters I think. But that's what I think, perhaps our  South Carolina example is too recent, what do YOU all think?

[Mippy]

Marcie ~  Total laugh!   About bathrooms indeed.  
I sure missed the detail about Maud and the dragon on the kimono, which does reinforce that she's a counterpart of Melusina.

Feminism?  It's clear to me that when any woman locks herself in a bath or jumps into a pool and turns into a fish or mermaid, she's in charge of her world, she's doing whatever she wants to do,  to disport or to frolic as she chooses, and she becomes the essence or the forebear of a feminist.
After all did the women in the 60s burn their bras to give something for men to oogle at?  Of course not!  They wanted to dump the whole concept of uncomfortable undergarments.  And during the Victorian age, they sure were, with tight laced bodices and so-called stomachers.  Yuck.
 

Here's a link for even more of Lady of Shalott:
http://www.mythicalrealm.com/legends/shalott.html

[bellamarie]

I must say this book is beginning to frustrate me to no end.  I feel Byatt has way overdone it with too  many paths to concentrate on.  The entire chapter of the letters is so over the top I feel like I am a minnow swimming in an ocean with sharks here.  She does not allow us to really connect with any one character.  I am trying to keep track of Val, Ellen, Christabel and Maude, but just as I begin to feel a bit of connection and insight I am distracted with more and more poems and characters that I feel like throwing my hands up.  Jonathon, for lack of better words I had to giggle when you used my frustrated Nonna's expression, "Momma Mia!"  LOL  I have vowed not to give up on this book.  You all are making some good points and I am so impressed how you are able to pull these proveribial rabbits out of a hat.  LOL

Ch. 9 the whole Childe with the 3  beautiful ladies carrying caskets and he having to choose was I guess a metaphor for having to make choices in life and having to live with them, and it seems he chose the one his father hoped for him, rather than the one  he was tempted to choose for himself.  Don't we all find somewhere in our life we too must make a choice and instead of doing what we want, we do what is expected of us.  Is that what this is all about...?

I don't see any of the females as damsels in distress, nor do I see them weak.  There are many inferences that the female characters are lesbian and reclusive, but they do indeed find ways of being productive and freeing in their own right.  I do like Maude even though she has her own secrets I sense.  I like how Byatt allowed us to see the caring side of Roland when he helped Joan Bailey in her wheelchair.  That was a truly compassionate, unselfish act, considering Maud did not seem to make any attempt to be concerned or inclined to help.  Roland is beginning to score some points with me in this chapter.

The bathroom keyhole with Roland and Maud seemed very innocent to me, and Byatt seemed to choose to use this perfect timing to bring in the comparison of Melusina.  What surprised me was Roland thinking Maud failed to see the "romance" in the bathroom.  Byatt does seem to have a thing with bathrooms.  tee hee...

I see so many happily ever after moments throughout the pages and poems of this book.  Byatt seems to be struggling with should they or shouldn't they be happy.  I thought the Freud quote was interesting, pg. 63 "Whenever she thought of Fergus Wolf, this battlefield was what she saw......Freud was right, Maud thought, vigorously rubbing her white legs, desire lies on the other side of repugnance."

Okay, I need to go finish all those complicated letters between Ash and Cristabel.  So the recluse has agreed to come out and meet with him.  hmmm....where dare I say will this lead us?  Be back shortly til then.......Ciao!

[marcie]

Mippy, I agree with you that the role of women and the challenges of how they see themselves and  how society sees them, is intrinsic to this book, even the feminist extremes embodied in Leonora.

Good for you, bellamarie, and for all of us who are sticking with this book. There are so many allusions and layers in the book that it's going to take all of us to try to figure them out. We're each going to be attracted to something different so I'm grateful to each of you who is posting your thoughts.

[Jonathan]

This book is helping me to a better understanding of feminism, both when Byatt was writing, and the epoch of the historical characters, when women began to look for a voice and a self and a place of their own.

Isn't that hilarious, following the bathroom thread through the book. It certainly  gives the book some coherence, or whatever it was that my English teacher said was necessary in a novel to make a jumble of disparate themes hang together.

I'm working on the letters. What do I have? Another two days?

bellamaria, Stay with it. You would be ever so sorry to miss out on the tears and smiles at the end. And some might even enjoy a roar of laughter.

