<p>NJTM-I’m not sure why, but I found Gode’s tale so disturbing that it practically tainted the whole book for me.</p>
<p>I remember reading your post that around page 425 the book gets very ‘dark’, so when I got to that section, I was consumed with knowing if Chrisabel harmed the baby.
It was terrifying, and I didn’t “trust” Byatt not to go down that path. </p>
<p>Interesting that it horrified you that much, and tainted the rest of the book. Sorry to read this.</p>
<p>Mary13- amusing comment about Swammerdam- feeling less guilty about skipping that one.</p>
<p>Not neurotic in the slightest. And since I prefer to view each book discussion as a pleasure cruise and not a heart of darkness journey, let’s end on a higher note. Here are the two remaining questions we haven’t covered, which I’m posting together because both pertain to Art with a capital A – how the need to create art impacts the characters and what various art forms Byatt employed in creating the novel.</p>
<p>SJCM yeah, at a certain point in the book A S Byatt had me convinced that Christabel was about to do something awful.</p>
<p>She certainly set it up that way. I had no idea, at that point, that the book had what one person called a “Harry Potter ending.”</p>
<p>In a way, the plot reminded me of a certain type of serious young adult novel. I read a few of them when I volunteered in a school library once, because I was curious about them.</p>
<p>In those books, the characters have harrowing real-life experiences that are so extreme that, in an adult book, the same story would have inevitably had a tragic ending. But those books always end happily! I think the kids enjoy the emotional “frisson” of the overwrought story. The darkness of the tale doesn’t get to them partly because their empathy is still underdeveloped…but mostly because they trust there will be a happy ending; it’s the formula.</p>
<p>I doggedly read all of the Harry Potters and one of them was like that. Rowling put Harry through dreary emotional travails for page after page after page…and then rewarded us with a gloriously ecstatic and triumphant conclusion. I asked my son, “How could you possibly like that book so much?” and he replied, “The ending was SO good.”</p>
<p>I expected Possession to be a sober work of adult literature and never dreamed that it would have features in common with, say, the young adult classic Holes. One of the things that annoyed me about it was the feeling that Byatt was…um…what’s the polite way to say “yanking my chain”?</p>
[quote]
9. Ash writes “Swammerdam” with a particular reader, Christabel LaMotte, in mind. Is Christabel’s influence on Ash evident in the poem, and if so, how and where? How, in the poem, does Ash address his society’s preoccupation with science and religion? How does he address his and Christabel’s conflicting religious ideas? How does Christabel herself present these ideas in M</p>
<p>^ Me, too. Holes is one of my favorite young adult classics. :o</p>
<p>NJTheatreMOM, what are some of your favorite books with happy endings? Is it your feeling that some novels “earn” the happy ending, while others do not, or would you say that you eschew happy endings altogether because they are so removed from real life experience?</p>
<p>Edited to add: Crosspost! You just answered my question. Any others besides Jane Eyre?</p>
<p>ignatius, I too like Swammerdam. In fact, I reread it this morning. But I do not feel the same way about The Fairy Melusine. As Mary said so well above, I’m angry with Christabel for wasting her own life and talent, but also for giving up her child, for hiding her child’s existence from the child’s father, for often being so snappishly dark and depressing. </p>
<p>That said, one (of many) difference I see between the two poems, is that Ash’s is inspired by an awe and curiosity about a divinely created and infinite natural world, whereas LaMotte’s muse is a divinely (or not) created spirit. It’s a rehash of their respective traits characterized in this book as scientific man of the world of man, made by a traditional(male) God, endowed with a curiosity to explore the whole world and that world’s physical relevance, versus the isolated female who’s receptive to spirits, ancient and modern, trying to work out her position as domesticated woman or artist. </p>
<p>From Ash and Swammerdam
</p>
<p>As opposed to LaMottes Melusine
</p>
<p>These two poems also remind me of their clash of opinions on the seance. Ash, while open to suggestion that a spiritual world exists, thinks (IMO) that the seances are a lot of manufactured ceremony, whereas LaMotte readily explores their potential to communicate with the spirit world.</p>
<p>Here are a few more adult “happy endings” books I like: Pride and Prejudice, Austen. Middlemarch, Eliot. A Christmas Carol, Dickens. The Man Who Was Thursday, Chesterton. Room, Donoghue.</p>
<p>Did any of you hear this afternoon’s interview with Tess Taylor on reading Sylvia Plath (on NPR’s All Things Considered)? It made me think of Christabel and her poetry.</p>
<p>I think Swammerdam would have been a better poem if it had been half as long! I did love the last verse where he compares Galileo discovering the vastness of the universe with scientist of his era finding the vastness of the minute. (And of course Gallileo is the classic tale of the clash of science and religion.)</p>
<p>I also thought the whole nod to the importance of the Queen in insect society was a nod to Christabel. He could have written his poem about a different 17c scientist who wasn’t as interested in insects with quite a different focus - but Swammerdam is interesting because his scientific mind fought with his religious one. And of course Christabel’s “Insect Life” seems to have gotten him interested in insects in the first place.</p>
