<p>Oh NJTheatreMOM, you are going to enjoy this review: [A.S</a>. Byatt, Possession, the novel | Vanishing Cities](<a href=“vincentczyz.com”>Vincentczyz.com)</p>
<p>An excerpt:</p>
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<p>Whether parody or stereotype, the anti-American sentiment wasn’t going to fly for the movie version. In the film, they make our hero Roland an American rather than a Brit. :)</p>
<p>^Haha, great, Mary. I’m thinking that some of the British characters in the book may have been stereotypes (crusty Sir George Bailey of the moldering Seal Court, for example), but they seemed to be far more affectionate one.</p>
<p>Another thing about Cropper was that Byatt gave the name of the town in the US that he was associated with (was it in New Mexico? I can’t find it just now) a stupid-sounding name that recalled to me the silly name that Thornton Wilder gave the place of Catholic pilgrimage in The Bridge of San Luis Rey. A little too sneering in both cases, I thought, but perhaps I’m overly sensitive to “imitation Spanish.”</p>
<p>I thought Leonora was a caricature who somehow fought against Byatt and actually became a real person after all. Or at least close to one.</p>
<p>^ Could be! Seems like with our past selections we have read interviews with many authors who claimed that their characters took on a life of their own in ways that surprised even the writer.</p>
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<p>That is how I saw it, too. I laughed out loud at some of the literary analysis provided, especially from Leonora, e.g., this—which isn’t even her entire sentence!:</p>
<p>“…the drowned women in the city might represent the totality of the female body as an erogenous zone if the circumambient fluid were seen as an undifferentiated eroticism, and this might be possible to connect to the erotic totality of the woman/dragon stirring the waters of the large marble bath, or submerging her person in it as LaM. tellingly describes her” (p.154).</p>
<p>Done!</p>
<p>Mary: Great analysis of the types of possession - post #50.</p>
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<p>I agree with all the above.</p>
<p>Possession demands to be read slowly, doesn’t it? I liked the poems and letters, particularly after I read them a second time. 
I liked matching the poem at the start of a chapter with the content that follows. I particularly like how the novel begins with an act of possession but ends with the relinquishing of possession - Ash’s meeting with May. Others also release long-held secrets - Christabel’s writes Ash and, yes, Ellen choose not to possess the information in the letter or destroy it.</p>
<p>Aren’t Ellen and Blanche polar opposites in how each handles the affair? I find the fact that Blanche fills her pockets with the volcanic rocks that Christabel collected both chilling and cruel.</p>
<p>But I digress.</p>
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<p>Yes – nice.</p>
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<p>They are indeed. I found myself feeling far more sympathetic to Ellen. I didn’t like Blanche, who is too possessive (!) of Christabel. I don’t think Byatt liked her either. For example, Sabine writes in her journal how dissatisfying it was to be told she couldn’t pretend to be Lancelot, but had to content herself “with being Elaine aux Mains Blanches, who did nothing but suffer and complain and die” (p. 368).</p>
<p>Mains Blanches = White Hands = Blanche Glover</p>
<p>I found this list helpful in keeping things straight:</p>
<p>List of Fictional Books in Possession: A Romance:</p>
<p>• Anemones of the British Coast by Francis Tugwell
• Ask to Embla poem-cycle by Randolph Henry Ash
• Cassandra verse drama by Randolph Henry Ash
• Chidiock Tichbourne by Randolph Henry Ash
• Christabel LaMotte: A Selection of Narrative and Lyric Poems, Leonora Stern, editor
• The City of Is by Christabel LaMotte
• Complete Poems and Plays of by Randolph Henry Ash, compiled by James Blackadder