[marcie]

Jonathan, yes we have through Sunday to talk about the letters between Ash and LaMotte in Chapter 10 before we move on to the next section starting on Monday (chapters 12-17). I am re-reading those letters too.

Of course, next week we can still continue to talk about anything in the first part of the book too.

[bellamarie]

Okay I am finished with the letters and have to tell you all that I enjoyed the relationship Christbel and Ash formed, BUT.......the innocence was obviously going to turn into romance.  He states he does not want to take her freedom away from her by making things complicated as being more than just poetic friends, YET....indeed that is exactly what he does.  She realizes this tryst has NO happily every after.  She points out her reputation as an author/poet is at risk to go any further with the letter writing and relationship, yet he pursues her.  She does not say exactly who is telling her this is all wrong and needs to put an end to the letter writing and someone goes as far as intercepting the letters.  Is this person a jealous lover, or is this person watching out for her? I found this very telling, pg. 216 "I have a wife, and I love her.  Not as I love you.....There are good reasons_ I cannot discuss them, but they are good, if not adequately good_why my love for you need not hurt her.  pg. 217 "To discuss this any further would be the most certain way to betray her."

Okay, so is their marriage a marriage in name only?  Is dear Ellen a lesbian and so they have no intimate relationship so it would not matter to Ellen if he found sex with someone else?  But...if this is the case, then how can he say it would not hurt Ellen?  He is proclaiming a true love to Christable, not just a tryst or roll in the hay.  (Okay of course poets would not use those words, I am being a bit facetious here.)  I abhor infidelity, not to  mention the risks Christabel is taking in ruining her reputation.  I am not liking Ash here.  Now I can see how he and Roland are similar.  They want what they want, and they want someone in the waiting.  I am not releasing Christabel of all responsibility here.  She knows what the ramifications are for her, yet she proceeds.  Ekkk....I think I can see the handwriting on the wall, or shall I say in keeping with the theme of the book, a true epic of lost love.  Romeo and Juliet?  Forbidden love?  So is their love what Alfred Lord Tennyson speaks of here, "Tis better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all."

I'm in it til the end especially since I have been tempted with tears and laughter.  I did find the letter bittersweet when Christabel wrote to end it, although she caved in to his pursuit.  must go ponder some more on these letters.  I'm so excited I caught up with the reading.

[kidsal]

The Swammardam poem - a will? - leaving his wordly goods plus a description of the formation of life?  Only reason for this poem is to expand on Ash's desire to disect creatures? Was Christabel happy about him taking time away from her to study the flora and fauna?

[ginny]

Bellamarie, I am so excited you caught up, too, and  I hate to tell you this but you must now move on. Why?

Because Everything is Explained in Chapter 12.

Followed by Everything Else Being Explained in Chapter 13.

Once you read 12 and 13, you'll see how clear it becomes.


Okay, so is their marriage a marriage in name only?

I don't think so, having read 12 and 13.  I could barely read both, 12 for laughing at Leonora Stern, really laughed out loud, her literary criticism, in bed, trying to go to sleep, and 13 could barely read it out of contempt for our good fellow Ash.

Not only is everything explained Byatt herself asks questions. THESE are the questions we SHOULD have had initially. One has to ask why. WHY are we now, 300 pages into the thing, finally understanding the plot?

I have my own ideas and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on them on Monday.

Meanwhile we have two days. Jonathan is looking back over the letters. She's FORCING us to do exactly what the characters are doing, she's FORCING us to make speculation and try to figure out on the basis of NO evidence, just these writings, what happened. She's brilliant in that. Once I got over the anger at the manipulation. WE are recreating in our own way, a parallel quest.

Pity the poor editor. I think he or she should have prevailed, actually, but we'll leave that to YOUR own assessment at the end. IF you were the editor, would you have left it this way or rearranged the book chapters.  Would this rearrangement   have spoiled the suspense?

I believe I actually hate Ash, what a reaction, huh? A fictional character, yet. What do YOU think of him?

In the two days left I want  for my own research part, hahaha, to  look back at Ellen Ash, several questions Marcie has in the heading  about her.

Tell me about migraines? Are they brought on by stress? What causes them?


Sally, you are so brave to take on Swammerdam, I honestly don't see a thing in it, but it's apparently pivotal, what does your book say if it does on the importance of this poem? Eggs, beginnings and ends?  

