Through a Glass, Darkly

It’s hard to talk about this without starting with the ending, so I’m going to kind of work backwards from the postscript.

Two people met on a hot May day, and never later mentioned their meeting. This is how it was.

The postscript is both unbearably sad and exactly as it should be. No matter how much we know about a person, no matter how well we know someone, we can’t possess all their thoughts and experiences. There are events between two people that no one else will ever know about, conversations that go unrecorded. We don’t know other people’s private thoughts. As much as Roland and Maud and Leonora and Blackadder and Cropper and Beatrice think that they solved the mystery . . . they didn’t. There are still a lot of things they don’t know, too (and therefore that we do not know), like what exactly the relationship between Christabel and Blanche was, whether they were just friends or whether it actually was a “Boston marriage,” and the things that Ellen edited out of her journal, about her difficulties. They don’t know what was in Ash’s letter(s) that Ellen burned, as much as it pains Cropper to know that there is information that was lost.

The part of the postscript that is the most poignant to me is, I think, the hair. Ash says to Ellen, “In my watch. Her hair. Tell her.” But Christabel never knows the truth.

This is a good place to talk about Ellen, so I’m going to jump from the postscript to a discussion of her. Her journal and thoughts are some of the things I think of when I think of this book, mostly because she has been kept off stage pretty much the entire time, and then gives us insight into the entire situation. When I read this book, I don’t have the same trouble with it that I do sometimes with adultery stories, mostly, I think, because of Ellen herself, that glimpse we get into her thoughts at the end, her problems with sex that led to what seemed to be a sexless marriage. It was interesting to be focusing on this section right now, because I read On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan last week, and it’s about a married couple on their wedding night and the problems they run into. Their story does not end as . . . happily . . . I think Ellen and Ash were happy, truly, I do . . . On Chesil Beach doesn’t end as happily for that couple, and it was interesting to think what life could have been like for them if the man in the story had been more like Ash. It gave me more appreciation for him, actually.

When it came to the affair, Ellen was hurt and angry, I think, but also seemed a bit . . . resigned about what had happened. And that’s why I don’t get so angry myself – I don’t want to excuse Ash for having an affair, but neither do I think Ellen should have withheld sex. Even if I don’t agree with what happened, I understand it, and I can’t blame one person without acknowledging that the other person had something to do with it. It’s like life, I think. Not so black-and-white that one person is completely in the wrong.

Were you surprised that the baby had lived? Had you guessed, as the lawyer had, that Christabel’s family had taken in the baby and raised it as their own? I do love the idea that Maud’s quest turned out to be searching for the truth of her own heritage, that she’s descended from them both.

Roland and Maud had quite a bit of trouble in this section. I always relate, when it comes to these class issues, more to Roland than to Maud. I have done what Roland does here, put my hackles up and been sensitive about money/class issues, even when I didn’t mean to. We’ve been watching Maud evolve throughout the book, growing less cold and more open, but it was interesting that what it took for Roland was the job offers. I love the scene where he realizes that, as much time as he has spent on Ash, they are two separate people. And while it’s very sad, I love the scene where he realizes that, in finding the letter, he did, in a sense, lose Randolph Henry Ash. Only after all of those things can he finally, finally go into the garden. He and Maud get the ending they deserve – each of them progressing in their careers, each of them finally learning to move past the white room with the small bed and into a real relationship.

I think it’s somewhat surprising to see that this book ends in a dramatic confrontation in a graveyard at midnight. I mean, that’s not what you’d expect, right? That seems more Da Vinci Code than literary detection. But I like that, in the end, all of them are there in that room with that box because they want to know the truth, and, yes, some of the details of ownership are going to need to be ironed out, but . . . in the end, the possession of information was much more important than the items themselves.

Other than that, I don’t have much more to say. This was my favorite time reading this book through, so I just want to say thanks for giving me the chance to actually dig into it. I enjoy this book so much, the themes of love and scholarship and sex and ownership. Thanks for playing along!

