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

[Mippy]

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 IV: "These Revenants" (page 420)
 

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 21-27  Chapters 18-23 (123pp)
June 28-30  Chapters 24- end  (90pp)  

Week IV: June 21-27  Chapters 18-23: Eternity and Revenants  

1. "To whom it may concern:"  (pages 332ff) What do you think of Blanche now that you've read her will/ suicide note?   Are you more in sympathy with her than you were?  How can you reconcile this note  with her visit to Ellen Ash?  What, realistically, were her options? Do you think she will attain the immortality she seeks?

2. "Do you not hear the little thing, dancing?" (page 392).  What  happened in the story told by Gode about the miller's daughter and the sailor? What do you think the "blood on the straw" signifies? (Page 388)  Why do you think this story is included here?

3. Now we find out what happened to Christabel, or do we? Where did she disappear to when she left Sabine and her father? What  do you think happened to the baby and why?

4. "I have seen Mrs. Lees Crowned with Stars, a true Persephone, a light in  Darkness.....I have, it seems, the power of Scrying..." (page 419. "And then I would ask you, if you are wise, why those who come from, from that world--those visitants, those Revenants, those Loved Ones--why are they all so Singly and Singularly Cheerful in their mode of address?" (Page 420).

The theme of the desire for immortality is brought forcefully home again  in the seance sequences attended by Ash and Christabel. The entire section resounds with "revenants" and Proserpine, (returned from the dead).

"Where is the child?" Tell me what they have done with the child?"   page 429). How does Ash's testimony of his "Gaza Exploit" (page 425ff) differ from that of Mrs. Lees?    Whom or what  do you think  Christabel is looking for? Why would Ash seem so vehement in his reactions?

5.  "Of course what we hope for and at the same time fear, is some major discovery that will confirm, or disprove, or change at the least, a lifetime's work.' (page 417).   "...he had a vivid imagination....his major asset in his craft." (page 415).

Now that the game's afoot and all the academics are getting involved in the chase, too, sometimes in parallel pairs, we find out more about them, sometimes surprisingly so.  It's turning into the Keystone Kops. Which one surprised you the most?  Which if any of them seem motivated for the right reasons? Who are you rooting for?

6. So  much mention of color in this section, do any of the colors seem to symbolize anything? Why does Christabel wear green boots? What can be the significance of "white," first in the bed dreams and now in Christabel's face?

7.
a... What is a "box bed"  in Brittany, mentioned in Sabine's Journal?
b.... Leonora Stern's husband had been a "happily meticulous New Critic, and had totally failed to survive Leonora and the cut-throat ideological battles of structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction and feminism" (page 337). What does this mean?

8.. How does Christabel make Sabine "live a lie? "(page 403)

9. "A heavy  Breath
One two and three---
And then the lapsed
Eternity." (page 412).

To what does this poem of Christabel LaMotte refer?  How many instances are there in this chapter of death mentioned? Are they pointed foreshadowing do you think, or could they be red herrings?

10. Who is "Geraldine" in Mummy Possest? (page439)? What does the constant repetition of the word "widdershins" remind you of? What is the  meaning and relevance  of the title Mummy Possest?

Discussion Leaders: ginny & Marcie

 

[JoanR]

It's funny, isn't it, how sometimes our discussions become interconnected!  Mary Wollstonecraft died shortly (probably from septicemia) after giving birth to Mary Shelley, the author of "Frankenstein" which is the subject of another discussion here.

"Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason."  a quote from Wikipedia -,  not always a bad source!!

[marcie]

I was thinking the same thing, JoanR, about our upcoming discussion of Frankentein.

The book says that Blanche learned from the failed drowning attempt of Mary Wollstonecraft. "She obviously noted that Wollstonecraft found it hard to sink, because of her clothes floating." (p 235). So Blanche filled her pockets with big round stones.

[Jonathan]

There's very real tragedy as well as sadness in this unusual book, isn't there? Blanche's suicide does bring one up short with its reminder that it wasn't just about editing and researching the lives of the dead poets. Christabel had rescued Blanche from a miserable life, how tragic that now the stones she brought back as souvenirs, caused the death of her friend.

Too, too depresssing. Let's look for some humor. How about Blackadder 'composing a footnote', at the beginning of Chapter 17, as part of his editing the works of Ash. Reading what he has written and then changing his mind and erasing, etc. Funny isn't it. Just the same, there are curious things mentioned in the footnote, having to do with Ash's interest in spiritual seances.

Ash could never have been the father of Bertha's child. I believe Chapter 15 proves that. A careful reading of this unusual tryst convinces me that both Christabel and Randolph were virgins going into unknown territory. Randolph's marriage with Ellen had never been consummated. Now with Christabel he is very hesitant. Both already thinking of regrets. Are you afraid, she asks him. Well, no. He offers her the chance to change her mind. She declines. Insists it has become a necessity. That impresses Ash, and shortly later he can tell her:

I have an idea for a poem about necessity. As you said on the train. So seldom in a life do we feel  that what we do is necessary in that sense - gripped by necessity - I suppose death must be like that. If it is given to us to know its approach, we must know we  are now complete - do you see, my dear -  without further awkward choices, or the possibility of lazy denial. Like balls rolling down a smooth slope.

You may turn back at any point, if - he tells her.

I have said. I cannot.

Always the poet. To go further than  Wordsworth, in the search for new subject matter (p301) I believe he deserves a better fate than the ash can. Christabel, despite her fairy telling, felt a greater need. Now we would say she felt her biological clock ticking.

[Jonathan]

Curious how Val keeps showing up. Serves almost like a reality check, doesn't she? And here in Chapter 17, she has something to say about footnotes:

Honestly, (she tells Fergus Wolff) I've lost interest in all his footnotes and things and all those dead letters from dead people about missing trains and supporting Copyright Bills and all that stuff. Who wants to spend their life in the British Museum basement? It smells as bad as Mrs Jarvis's flat up there, full of cat piss. Who wants to spend their life reading old menus in cat piss?

and she admits:

I wasn't being all that nice to him.