Ash's "profound" thoughts on man's place in the universe? One wonders why all the fuss about this minor (bad) poet, why so many people have spent their entire lives studying him. Gives the entire pursuit of literature a bad name. hahahaa Maybe that's intended.

 I love your questions and can't answer  one! hahahaa  But THIS one I think we all need to talk about on Monday. This is ONE book which segmenting hampers the reader, stopping at different segments, but whey you read it, it's Byatt herself who has done this, arranged these passages like this and deliberately (and she as much as says so) planted red herrings. Just, Everybody, if you have not, read 12 and 13, there you will find Byatt challenging us to see who the "I" is in the narration and a lot of other disgusting things.

She's done this deliberately. Are you impressed?

Sally Was Christabel happy about him taking time away from her to study the flora and fauna?

DID he actually study the flora and fauna? He says he did. He leaves out (chapter 13) any mention of Christabel. Cropper says he did. Everybody says he did, and what gruesome detail, but did he?


I agree with Bellamarie that just when I think I have some tenuous handle on a character, more smoke screens and diversions ensue but I saw this plainly enough in 12,  (again getting ahead but we need to know this): page 239) a minor character Beatrice Nest (those names!) says:

"I do have a theory. It's far fetched, I think."

"I think she wrote it to baffle. Yes. To baffle."

Yes she, Byatt, apparently  did,  and she's enjoying herself, the issue is, is the reader?

I'm going to have another look at  Ellen now that she's revealed in 12 and 13, before we have to leave 1-11.  It's like an onion, peeling back, layer by layer, sort of like his dissection of animals without the cruelty, and what's revealed in nature and what's revealed here about man and specifically the Ash Man, are two completely different things in the light of what truth there is in this.

It's fascinating, but frustrating, I think. How do you find it? I feel a kind of anger, fool me once type of thing. I don't think the joke is on the reader, tho, do you?  

That's a great question in the heading, (chapter 7) What does Roland discover in the journals of Ellen  Ash?  I don't know, but armed with 12 and 13 I'm going to read Chapter 7 again.

Two days left before we hit the truth square on or a lot more of it than we have, what are your parting thoughts on 1-11?

Swammerdam a will?  I'm not reading it again, have read it three times and if there is meaning there it eludes me, I like your idea, Sally, it's better than mine.

[ginny]

3. (Chapter 7) What does Roland discover in the journals of Ellen Ash?

Beatrice Nest first thinks  of  Ellen Ash, when she tries to picture her, wife of the great man (Beatrice is in "love" with RHA), thinks her "dull," "vague adjectival enthusiasm...sweetness, blanket dutiful pleasure..." And then she notices references by Ellen to her own "feebleness and inadequacies," and finally "long days of prostration in darkened rooms."

Long days of prostration?

Nest writes Helpmeets about the wives of great genius.

Roland goes to visit Nest, who produces a note from her card catalog that says "it appears she read The Fairy Melusina, in 1872."  So Ellen has read Christabel. She liked it at first but then became all upset. She sees something in it, I'm trying to pay attention to the dates (having read 12 and 13), the date must be significant.

Ellen now wishes she had been a poet or a poem herself. She has spent years of prostration with migraines in dark rooms and says if she had not facilitated the great man at least she did not prevent him. She looks at her sisters who are happy but worn down grandmothers and wonders at her new energy in life. What gives her this new energy? She says HE would say it's never too late.

"But he shan't see this, and I will find a way--- to be a very little more--- there now I'm crying, as that girl might have cried. Enough."

What girl? Melusina? Christabel? So she was not content, in age,  to simply be the...accessory to the great man, in fact it gave her headaches apparently which took her to her bed for long periods of time. I once knew a woman whose husband was a teacher and who was overbearing. Every summer when he was home from school every day she'd lose her voice. I'm not kidding.

She would lose her voice the entire summer. She did not take to her bed like a Victorian or die for love like a Romantic, but she would lose her voice. Medical science was baffled. When school started, so did her voice.

Like Beatrice Nest (page 127) Ellen also now (why now in 1872?) hoped to make a "Contribution" of her own. Find her own voice.

Is that the answer or is there another one?  What do you all see revealed about Ellen by  Roland in Chapter 7?