Just for fun, here’s my copy, so you can see what I did to it this summer.

Were you surprised? Had you guessed? I can’t remember if I was surprised when I read it the first time, but I remember being like, “Ohhhh, so that’s what’s going on. A baby.”

I didn’t read these chapters twice, either, probably because the journal was quite long enough once, which is not to say I found it uninteresting, just long. But I think I will break this one down by chapter and then sum up my thoughts at the end. Ready?

Chapter 16: The Fairy Melusine. Of course, this isn’t all of the poem, but I think that this part is significant because of the way that Christabel acts. I said last week that I found her unsympathetic, and that is, of course, also how she is portrayed in these chapters as well. But look at this: “But let the Power take a female form / And ’tis the Power is punished. All men shrink / from dire Medusa and her writhing locks. / Who weeps for Scylla in her cave of bones, / Thrashing her tail and howling for her fate / With yelping hound-mouths, though she once was fair, / Love by the sea-god for her mystery, / Daughter of Hecate, beautiful as Night? / Who weeps the fall of Hydra’s many heads? / The siren sings and sings, and virtuous men / Bind ears and eyes and sail resolved away / From all her pain that what she loves must die, / That her desire, though lovely in her song / Is mortal in her kiss to mortal men. / The feline Sphinx roamed free as air and smiled / IN the dry desert at those foolish men / Who saw not that her crafted Riddle’s clue / Was merely Man, bare man, no Mystery. / But when they found it out they spilt her blood / For her presumption and her Monstrous shape. / Man named Himself and thus assumed the Power / Over his Questioner, til then his Fate– / After, his Slave and victim.” In some way, I feel that this is Christabel’s answer to the question of why she behaves as she does, both before, during, and after the trip with Ash. No matter how much she cares for him, she is deeply aware of how she has been treated because she is a woman, and, given the end of the chapter, she is deeply aware of her power as a woman, and feels the need to use it.

Chapter 17: Oh, Fergus. Stop sneaking around. No good can come of it. You fill me with a sense of dread.

Chapter 18: Oh, Blanche. I found the part about the “volcanic stones” especially heartbreaking. She used the stones from the trip to drown herself. I keep meaning to read “Merlin and Vivien,” but I haven’t done it yet, so I don’t know if the reference that keeps being made to that painting of Blanche’s is significant. I’ll try to get it read this week, finally. I like watching Maud with Leonora, because (I think I said this before) I am afraid of Leonora, too, but I also find her very likable. I think I would be the same as Maud - dreading her visits and then remembering how warm and friendly and alive she is. Oh, Cropper. Stop mucking with things. Look what you did. If Maud and Roland have to escape, it’s your own fault. (I don’t really believe it’s his fault, because I feel like something had to force them on their Quest. So, thanks, Cropper.)

Chapter 19: Again, the imagery in Christabel’s poem is significant, I think, as the lady of Is refuses to admit the danger until it’s too late and the city is drowned. We get yet another perspective here, Sabine’s journal. So, did you guess that she’d be pregnant? Were you surprised by what happened with the baby? One of the most interesting parts of the journal was, I think, Gode’s story. Do you think it affected Christabel because she’d made a decision about what to do with the baby? Or because she hadn’t? She is so, so unsympathetic here, in these journals. So unkind to people who only wanted to help her. And yet, I’m not unaware of what she has given up - her happy home with Blanche, destroyed. Her relationship with Ash, over and done with except for an unwanted pregnancy. I did notice that, like Maud, she cut her hair. Maud has grown hers back out . . . is there anyone who can give Christabel the strength to recover herself?

Chapter 20: So, what happened, exactly, that day at the seance? If you are anything like me, you spent a lot of the book before this wondering why the seance/medium discussions were there. How do you think Ash knew about the baby? And can I just say that I love that Leonora helps Blackadder buck up and handle the media storm. What an unlikely friendship.

