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<p>You’re talking about us, right? 
:)</p>
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<p>Here is a nice “cheat sheet” with a guide to the real poets that influenced Randolph and Christabel in their fictional world: [Cambridge</a> Authors Byatt: Victorian Poets in Possession](<a href=“http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/cambridgeauthors/byatt-victorian-poets]Cambridge”>Cambridge Authors » Byatt: Victorian Poets in Possession)</p>
<p>The site contains a quote from A.S. Byatt that not only addresses the type of “feminine” voice she chose for Christabel, but also speaks to pyschmom’s comment above (”I was wondering to myself how the author managed to write two sets of poetry in different gender voices combined with myths, love letters, etc. It seems so grand in scope…I can’t even conceptualize it.”). Byatt says:</p>
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<p>Byatt mentions Emily Dickenson in the quote above. I thought some of Christabel’s short poems were similar to Dickenson’s, it least in tone, and that was why I like them.</p>
<p>Sorry for a couple of typos in my “manipulation” post above. Byatt didn’t refer to George Eliot’s “shirts,” of course…it was her skirts. (p.4)</p>
<p>Yes, I thought of Emily Dickinson, too, mostly because at times Christabel had a fondness for dashes.</p>
<p>^Yes me too. </p>
<p>It never occured to me that Ash was the father of the housemaid’s child, but of course at that point in the story we don’t know that he has no marital sex life. I still don’t think so, but only because I don’t think he would have strayed so close to home. </p>
<p>I have no idea what a masculine or feminine type of poet would be. Any number of female novelists have used assumed names or initials and the world has been very surprised when their gender was revealed. One particularly amusing case involved a sci fi writer -James Tiptree Jr. - from the days when none of them were women and was often praised for her masculine writing.</p>
<p>That said, they both often wrote about people and Ash wrote about men and LaMotte about women, but were their nature poems really that different from each other? Could Dickinson or Christina Rossetti only be women? Do women really write about caves and men about sticks?</p>
<p>Re hallmarks of women’s writing, there was a remark that I quoted in a post on a previous thread – from a book called The Madwoman in the Attic – in which the authors state:</p>
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<p>Time for only the start of this conversation of the masculine and feminine content of Ash and LaMotte. More later!</p>
<p>In the beginning of Possession, when we’re first introduced to the characters of Ash and Lamotte, their poetry is contrasted through the thoughts and research of Blackadder and Roland. Blackadder first defines (for me, at least) Ash as the rugged, adventurous guy’s guy. On pg. 33, Blackadder on Ahs, " Ash had been interested in everything. Arab astronomy and African transport systems, angels and oak apples, hydraulics and the guillotine…"</p>
<p>pg. 34, from Ash’s poem about the dissection of an owl pellet,</p>
<p>Finding out ancient battles from the shards
Of shatterd blades or mashed and splintered bones,
Or broken brain-pans, as the curate reads
The death of vole or slow-worm in …</p>
<p>Ash is presented as the scientific, rugged male, a snips and snails sort of guy.</p>
<p>Christabel, based on Vernonica Honiton’s comments, pg. 42, "commented sweetly on her “domestic mysticism,” which she compared to George Herbert’s celebration of the servant who “sweeps a room for Thy laws.” Opinions of Christabel’s work (the critics’ and the this reader’s) quickly evolve as the apparent harsh character of her work is presented, through the fairy tales, and then her poetry. </p>
<p>"Thirty years later the feminists saw Christabel LaMotte as distraught and enraged. They wrote on “Ariachne’s Broken Woof: Art as Discarded Spinning in the Poems of LaMott.” Or “Melusina and the Daemonic Double: Godd Mother, Bad Serpent.” (pg. 43). </p>
<p>This early setup provides the first tension in the Ash and LaMotte plot. What happened to Christabel to change her from possible sugar and spice girl to crazed and infuriated poet? The mystery begins.</p>