I don't make him happy.

Will Roland remain true to her? Will he ever find a job?

[marcie]

Ginny, you are so good with rhyme and meter. I am awed by your detailed analysis and your hypothesis that Ellen recognized her husband's writing style in Christabel's poem.

Jonathan, I am with you in your sympathetic reading of Ash and Lamotte and their belief in the "necessity" of their closer bonds.... you quote Ash..."as necessary as death."

The character of Val does pull us out of the ivory towers. I do think she provides some humor in the way that she
dresses and acts at home and then makes up so very differently for work. The descriptions of Blackadder are often humorous. I enjoyed the following: "His scholarly method, furthermore, is primarily one of negation. Much of his time was spent wondering whether or not to erase things. He usually did."

We have lots to look forward to in the next sections.

[ginny]

haha, well I'm impressed, too, having scored 50 % on my own challenge, and may score 0 on what she really saw. I am looking forward, too, to the next section.

Val IS a strange character in here. I am not sure what to make of her.  Or why SHE like Bertha and Blanche, is here. If she feels so devalued by Roland, since it appears they are not married, why does she stay, then? Is this a character with "masochist" on her billboard walking occasionally across the stage?

I've begun to think of this as a huge play.

I've reread the Ellen bit  where she first encounters Blanche, who writes for an audience.  Boy that poor woman has headaches. She seems to have one before Blanche even comes,  dismisses her at first as just another fan writing her to get to Him, but note the headaches which ensue here as well. Good descriptions, I've never had migraines but have heard this extreme sense of smell,  is typical, and the lights. She says on page 250 that Blanche does not seem overly hysterical and takes to her bed at the same time.  "The headache introduces one to a curious twilight deathly world in which life and death seem no great matter."

So the headaches seem to  provide her with a sort of nirvana, an escape, a place she can go willingly or unwillingly when the stress gets to be too much.

Then she takes laudanum from the doctor which was common I think and a type of cocaine, am I right?

She says "No writer has written well enough of the Bliss of sleep." Of course of you discount Shakespeare,  and I think Coleridge, tho she says the opposite, did as well. Is all this passage,  then, Ellen obscuring the truth which we've been told to look out for,  and is that a clue to it?

Sherlock Holmes is needed here. But she's right about the Bliss of sleep, and most of us know about one wakeful night at this point in our lives.

"the bliss of relaxing one's grip of the world and warmly and motionlessly moving into another. Folded in by curtains, closed in by the warmth of blankets, without weight it seems----"

We can see what headaches do for her.

Blanche comes,  and.. "That matter is now I hope quite at an end and wholly cleared up."

(251).

"A poet is not a Divine being."

So poets have faults she's drifting away with drugs and headaches, and here comes Herbert Baulk again! An admirer? What's he doing there night and day? Another parallel, I guess this time with Val and Fergus?

Bertha leaves, Ellen is  "suspended almost as Snow White lay maybe, in the glass casket, alive but out of the weather, breathing but motionless." She feels she needs to be "quick and lively" tho when he gets back.

And the E word appears in Blanche's cryptic letter to Ellen, whose own letters or journal has fallen maddeningly  silent: Evidence.

"You did wrong to keep my Evidence." writes Blanche as Roland and Maude read. And as Bella says, what is it?

Whatever it is, it's physical, not hearsay, it's something which can be "kept," and Ellen, already beset with doubt about how she handled Bertha, now has this accusation of wrong to deal with,  too, when the bearer of that accusation has brought splitting headache bringing news. Poor thing.

What could it BE which would prove Ash and Christabel together?

I think today it must be a letter from Christabel saying she's going away, with Ash, what else could it be? Or maybe some personal affect of Ash.

On 257, forget the meter, Roland and Maude think they have stumbled on what Ellen saw: the Hob. Ash wrote his wife about a Hob, and Christabel wrote a tale about one. Maybe it's the HOB!

And water fountains. And their eureka moment comes on page 258 with our heart's ASH growing pale.

So they are "possessed" ("I feel quite taken over by this") by the quest, the search as "literary detectives" for the truth.

It's a nice literary mystery and at the end of 17 Fergus has managed to get the other two external principal players Blackadder and Cropper, in on it, now it's a race.

My question is how long were they gone and did Christabel leave any word she was leaving, what did she tell Blanche?

What last thoughts on anything up to this section do any of you have today before we move on?

[ginny]

As we're leaving this section, those are  Rembrandt's shells in the heading from his workshop in Amsterdam.

Sally I keep reading your post about Ash and death. I wonder if all authors hope to obtain immortality in their writings. Some do! And some don't. An interesting point.

Oh and Coleridge didn't write about the Bliss of  Sleep?


Part V

"Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!
To Mary Queen the praise be given!
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven,
That slid into my soul.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Maybe it's not blissful enough? Like Cropper I had to memorize huge swaths of poems, this was one of them, or the greater part of it.

Such a shame nobody memorizes any more.Quick, without looking, what can you recite? Half the time our memory remembers one thing and it turns out another, that's so fun. You have no idea how many people have INSISTED to me over the years that Caesar's Gallic Wars begins Omnis Gallia. hahaha

[marcie]

Randolph had planned to go on an excursion with his friend Tugwell who is now too busy to go. Since there is no other information about what he said to Ellen about the trip, we're left to believe that she thinks that Randolph is going alone, without Tugwell.

In the letters at the end of Chapter 10 Randolph speaks of "a week or two" alone together with Christabel. He also writes, "I do not wish to do irreparable damage to your life. I have so much rational understanding left to me, as to beg you--against my own desires, my own hope, my own true love--to think before and after. If by any kind of ingenuity it may be done satisfactorily so that you may afterward live as you wish--well then--if it may--this is not a matter for writing. I shall be at the Church at noon tomorrow. I send my love now and always."

