The Neutral Territory in A. S. Byatts Possession

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The Neutral Territory in A. S. Byatts Possession

Prepared by Anne Chen
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Coexistence of two phases

• History past and present
• Fiction realism and romance
• Mirror image 19th century Victorian poets
• 20th century contemporary
• academics (history
  fiction)
• Christabels two-fold identity a poet and
• a
  mother
• Tragicomic view of life death and rebirth
  

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History past and present (1)

• Postmodern view of history an explanatory system
  like history can be reduced to linguistic
  formulas it has persuasive powers rather than
  truth. This leads to postmodern trends such as
  multiplicity, self-conscious reflexivity, and
  intertextuality.
• Coexistence of past present Byatt creates a
  quest of self-identity for the contemporary
  academics (20th cent.) to resurrect the living
  past (19th cent.) and to redefine the present.

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History past and present (2)

• Cyclical and linear time are best conceived as
  two often but not always complementary ways of
  looking at the same thing, two alternative
  conceptualizations of the same phenomenon which
  do not exclude each other.
• Linear time the Victorian age is the age of
  science in which the linear certainty of death as
  the real future, full of fragmentation and
  despair.

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• Cyclical time by marking the past, contemporary
  artists can generate the heterogeneity by various
  histories and resurrect the living past. This
  heritage in life and art preserves the cyclical
  story.
• Byatt creates the cyclical and linear stories of
  past and present to blend and interact in
  Possession.
• Through the quest for knowledge, all the
  characters are possessed by the past. Byatt
  connects the past to the present.
• The cyclical story gives hope of rebirth in the
  tragicomic ending.

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Fiction realism and romance

• Possession is a blend of poetry and prose, and
  the Romance and Realism styles of the Victorian
  and contemporary novel.
• Possession, a romanceByatts romance takes us
  into Nature, human and secret moments with the
  plots of the quest, the chase and the mystery and
  reveals hidden historical truths, claiming a more
  complete re-visioning of reality.

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Mirror image 19th 20th centuries (1)
Maud Bailey (an academic as a reader)
Christabel LaMotte (a poet as a character)
Leonora Stern (a feminist)
Blanche Glover (an artist)
Roland Michell (an academic a poet)
Randolph Henry Ash (a poet as a character)
Val
Ellen Ash
(20th cent. contemporary novel)
(19th cent. Victorian novel)
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Mirror image 19th 20th centuries (2)

• Mirror image to Lacan, though the mirror image
  becomes an image outside of the self, the image
  becomes a sign for a self and constitutes the
  self. So we depend on the images of the literal
  Other both to create the self through difference
  and somehow to fill up the gap created by our
  subjectivity because the Other represents this
  unified self we have lost.

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Mirror image 19th 20thcenturies (3)

• Christabel (character) Maud (reader)
• (ancestor/mother)
  (descendant/child)
• Christabel Blanche Maud Leonora
• Randolph Ash (character) Roland Michell
  (reader)
• (poet)
  (poet)
• Randolph Ellen Roland Val
• Fictional realism parallelism serves to
  reverse the concept that art holds the mirror up
  to nature but shows how reality imitates art.

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Christabels two-fold identity (1)

• Christabel as Emily Dickinson as a poet,
  Dickinson/ Christabel is in total inwardness, a
  refusal to share in the collective utterance of
  the world. Her privateness essential to female
  writing.
• The stimulus of Loss makes most Possession
  
• mean. Emily Dickinson
• Christabel as Melusina Christabel is Melusina,
  an ambivalent figure unnatural monster
• -- loving and handy
  woman

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Christabels two-fold identity (2)

• Melusina like women has no real self for her
  split between the human and the inhuman
  (half-woman, half-serpent).
• Byatts perspective on female subjectivity
• She evokes autonomy and creativity from
  womens roles of a mother (reproduction) and of a
  woman artist.
• 19th cent. womans plot does not end in marriage
  or death but through the bridge of art gets
  rebirth in the 20th cent.

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Tragicomic view of life death rebirth

• The death of Ash and the birth of Maia
• Love between Maud and Roland consummates
• and continues the love between Christabel and
• Randolph.
• The present interacting with the past revivifies
  the past memories and renders the possibilities
  in life by redefining the present.
• Love promises the rebirth to each other which
  such withdrawal aids by protecting and
  regenerating the self.

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References

• Bloom, Harold. Emily Dickinson. Philadelphia
  Chelsea
• House, 1999.
• Byatt, A. S. Possession A Romance. London
  Vintage,
• 1991.
• Self and the Other. Otherness in Advertising.
  12 April
• 2004 ml.
• Young, Michael. The Metronmic Society. London
  Thames,
• 1988.