[Jonathan]

Caught in Christabel's web.  Oh, the tangled webs we mortals weave. Governor Sanford felt he should set the record straight, by telling about his affair. Now his ex, Jenny, has published her story. The reference to this romance is very apt, Ginny. I liked the part which had the governor hiking the Appalachian Trail. Ash, too, led Ellen to believe he was communing with nature on the coast, when in reality he was...that's ahead, I don't want to anticipate.

Why is Beatrice Nest sitting on Ellen's journal? Is she hatching something? She's been editing away for 25 years. She found herself in love with Randolph Ash. Now, reading Ellen's journal, she finds what it was lke being married to him. Her sympathy is all with Ellen, so now she has become protective. Not inclined to see the journal published. Perhaps to prevent the feminists from getting hold of it and then holding Ellen up to scorn.

The letters certainly make Christabel look like a seductrice. Ash is easily led astray. Did you all enjoy that little quip about Keat's famous poetic truth:

Beauty is Truth, Truth is Beauty.

Ash says Keats was just quibbling. Isn't it fun to be the fly on the wall, when poets are comparing notes?

In the same letter (page 185) just a few lines earlier, Ash writes:

Do you know - the only life I am sure of is the life of the imagination

Christabel pleads uncertainty, and draws Ash out...or in, depending on how one looks at it.

[bellamarie]

Jonathon..."Caught in Christabel's web......The letters certainly make Christabel look like a seductrice. Ash is easily led astray."

Now this is very interesting, coming from a man's perspective, BUT coming from a woman's perspective, I actually saw Ash as the pursuer.  She has written to say she must decease the letter writing and he goes into a whole spill of why she should not.  He convinces her to continue and to meet him in the park.  Not that I care for either of them at this point.  They both are throwing caution to the wind and not caring who can or will be hurt through their irresponsible behavior.  As far as being caught in a web, I think they both are poisonous spiders, spinning webs for each other.

Oh Ginny, shame on you for tempting us with chapters 12 & 13.  I am going to go read them instantly.  I never cared for Roland or Ash much and so now what you are expressing tells me I probably will not change my feelings at least for Ash.  Why indeed should so many people put their lives on hold on two people.  I agree, I will leave Swammerdam for others to figure out.  I personally feel like Byatt has NO real intent for the poems, other than showcasing, and red herrings.  Yes, again I agree, first time shame on you, second time shame on ME.  I am not revisiting Swammerdam.  As my little five year old granddaughter Hayden would do, I am crossed armed, stomping my foot, lip out and going hmphhhhh......I will NOT take any more of my time with that lengthy poem.  Off to see what the fuss in all about in ch. 12 & 13....LOL

[marcie]

WOW, what a great discussion. We certainly are having different reactions to the book and characters. You've all backed up your responses with good insights from the book.

I personally don't think that Byatt is jerking us readers around. If she left out all of the poems and stories it would have given us a more-or-less direct romantic mystery or mysterious romance. I feel that, Ginny,  you are right when you say that, with the embedded poems and stories, she is enticing us to become part of Roland and Maude's (and everyone else's) quest to discover what happened between Ash and LaMotte and it's effect on their loved ones. We are hearing from LaMotte and Ash themselves and their imagery and thoughts are giving us insight into their times and their own feelings. Those documents also add layers to the work, much as the intellectual and cultural spirit of the Victorians was alive with both classical imagery and the speculations of newly developing sciences.

I think that all of the characters have flaws and make mistakes but I am in sympathy with both Randolph Ash and Christabel LaMotte.

I think that Ellen would probably be diagnosed as suffering from "hysteria"--a very prevalent diagnosis in those times. One physician in the 1800s cataloged 75 pages of possible symptoms of hysteria. Those included insomnia, headaches, fainting, lack of sexual passion, etc. Since Wikipedia says that a physician in 1859 claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria, I don't think that it's necessary to think that Randolph was at fault. She married late and may have been afraid of intimacy, since women were supposed to be chaste, unaware and uneducated in "worldly" matters.

[kidsal]

From Catherine Burgass’ Reader’s Guide
Ash describes his marine specimens confined in yellow pudding bowls and later to his “regimen of dissection and magnification”.  This research, though carried out for its own sake, relates to the debate between the emerging evolutionary theory (Darwinism) and Christian doctrine, and informs his poetry in terms of theme and imagery.
Swammerdam is the poetic monologue of a 17th century dutch microscopist who muses on the relation between nature and God.  Ash writes to Ellen: “ I divagate without discipline – my mind runs all over”, but Ash is an “amateur” in the best sense, and for him art and science are mutually enriching rather than mutually exclusive.  The 20th century critics, on the other hand are confined to a narrow specialization within a secondary discipline which inhibits their creative impulses and leads them to misread the primary object of study. Those who are unable to look outwards or to pay attention to the text without the narrowing lens of literary theory are presented as singularly incapable of perceiving things as they are.