There is a letter from Christabel:
 "It is done. BY FIAT. I spoke Thunder--and said--so it shall be--and there will be no questions now--or ever--and to this absolute Proposition I have--like all Tyrants--meek acquiescence.
No more Harm can be done by this than has already been done-- not by your will--though a little by mine--for I was (and am) angry."

Christabel was furious with Blanche for intercepting a number of Randolph's letters and (Blanche told Christabel) destroying them. She has decreed something to Blanche (that she is going away for a short while?) and lets her know that no questions are to be raised.

As to what Blanche then told Ellen and what "evidence" she showed her, we don't know. In Chapter 12 Roland says "I think the only certain thing is that Blanche told Ellen something. Showed her the stolen letters, probably? I want to think Blanche did this because Christabel had gone to Yorkshire with Ash. It fits in beautifully. But it isn't proof."

[marcie]

Ellen suffers from migraines and doesn't want physical intimacy with Randolph. I don't think we can blame her for these conditions but I don't think we can blame Randolph for them either.

[ginny]

What an interesting topic, Marcie: blame.  I don't think we can blame Ash for them either, but I don't think he's blameless in other areas.

What an eye opener this next section starting tomorrow is! I couldn't resist, had to know, and read the rest of the book too. Now I return to this section  more puzzled than ever hahahaa.

What would you all  say is the #1 question of our new section tomorrow?

[kidsal]

A box-bed is a bed having the form of a large box with wooden roof, sides, and ends, opening in front with two sliding panels or shutters; often used in cottages in Scotland: sometimes also applied to a bed arranged so as to fold up into a box.  WIKI
Have seen pictures of beds set into a wall with doors or shutters.  Usually think of cold climates for this type of bed.

[Gumtree]

Box -Beds : Where did I read recently that boxbeds were used in areas where predatory animals such as wolves were about. The  mother would place her babes or little ones to sleep in a boxbed and shut them in then go about her work knowing they were safe - but definitely for cold climates - please don't tell me that I read it in Possession

 In Wuthering Heights isn't the bed that Lockwood slept in -Cathy's old bed - I thought that was a box bed but that may be wrong.

[ginny]

Thank you Sally and Gum. (oh yeah we've got the box bed going here in Possession). I seem to have some vague remembrance of seeing something about one but isn't it interesting at the lack of photos, and writings, etc., on the internet about them? But safe from wolves, yes and predators. As safe perhaps as a glass coffin.

I've always loved those beds with curtains all around but for some reason they remind me of coffins, I guess a box bed would do/ be the same effect? Very dark and claustrophobic and hot unless as you say it was a cold climate. I seem to remember, however, having seen one, somewhere, somehow.

This section is something else! Lots of action and interesting characters (some of them surprised me)  and movement. I could not wait and finished the book to find out once and for all what was going on. So now I return to THIS section in a greater state of perplexity than I was.

What is she doing here and why?

Sally that book on Possession is somewhat viewable on the internet in the Look Inside feature on Amazon, it's quite interesting.  I wish I had it. What does she say about color here in these chapters specifically? Her take on the meaning? I can't get over the greens. Christabel has green feet, her feet (apparently always) are shod in green.  (Surely that was not a normal  Victorian thing?),  and in one point reference is made to a snake or serpent tail or perhaps a Melusina type being. GREEN footwear in Victorian times?

She's Melusina, is she? I guess I need to reread that legend. Or no, maybe her own poem which apparently changed 8 times.

Green and white. Her face is white. What do these colors mean because at the end they seem to change? White beds. You'd think green was the color of spring. Could this be in keeping with the Proserpina legend? Where does Merlin come in if he does?

Is this the Superbowl of Fairy Tales in itself?

This is the kind of book that you wish you had a Guide through the Forest for. In other words, a book that SOMEBODY (and you know it won't be you because you don't care enough to pursue the billion and one references and allusions) has done an authoritative study on, or has an opinion of... OR some expert has given their "authoritative" opinion. And we know by now, I hope, what Byatt thinks of them: made up and probably wrong.

I'm struck this morning by the behavior of Christabel while expecting.  What do you make of it? Seems to want to deny the very presence OF the baby. I think here she and Ellen, to me, seem to have a lot in common.

How do you explain her behavior?

Do you think people in the future will study Byatt (it appears they already are!) like these scholars study Ash?

I think the biggest theme in this section is immortality, they've all got the bug, it appears, in various forms. Ash, Blanche with her pitiful will wanting to be appreciated by later art lovers  and as a person..."here I am a superfluous creature. There I shall know and be known." She even brings in the "darkling light," paraphrasing Biblical sayings. Sometimes I think Byatt's obvious retention of a wide reading background somewhat sometimes overburdens her prose. Then there's Mrs. Lees and Christabel. Cropper with his Stant collection and fear of all his contributions, his reputation, his immortality,  being proved wrong, and Ellen, who turns out...but that's next week.

But at least here the plot seems to rise to the surface and the poetry and fairy tales and allusions are clinging on determinedly, for dear life,  just as plentiful, but pushed back, somewhat.

There's a lot to discuss here,  if you're caught up, what do you think?

[ginny]

Behold! The Breton Box Bed:   http://www.oldandinteresting.com/breton-box-beds.aspx






Interesting!

[kidsal]

Looking up the symbolism of colors in literature:  green - fertility; white - not only virginal but also clinical and cold -

BURGASS:  There is a metaphorical cold.  Maud has been associated with whiteness (chastity, untouchability) and an emotional lack of warmth. She is - like Christabel - a "chilly mortal."  Red and white imagery is prevalent in fairy tales such as Snow White.  In fairy tale stories the frozen ice princess would be warmed up by the prince, although in Byatt's fairy tale "Cold" an ice princess is liberated only by living in her proper element.  The final scene of Roland and Maud has touches of the fairy tale.

