<p>** PLANTMOM WHAT A GREAT LINK **
I’ve been researching many of these references and that link is very helpful !!!</p>
<p>Thank you all for the wonderful discussion…just popping in to say that I am going out to dinner now for Valentines Day (haha, as I typed that I thought of Val), and my H will be receiving my pathetic Hallmark poem. (We are doing this early due to scheduling issues.) Wish me luck!</p>
<p>Good luck psychmom! Enjoy your dinner, I’m sure your husband will love the poem.</p>
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<p>mathmom, Roland is Geraldine’s father in the poem Christabel – a friend from youth of Christabel’s father Leoline. And I don’t want to go there either…If Geraldine=Christabel, and Christabel=Maud, and Roland the 1st is father to Geraldine, and Roland the 2nd is lover to Maud…there’s just something oedipal in the air that I don’t have the energy to think about. :)</p>
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<p>I was left wondering, too. Here’s exactly what goes through Randolph’s head:</p>
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<p>My first reaction upon reading that was it meant Christabel and Blanche had some sort of sexual relationship. But upon reflection, I wondered, what does “delicate skills” and “informed desire” mean? Maybe it simply indicates that Christabel liked it. That would be an alien concept to Randolph, not only because of the Victorian sensibilities he was raised with, but because his own wife did not like sex, was in fact, very fearful of it. Even if Christabel were completely inexperienced, I imagine that “delicate skills” and “informed desire” would come easy to her—she doesn’t strike me as the shrinking violet type. So toss me into the camp that believes Christabel is not a lesbian, but Blanche is –- she is in love with Christabel, which makes her at first furious and then heartbroken on account of the affair.</p>
<p>Geez, I can’t believe how I keep mixing up names. Really I kept it all straight when I read the book (and the assorted poems)! </p>
<p>But would Blanche be so heartbroken if their affair was entirely unconsummated?</p>
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<p>I agree. It might very well have not occurred to a man like Ash it that era that a woman was likely to have had intimate relations with another woman.</p>
<p>If Blanche was in love with Christabel, she would have been just as heartbroken by what happened, whether or not there was an openly physical side to things.</p>
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<p>I think so. Unrequited love can be painful, in literature anyway: Cyrano and Roxanne, Quasimodo and Esmeralda, Dante and Beatrice…</p>
<p>I think the possibility and the power of unspoken, unconsummated love is already “out there” in the Roland-Maud story. Yes, eventually they become lovers, but even before that there is a deep bond between them:</p>
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<p>Maybe Christabel and Blanche had that kind of affectionate but “without progression” relationship (which perhaps meant more to Blanche than Christabel).</p>
<p>Back to names for a minute…</p>
<p>SouthJerseyChessMom, I also think that Walter will carry the torch (don’t certain genetic predispositions skip a generation?) and it wouldn’t surprise me if Byatt wanted the reader to think of Sir Walter Scott.</p>
<p>Re Randolph Ash, I think that “Ash” is just as important as “Randolph.” Look what I found:</p>
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<p>A Serpent gnawing at the roots of the Ash. How appropriate!</p>
<p>Speaking of serpents, the snake motif shows itself again in Professor Blackadder’s name. There are two types of black adder snake, one venomous and one non-venomous. I remember that in one of the many Possession reviews I read online, someone wrote that we are leery of Blackadder in the beginning, as if he could be the first type of snake, but by the end we have discovered that he is the harmless variety.</p>
<p>Snakes - are they symbolism of Sin, Biblical view, or the Phallic, Freudian view, or of “rebirth”, as Joseph Cambell explains, a snake is able to shed it’s skin each year, thus rebirthing itself. </p>
<p>Below AS Byatt’s interviewabout her religious beliefs, then and a clearly written, and * easy- to -read *, grad student’s analysis of the Christabel’s Melusina myth, about “strangeness, non-conformity to societal rules” and why Maud’s future will be different. </p>
<p>**Maud ** </p>
<p>From AS Byatt’s own words:
When discussing Possession in Portraits in Fiction you say** near the start that every reader will see a different Maud and that seems like a fault; but by the end you say it’s a particular virtue** of the novel as opposed to cinema and, presumably, radio.</p>
<p>re:At the end of A Whistling Woman Frederica has a vision of the world as rich and strange.** Do you sometimes write as a mystic?**</p>
<p>ASB:** I am a mystic, and I don’t want to be!**
When I was a girl it drove me mad. Marcus in The Virgin in the Garden is a self-portrait: somebody baffled by things being far too much and not fittable into any of the languages you were offered.