• Complete Correspondence of by Randolph Henry Ash, compiled by Mortimer Cropper
• Cromwell verse drama by Randolph Henry Ash
• Debatable Land Between This World and the Next by Robert Dale Owen
• The Fairy Melusina epic poem by Christabel LaMotte
• The Garden of Proserpina by Randolph Henry Ash
• Ghosts and Other Weird Creatures by Unknown
• Gods, Men, and Heroes by Randolph Henry Ash
• The Great Collector by Randolph Henry Ash
• The Great Ventriloquist, a biography of by Randolph Henry Ash by Mortimer Cropper
• The Grecian Way of Love by Randolph Henry Ash
• The Incarcerated Sorceress by Randolph Henry Ash
• LaMotte’s Strategies of Evasion: A collection of essays Leonora Stern, compiler
• Last Tales by Christabel LaMotte
• Last Things by Christabel LaMotte
• Mummy Possest poem by Randolph Henry Ash
• No Place Like home by Leonora Stern
• Pranks of Priapus by Randolph Henry Ash
• Ragnarök by Randolph Henry Ash
• The Shadowy Portal by Mrs. Lees
• Jan Swammerdam poem by Randolph Henry Ash
• St. Bartholomew’s Eve verse drama by Randolph Henry Ash
• Tales for Innocents by Christabel LaMotte
• Tales Told in November by Christabel LaMotte
• Tallahassee Women Poets, Leonora Stern, editor
• Unknown Sex Life of Eminent Victorians by Unknown
• White Linen by Unknown</p>
<p>The source is Wikipedia. The list of authors who create imaginary works to reference in their novels is impressive: [List</a> of fictional books - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_books]List”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_books)</p>
<p>^Oh but poor Blanche. She was so dependent on Christabel for being able to have a decent life. Women couldn’t easily go off and be independent in that era, as they can to a much greater extent these days.</p>
<p>I felt so sorry for Blanche. And I agree with Ignatius that the detail about the rocks in her pockets was disturbing.</p>
<p>Even if Ellen was devastated to learn of the affair, she presumably understood that Ash never would have abandoned her. </p>
<p>I don’t know if Byatt really “liked” any of her characters. None of them struck me as particularly sympathetic, although some were more attractive than others.</p>
<p>It was impossible not to feel a fair degree of sympathy for Ellen; however, I thought that Byatt’s short but vivid description of her sexual frigidity was haunting and perhaps needlessly unpleasant.</p>
<p>But Ellen’s frigidity (whatever its cause) certainly made Roland more sympathetic. I wanted to like Blanche more than I did. The rocks in the pocket comes out of Virginia Woolf, but as far as I know Woolf’s rocks were just rocks.</p>
<p>I missed Sabine’s reference to Blanche Glover in French - interesting…</p>
<p>^ I think you mean “made Randolph more sympathetic.” But it’s a natural slip – Roland is an anagram of the first five letters of Randolph. It’s a clue from the start that the two men will mirror each other in many ways.</p>
<p>Love the web, I’ve diagnosed Ellen: [Vaginismus</a> and infertility](<a href=“http://www.drmalpani.com/vaginismus.htm]Vaginismus”>http://www.drmalpani.com/vaginismus.htm)</p>
<p>Today, Ellen would be seeing a women’s health specialist and Randolph would be fully briefed on her condition. 160 years ago, however, he is puzzled and she is guilt-ridden:</p>
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<p>Randolph Ash’s two loves, Ellen and Christabel, seem on the surface like polar opposites. But interestingly, Christabel also identifies as “Slave and victim” in *The Fairy M</p>
<p>Mary great review of "possession " in first post.</p>
<p>Ellen’s medical condition might have been caused by the repressed cultural views sadly making Ellen a victim of her times.</p>
<p>Byatt’s modern day couple,Maud and Roland,certainly had their " sexual/ relationship" issues!</p>
<p>I wonder if readers felt Randolph was justified in his search fora “Muse” given his wife’s condition?</p>
<p>Did Bryatt distill each stereotype down into individual characters?