<p>I see two separate areas here: there is the the masculinity and femininity of the poetry, and there is also the submissive feminine role vs. feminism. I liked the feminine poetry but not the submissiveness! I realize Christabel was speaking with an established poet, but she seemed to put herself down much of the time. Roland and Maud’s relationship provided the more egalitarian romance…perhaps that is why it was a little bland more me? Oh so confusing!</p>
<p>Just because … my children used to say this poem on windy days.</p>
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<p>Truthfully, I thought most of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, mirrored in the courtship of Randolph and Christabel:</p>
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<p>(I possess 
a copy of the Brownings’ letters - actually an 1800 century copy that I picked up in England many years ago - no longer in good condition. No surprise I liked the letters in this book.)</p>
<p>Blanche restrains Christabel in much the same way as Barrett Browning’s father confined his daughters. Both “eloped” … though Randolph and Christabel have no chance at true elopement/happy ending. </p>
<p>Re masculine vs. feminine - Ash seems to venture further afield in his poetry - traveling for his inspiration - while LaMotte stays closer to home and hearth. Even her dark poems and tales start out from tales she heard as a child. I can’t see Ash penning LaMotte’s “domesticity” poems.</p>
<p>In general, I prefer female novelists, for what little it’s worth. I need go no further than to mention The Glass Room for my reasoning.</p>
<p>I think I tend to prefer female novelists, but male poets. I don’t know what that says about me! I loved Browning’s “My Last Duchess”, while Elizabeth Barrett Browning is best known for “How do I love thee”, sweet, but bland. Reading wikipedia, it looks like I may be being unfair to her - not my fault that’s all that ends up in the anthologies! Somewhere in one of those interviews I believe that Byatt at first thought about writing about the Brownings, but then realized it would be more fun to make up her own poets and not be hampered by the biography. Ash’s habit of writing poems based on historical figures is clearly based on Browning.</p>
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<p>I originally wrote that I prefer female authors and then changed to novelists for much the same reason.</p>
<p>Perhaps you’ve inadvertently - and succinctly - answered the question (#4).</p>
<p>I’m trying to recall the discussion in the book of how strongly Christabel’s writing may have been influenced by Ash, to the extent that he might actually have written some of it. Were there things that stood out as having been different from the rest?</p>
<p>With regard to women poets, I wish I knew more about the subject. I have read so little poetry…but surely there must be modern women poets whose work could be considered strong and fierce?? I’m having trouble coming up with any examples except Sylvia Plath and I don’t really think she fits the criterion.</p>
<p>Adrienne Rich is surely strong and fierce. Gwendolyn Brooks maybe. But Victorian women? I don’t know of any.</p>
<p>I kept thinking in the novel that I should go back and look and see if her poetry seems influenced by Ash beyond the specific examples in the story such as the way the water at the waterfall cave was described.</p>
<p>I will wade into unknown waters (I know so little of the poetry of men or women, much less having the ability to distinguish between masculine and feminine) to say that generally, the style and words of LaMotte with short verse, and metaphor swirling around metaphor, seem more–oh what is the word?–seem more darkly imaginary and emoted, than Ash’s longer, more literally descriptive (and scientific) way of writing.</p>
<p>For example (pg. 38) by LaMotte, (Rapunzel)
The Thicket is Thorny
Up snakes the glassy Tower
Here is no sweet Dovecote
Nor plump Lady’s Bower…</p>
<p>The wind whistles sourly
Through that Sharp land
At the black casement
He sees her white hand…</p>
<p>or (p 414)</p>
<p>I press my palms on
Window’s white cross
Is that Your dark Form
Beyond the glass</p>
<p>Contrast with Ash (p. 77, The Incarcerated Sorceress)</p>
<p>The ploughman, turning sullen clods may see
(Air whistling in his brain that rose in sighs
From belly griped by famine) the soil work
And work, to extrude a demon, with knobbed brow…</p>
<p>Or Ash from Mummy Posset </p>
<p>The spirits weave them flesh and robes of air,
Of air and matter of my grosser breath
