Feminine Narration A Feminist Study Of Possession: A Romance

This preliminary feminist study of Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt, a woman writer of contemporary English literature, focuses on an analysis of the feminine narration of the novel with a view to inierpretmg the feminist implications of the narrative strategies which challenge and disrupt the conventional masculine narrative and justifying the feminist stance of Byatt.This paper holds that in spite of the fact that Byatt resists any critical attempt to tie her or her works to any feminist agenda, Possession, either in form or in content, is the embodiment of its author's interpretation and exploration of feminist issues. Accordingly, the paper, adopting the feminine writing theories advocated by the French feminist critics Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. explores three aspects of the novel's narrative strategies, namely, the multiplicity of narrative perspectives, Byatt's conception of time and her appropriation of the classical myths. First, the multiple narrative perspectives are used in narrating the story instead of the single and fixed narrator in masculine narrative. By doing so. the female is given the right to speak, female narrative authority is highlighted and the truth of female existence is presented. Second, the narrative temporality of the novel is cyclical with the past and present integrated with each other, which deconstructs the linearity of masculine narrative. Finally, Byatt's appropriation of the classical myths from the female perspective aims to expose the oppression of the female vitality and the distortion of the female image and highlight the marginalized feminine presence and experienceThis analysis of the novel's feminine narration spotlights Byatt's creation of such a narrative discourse that challenges and disrupts the stereotypes and conventions of masculine narrative and her feminist tendency embodied in the narrative strategies.