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Finding our
Present in the Past: Possession
by A.S. Byatt
by Marilyn
Green Faulkner
If
you tend to lose yourself in second-hand bookstores, are ravenously
curious about the lives of the authors whose works you read, or
simply love a great romantic mystery, you will love this book
"The book was
thick and black and covered with dust." It is not a coincidence
that the first two words of this remarkable novel are, "the book."
Possession is a book about books, about the study and love of literature
and the intricate obsession with the lives of literary figures shared
by academics, historians, and the randomly curious public. It tells
the story of a quiet literary scholar, Roland Michell, who finds
a lost letter from the great Victorian poet R.H. Ash to another
famous poet of the day, Christabel LaMotte. As he is an Ash scholar,
Roland takes the letter to a LaMotte scholar named Maude Bailey,
and together they begin a search to uncover the relationship between
the two. It is a discovery that will have repercussions in the academic
world and in their own lives. If you tend to lose yourself in second-hand
bookstores, are ravenously curious about the lives of the authors
whose works you read, or simply love a great romantic mystery, you
will love this book, which won the Booker prize, England's highest
literary award.
A.S. Byatt is
herself a formidable scholar of literature who left a teaching career
at London College in 1983 to write full-time. One day while in the
British Museum Library, she spotted a well-known Coleridge scholar.
It occurred to Byatt that much of what she knew about the Romantic
poet had been filtered through the mind of that scholar. She mused
about the effect that such a single-minded pursuit must have on
a person. "I thought," she said, "it's almost like a case of demonic
possession, and I wondered—has she eaten up his life or has
he eaten up hers?" Years later while studying Robert Browning, she
became interested in the effect that his relationship with his wife
(the more famous and more readable poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
would have had on his work, and vice versa, and considered writing
a novel about their lives. Soon the two ideas would combine for
one great novel.
A Two-Part
Invention
Fearing the legal implications and the artistic restrictions of
writing about real people, Byatt decided instead to create a pair
of Victorian poets and link them to a pair of modern literary scholars.
She remembered D.H. Lawrence's advice: "I thought: I have to have
two couples, which he says is the beginning of any novel." She also
decided she would try to instill her novel "with the kind of warmth
of a Shakespearean comedy." Her romantic poet, Randolph Henry Ash,
loosely modeled on Robert Browning, writes dramatic monologues with
deep mythological and psychological underpinnings. The fair, mysterious
Christabel LaMotte resembles Christina Rosetti, with her mystical,
lyrical verse and her fascination with ancient folk tales and legends.
The marvel of the novel is that Byatt creates not just the poets,
but also their poetry. Calling on her extensive knowledge of Victorian
literature, she intersperses the narrative with poetry, prose, tales,
and even literary criticism about the works of these fictional characters.
It is, to use an over-taxed phrase, a tour de force. The poems are
beautiful in their own right. Here are just a few lines from the
fictional Ash:
In certain moods
we eat our lives away
In fast successive
greed; we must have more
Although that
more depletes our little stock
Of time and
peace remaining.
I confess that
my first time through this novel I went to my Norton Anthology
of English Literature and looked for R.H. Ash. It amazed me
that the author could switch from style to style and write such
beautiful verse in different voices. This third time through the
book, I was also sensitive to the way the poetry illuminates the
narrative.
Liberated
Women?
For those who are involved in, and perhaps discouraged by, the academic
climate of today, Possession offers a clear-eyed look at
modern literary scholarship. In particular Byatt is interested in
the largely negative effect of the feminist movement in literary
studies. Herself the mother of four children and a successful career
woman, Byatt is keenly aware of each woman's struggle to balance
the roles of her life, and is certainly an ardent advocate for the
rights of all people. She sees, however, a curious parallel between
modern women and their Victorian counterparts and suggests that
in the fight for their freedom, women may have "thrown the baby
out with the bathwater." Through Christabel LaMotte and Maude
Bailey Byatt suggests that, while the Victorian woman was trapped
by the notion that her proper place was only to mother children
and nurture and support men, the modern woman may be equally trapped
by the opposite notion, that she must live free of these very natural
female roles. Thus Christabel LaMotte is symbolized by the princess
in the glass coffin, beautiful but unable to break free of her bonds.
