A Comparison Between the Victorian and the Contemporary Couple in A.S Byatt's Possession

A Comparison Between the Victorian and the Contemporary Couple in A.S Byatt's Possession

Possession contains two love stories: a contemporary one and a

Victorian one whose plots are interlaced, and not as its subtitle

suggests a single one: "A Romance". It is a novel about a pair of

young scholars who trace the correspondence between two Victorian

poets. The contemporary love story between Roland Mitchell and Maud

Bailey develops in parallel with and is intermingled with the story of

the Victorian lovers, Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, since

the modern academics' quest for knowledge of the past drives the

modern romance. While the Victorian love affair is characterized by

its passionate intensity, the other relation develops slowly compared

to the customs of late twentieth century with its sexual freedom.

Sexuality is another major concern treated in these relationships. In

order to examine sexuality in this novel, it is necessary to analyse

the relationships between the characters. Indeed, the sexual act is

linked to romance. Byatt draws obvious parallels between the modern

characters' need to distance themselves from sexuality and Victorian

repression of sexuality. This essay will thus show how love and

sexuality are conceptualised, represented and dramatised in the

Victorian and in the twentieth-century couple and society. Indeed,

these two relationships escape from the norms of their respective

epochs.

Ash and Ellen are a traditional Victorian couple. He is a typical

nineteenth-century gentleman and she represents the "Angel in the

House", a retiring figure with no proper life of her own beside her

diary. They ap...

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...e draws, thus, a comparison of the two epochs, analyzing

both the problem of the nineteenth century and of the twentieth

century. She also demonstrates how in all times women have fought

against the rules of society. In the nineteenth century the lack of

women's freedom was a true difficulty for man-woman relationships. In

the twentieth century, the extreme freedom in sexuality, the need for

women to equal men is a new trouble for relationships. Thus, Byatt

really proposes a serious analysis observing that there are problems

in all societies and denouncing them.

Bibliography:

Byatt, A.S. Possession: A Romance. London: Vintage, 1990.

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[1] A.S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance (London: Vintage 1990). All

further references are to this edition.