[JoanR]

About box beds:  I remember reading as a child a series of books about "Life Long Ago" (or some such title) in which box beds were described as necessary to keep out the cold drafts in homes heated only by fireplaces which would have had the fires either "banked" or gone out during the night.  They were also used in small Dutch homes - either for reasons of tidiness or warmth.  Just think, you wouldn't have to make up your bed - just close the doors!

You mention "green", Ginny.  It does come up a lot but it's a color with all sorts of legendary and mystical overtones.  Think of the Green Knight, little green men, the song "Greensleeves", fairy rings on the green etc. It's the color of life and sustenance!

I'm up to chapter 20, so the fate of the baby has not yet been divulged .  Christabel seems to be amazingly stoic, if not actually cold, about it - in everything else so far she exhibits emotion, warmth, even passion - here it's almost as if she is trying to ignore the baby's existence.

[Jonathan]

More on the subject of box-beds, quoted from a book by Pierre-Jakez Helias: The Horse Of Pride, Life in a Breton Village. Pub 1975.

The peasant civilizations that were shattered have left material proof of their existence - fields of ruins upon which antique dealers, second-hand dealers, cobblers and collectors of all types have swooped down. The whole of Brittany has become a huge repository of "curios,"...there are so many cupboards, box-beds, standing clocks, cradles, spinning wheels, settles and horse collars - indeed, almost everything made by hand that's usable, even in unexpected ways. And if they happen to be useless, they can serve as ornaments, like the wagon wheels embedded in garden gates and which turn instead of roll. A stable lantern sits enthroned in a drawing room next to a cartwheel made into a table lamp....Before sitting down on a worm-eaten charabanc seat, you can put your umbrella into a churn in the hallway and recomb your hair if you open the doors of a box-bed facade glued to the wall and which dresses up a mirror. Ah! Those box-beds, what a blessing!

I have seen some that have been transformed into coat racks, into bookcases, into sideboards or living-room bars, and into cabinets containing a phonograph, a radio, and a television set I even found one that had been turned into a lavatory to the great satisfaction, if not the great comfort, of those who use it. Another one serves as a dressing in a tailor's shop. Yet another conceals a screen for showing home movies. And the one that received the greatest tribute is today the frame for a well-known masterpiece worth millions.

I expect to read that Cropper, after using one as a concealing dark room, is taking it home with him. Just another way of holding him up to ridicule. The narrator is not always without predjudice about him.

What I find extremely interesting is that Byatt takes Christabel 'home' to Brittany to have her baby. Of far greater interest than the sticks of furniture are the myths and legends in which Christabel was cradled. And the dark night stories. Brittany, the meeting place of the real and the unreal. But that's wrong. It's the place where different worlds and times mesh. I find this section melodramatic.

[Gumtree]

Green - I'm put in mind of the legends of the Green Man which is essentially a rural tradition celebrating the coming of the growing season -He's usually dressed in lush green foliage and gets ceremonially put to death at May time in order to bring about regeneration.

I've seen references which indicate that the Green Knight in Gawain may refer to the Green Man as the God that dies and is reborn.

So does the green in Christabel's attire symbolise regeneration and thus fit well with Ash's desire for some kind of immortality? But then what does green symbolise in relation to Maud who wears it frequently?

[Jonathan]

From the seance sequences attended by Ash and Christabel. "Where is the child? Tell me what they have done with the child?

That's from question 4. This makes for a very dramatic scene in the movie version of POSSESSION. But I'm almost certaing that Ash glares at Christabel across the table and demands, What have YOU done with the child?

[Jonathan]

Somewhere we were told that colors also serve as a language. The problem of white has come up repeatedly. White, it seems to me, is the most puzzling metaphor in the book. Blank page? Clean slate? Fresh beginning? No footnotes?

[kidsal]

Another green symbol: Epiphany

[kidsal]

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.

[bellamarie]

Oh my heavens Ginny, I leave for a couple of days and you have gone on without me...lolol  Wow!  I just don't know where to begin with all your comments, questions and ideas in your last few posts.  I almost felt like Byatt was posting here....tee hee, you do seem to be trying to trick us as you suspect Byatt of doing.  Although, I must tell you that I don't see trickery as you do. I see Byatt meshing Ash and Christabel together.  She for some reason wants us to think Ash either wrote or had some kind of input into Christabel's writings.  Why would she do this? 

Now, as for Blanche and Christabel's relationship, I am thinking possibly it was not of a sexual nature because on pg. 333 in Blanche's suicide letter she states under reason #3.  "Third, failure of ideals.  I have tried, initially with Miss LaMotte, and also alone in this little house, to live according to certain beliefs about the possibility, for independent single women, of living useful and fully human lives, in each others company, and without recourse to help from the outside world, or men.  We believed it was possible to live frugally, charitably, philosophically, artistically, and in harmony with each other and Nature.  Regrettably, it was not.  Either the world was too fiercely inimical (unfriendly) to our experiment (which I believe it was) or we ourselves were insufficiently resourceful and strong minded (which I believe was also so, in both cases, and from time to time).  It is to be hoped that our first heady days of economic independence, and the work we leave behind us, may induce other stronger spirits to take up the task and try the experiment and not fail.  Independent women must expect more of themselves, since neither men or other more conventionally domesticated women will hope for anything, or expect any result other than utter failure.

The two of them were women libbers, they wanted to prove that women can survive and succeed in this world without the income or relationship with the male.  But, as she states, they both failed, which leads me to believe that Christabel gave into the emotional need for Ash, and Blanche was not able to survive economically without Christabel being there with her. 

Good question Ginny, about just how long did Christabel leave Blanche on her own with no income or communication between them.  Christabel had to have known Blanche could not survive without her.  How could she leave and not provide for Blanche?  Here is where Byatt has not convinced me of the entire charitable character of Christabel.  She runs off with a married man, and she leaves her dearest friend behind with no means of support.   

