Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Dispossessing Femininity In Byatt's Possession, Jenna Miller

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

A.S. Byatt’s best-selling 1990 novel Possession follows the character of Roland Michell, an intelligent but struggling academic who has devoted his life and studies to the brilliant Victorian author, Randolph Ash. Roland joins forces with Maud bailey, an expert on a similarly talented but under-recognized Victorian author Christabel LaMotte, in order to better study the relationships between LaMotte, Ash, and Ash’s wife, Ellen. Roland’s and Maud’s literary studies develop along with their relationship, but the more the two of them learn about the relationship between Ash and Christabel, the more they discover that the truth about their Victorian counterparts is …