Final thesis contents to hyperlink July 08

 
4.1. Challenging postmodern theory: Reclaiming the value of the past
Possession challenges postmodernist theories’ devaluation of the metanarratives of 
history and truth, negotiating a space that reclaims the significance of these things in 
people’s lives. Possession’s present is invigorated by the past that it mirrors. Being in 
touch with the passion and emotion of the past allows the scholars to connect with 
these qualities in themselves. The present is both “utterly emplotted by the past, and 
immeasurably enriched by it” (Shiller). The past has many gifts for the scholars; it 

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facilitates a renewed sense of vigour and purpose, it restores the capacity for empathy 
and remodels a previously hopeless future.
The discovery of the past is a journey toward origins: Maud discovers the truth of her 
bloodline while the others learn more about the poets they emulate, and at the same 
time deepen their understanding of their own lives. Roland’s journey is principally 
one of self-discovery. At the beginning of the novel, he defines himself in terms of 
others - Blackadder, Ash and his girlfriend Val (Possession 13). He is a kind of anti-
hero - not particularly strong, successful or dashing but rather small and ‘mole’-ish
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But during the course of the book, he becomes the chivalric hero - a knight who 
rescues damsels in distress. At the novel’s conclusion, he has found a measure of 
professional and personal success and is liberated from his previous sense of failure. 
He is released from his imprisonment in the sour cat-piss stained flat, and before he 
leaves, he walks into the forbidden garden that is a symbol of the “opening of the 
future” (562). Importantly the Quest for the truth about Ash’s affair facilitates the 
discovery of a poetic voice “he didn’t yet know, but which was his own” (563) - 
derived partly from Ash’s influence but still his own. The past offers Roland a better 
understanding of the present and a greater hope for the future. It is “from the Past 
(that) Byatt recalls for us the passion of life” (Shinn 182). Roland and Maud regain 
their passion in more senses than one, rediscovering the pleasures of love and life. 
The past is needed to inspire passion in Roland, when early in the text he thinks of the 
image of a Victorian woman in order to arouse himself (150).
 
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Val calls him “mole” on account of his “small regular features” (14).

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Possession reaffirms the relevance of the past, reinforcing the need to retell it as a 
story that demands empathy (Scanlan 503). The story of the past is emotionally 
affective and affecting and the scholars and readers are encouraged to connect with 
the historical characters on a personal, rather than an academic, level. Maud 
empathises with Christabel in her pain and loneliness, immensely worried by her 
‘spilt milk’ poem that suggests she had given birth to a stillborn child (Possession 
454), and able to imagine how she must have felt on hearing the news of Blanche’s 
suicide. Beatrice weeps with distress at the thought that Randolph never knew about 
his daughter. Their ability to empathise brings out their personalities, drawing them 
out of their two-dimensional characterisation so that they come alive. Through the 
past their capacity for feeling, that has been partly suppressed by postmodern thought, 
is reconnected. 
Postmodernism considers history a human construct, and promotes an awareness of 
the power politics that shape our records of the past so that this is ever-present in a 
postmodern retelling of that past (Hutcheon, Poetics 16). Postmodernism believes that 
it is not possible to tell the truth about history because what is recorded is never free 
from human interference. History is seen as a text - and Possession’s history is only 
available to the scholars through the texts they manage to find. The novel is acutely 
aware of the proposition that there is no such thing as an error-free text (Possession 
31), and by implication, that our grasp of the past can never be without mistakes
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Byatt takes into account the ideas about the limits of knowing about the past and still 
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A number of phrases in the novel are erroneously cross-referenced, quite obviously on purpose. For 
example, Maud mistakenly quotes Blanche’s suicide note as saying she was a “superfluous person” 
(265). A few pages later, Val refers to herself in the same way. Yet in the real note Blanche describes 
herself as a “superfluous creature” (372).

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manages to evoke a picture that is “redemptive” (Shiller). The importance of the past 
is redeemed and restored. 
 
Possession challenges Jameson’s concerns about the devaluation of history. He argues 
that postmodern historicism and its “random cannibalisation of the styles of the past” 
(18) utilises history as a subject merely to be mined for comparisons to our world 
today, creating a gap between representations of the past and the actual lived reality of 
that past. History becomes merely a ‘text’ (18) and the novel that uses it in this way 
becomes indifferent to its importance, so that “we are condemned to seek History by 
way of our own pop images and simulacra of that history, which itself remains forever 
out of reach” (25). History is replaced by history, when we are denied access to the 
valuable lessons of our past because we focus on what we cannot come to know. 
Jameson is concerned that postmodern novels are more concerned with what Shiller 
terms the “look and feel”, rather than the substance of, the past. Some argue that the 
use of traumatic events like the Holocaust as a fictional subject risks trivialising the 
horror and emotional trauma that are undeniably part of the experience of those 
events, as it emphasises the relativity of truth, blurring the line between fiction and 
hard facts (McHale 95-96).
While its subject is a fictional (rather than a factual) history, and is all too aware of 
the state of history as text, Possession is still concerned with retrieving the complete 
substance of the past. The novel regards the past as important rather than trivialising 
it. Contrary to Jameson’s concerns, Possession captures the rhythms of its characters’ 
daily lives, reaching to the heart of what is most important to them. It captures the 
truth of its characters’ emotions rather than simply the appearance of them, and it 

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treats the great men and women of the past with respect. The novel’s project is to 
retrieve parts of its characters’ lives that have so far escaped the notice of those who 
study them. The discovery of the love letters allows them to unravel a key event in the 
lives of the poets that was shrouded in secrecy and was therefore absent in the official 
records of their lives. The novel refutes Jameson’s concerns about postmodern 
historiography by closing the gap between the lived reality of the past and what is 
recorded (Shiller). Uncovering the letters allows the scholars to get closer to the 
reality of the past, while the intrusion of the omniscient narrator gives the readers an 
even clearer view. Readers criticised Byatt for the use of this particularly ‘un-
postmodern’ device (“Introduction” xv), yet her commitment to her characters and 
creating an emotionally affective story is more important than strict adherence to a