I find it a bit odd Blanche did not leave all her belongings to Christabel.  Instead she left her the jet brooch of the two hands clasped in Friendship which Christabel had given to her, and the two paintings which she states, pg. 334 "Of these large works, two are the property of Miss Lamott.  These are "Christabel before Sir Leoline" and Merlin and Vivien."  She hopes they will help her to recall the happy times.[/i]  Okay Ginny...I implore you to find such paintings and post, should they actually exist.  lol

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

When I read that I surmised he wanted her to continue to feel free and independent.  He did not want to cage her spirit, the thing he loved about her.  She worried in being with him he would possess her and she would lose herself in him.  I did not see it as him being arrogant, or full of himself, on the contrary, I saw him wanting to never allow her to be captured, possessed or feel weak, for loving him.

Okay up to this point I am just a tad bit upset with this book.  It is full of contradictions where the characters are concerned.  Byatt called it a comedy....I hardly have found much humor in it whatsoever.  Its a bit of doom and gloom with confusion, and calamity peppered in.  If it were a recipe, I'm not finding it palatable. I shall as my mother used to say to me when she put something new in front of me and I would wince, "You won't know if you like it until you try it."  Well, I've tried 18 chapters so far, and am wincing and waiting for it to convince me its someting I would try again, or recommend on the menu to a friend.

Ginny, I do feel Ash, Byatt and Lamotte are all three in one.  She has very artistically intertwined the styles, and themes and eliminated just enough so we don't see it, but I have had this feeling early on.  They are three of one mind.  Now how is that, for shall we use your word, a "tricksey" author.  LOL

Be back in a bit...Ciao

[bellamarie]

Egads... I was writing my post, I hit "post" and saw all of the ones before mine.  Oh dear, I am at a loss, I am only up to ch. 19, so by all your posts I have learned a baby is on board, box beds, Ginny has finished the entire book and Kidsal is mentioning ch 26 is "the beginning of the end of the novel" and, " 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. And Jonathon recalls in the movie, I'm almost certaing that Ash glares at Christabel across the table and demands, What have YOU done with the child?

For some reason I feel like I have just been told there really is NO Santa, after all the anticipation of waiting in line to give him my Christmas list.

So, I suppose if we are going to continue discussing chapters ahead I had better either get busy and read up to at least ch. 23, or like most of you, finish the book.  Gads...where will I find the time, I thought I had two weeks left.  Okay, I am off to see how far I can read this afternoon.  Luckily, my last day care child leaves in ten minutes and I have no plans for the evening.  Phew..NO moss grows under your feet.  lolol

[kidsal]

#10.  Geraldine in "Mummy Possest" is the medium in training at the seance.

Sorry I got ahead of myself referencing Chapter 26.

[ginny]

Wow!~ What a fabulous burst of responses! Welcome back, Bellamarie! I'm proud of everybody here because THIS section is really an Alice in Wonderland journey.

I've been thinking about your posts  all night but am having connectivity problems, or rather the satellite is. Maybe I should say I am, with all the repetition and swirling  echoes and parallels.

Geraldine: medium in training!! Good one Kidsal! Why did I miss that?  She's also, I just found by reading most of yesterday, in  the Melusina different legends. These books of analysis are unbelievable. The literary experts are in danger of making themselves intro what Byatt is poking fun at.

Sally what does that passage from Burgass mean? W hat do the rest of you think? I got up thinking that if a writer needs somebody TO interpret for the reader then that writer is not clear. Why is the writer not clear is the question? Why?

My question for this section, having read to the end, is why? WHY?

I've printed that selection out, Sally and will ponder it further (so far pondering has done absolutely nothing), it may simply be a case of "pearls before swine," at first glance it seems to mean nothing. hahhaaa But Miss Piggy will persist!

I found another one by the Look Inside method (which you can do a screen shot of if it's in hieroglyphics as most of them seem to be), and found that Coleridge has Geraldine too, in his poem Christabel. Writing in "Melusine the serpent goddess in A. D. Byatt's Possession and in mythology, the author says

" Coleridge describes Geraldine as a deathly woman in his unfinished poem "Christabel." Christabel was to have been the enchantress victim of Geraldine as Byatt has Coleridge in relation to MaMotte:  Christabel "is a beautiful name and will I trust not to be a name of ill omen." Byatt gives the name Geraldine to the pupil of Mrs,. Lee's in Ash's poem "mummy Possest," where she is undergoing training in artfulness or deception in the spiritual dimension. This is the reverse world of women,"Where power flows upwards, as in the glass ball// Where left is right, and clocks go widdernshins,/ And women sit enthroned and wear robes." (410)

er...WHAT is the "reverse world of women?" Mummy Possest?" LaMotte? Melusina?

Is Melusina actually (in LaMotte's poetry) supposed to be a female empowerment type of thing?  What do you make of this comment on Possessed?

When you can't understand the explanatory comments you begin to realize that it's true, nobody actually understands the WHY and the WHEREFORE of a lot of this book, some lie and some just pick a thread and go with it. Here's a female power thread, what does it apply to?

Blanche says we tried  but we failed.

(Anybody except me who did not see that Possest was actually Possessed? What does that title mean? Looks a lot like posse in Latin, I was even mispronouncing  it!  I must add that title and its possible meaning  to the questions).

[ginny]

Jonathan, you are totally right, she's returned to her Breton roots, never particularly defined, to have a go at the innumerable legends and tales of Brittany. Good place to add them, like a 20 course dessert after a heavy meal.

Why are these tales here? What do they mean? More parallels, two  bloods on straw, seems like somebody should have cried: hold! Enough!