<p>I also liked this bit where he’s wondering whether he’s a rational man of science or not:</p>
I felt much the same way. What a creepy story. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Scattered thoughts mostly. I had trouble with the whole Melusine metaphor - I keep seeing it as the Orpheus story or the Lot’s wife story. The dumb guy ruins it by wanting to have too much. But there is something attractive about the idea that she can be both the good wife and the monster. That she can compartmentalize her aspects. For some reason Christabel seems to feel it is all or nothing. If she can’t have Woolf’s* A Room of One’s Own* she can’t write at all.</p></li>
<li><p>We’ve already talked about detective story and the boy meets girl type of romance. But I also believe that there’s another sort of romance with a capital R that she alludes to in the very beginning with the excerpt from Hawthorne - the sort of story that you are aware is not really “realistic”, where the author is allowed more license to make things come out neat and tidy.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Like the Fairy Melusine, the Selkie is half human/half creature and her husband, although he loves her, pushes too far to learn her secret, with sorrowful results. (As I think I posted earlier, Ash calls Christabel his “Selkie.”)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Roland thinks of some more: “In any case, since Blackadder and Leonora and Cropper had come, it had changed from Quest, a good romantic form, into Chase and Race, two other equally valid ones” (p. 460).</p>
<p>So do we fit into one or more of the seven basic plots? (The seven basic plots are: overcoming the monster; rags to riches; the quest; voyage and return; comedy; tragedy; rebirth.) I see a bunch of them. :)</p>
<p>^ If we’re allowed to think in metaphorical terms, I think we could make an argument for almost all of them!</p>
<p>One more historical character worth mentioning is John Ruskin. He is referred to several times in Possession: Blanche and Glover meet at a Ruskin lecture; Ash writes Ruskin about “the nature of love” and its use as allegory; Christabel mentions Ruskin to Ash in one of her letters and is quite taken with his “Art of Nature in the depicting of a veined Stone in a water-glass” (p. 205).</p>
<p>I looked up John Ruskin, as I knew next-to-nothing about him. My, was he prolific – “art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist.” [John</a> Ruskin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ruskin]John”>John Ruskin - Wikipedia). He was also a bit odd – certain aspects of his personal life were rather strange. (He had something in common with Randolph Ash—a sexless marriage—with Ruskin in the Ellen role, which eventually sent his wife off to seek greener pastures.)</p>
<p>Anyway, in reading the Wikipedia article, I learned that Ruskin coined the term “pathetic fallacy,” which I used earlier to describe Possession’s graveyard scene, having no idea of its origin!</p>
<p>Oh yeah, Ruskin is so critical to the Arts and Crafts movement (an interest of mine in architecture) I forget he’s not a household term. He’s one of those guys though that everyone talks about, but few actually read. (For us the most important books are The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stone of Venice.)</p>
<p>I’ve learned about a number of interesting Victorians thanks to this novel here’s one I looked up thanks to a passing comment in one of the letters: [Ernest</a> Renan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Renan]Ernest”>Ernest Renan - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Sorry I’m coming so late to the party–I found the book slow going, and only finished recently! But I’ve been enjoying the discussion and all the posted links. I liked the book, but that digested classic version was pretty funny!</p>
<p>ignatius: I’ve never studied poetry, but I also like to give poetry for baby gifts. When he was little, my oldest also used to recite, because we read them a lot: snippets of A.A. Milne, Stevenson, and Longfellow.</p>
<p>SouthJerseyChessMom: Thanks very much for the discussion on the graveyard scene and Ragnarok; that part of the book was a bit over the top for me, but your comments helped it make more sense.</p>
<p>Since I’m coming in at the end of the discussion, I’m interested that some felt the book had a happy ending. I didn’t entirely feel that way. It had–I forget who mentioned it–that Shakespearean comedic feel of all the modern couples coming together happily, but the last chapter (which I loved) felt quite different to me. Wistful and poignant.</p>
<p>PlantMom commented (and also earlier ties in this theme with genealogical work):</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Readers are let in on the secret, but the scholars, no matter how much they study and write, and how many quests they go on, will never know a central piece of information about Ash. And who knew Ash could be playful with a child; that’s not a side of him seen anywhere else in the novel. Maia never “knew” her father, Christabel did not know he looked for her. Ellen didn’t know.</p>
<p>And how often is that true for the rest of us, who lack an omnicient narrator? Reading the last chapter made me think about all the little bits of my life–nothing so major as meeting a hidden child–small events that are important to me, but have never been written down or shared, and that no one will ever know.</p>