This is the section in which everything seems to come together: the Breton legends, the discussions of mysticism, even the characters overlap. The whole book has been leading up to this section, the mystery of the result of Christabel and Ash’s relationship, even if we don’t have all the answers yet. It seems to speak for itself, and, knowing what is to come, I am a bit afraid of saying too much. So I will just say: I look forward to finding out how you enjoy the ending next week.

This week went by quickly for me, thanks to my vacation. And so, I must admit that I only read these chapters once. While floating around in the pool. Tough life, I have.

So, anyway, I don’t have tons of individual notes, since I didn’t have my post-its out at the pool (I am going to post a picture of my book and how post-it-filled it is at the end), but I thought I might break this one down chapter by chapter, if that’s okay. I think that this section, with the way that Maud and Roland figure out what happened by matching up the poets’ own words and the story of Ash and LaMotte’s trip, is my favorite part of the whole book, and what I remember when I think about the book. And I don’t want to spoil the movie, but I thought that this part of the movie, where Roland and Maud, Christabel and Randolph were all in the same place (though many years separated them), was very well done.

Chapter 11 is Ash’s Swammerdam poem. I have done pretty well this time through with understanding the poetry and matching it up to what she was trying to do/evoke, but this one is kind of mysterious to me. I do appreciate the fact that Ash had Christabel (why do I want to call him by his last name and her by her first name?) in mind when he was writing it, which, to me, makes the ending, about questioning, more interesting. You can kind of see how its religious bent grew out of their discussions. And I know Andrea had some comments/ideas/perspective on the “science” aspect. That’s probably part of why I check out a bit on that poem. I mean, come on. It’s about microscopes. hehe. I did actually read this chapter twice, for the record. Not that it helped. After I wrote this paragraph, I went and looked at the reader’s guide, which asks the question in this way:

Ash writes “Swammerdam” with a particular reader, Christabel LaMotte, in mind. Is Christabel’s influence on Ash evident in the poem, and if so, how and where? How, in the poem, does Ash address his society’s preoccupation with science and religion? How does he address his and Christabel’s conflicting religious ideas? How does Christabel herself present these ideas in Mélusine [which we will get to in Chapter 16]?

Chapter 12 is Roland and Maud beginning to piece together what happened. I especially like the scene with Maud and Beatrice, because Beatrice, who has seemed so . . . dull, understands very quickly that something is going on. I also like how Beatrice is very protective of Ellen, knows that there’s something more to her, but she can’t quite figure out what it is or why the diary would have been written “to baffle.” There are definitely indications of something deeper going on with Ellen, things she is choosing not to say in her diary, as well as the idea that she is very uncomfortable with the idea that her maid is pregnant and the example her own mother gave when it came to treating servants. And Blanche’s role in this whole story is also beginning to come clear, as we find out the moves she made to protect her home and her friend from the danger as she saw it. But what was the “evidence,” and what did Ellen do with it? I also liked that Blanche’s suicide note from all those years ago was echoed in Val’s words in the modern day: each considering herself superfluous.

Chapter 13 is the next piece of literary detection, as Roland and Maud actually follow Ash and Christabel on their (supposed) journey. This is where they find that the poetry matches up, and I like that because it becomes apparent that Christabel was intentionally placing clues in her poetry, more than just the “Dolly” poem.

In this section, most significantly in this chapter, we again run into the idea that perhaps we see things through too much of a sexual lens. I think that Roland speaks for the author when he disagrees with Leonora’s oversexualization of every aspect of life. We also see Maud feeling that Cropper put quite a bit of himself in the biography he wrote on Ash, another instance when the author is probably speaking to us through her character.

Chapter 14 is fairly short, and contains the scene I always think of when I think of what Roland and Maud are doing: the scene where they see the waterfall and Maud realizes that a poem that Christabel has written was inspired by what she must have seen on that trip. And, finally, Maud and Roland have become comfortable enough with each other to spend some time talking, getting to know each other. Maud, fulfilling the earlier idea that we mentioned, begins to let her hair down.