Jonathan, melodramatic? I looked that up to be sure of the meaning:

Main Entry: melo·dra·ma
Pronunciation: \ˈme-lə-ˌdrä-mə, -ˌdra-\
Function: noun
Etymology: modification of French mélodrame, from Greek melos song + French drame drama, from Late Latin drama
Date: 1802

1 a : a work (as a movie or play) characterized by extravagant theatricality and by the predominance of plot and physical action over characterization b : the genre of dramatic literature constituted by such works
2 : something resembling a melodrama especially in having a sensational or theatrical quality


It's definitely a shift, and the end is more melodramatic by this definition than this part,  and if I guess we were ever to see the character of Christabel, we'd see it now, but we don't? I don't. What do you all  make of her strange behavior here? Pretending she's not pregnant? Two other women have to figure out she's the one letting out her dresses? Huh?

Where did she go for those two days? Where is the baby?  Do you like her more or less than you did? She certainly seems to be in control here. Has your opinion changed about her now? Poor victim or?

So the movie, which I hope we can discuss for a day or two after the book, I have not viewed it yet, has Ash accusing Christabel, what have YOU done with the baby?

But in the book we don't really know IF that is Christabel who fainted at all. IF she is there at all?/ Why did she faint? We have to find it thru letters again, allusions.  WHY can't the author say who it was?

How, has anybody reflected on this, does Ash know there WAS a baby in the first place?

More in a bit, have read and so enjoyed everything you've said, colors coming up, what a rich discussion you've made of it!

[ginny]

I love the stuff on the bed. When we look back on this and ask ourselves what we have learned, that's one thing I can put in the plus column, thank you all.

Joan R and Kidsal, great stuff on the green color. I forgot about the Green heroes, there was also Sir  Gawain and the Green Knight.  So we have gold green and white here.

Sally I agree with  Burgass (now I  can understand that one) that Christabel seems cold here and Joan: Christabel seems to be amazingly stoic, if not actually cold, about it - in everything else so far she exhibits emotion, warmth, even passion - here it's almost as if she is trying to ignore the baby's existence.

Yes. Why, do you think? What's our reaction here, how can you deny the baby? Queen of Denial here or something else?

Oh good points, Jonathan: Somewhere we were told that colors also serve as a language. The problem of white has come up repeatedly. White, it seems to me, is the most puzzling metaphor in the book. Blank page? Clean slate? Fresh beginning? No footnotes?

Good point, white as metaphor, I wondered what that no footnotes meant and then when you get to the end, footnotes everywhere, all spurious.

 I don't think, Bella, we'll find any paintings of Blanche's, but I am now wondering about the cover painting, the Beguiling of Merlin. She never really worked him in, did she, or,  for that matter, Dr. Mesmer.

So many unravelled ends and languages. The language of colors the language of metaphor the language of allusion to Mythology, it's a regular Tower of Babel, isn't it?


Bella, Byatt also provides two endings, both of them happy in their way.  She finds a compromise between coherence and  closure and the postmodern game


What? I read to the end and don't see but one? sigh. When we get there, let's remember this and discuss it!


I see Byatt meshing Ash and Christabel together.  She for some reason wants us to think Ash either wrote or had some kind of input into Christabel's writings.  Why would she do this?

Good question, where do you see them woven together?

Can anyone decipher Burgass on Possession, quoted by Sally belopw? Let me go see what's said about David Byrne Jones and his painting of Merlin and...who?

A blizzard of questions and theories this morning, what struck YOU about this passage? Why is Ash so angry at the seance? What's the story by Gode about? Why is it here?

I find myself more in sympathy with Blanche than Chrisabel here who even resents the dog eating for Pete's sake. She says she should have left him behind. With whom?

Marcie indicates that Ash says he and Christabel were only together two weeks, kind of makes Blanche look odd. As Bella says, contradictions about characters. Why did she go to Ellen? Two weeks? She can't last two weeks? Her suicide note/ will seems so coherent, but nothing else about her is.


Just found yet another source on color for tonight!

[ginny]

Ok here's the Beguilng of Merlin, but it's not Vivian, explanation by Wikipedia:

The Beguiling of Merlin is a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones which was created between 1872 and 1877.

The painting depicts a scene from Arthurian legend, the infatuation of Merlin with the Lady of the Lake, Nimue. Merlin is shown trapped, helpless in a hawthorn bush as Nimue reads from a book of spells.[1]

The work was commissioned from Burne-Jones by Frederick Richards Leyland, a Liverpool ship-owner and art-collector,[2] in the late 1860s. After a false start blamed on "poor materials" Burne-Jones began work on the painting proper in 1873, finishing the body of the work by the end of 1874; although the painting was not first exhibited until 1877 at the opening exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery in London.[1]

Burne-Jones used Maria Zambaco, who was probably his mistress from 1866 to 1872, for the model for the head of Nimue.[1]

The painting was purchased by Lord Leverhulme in 1918 and remains in the Lady Lever Art Gallery to the present day.[1]

The painting features on the cover of the novel Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt.

I would have said that the King Arthur is ONE set of legends she did not cover?  Or did she?

[Mippy]

your question:  what happened to the baby was on point.
This kind of plot devise is why I'm having trouble reading this book.
                       
The baby of Christobel is undefined, even less defined (in the reading so far) than Dog Tray.
I hate that.  I cannot stand book where babies are killed.  I'm so discouraged about this.

Could the baby be alive, somewhere?  The nuns have no idea.  The priest is quite yucky, as described.  So did she drown the baby or leave it out in the woods.   Hate, just hate, it.   

[ginny]

Good points, Mippy. COULD the baby be alive somewhere? The reader is left to conjecture but how MANY references to infant death there are in this passage, the foreshadowing is heavy, isn't it? And yet....


