Possession by A. S. Byatt

[lunabee34]

Possession by A.S. Byatt

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


At my alma mater, the Honors College presented a book award to a freshman each year. The book was chosen by the professors teaching the Colloquium class and tailored to the student who won. When I won the award, the professors chose to give me this book, beginning a lifelong love of A.S. Byatt and confirming my desire to be an English professor.

I absolutely love the way this story is told in a variety of formats--letters, diaries, poems, short stories, and the POV of multiple characters. Byatt tends to hit a handful of themes in much of her work--transformation, the power of words, the role of women in the academy and in society at large, the spirit world and whether Victorian forays into the supernatural were chicanery (she tends to come down on the side of charlatanism alongside a healthy dose of and yet...)--and these are each treated interestingly here.

What this novel does best, though, is express the absolute joy that scholarship can be--that heady feeling when you realize you've thought of something no one else has noticed, that rush of putting together a puzzle, the visceral pleasure of knowing you are reading material that no one else has read or thought about in years. I remember when I was doing research for my master's thesis, I was looking through bound volumes of Punch from the 1860s (so the actual, physical magazines from that decade), and I found a dated invitation card that had been stuck into the magazine as a bookmark by a person who'd been reading it in the 1860s, and it felt like magic to hold this thing in my hands that an unknown person had held so long ago, and just like Roland, I took that card, and I have it still.

I love the way Maud and Roland's romance mirrors Ash and Christabel's romance, and I love the insinuation that they will be able to avoid the perils that befell their predecessors.

The first few times I read the novel, I assumed that Blanche is romantically in love with Christabel but that Christabel doesn't share her feelings. The novel is explicit about Blanche's jealousy, her anger over Christabel's relationship with Ash, and the lengths she's willing to go to to separate them. Whenever Christabel describes her relationship with Blanche, she makes it sound as if they are two women living platonically and devoting their lives to art, and she doesn't indicate that she's ever felt anything other than friendship for Blanche. This reread, I was struck by Ash's thoughts after he and Christabel make love for the first time: "He stood . . . and puzzled over her. Such delicate skills, such informed desire, and yet a virgin. There were possibilities, of which the most obvious was to him slightly repugnant, and then, when he thought about it with determination, interesting, too. He could never ask." I think the implication is that she and Blanche had a sexual relationship; it's Ash's speculation, but it's his informed speculation, and it changes everything for me. If Christabel is actually cheating on Blanche with Ash (just as he is actually cheating on his wife with her), that changes everything about Christabel's motivation, etc.

Christabel is so smart and so fierce and so independent, and yet it's hard to like her when, as her cousin says, she keeps everyone at bay and makes her life so much harder than it has to be. I feel so sorry for her that she couldn't have that life of solitude and greatness that she wanted, and then I feel even sorrier for her that she loses everything--Blanche, Ash, and her daughter. By the end, she sounds lonely and bitter and full of regret, the witch in her turret as she calls herself.

All those secrets so tightly kept that weren't even secrets at all--Ellen knows all along about Christabel, and Ash knows about his daughter. That ending when you realize that he figures out his daughter lived and meets her and takes a lock of her hair, but that Christabel never knows of his discovery, that she spends the whole rest of her life hurting because she believes she's hurt him by letting him believe his child had died--I cry like a baby every time. And that, too, is a lesson about scholarship, all those things we can never know. Roland and Maud believe the hair is Christabel's, not Maia's, and they'll never know any different, just like I'll never get to know if Ouida did actually have a sexual relationship with Stufa or if her paintings were as abysmal as at least one of her biographers reports.

Absolutely spectacular read. I can't recommend it highly enough.



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Comments

[chelseagirl]

I adore this book. I remember when it first came out, I was still a lawyer and I closed my office door and read it all day and wished myself into another life. Which, in the end, worked out okay.

I always thought Christabel and Blanche were lovers, because of that exact line you quoted.