Ellen- repressed woman
Christabel- fallen woman
Blanche- spinster, tragic,depressed</p>
<p>From Victorian Muse: Julia Straub
Dante and “Beatrice”…</p>
<p>It would not be an exaggeration to say that Dante’s Beatrice is a creation of the nineteenth-century. In previous centuries she was overlooked in favour of the darker, more dramatic figures of the Divine Comedy, but the Victorians took her over and made her their own. In the admirable introductory chapters to this book Julia Straub outlines the wide range of cultural uses to which Beatrice was put. Sometimes she was “a beautiful, but death-bound, young girl involved in a tragic love story,” sometimes a “prime example of female virtuousness,” sometimes a woman “deprived of her own voice” (p. 18); sometimes she is other-worldly, and sometimes intensely erotic. The polarities between which she moved were those of the “beautiful woman walking in the streets of Florence” and "a spiritual transcendent muse</p>
<p><a href=“Online Book Review by , Reviewed by”>A VICTORIAN MUSE: THE AFTERLIFE OF DANTE'S BEATRICE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE by Julia Straub, Reviewed by J. Barrie Bullen;
<p>Since I haven’t finished yet, I will be joining in later, hopefully within a week :). The semester has started and already I’m buried in students and prep!</p>
<p>Not to mention I have to get the taxes done so we can do FAFSA and CSS Profile for D’s applications…oy vey!</p>
<p>^ Good luck sylvan8798. Hope you can join us later!</p>
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<p>I’m pretty intolerant of infidelity in literature (and real life ;)), but I was not offended by Ash’s behavior (in the way, for example, I was offended by Viktor in The Glass Room). Part of the reason that I am giving Randolph a pass is that he was not really “searching” for a Muse; he found one unexpectedly at Crabb’s breakfast party.</p>
<p>It seemed clear that the affair with Christabel was a first for him. I got the impression from the thoughts that went through his mind before he went upstairs to sleep with her that he might have been a virgin, too – which I think would not be unusual in a “respectable” Victorian man who married young. </p>
<p>Although the film version of Possession had many shortcomings, I thought it did a fine job of portraying the chemistry—the “romance”–between Randolph and Christabel. In the book during this sequence, she seems resolved and humorless, and he seems stuffy (all those “my dear”s). But when brought to life by Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle, it was easier to understand why they felt compelled to be together. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the actors are beautiful, but that’s the movies for you. <a href=“http://s0.culture.com/image_lib/5533_007.jpg[/url]”>http://s0.culture.com/image_lib/5533_007.jpg</a></p>
<p>I adore Jennifer Ehle, but other things about the film of Possession make me not want to watch it.</p>
<p>In addition, Ehle doesn’t look like my mental picture of Christabel. I picture her looking more like a younger version of Vanessa Redgrave, but more petite.</p>
<p>Are Vanessa Redgrave’s teeth large enough? :)</p>
<p>I wondered about the emphasis on Christabel’s teeth, which were mentioned at least four times. Put politely, “Her teeth were a little large for an exacting taste, but they were strong and white” (p. 298). Put impolitely (by Sabine, when angry), “She has huge teeth like Baba Yaga or the wolf in the English tale who pretended to be a grandmother” (p. 396).</p>
<p>Hmmm…if we follow through with Sabine’s image of the Big Bad Wolf and look at Charles Perrault’s original Little Red Riding Hood, there are concepts reminiscent of those in Possession: </p>
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<p>The child emerges unharmed from the Wolf (as May does from Christabel). And the image of being filled with heavy stones, leading to death, takes us right to Blanche Glover.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why they didn’t make Jennifer Ehle blonder - she’s supposed to resemble Maud more than she does. Interesting thought about the big bad wolf. I had noticed the earlier teeth references and thought they were odd, but then completely missed why they were being tossed at us. (I had just been thinking - oh she has good teeth unlike so many of the English - or at least the English of my youth - they have much better teeth in general now.)</p>
<p>I was wondering what big teeth were supposed to mean. What’s about Christabel’s greenishness?</p>
<p>^Maybe Christabel ate too many cucumber sandwiches. :D</p>
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