The poem paraphrased:  The dutch microscopist says:  Bend nearer, Brother …I fear I trouble you.  I thank you now that you have set with me – here in this bare white cell.  I shall be hatched tonight into what clear and empty space of quiet, she best knows the holy anchoress of Germany who charged you with my care and speaks to God.
I have not much to leave.  Once I had much.  Well-nigh 3000 winged or creeping things.  I leave my manuscripts and pens to my sole friend Thevenot.  He should have had my microscopes and screw.  But these are gone, to buy the bread and milk .  I must die in debt.  He is my friend and will forgive me.  Then write to Antoinette de Bourignon who spoke to me of God’s infinite love.  I turn my face to the bare wall and leave this world of things for the no-thing she showed me.  
Now sign it, Swammerdam, and write the date, March 1680 and then write my age his 43rd year.
My father had a pothecary shop.  He had ambitions for me – lawyer, physician.  But I had other leanings.  It seemed to me that true anatomy began not in the human heart and hands but in the simpler tissues, primal forms of tiny things that crept or coiled or flew.  Life is One I thought and rational anatomy begins at the foot of the ladder on the rung nearest the fertile heat of Mother Earth.
I sought to know the origins of life.  Did not God lend me the skill to magnify living particles until I saw successive plans and links of dizzying order and complexity?  I saw a new world in this world of ours – a world of miracle, a world of truth.  Monstrous and swarming with unguessed-at life.
The more were revealed to me the more I pressed my hunt to find the One – Prima Materia.  I found her law in the successive forms.  I first discerned the pattern of growth from egg to simple grub, from grub encased, shrinking in part, in other putting forth new organs in its sleep, until it stir, split and disgorge the tattered silk, which fast trembles and stiffens and then takes the air.  It was these eyes first saw the Ovaries and drew them.  I discerned the law of metamorphosis and wrote it down to show indifferent men.  
My father cast me bankrupt into the street.  When by want driven to sell my library of slides, my demonstrations and experiments, I found no buyer, nor no man of science, philosopher or doctor who would take my images and give them hope to last.  So I came to penury and beg for sops of bread and milk and scraps of meat.  
Galileo with his optic tube a century ago displaced this earth from apprehension’s center and made out the planets’ swimming circles and the Sun and beyond that motion of infinite space in which our spinning world is but a speck in a kind of star-broth, rightly seen. They would have burned him for saying so save they submitted him to doctors of the Church who deal in other truths and mysteries.
It was one step to displace man from the center of the sum of things.  But quite another step to strike at God who made us as we are – making our wonderful intellects, our tireless quest to know , but also made our finitude within His Mystery.   I ask myself did Galileo know fear when he saw the gleaming globes in space, like mine whose lens revealed to me not the chill glory of Heaven’s Infinite but all the swarming seething motes.  I dare not speak it – why not microcosms as much as man whose ruffled pride cannot abide the Infinite’s questioning from smallest as from greatest?

[salan]

Ginny--"ollie, ollie, oxen freeeeee"!  I haven't heard that in a looong time!  It brought back memories and sent me on a quest to see where it originated.  That is the problem with "Possession" for me at this particular time.  I can't seem to skip over these quests and get on with the story.  My obsession for rooting out references, babysitting my 9 yr old grandson and preparing for a family reunion this week-end has put me woefully behind in reading this book.  All of this has convinced me that this book is not for me at this particular time.  I am sorry to leave this discussion, but I think I just need simple "beach" books for now.  Someting easy to pick up and easy to put down.  I will save "Possession" for cold winter days when I am housebound.
Sally

[ginny]

hahaa Sally, well with all that going on it's no wonder, good to see you here!  If you figure it out in the winter come tell us in the Library, I am sure we'll still be arguing over the elements somewhere. hahahaa

Thank you Sally (Kidsal) for that parsing of the Sawmmerdam and explanation. For a minute there I almost thought I was reading more Byatt, that's some explanation! This is a good point: Those who are unable to look outwards or to pay attention to the text without the narrowing lens of literary theory are presented as singularly incapable of perceiving things as they are.