Chapter 15: Did it surprise you when it switched to a different perspective, that we got the poets’ story not only from their letters/journals? Did you know we were going to know for sure what happened on their trip? I’m not sure I have anything more to say about it than that . . . it feels almost intrusive to say more about their trip. These last two chapters are more “traditional romance” than anything else we’ve gotten so far.

So, how is it going? Do you find this section as interesting as I do? Any comments on the piecing together of the evidence or the poets’ trip or Ellen Ash or Swammerdam? The next chapter, if you haven’t already looked, is Christabel’s Fairy Melusine poem, and I expect I’ll have more to say about that than I did about Swammerdam. I haven’t read it yet, but when I was reviewing things for today, I realized that in last week’s reading, I completely missed that Roland looking through the keyhole at Maud in the bathroom was paralleling what we know about the Melusine legend. I am looking forward to that.

And, one last thing - I think we can do two more weeks instead of three. So we’ll plan on reading chapters 16-20 next week and finishing it up the week after. In my copy, the last eight chapters + epilogue are only 120 pages, so it makes more sense to do that than to stretch it out. Plus, if we don’t finish it on the 16th, we’ll be pushing it back to the 23rd. And we’d rather be talking Harry Potter that week, I think. hehe.

In which, most importantly, we get to read The Correspondence. And other stuff happens, too, but . . . The Correspondence! Another great place to end. Okay, fine. We also meet the vile Cropper, learn more about Leonora. And Beatrice Nest, poor Beatrice (and through her, Ellen Ash).

There are some very interesting themes in this section. The two that pop out at me are biography and sexuality. Both Cropper and Leonora tend to see their particular poet through a specific lens. For Cropper, that lens is, essentially, himself, and for Leonora, it’s sexuality/feminism/lesbianism. The danger is that, instead of reporting the facts and then interpreting them, they are interpreting the facts and then reporting them in such a way to make them line up with that interpretation.

And when it comes to sexuality, in this section we start to see that the modern-day folk certainly can talk a lot about sex, but when it comes to love and relationships, it doesn’t seem as if they are doing any better than the Victorians. I am not sure I’d go so far as to say that all that talk of sex is stifling them, because it doesn’t seem as if it’s stifled Fergus, but it does seem to have stifled intimacy. Certainly there is something repressed about Maud.

Of course I don’t need to point you in the direction of these famous letters to get the idea of who Byatt might have been channeling. And what of the letters themselves? There are a few quotes in particular that I love. This one, from Ash:

The impulses to religion might be the need to trust–or the capacity for wonder–and my own religious feelings have always been inspired more by the latter. I find it hard to shift without the Creator–the more we see and understand, the more amazement there is in this strangely interrelated Heap of things–which is yet not disordered.

And this (of course), from Christabel:

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

What a description of the situation they have fallen into. Is “fallen into” too generous? Perhaps so. Ash, especially, charged ahead, seemingly unconcerned with the possible consequences of his actions.

Christabel’s story, The Threshold, is, indeed, set at the threshold of adventure for Roland and Maud, just as they are discovering what the letters say (actually, they discover it before we the reader are allowed to know, but that’s the concept anyway). That story is based on Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower,” which I read to see if I could gain some insight into what Byatt might have been thinking. I thought it was interesting that it’s basically about Childe Roland approaching the Dark Tower, not actually what he finds in it. I kept waiting for the poem to get to the exciting LotR stuff, but instead it was about the journey rather than the actual adventure. Which also explains why Christabel’s story ends where it does, without anything resolved.

