Possession

The famous novel Possession depicts the journey and investigation of Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, two English scholars attempting to discover the true story about the supposed relationship between two fictitious Victorian poets named Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte.

The plot is set in the second half of the 1980s. Roland is an expert in Ash, Maud in LaMotte whom she is a remote heiress. While documenting on Ash, Roland finds two mysterious drafts of letters addressed to an unknown woman. The quest for truth may now begin. It turns out that the woman in question is another poet, the secluded Christabel LaMotte. That is how Maud Bailey joins him in his quest. At first she helps him kindly but then she becomes as enthralled by this story as Roland is. They feel like possessed by this discovery, eager to know what exactly happened between the poets. While they investigate, Maud and Roland seem to get all the more closer to each other that their subjects of inquiry get acquainted whence a new bond is created between their field of studies. Roland's discovery will baffle the profession and all what has been known about either Ash/LaMotte's lives, writings or Victorian period's conceptions. As a consequence of this breakthrough, many people will get interested by the letters and soon two enemies will face : greed and integrity -or truth.

Possession truly happens to be an amazing piece of literature doubled notwithstanding its most attractive plot for those who like either romance, literature or investigations. Antonia S. Byatt has not only interspersed Ash and LaMotte in Literature but has created a whole literary universe scattered throughout the novel. Her most impressive achievement is that she has involved in her narrative fictitious writings by these Victorian writers and also by contemporaries from both Ash/LaMotte and Roland/Maud's periods. The novel is indeed full of poems, tales, excerpts from autobiographies and diaries, and more importantly it is filled with letters standing among the “classical” narrative which are the main source of information about Ash and LaMotte. Along with this range of literary genres, the novel is partly a romance, partly a quest, partly a detective story and even involves hints at gloomy stories near the end. These genres mingled together are another proof of the literary master-handling of the author as she seems to sail from one to another without the mere difficulty. Mrs Byatt is, as I recently learned, a former lecturer in English hence her capacity to produce such works as poems or excerpts of supposed critical papers, a reading that may appear very obscure to people not accustomed to literary criticisms.

After the coming out of her book in 1990 she was awarded the Booker Prize. As a true recognition of her work, the website The Victorian Web presents the book in an extended way with many subjects upon it. What impresses me is that this contemporary book only dating from 1990 is analyzed as one of the major novels we still study nowadays.

The director of the brilliant Death at a Funeral Neil Labute has adapted Possession to the screen in 2002 starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jennifer Ehle and Jeremy Northam as LaMotte and Ash. The novel has obviously undertaken many changes to end up in the film. Some of the scholars have thus been deleted as well as the solicitors and Roland girlfriend Val to allow, in a more easy way, the relationship between Maud and him. Besides, Roland is no longer British but American. It is a shift I do not completely understand though.

The emphasis is made upon the love stories between each duet though there were more stakes than merely a love story in the 19^th century. All the crucial elements are there, plus the fact that Maud and Roland are not that shy towards each other as in the novel. I think that the spirit of the book is luckily enough there even though it is exposed in radically a simple way. This story has enthralled me as to be as eager as our two modern heroes to know the true story of Ash and LaMotte. This movie has also moved me enough to make me want to study English and literature though at the time it was not as obvious as it is now. Now that I have read the original book, this want is increased though I can be nothing but impressed by this work.