Whose warmth brushes thy brow in this my kiss–…</p>
<p>You must not stare at me with fair large eyes
Full of a question and a glittering tear.<br>
Drink up this cordial glass of wildflower wine–
'Twill settle you–come near–compose yourself
And fis your eyes on mine, your hand in mine,
And feel us breathe together. So When first…</p>
<p>Ash’s writing seems to me richer, and perhaps more readable than LaMotte’s whose ideas are written more concisely. This is my impression of the letters, with LaMotte’s frequent breaks in ideas with the dashes, vs. the more ornate and descriptive (sometimes too longwinded) Ash. Is this masculine vs. feminine, or simply two very different writing styles, or as Ignatius suggests, a reflection of the times, and the very different realms men and women were allowed to inhabit. Ash, the man, was able to travel for experience, while LaMotte, the woman, was dependent on home and imagination as a basis of her writing.</p>
<p>NJTM, yes, there was something about LaMotte’s work becoming more Ash-like, and it would make sense, given not only his role as mentor, but the broadening of her experience when the took the trip together–when she could wear pants, or skirts without the slips, and browse the scientific specimens he gathered. </p>
<p>Ash seemed to consider much the differences in masculine and feminine worlds.</p>
<p>From Mummy Posset by Ash (p 443), on the spiritual and decidedly more feminine aspects,</p>
<p>Know you not that we Women have no Power
In the cold world of objects Reason rules,
Where all is measured and mechanical?
There we are chattels, baubles, property,
Flowers pent in vases with our roots sliced off,
To shine a day and perish. But you see,
Here in this secret room, all curtained round
With vaguest softness, all dimly lit
With flickerings and twinklings, where all shapes
Are indistinct, all sounds ambiguous,
Here we have Power, Here the Irrational,
The Intutitoion of the Unseen Powers
Speaks to our women’s nerves, galvanic threads…</p>
<p>This is our negative world, where the Unseen,
Unheard, Impalpable, and Unconfined
Speak to and through us…</p>
<p>I had to look back to verify that Ash, and not LaMotte, composed Mummy Posset.</p>
<p>That’s a good analysis, Plantmom.</p>
<p>Regarding Ash being an adventurous fellow…I was struck by the extent to which natural history explorations were apparently in vogue at the time. I’d had no idea.</p>
<p>In one of the films of Jane Eyre, Rochester was portrayed an insect collector. That surprised me, because I remembered nothing like that from the book. When I read Possession, I realized that that activity had been fashionable among gentlemen of a certain era in England.</p>
<p>To what extent was Ash innately adventurous and to what extent was he fashionable? He did seem fervently interested, though…</p>
<p>I think the issue’s still at play today. I like Sandra Cisneros, but you couldn’t mistake her work for that of a male poet/novelist. It doesn’t mean she isn’t fierce: it’s just a different type of fierce.</p>
<p>From wikipedia:</p>
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<p>(Love her debut novel: The House on Mango Street. I liked the poetic-ness of it.)</p>
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<p>I felt this too when I read the letters. There is a certain “I can never be as wonderful as you” tone on Christabel’s part. </p>
<p>For example: “I was greatly flattered by your good opinion of my little poem” (p. 177).
“Now I come to the end of my clumsy apprentice adumbration of your masterly monologue” (p. 184).
“This letter is not a worthy answer to your inspiring remarks…” (p. 187)</p>
<p>Her deference doesn’t fit well with the personality that we come to know as the novel progresses, but maybe it’s the way some people feel when they are in the first blush of love – that the object of their affection is perfect.</p>
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<p>I think this is the passage you are looking for. Roland and Maud are discussing the Ellen-Randolph-Christabel love triangle and Ash’s possible influence on LaMotte. Roland says:</p>
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<p>This letter, from LaMotte to Ash (p. 152), contrasts the freedoms of the female at home and freedom of the wandering male.</p>
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And who does this remind us of?!</p>
<p>^^Exactly, mathmom! I am in awe of Byatt’s ability to write this book with its many layers.</p>