[lunabee34]

I think I just overlooked those lines the first few times I read it, and then when I did notice it, I thought that Ash was just projecting since he's married to a woman who hates sex and never had sex with him after their honeymoon. I assume that the only other person he had a relationship with after her married is Christabel, and so that line was just his amazement at a woman having pleasure in sex. But now I don't see how I could have read it any other way. LOL

How much do I love Leonora? Every academic in this book is thwarted in some way, repressed, unhealthily obsessed (Cropper), unable to create an identity independent of their work, unable to connect successfully with other people (except Blackadder whose seems to be doing alright) EXCEPT for Leonora who is happy with herself and her work and larger than life and colorful and beautiful and indiscriminately trying to sleep with everyone. She's delightful.

[zulu]

Wow, what a great recommendation! I'm gonna put it on hold.

[lunabee34]

It is so good. I hope I haven't spoiled too much of it for you in the review; it is a mystery with the scholars trying to piece everything together.

I will also say that it takes a little bit to pick up steam; the beginning is a bit slow the first time you read it.

[china_shop]

I've only read this once, decades ago (and shortly afterwards got put off A.S. Byatt by the horrific torture stuff in Babel Tower), but this makes me want to dig it out again. I love how much you love it! <3 <3 <3

[lunabee34]

I do, I do! She and Margaret Atwood are my all time favorite authors.

You might want to try her short story collections if you ever get back into Byatt. She's really, really good in that format.

[author_by_night]

I would have given this book a 4/5, honestly. I found it very dry until we learned about the "historic characters." However, you've given me new insight: Because it is about scholarship and academia, there's probably an element I wasn't quite able to appreciate properly. I'd done research for school, but it wasn't really my life. I was able to relate somewhat from the perspective of a fangirl, and as a genealogist. As far as being a fan goes, I was able to see how you can be so obsessed with a work, it almost takes over your life. And all the connections you can make from that obsession/possession, both good (Maud and Roland) and unhealthy (Maud and her ex, who was very very creepy - I seem to remember his first name was Fergus).

And from a genealogy perspective, I could see all of those unanswered questions, all of those unknowable details. I have my own questions within family research that may never be answered. I can only speculate, but really, who knows? There were so many secrets.

I also liked the parallels between the modern day characters and the historic ones. Also, the fact that Christabel may have cheated on Blanche does add a layer to both. It makes Blanche seem less like a stalkery lesbian, and more rightfully upset. It also takes away from some of the innocence Christabel appears to espouse, but by that same token makes her seem less pure.

Did I ever show you the paper I wrote on Possession? I know I meant to.

[lunabee34]

No; I'd love to see it!

I agree that if Christabel and Blanche are lovers, it completely changes everything. If they're not, Blanche is being unfair and delusional. If they are, Blanche has been wronged just as deeply as Ellen Ash has been wronged. I mean, I can understand her hurt and her pain in either case, but the extremity of her behavior is more sympathetic when she's a jilted lover. And it does change my perception of Christabel; it makes her much more callous. I don't think she ever *wanted* to hurt Blanche, but she was willing to risk it. If they weren't lovers, then she could legitimately be surprised that Blanche would react so poorly to her relationship with Ash.

[oracne]

You have succeeded in making me interested in this book.

[lunabee34]

Byatt has such a distinctive style; I think she's probably a love her or hate her write her, but I love her so hard.

[nyctanthes]

What a great review. When I was in academia I read many novels about life in academia, including this one. It's been so long, though; definitely time for a re-read.

Also, have you read Byatt's The Children's Book? It's one of hers I own but haven't read.

[lunabee34]

Weirdly enough, I haven't read a lot of novels about academia outside of Byatt's novels and short stories that touch on it. Do you have any recs?

I have read The Children's Book! I really enjoyed it, but I read it when it first came out and not since. It's on my list to reread soon.

[nyctanthes]

Hm, I'm not sure I do. I read a lot of them in my 20s, and they tended to be white males talking about their job and sex and marriage angst that I was far more tolerant of then than I am now. Also, Possession is a high bar/hard act to follow. :P

Jane Smiley's Moo was a big comfort read for me, while I was slogging in the PhD trenches.

[lunabee34]

I think that's why I haven't read many of them either. LOL

I'll check out Moo.

[tamsin]

Interesting that you love it so much. It's been years and years since I've read it and I only have fragmented (negative) memories of it. I wonder if I'd like it better if I read it now.

[lunabee34]

Sometimes our taste changes, and sometimes it doesn't. You might hate it even more. LOL