Oh good heavens, look at this, from Wikipedia (because they are first) it IS Vivian after all in the painting, check this out:

In the Lancelot-Grail and later accounts Merlin's eventual downfall came from his lusting after a huntress named Niviane (or Nymue, Nimue, Niniane, Nyneue, or Viviane in some versions of the legend), who was the daughter of the king of Northumberland. In the Suite du Merlin [8], for example, Niviane is about to depart from Arthur's court, but, with some encouragement from Merlin, Arthur asks her to stay in his castle with the queen. During her stay, Merlin falls in love with her and desires her. Niviane, frightened that Merlin might take advantage of her with his spells, swears that she will never love him unless he swears to teach her all of his magic. Merlin consents, unaware that throughout the course of her lessons, Niviane will use Merlin's own powers against him, forcing him to do her bidding.[8]

When Niviane finally goes back to her country, Merlin escorts her. However, along the way, Merlin receives a vision that Arthur is in need of assistance against the schemes of Morgan le Fay. Niviane and Merlin rush back to Arthur's castle, but have to stop for the night in a stone chamber, once inhabited by two lovers. Merlin relates that when the lovers died, they were placed in a magic tomb within a room in the chamber. That night, while Merlin is asleep, Niviane, still disgusted with Merlin's desire for her, as well as his demon heritage, casts a spell over him and places him in the magic tomb so that he can never escape, thus causing his death.

[ginny]

And this excerpt is from a Reader's Guide from Continuum Contemporary:

Connections proliferate through the various narrative strands of the novel. One significant example is the green, white, and gold imagery associated with Crhistabel, the Princess in the glass coffin, Melusine, and Maude....

Maud's physical description and haughty behavior cast her undeniably in teh fairy tale princess mold....Unlike Melusine, this fairy tale provide direction to Roland (as well as the reader), if he chooses to take it, on how to win Maud. It places him more firmly in the role of hero by providing a closer literary tole model in the little tailor. The analogies already present in the tale suggest that Roland, if he continues to exercise resourcefulness and tact, is assured of his happy ending. The tale may also predict the conclusion of Christabel and Ash's relationship. Ash from the first proves a more importunate suitor than Roland..., Later Ash observes her, as Roland has observed Maud: "lashes...silver, but thick  enough to be visibly present. The face not kind. There was no kindness in the  face. it was cut clean but not fine--strong boned rather." Melusine is a milky luminous white and green clad fairy:

She wore a shift of whitest silk, that stirred
With her song's breathing, and a girdle  green
As emerald or wettest meadow-grass.

Her living hair was brighter than chill gold..."

I had not noticed those parallels but who could miss the constant green and gold.

So what are we to make of all this? This guide also makes the statement "The reader is already quipped to make further connections."

The reader may BE equipped and encouraged by the million and one references, but ARE the conclusions the reader comes to accurate? Should we then see  Christabel as Melusina, then?  She's Melusina, the feminine triumphant? I guess it depends on your definition of triumphant.

It's good to see what the experts see in it, I love an enlightened mind. The question is what the normal or astute reader sees in it, and that's where we are.

What DO you see in all these parallels? Anything recognizable? Or is it simply an explosion of metaphor and simile, allusion. legends,  and myth, parallels and references which got out of hand?

[Jonathan]

Quote from Ginny: 'What DO you see in all these parallels? Anything recognizable? Or is it simply an explosion of metaphor and simile, allusion. legends,  and myth, parallels and references which got out of hand?'

Right. What a literary riot! And romantic in the full sense. With a harlequin flavor thrown in. What a happy maze this book has turned out to be. A surprise around every corner. Madcaps and mediums everywhere. Not to mention metaphors. Even church steeples are made to serve. And meanings everywhere. Even the characters are wearied by them. Maud wants to take a break from them. And Sabine also complains of them. Is it so surprising that Maud and Roland take on the characteristics of the literary heroes they are pursuing with might and main?

Right on, in an earlier post, Ginny: 'The literary  experts are in danger of making themselves into what Byatt is poking fun at.'

Not that she isn't serious about a lot of  things. The lives of her characters are full of human drama. The reader gets a fairly comprehensive picture of  19c concerns: the impact of scientific discoveries, especially the work of the geologist Leyell, whose work Ash is trying to emulate in an amateurish manner, as were a host of others who were destroying the seashore life. Trying to discover the source of life in the ocean. Throwing Christian theology into confusion. Looking to spiritualism for evidence of life beyond the here and now. The awakening female mind, long kept silent in a patriarchal  world. What a strange consciousnens is brought into being. Femisist speculations couched in Lacanian riddles. 423. Along come the new literary critics a century later.

Left in Leonora's wake is poor Nathaniel Stern, her first husband:

...an assistant professor at Princeton who had been a happily meticulous New Critic, and had totally failed to survive Leonora and the cut-thoat ideological battles of structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, deconstruction and feminism....

Isn't it strange that Cropper should have used every opportunity to include the letter from Randolph Ash to his great-grandmother Priscilla in his publications, having to do with Ash's views about communicating with the dead. A real Victorian occupation. Only now with these new revelations of an Ash/LaMotte conection does Cropper discover in his collection that Christabel also wrote a letter to Priscilla on the same subject. Things are beginning to come together.

And the author is caving in, it seems. Going in for coherence and closure after all, to keep her readers happy. And she does it all in such a grand and hokey, old-fashioned style. What a happy ending!

[kidsal]

#9. The poem " A heavy Breath/one two and three--/and then the lapsed/eternity."  Believe the poem refers to birth.

Lots of death in that chapter:  lying dead in a cave; death of Sabine; death of miner's daughter; Druids writing a form of death; death of Sabine's mother; Godes story of wolves and death; the Black Month/Night tales.

[kidsal]

Why didn't Christabel go to her mother who was still alive?  Said "she is not a spiritual woman."

[kidsal]

On Netflix Possession is available to watch online.

[ginny]

Jonathan what a beautiful post!  Right. What a literary riot! And romantic in the full sense. With a harlequin flavor thrown in. What a happy maze this book has turned out to be. A surprise around every corner. Madcaps and mediums everywhere. Not to mention metaphors. Even church steeples are made to serve. And meanings everywhere. Even the characters are wearied by them. Maud wants to take a break from them. And Sabine also complains of them. Is it so surprising that Maud and Roland take on the characteristics of the literary heroes they are pursuing with might and main?

I also liked your next paragraph on what she is serious about, but I can't quote you over and over.

