Water

There's water, water everywhere in Possession, and this powerful and mysterious element gives the novel some of its most captivating imagery and symbolism.

As in many of the folktales, fairy tales, myths, and legends that A. S. Byatt draws on in Possession, watery landscapes in the novel tend to be associated with women and femininity. Sometimes, they're symbols for women's bodies, women's power, and women's sexuality. At other times, they're the homes of woman-inspired sea creatures that tempt (and sometimes totally threaten) men with their seductive, serpentine ways.

With this in mind, let's take a look at the biggest and most important examples of water imagery and symbolism in the text.

The Drowned City of Is

The legend of the drowned city of Is is much older than Possession, and in this novel it represents one of many examples of watery representations of women and femininity. Excerpts from the writings of Leonora Stern, Christabel LaMotte, and Sabine de Kercoz make this pretty clear. As Sabine de Kercoz writes in her journal:

In one of my father's mythological recensions the editor says, 'In the legend of the City of Is may be felt, like the passing of a whirlwind, the terror of ancient pagan cults and the terror of the passion of the senses, let loose in women. And to these two terrors is added the third, that of the Ocean, which, in this drama, has the role of Nemesis and fate. Paganism, woman and the Ocean, these three desires and these three great fears of man, are mingled in this strange legend and come to a tempestuous and terrible end.' (19.115)

Sabine herself rejects this vision of the story and writes her own version a little bit differently. As she says: "What I had meant to do was make the wild Dahud"—that's the powerful sorceress at the heart of the legend—"an embodiment as it were of our desire for freedom, for autonomy, for our own proper passion, which women have, and which it seems, men fear" (19.115).

From what little we know of it, it's hard to say if Sabine's version of the legend emphasizes the connection between water and femininity, but the novel makes it clear that Christabel LaMotte's version of the story certainly does. As Leonora Stern says of Christabel's poem on the drowned City of Is: "[t]he women's world of the underwater city is the obverse of the male-dominated technological industrial world of Paris or Par-is, as the Bretons have it. They say that Is will come to the surface when Paris is drowned for its sins" (8.35).

As Leonora Stern also notes, the drowned City of Is isn't the only watery legend that Christabel soaked up and recreated in her poetry. As she argues in her book on LaMotte's written works: "The heroes of LaMotte's texts are typically watery beings" (13.8). While "Dahud the matriarchal Sorceress-Queen rules a hidden kingdom below the unbroken waters of the Armoric Gulf," she continues, "[t]he Fairy Melusina is in her primary and beneficent state a watery being" (13.8).

Melusina? Let's take a closer look.

The Fairy Melusina

Melusina (or Melusine) is, hands down, the most important of the symbolic figures that populate Possession. Her story is told multiple times by multiple characters throughout the novel, and both Christabel LaMotte and Maud Bailey are depicted as having Melusine-like characteristics.

Fergus Wolff, of all people, gives us our first introduction to the Melusina story. He tells Roland Mitchell:

"She was a fairy who married a mortal to gain a soul, and made a pact that he would never spy on her on Saturdays, and for years he never did, and they had six sons […]. And in the end, of course, he looked through the keyhole—or made one in her steel door with his sword-point according to one version—and there she was in a great marble bath disporting herself. And from the waist down she was a fish or a serpent, Rabelais says 'andouille', a kind of huge sausage, the symbolism is obvious, and she beat the water with her muscular tail." (3.51)

When we readers have a chance to see bits and pieces of Christabel LaMotte's version of the story, we learn that she saw Melusina as a kind of kindred spirit. As Leonora Stern points out, Melusina's forested "fountain" home "is inaccessible and concealed" in Christabel's version, and "the knight and his lost horse must descend and scramble to come to it and to the Fairy Melusina's 'small clear' voice 'singing to herself' which 'sings no more' when the man and beast disturb a stone on their damp descent" (13.9).

In Christabel's poem—or what we see of it—Melusina is a solitary, secluded being whose privacy and contentment are disturbed by the knight Raimondin. Remind you of anyone?

We won't lay out every single instance in Possession when Maud and Christabel are depicted as having Melusine-like characteristics—we know you don't need a list as long as your arm. Let's take a look at just two crucial scenes that'll help to give you the lay of the land.

First, Maud. When a snowstorm forces her to spend a night at Seal Court, she and Roland have an unexpected encounter near the bathroom. Watch what goes down:

The heavy, latched door was dark inside its stone arch. There was no sound of plashing or flushing. He was then stirred with doubt as to whether the bathroom was in fact empty—how could any sound penetrate that solid oak? He did not want to rattle a locked door and embarrass both her and himself. So he went down on one knee on the putative drugget and put his eye to the huge keyhole which glinted at him and disconcertingly vanished as the door swung back and he smelled wet, freshness, steam in cold air. (8.125)

This scene should remind us immediately of the story that Fergus tells Roland—you know, the about Melusina's human husband breaking his promise and spying on her through a keyhole as she takes her Saturday bath. By creating this parallel scene, Byatt creates some not-too-subtle connections between Maud and Roland and Melusine and Raimondin. She continues to draw other connections along these lines throughout the rest of the novel, too.

Now, let's turn back to Christabel. When she seeks refuge with her Breton family, her cousin Sabine de Kercoz writes a number of nice and not-so-nice things about her in a journal. Here's one of the not-so-nice entries: "And she changes in my sight. I hate her smooth pale head and her greeny eyes and her shiny green feet beneath her skirts, as though she was some sort of serpent, hissing quietly like a pot in the hearth, but ready to strike when warmed by generosity" (19.256).

Here, Sabine depicts Christabel as a dangerously serpentine woman, allowing Byatt to draw another one of many connections between the nineteenth-century poet and the mythical Melusine.

So, what do all of these connections mean? Why are Maud and Christabel repeatedly depicted as having serpentine, fishy, dragon-like, or mermaidy characteristics? The wonderful thing about symbols and analogies like these is that they can have multiple meanings. Melusina was a powerful woman who made certain sacrifices when she married her knight, and things didn't work out too well for her in the end. Is she a cautionary tale for Christabel and Maud, or does her story suggest that certain things are worth the sacrifice?