**I can recognise “The Ancient Mariner” for what it is: a cosmic poem of no religion. It’s on the edge of Coleridge deciding for Christianity but, whatever he thought it was, it’s not Christian. It’s about strangeness. **</p>
<p>[BYATT[/url</a>]</p>
<p><a href=“Crazy Fox Casino: Die Spielbank mit dem verrückten Fuchs”>Crazy Fox Casino: Die Spielbank mit dem verrückten Fuchs](<a href=“http://www.cercles.com/interviews/byatt.html]BYATT[/url”>BYATT)</a></p>
<p>Christabel is interested “in other visions of the fairy Melusin[a] –
who has two aspects –
an Unnatural Monster – and a most proud and loving and handy woman” (Poss. 174). </p>
<p>She sees her “as an unfortunate Creature – of Power and Frailty” (Poss. 175)** who tragically loses her power to a patriarchal society that cannot accept her female power which symbolises her deviation from social norms.** </p>
<p>And although Christabel’s Melusina “is . . . terrible and tragic, . . . inhuman in the last resort” (Poss. 121),
her superhuman nature evokes admiration rather than terror:</p>
<p>“She is beautiful, . . . the snake . . . is beautiful” (Poss. 121).</p>
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<p>Truly deliberate as we know that Maud has a sexual relationship with Fergus, that she refuses one with Leonora … Roland with Val … Val with Euan … We know about Ellen and Ash. I lean toward some hint (that word again) of a physical relationship. I think Blanche and Christabel fall somewhere on the continuum between physically affectionate and lovers but definitely farther from lesbianism that the feminist literati choose to believe.</p>
<p>Reading with interest the analysis of names but definitely recognize when I’m out of my league. :o</p>
<p>I had the impression that Christabel and Blanche were not lovers, that their relationship (in the sexual realm) paralleled that of Ellen and Randolph (unconsummated) and contributed to the intensity of the passion between C. and R. We were then left with the contrast of Ellen’s and Blanche’s reactions to the affair–one showing restraint/avoidance while the other wanting to possess.</p>
<p>^^^ Hope your evening (last night) turned out lovely.</p>
<p>psychmom, okay you may have convinced me. :)</p>
<p>Nice paper. Lots to think about there.</p>
<p>Thank you, ignatius! The poem went over well :)</p>
<p>mathmom, Please take any comments I make on this thread with a grain of salt. I was a biology major back in the day and avoided English courses like the plague! I am here for comedic relief ;)</p>
<p>^LOL. I never took an English course in college either. I took one French lit course and I wrote a paper for a Women’s history course about settlement houses being celebrated in children’s books. That’s as close as I came to English courses!</p>
<p>SJCM, the nature of the Melusine you’ve described above mirrors the idea of Romance as a quest of discovery, and reconciliation of opposing natures. On page 404 (I have the paperback), “She (LaMotte) says Romance is a land where women can be free to express their true natures, as in the Ile de Sein or Sid, though not in this world…She said, in Romance, women’s two natures can be reconciled. I asked, which two natures, and she said, men saw women as double beings, enchantresses and demons or innocent angels.” In my view, because Ash and Christabel could not reconcile this double nature, they did not have a permanent romance. But Maud and Roland, yes.</p>
<p>So glad your poem was a success, Psychmom. And whew, I’m in good company. Chemist, here, with no college lit classes AND a pretty weak high school lit background as well. I love being able to hear your opinions and ideas in this discussion. I’m learning so much and enjoying the book all the more!</p>
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<p>I’m confused. Are you saying Christabel wanted intimacy in both cases (Blanche and Ash) but that Blanche resisted this aspect of Christabel and was still possessive out of love or need?</p>
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<p>That quote from the A.S. Byatt interview reminds me of NJTheatreMOM’s earlier comment, “Maybe Possession is like a Rorschach test…or a prism. It can be looked at in a variety of different ways.”</p>
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<p>I didn’t think of that. I had been thinking only about the (initially) unconsummated relationship between Maud and Roland, and forgot that Ellen and Randolph are another example in the novel of an unconsummated deep love. It makes sense that Christabel and Randolph’s grand passion happened not only because of their personal attraction, but because of the sexual restraints (be they physical/social/emotional) in their respective households.</p>
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<p>Great comparison. What did Beatrice say about Ellen? “I think she wrote it to baffle. Yes. To baffle” (p. 239). Seems like Byatt did the same thing.</p>
<p>And speaking of Beatrice…What about her name? I suppose the “Beatrice” part refers to Dante’s muse – which is kind of ironic since “poor old Beatrice” doesn’t seem to be anybody’s muse. The “Nest” surname is fitting: She is like a hen, in an office-nest papered with the pages of Ellen’s journal.</p>
<p>NJTM: I took psychmom to mean that Ellen and Randolph aren’t sexually intimate though Randolph desires to be. Christabel and Blanche aren’t sexually intimate though Blanche desires to be. So, Ellen feels no right to possess Randolph because she keeps him at arm’s length. Blanche reacts differently because she wants to possess the person she can’t quite have. I keep moving more and more to the relationship being one of physical affection on Christabel’s part and hope/desire on Blanche’s.</p>