I got up thinking I now see the humor, Bella, and I like Jonathan's positive spin on this so much. I've been thinking about this section for 2 days. I think I've got it.

I got up thinking BRETON legends? On top of everything else? And something about footnotes that Jonathan said way back there, and suddenly I see it.

Here's what I see, what do you see?

What IF you set out to write  a fantasy fairy tale spoofing literary criticism, specifically literary critics, academics and scholars, the constructionists and New  Critics (Sally I understand Burgass now, too, be right back with that one). To have fun with it and in the process of writing a mystery about two researchers (literary critics, academics and scholars) put in enough real legends, false legends, mythology, literary references, folk tales, to choke a horse and somehow try (and you notice it's very contrived, the parallels, the colors: for one awful minute I thought she was going to start another parallel with Blackadder too),  to mock yourself as Jonathan shows Maude tired of trying to find meaning,  to tie them all together with constant references to color, symbolism, allusion,  and pretty much the kitchen sink.

In the last section which I recommend everybody read ahead now, we suddenly see footnotes to very famous people and works. What's odd about them? The comedy rips wide open about as obvious as it's possible to get, slapstick at the end, tho in this section the auto accident certainly counts.

When you see the end, you have to come back HERE, this is the worst and most difficult section. You have to come back HERE and say WHY?

Why have you done this? Look at Mippy all upset here. WHY are you leading us down this path?

It will depend on the reader's reaction as to whether or not Byatt has carried this romp off. As late as yesterday I truly believed she was having the reader on.

I don't think so today, I think it's exactly what I first thought, one giant, fun,  creative joke. You can't CARE about Christabel, she won't let you, she's the Ice Princess in the  Tower, even preggers. The characters, the major ones, are cardboard.

Sally says what of her mother? What, indeed? WHAT mother? There's a mother? Where has she been? Super question, Sally. What indeed. But let's have another Breton legend.

Then Sally says: #9. The poem " A heavy Breath/one two and three--/and then the lapsed/eternity."  Believe the poem refers to birth


Lots of death in that chapter:  lying dead in a cave; death of Sabine; death of miner's daughter; Druids writing a form of death; death of Sabine's mother; Godes story of wolves and death; the Black Month/Night tales.

SO right you are. Death in a million forms. More blood on the straw, is that birth or death?

I thought this: " A heavy Breath/one two and three--/and then the lapsed/eternity." meant death.  To me this meant three breaths and then the baby died?

and then the lapsed........ so something stopped....and then

eternity.

A heavy Breath
one two and three
and then the lapsed
eternity.

Looks like death, to me.

But I  don't know what it means. Nobody knows but Byatt. The constructionalists can do what they'd like with it, she's the only one who really knows what she intended.

Plot wise it certainly looks as if  Christabel was pregnant one day and not the next. Nobody seems to know what happened to the baby. She appears to be attending seances (WITH ASH?) to find out. But is that why she's there?  That sure is how it looks, doesn't it? how does ASH know there was a baby? Is that explained ANYWHERE? How does ASH turn out at that particular seance?

I don't think it's the baby she wants to communicate with beyond the grave.  Well having read the end, I know it's not. Ash apparently doesn't tho.

'Twas brillig.

Turns out also Miss Ellen and Miss Christabel have a lot in common.

I now think as I did initially it's a giant send off, a riot of creativity, poems, legends, tales, parallel plots and mysteries centering on literary scholars and criticism, almost like,  but not quite,  a "TAKE THAT! See if you can figure this one out...." it IS intended as comedy. She was right.

The thing we need to decide and we will in the last days, is did she carry it off.

I'm sure those who have not read beyond 23 don't see anything funny, you'll need to read on. Then you'll want to come back because here is where her plan begins to unravel, it's the Breton stuff that does it, and the proof is in the pudding in the last chapters, hidden in plain sight on the bottom of the pages.  A brilliant division of the book for discussion, Marcie, my hat's off to you.

Colors? Forget the colors, they are a smoke screen, they mean anything and everything and change at the end again. The language of....you pick it, it's here. Don't forget the gold, the golden apples of the Sibyl,  a passport from the Underworld and death.



The reader says to himself, oh...er... yes I've heard of ....whatever legend, or the reader looks up Proserpine or Merlin or whoever and says oh, my, she's learned, so all this other stuff also is terribly meaningful too, I must be a knucklehead, I don't see XXX or YYYY.

The reader is intimidated and probably somewhat irritated. IF the reader got this far. I bet this book holds the record for people dropping it. How proud I am of YOU who did not, and you're out there, you're just not posting.

We feel, well this expert (Burgass) or that one (there are tons of them), know what this means, their interpretation is correct (and how glad I am I'm not in one of THEIR classes, talk about Leavis), but I NEED them to understand.

No, you don't. It's a joke. It's just a big joke. Look up if you like the 101 tales of Melusina and then you'll know something you did not when it started and enjoy some of the great writing and creativity, but don't take it seriously because, in my opinion, it's not.

Sally,  back with poststructuralism in a second.

[ginny]

Sally, On Netflix Possession is available to watch online.

I've got the movie from Netflix right here in front of me. Let's take a minute at the end of the discussion to discuss what the moviemakers made of this mess and how it might have altered one's perception of the book to have seen IT first?

So those of you talking about the character of  Ash, we'll want to talk about him, too, on his deathbed. A lot to come here.

I was truly  afraid there for a minute she was going to make Blackadder the most compelling character. Any time you read a book and the author is always present, and you don't have any sort of suspension of disbelief, for whatever reason, to me, it's not the best writing, but we'll decide that at the end, too. You can rate it, yourselves.

[kidsal]

Was looking in Amazon for her latest novel, the Children's Book.  This is from Publisher's Weekly:  The novel's moments of magic and humanity, malignant as they may be, are too often interrupted by information dumps that show off Byatt's extensive research. Buried somewhere in here is a fine novel. (Oct.)