"Pay attention to the text," hahahaha that might be an epitaph for the hapless reader here.

I also liked the idea that Ash is an "amateur" in the best sense. Makes you think about the meaning of the word. I think he's an amateur in the worst sense, but will wait till Monday.

How do we see our Ash at this point?

It's just that line there at the bottom why not microcosms as much as man whose ruffled pride cannot abide the Infinite’s questioning from smallest as from greatest? and the recurrent theme spoken by the noble  Ash (have now finished through  17 for tomorrow) which makes me dislike him so much, in the light of what's coming. Brotherhood of living things my foot.

Marcie you feel in sympathy for Ash, can you say why at this point?

Jonathan, you are a hoot: I liked the part which had the governor hiking the Appalachian Trail. Ash, too, led Ellen to believe he was communing with nature on the coast, when in reality he was...that's ahead, I don't want to anticipate.





I'm beginning to wonder how much communing he actually did, period. Can't wait till tomorrow.


Oh my goodness, Marcie!~  Ellen as "hysteric?"  Wow! No wonder the feminist movement took hold.  

I'm telling you, those corsets they wore, the squeezing of the waist into such tiny proportions, it's no wonder they kept swooning, I am sure anybody would.  What would we call Ellen today, I wonder?



Jonathan you see CHRISTABEL as the seductress? Why? Because she tried to shut herself off?

Bellamarie, As far as being caught in a web, I think they both are poisonous spiders, spinning webs for each other.

How are you all seeing Christabel as having any purpose or intent  in this so far? I don't see any approach by her at all. I guess she did not have to answer his letters, in that she's also culpable?

She can't win.

I think we're going to really enjoy the section, hahaha,  starting tomorrow.

[ginny]

Could not wait till tomorrow, had to start tonight, what a section what a section, WHAT a section, what do you think about the heading now? And Ash? And Ellen?

What in fact do you think now?!?

Wow!

[bellamarie]

Ginny...."I'm telling you, those corsets they wore, the squeezing of the waist into such tiny proportions, it's no wonder they kept swooning, I am sure anybody would.  What would we call Ellen today, I wonder?"

Talk about hysteria, when I read this I laughed hysterically.  Ginny you are a hoot!!  What I would call Ellen or any other woman strung up in them type of confining confounded garments today.....INSANE!!!  I was getting dressed to go out to lunch with my sister today and it was quite warm out so I chose a tank dress and told her I'm all about comfort, I am done with the proper dress code that confines me.  She and I both laughed and said after 50 it don't matter.  Why in God's name did they wear them type of clothes that strung you up and pushed your bosoms practically up to your neck?  LOLOL  All for vanity.  Ugggg

I have to go to bed since I do in home day care, and Sally you ain't got nothing on me, I got 4 grandkids ages 2, 5, 7, 8, and 14 with a 1 and 3 yr. old to watch five days a week and plan a birthday, Father's day and graduation party all in the next week or so along with deciding our vacation after I have the annual 4th of July backyard swim/cookout, so we can be packed up and on the road to our five hour drive to Harbor Springs Mich.  Phew...I'm exhausted just talking about it.  But I gotta say, this book is worth the read and I'm not waiting til I am at the beach in my chair or a winter read, to finish it.  I have to know NOW what Byatt is up to.  LOLOL  Okay, all kidding aside, I still am totally perplexed after reading chapter 12.  Nothing revealing, but I will finish 13 tomorrow, or should I say today now that it is early morning.  Be back after some sleep and sanity when all the kids are down for quiet/nap time.  Ciao and good night.....

[ginny]

Oh but this morning all is clear, right? Maybe we need to read on thru 17. This section came like a slap in the face to me, and it all SEEMS clear but perhaps I'm wrong? What do you all think?

Bella, loved that post, how busy you are!!

This is a heck of a section.

I think I would like to start with Ash, for my part.  How do you all feel about him now,  having read thru 17?

 Any change? Did this section reinforce or destroy your previous image of him? 

Here's what I personally  don't like about him:

1. Page 310:

"You are in love with all the human race,  Randolph Ash."

"With you. [Christabel]. And by extension all creatures who remotely resemble you.  Which is, all creatures,  for we are all part of some divine organism I do believe, that breathes its own breath and lives a little here, and dies a little there, but is eternal."