And I guess now is as good a place as any to talk about the theme of “possession.” Cropper wants to possess all that he can of Ash’s, and so, possess Ash himself. He even imagines (in the biography) Ash considering his new wife as a possession. There are other examples, too: Beatrice being so possessive of Ellen, Roland’s possession of the letters (and wanting to do the work himself). Even Blanche with Christabel. I think that theme will continue to develop over the course of the book, but . . . well, I don’t want to give a lot away, but I think that one of the themes of the book is that even if we read someone’s most private letters or diary, we still don’t know everything about them. No matter how well Maud knows Christabel through her writing, she will never actually grasp (or possess) all of Christabel’s thoughts or experiences.

We’re given quite a bit of information about Beatrice there, and you feel (or at least I feel) pity for her, and I always felt she was kind of benevolent, but I noticed how Roland was talking to her and she just sat there smiling, and I just wanted her to do something. We’ve been given indications that she feels more deeply than she can express, and to see her sitting there with a placid smile because she’s slightly intimidated by (meek, mild) Roland is . . . frustrating.

I think I would also like to say something about the letter that Fergus sent Maud, the letter that was notable only for how petty it seemed and how much it bugged Maud. Fergus, with the last name Wolff, is clearly much more of a predator than our Roland. And Leonora sent a letter, too. I don’t think I know what to say about Leonora. She overpowers me in the same way that Maud seems overpowered by her.

Roland and Maud’s class differences make another reappearance, and this time we get more of Maud’s perspective rather than just Roland being prickly. Of course, we only get Maud’s perspective after she’s been goaded into it by Fergus. And Roland is a bit harsh, believing that Maud, used to being surrounded by beautiful things, would not be able to appreciate the beauty or romance of the bathroom.

But, in the end, what sticks with me about this section is The Correspondence. Andrea and I were talking about it a bit last week, and we both agreed that the first part was difficult to get through. The letters dragged on for longer than I’d remembered, with a slow build, but when they start picking up steam, they make quite an impression. I am not sure I have a lot to say about the letters themselves (or the revelations they make of love and treachery), but I would like to hear your comments.

I’m going on vacation at the end of this week, but I should still have plenty of time to get next week’s chapters written up. Happy reading!

That’s not a very interesting title. If you have a better suggestion, feel free to let me know what it is and I will use it next week.

Chapters 1-5: In which we meet Roland, Val, Blackadder, Fergus, and Maud; discover the connection between Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Henry Ash; and, of course, discover their letters. Wasn’t that a great place to end? Didn’t it leave you wanting more? I would like to take the credit for it, but . . . I picked it arbitrarily. Sorry. But, still, a great place to end. The beginning was a bit slower than I remembered, but I never remember this as a very fast book in the first place.

I linked to the poetry already, which took away some of the things I was going to put in today’s post. I haven’t read all of it, but I have been getting through it. The thing about poetry is that I always have to read it out loud. And Mike doesn’t want to listen to Victorian poetry, nor do I really want to read it out loud to myself in my car on my lunch break.

I was going to write out some questions, but since this is the beginning, the best place to start is probably with first impressions. I’ll go ahead and start with mine, and you can leave yours.

Later in the book, Roland is described as “meek,” and that’s as good a description as I can come up with. He’s too meek to get the kind of job he deserves, he’s too meek to do anything about his horrible apartment, too meek to do anything about his situation with Val. And yet, in an uncharacteristic moment, he steals the letters. In a parallel, it seems that even writing the letters was uncharacteristic for Ash himself.

Maud is, from the beginning, described in bright colors, as is her apartment. One of the things I was proud to have picked up on is that when Fergus says that she “thicks men’s blood with cold,” that’s a reference to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

That’s not the only poetry Fergus used to describe her, either:

Never shall a young man,
Thrown into despair
By those great honey-coloured
Ramparts at your ear,
Love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.