Yet her modern counterpart, renowned scholar and feminist Maude
Bailey, is equally unhappy and trapped in a role that feels unnatural
to her. She self-consciously hides her long, blonde hair under a
scarf; her beauty is a source of shame; and her life, characterized
by her surgically sterile, clean apartment, is lonely and unfulfilling.
Byatt introduces another feminist scholar, the vulgar American Leonora
Stern, in a further attempt to show the kind of backwards Puritanism
that exists in academia today, where morality and virtue are taboo
and fundamental truths have been deconstructed and dissected until
nothing remains but tolerance. The very modern Roland and Maude
seem almost childish in their inability to form meaningful relationships,
and this emotional paralysis stems from the shifting philosophies
of today: "Roland had learned to see himself, theoretically, as
a crossing-place for a number of systems, all loosely connected.
He had been trained to see his idea of his 'self' as an illusion...
" As Roland and Maude attempt to uncover "the truth" about the two
poets, they learn important truths about themselves as well, and
they break free of the modern relativism that has bound them.
Literary
Study and the Search for Truth
The characters that swarm around the relics of the lives of
the two Victorian poets represent the desolation of our modern morality,
and I would warn sensitive readers that their values do not reflect
our own. Like Shakespeare, Byatt is showing us this empty world
for a reason, however, to encourage us to recover certain truths
that have been trampled in the rush for social progress. Roland
Michell and Maude Bailey feel strangely uncomfortable in their modern
setting and turn to the past for answers. As they connect to the
lives of these poets through their letters, they find strength within
themselves to live more meaningful lives. Byatt's genius for metaphor
connects the two couples, linking the present to the past. Notice
the use of color: greens for the feminine and grays and blacks for
the masculine characters. Connection is made through objects: Cropper
wears Ash's watch, Maude wears LaMotte's brooch. Symbols of confinement
and release are paired: the glass coffin and the library cubicle,
the green Beetle and the serpent Melusine, the short-lived Eden
of Yorkshire and Roland's forbidden garden. As the story builds
toward its climax, the images pile up, as it were, until everything
and everyone meets in one place, in one very cinematic scene, to
uncover the truth. Yet, even with all the romantic drama, Byatt
never loses contact with books, with the fact that it is through
reading and writing that human beings make contact with their finer
selves. There is a marvelous passage about reading that describes
that moment when a text we are studying finally becomes clear for
us. It is one of the only passages in literature I know that describes
an emotion dear and familiar to any serious reader:
"Now and then
there are readings that make the hairs on the neck, the non-existent
pelt, stand on end and tremble, when every word burns and shines
hard and clear and infinite and exact, like stones of fire, like
points of stars in the dark... " (512)
Those who write biography or study history know that every life
has a story, but also that we can never tell the story exactly as
it was. There is no final truth in history, but only interpretation
and recreation. We read the journals of our ancestors and wonder
what was not said that would have been most enlightening, as we
try to extract a vision of their reality from the clues left to
us. Roland and Maude, after years of studying these poets, are torn
between a desire to protect their privacy and an insatiable curiosity
to find out what really happened to them. In a highly readable series
of events we are pulled deeper and deeper into these interconnected
lives, switching from past to present and back to the past. Finally,
after all is revealed, Byatt shares one more crucial detail with
the reader that is never revealed to the other characters. It is
her way of letting us know at the last that the full story of any
other life will always be, to some extent, a mystery.
Possession
is the February selection for the Best Books Club. Share your comments
about this or any other book that interests you by writing to bestbooks@meridianmagazine.com,
or join the conversation on our website at www.jadefalconpress.com.
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