2. Page 270:

"Anti -vivisection propaganda was wide-spread and vehement, and Randolph was aware of it, as he was aware of the charges of cruelty that might be leveled at his enthusiastic  operations with scalpel and microscope. He had the squeamishness and the resolution  of his poet-nature: he did various precise experiments to prove that writings which might be thought to be responses to pain in various primitive organisms in fact took place after death... He concluded that primitive organisms felt nothing we would call pain, and that hissing and shrinking were mere automatic responses. He might have continued had he not come to this conclusion, as he was willing to concede that knowledge and science laid "austere claims" on men.

He made a particular study of the reproductive system of his chosen life-forms."

That, to me, is sick. So we're all one giant microcosm in the universe, are we, we're all one? All Creatures Great and Small? Was it Albert Schweitzer who would not step on an ant?

There seems to be a huge gap between the Narcissistic Ash's grandiose sayings and his actions, to wit:

"Dearest Ellen...."

I see him as a narcissist, a hypocrite,  and and a liar for starters,  can we excuse this because of his great poetic genius?


But how do you see him? Caught up somehow in his...er...how do you see him?

[ginny]

And I have to say also on the subject of who wrote Melusina,  which is,  I guess,  supposed to be something of a bombshell, that I have never seen but one voice in any of the poems or the book, have you? Can you see a difference in style? This seems a pivotal element of the plot, but what do YOU see?

[ginny]

Whitby! From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitby

The jet is quite pretty, isn't it? And apparently favored by Queen Victoria as mourning jewelry.

 Many interesting fossils have been found in the Whitby area including entire skeletons of pterodactyls. Whitby is known for its well preserved ammonite fossils, which can be found on the seashore or purchased from stalls or shops in the town.

One unusual feature of Whitby is the Dracula Museum. Part of Bram Stoker's famous novel was set in Whitby, describing Dracula's arrival in Britain.

See the fantastic connections to writers and literature, I guess somebody should add Byatt's book, huh?

[Jonathan]

Do you all remember the song: Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.

Shall we add, baffled, like  Maud and Beatrice, over Ellen's journal? Don't we have enough with what's in the text? According to Maud, as an expert in these things, literary criticism should take into account what is not said! Can't put anything over on her. Cropper's bio of Ash isn't helpful. She thinks it's more about Cropper than Ash. And Leonora's paper on Christabel just got a shrug out of Roland.

Don't we all agree with bellamarie?

I have to know NOW what Byatt is up to?LOL

And now such disturbing questions from ginny. This fellow Ash. What's he up to? Always searching for answers. Finding them in the lives of others. Like the marooned sailor. Lazarus. The guy who took his wife's skeleton,bedecked with jewels, with him wherever he went. This guy Salamander, or whatever his name was' Is Christabel just another case study? Is he just seeking knowledge, like Faust or Freud? We shouldn't condemn him out of hand. Let's recall what was said about him early on:

Ash had been interested in everything. Arab astronomy and African transport systems, andgels and oak trees, hydraulics and the guillotine (ugh) druids, and the grande armee, catharists and printer's devils, ectoplasm and solar mythology, the last meals of frozen mastodons and the true nature of manna.

Suspicions? Sure Is Ash the father of Bertha's child?

[JoanR]

Ash? Bertha? I hadn't even thought of that, Jonathan, but of course it must be true since the Bertha "story" is not accidentally in this book - everything has its purpose.

I love reading a book and then coming unexpectedly upon a place where I have been - Whitby!A memorable place visited years ago, walking up the steep hill and then climbing a multitude of steps to the top of the cliff.  The jet jewelry was in all the little shop windows.  The town echoed of Dracula.
And then to find out later that Maud and Roland in London went to eat at Oodles - our favorite cheap place.  I'm getting a very personal relationship with this book, I guess!

Liking Ash less and less as we go on.  He's taking terrible advantage of our Cristabel, deceiving his doting (and I do mean DOTING!) wife, torturing small creatures in his quasi-scientific quest for "knowledge" instead of sticking to his pen and paper.  No, I think at this point that I can't stand him!  And how about poor Blanche, Cristabel's companion, driven to suicide?  She and Cristabel were leading a good and artistically productive life in their little cottage, untroubled by the world until Ash burst upon the scene.