Maud’s identity is very tied up in her hair, having cut it short to meet the expectations of those around her. At the beginning of our introduction to her, we see Christabel’s poem on Rapunzel, and the meaning is two-fold: Maud is in her ivory tower of academia, and Maud needs to literally let down her hair rather than keeping it under scarves. Her character is centered on poetry in other ways, too - Tennyson’s “Maud” requests that she, “Come into the garden, Maud.” Roland doesn’t approach the garden of his apartment, either, making the imagery of being closed off/needing to enter certain areas important for both of them. Which leads me to Christabel’s Tales for Innocents. The implication of “The Glass Coffin” is probably that the girl with golden hair needs to be saved from her cold, compartmentalized life. Is that what you got from the story, too? Anything I missed? Is it significant that Christabel is working on it at the time that she and Ash are corresponding? That story also touches a bit on Roland and Maud’s different class backgrounds. The movie, I think, explains their differences by making Roland an American, but I like it better in the original.

I suppose the next character to mention is Val. I find myself taking Roland’s side against her, because she is so blank. I don’t see her as a fully-formed person, more as a reflection of whoever she is with (in this case, Roland). She reminds me of people I know who have to see the negative side of everything. I probably dislike her so much because I recognize in myself that same tendency.

I have less to say about Blackadder and Fergus, who work with Roland. I see Blackadder sympathetically, but I couldn’t tell you exactly why (it may simply be in contrast with Cropper, who is fairly vile, but . . . we haven’t completely gotten to see that yet). Fergus, to me, is someone I feel that I shouldn’t like, and yet I find him charming. Which is, I think, a bit how Maud feels, too.

It’s harder for me to talk about what happened in these five chapters, because I know what is going to happen later on, and I don’t want to foreshadow that too much. Additionally, I think that I tend to be more focused on character than plot, and a lot of what happens in the first five chapters is basically setting up the rest of the book. But please feel free to talk about it. The most exciting thing that happens is, of course, the finding of the letters, and I love that the poetry was a clue. And the Baileys, with their house falling down around them. I also love the way that Roland pieces things together to discover the truth about the letter and the relationship.

So, here is a bit to get us started on the first five chapters. I certainly haven’t mentioned everything that happened, but I hope that you will point out things that stood out to you as you read. I will post next Monday about the next five. Happy discussing, happy reading.

I’ve been getting all my information together for our big Possession read, and I came across some things that seemed kind of helpful. As I mentioned before, there are many many references that aren’t necessary to understanding Possession, but which do enhance the reading of it. Or so I hear. I didn’t actually know where to find those references . . . until today. So, for your reading pleasure, I have decided to link many of them. I hope you find them helpful. Also, this should make next Monday’s post much shorter. (It should, but maybe I’ll dig in to all the references and have entirely too much to say. It’s possible, knowing me.)

At the end of the reader’s guide (which contains spoilers), the publisher’s website lists the following poems as helpful to understanding Possession:

Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” (keep our Roland and his quest in mind as you read it), “My Last Duchess,” “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Caliban Upon Setebos,” “Bishop Blougram’s Apology,” “Mr. Sludge, the ‘Medium‘,” “Andrea del Sarto,” and “Fra Lippo Lippi“;

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel“;

Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress,” “The Garden“;

Petrarch, Rime Sparse;

Christina Rossetti, Poetical Works;

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Merlin and Vivien” from Idylls of the King, In Memoriam, “Maud,” “Mariana,” “The Lady of Shallott“;

W.B. Yeats, The Rose

It may also be illuminating to keep in mind that Ash is loosely based on Browning and LaMotte is loosely based on Rossetti. Here are some other references to look at if you get a chance.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that you are laughing that someone who claims not to like poetry picked a big old book full of references to it to discuss. I must confess: I like a book that expects me to keep up, to do a little work. I like being able to dig into something like you can dig into this book. I think that literature classes should have been as fun as reading this book is. I’ll wait and actually talk more about the themes next week. I can hardly wait.

Next Monday, join us for our discussion of the first five chapters of A.S. Byatt’s Possession. In my copy, it’s about 100 pages, so there is plenty of time to read it before then!