An Analysis Of A.S. Byatt's Historical And Feminist Consciousness In Possession

Possession: A Romance, as the most successful novel of a most distinguished British writer A.S. Byatt, was published in 1990 and won that year's Booker Prize for Fiction, Britain's highest literary award. This novel is a romance telling of how two modern scholars get to know each other and ultimately fall in love as they combine their efforts in uncovering a secret love affair between two Victorian poets, in which A.S. Byatt's profound historical and feminist consciousness is embodied. In the novel, the plots of Victorian and modern times which are juxtaposed and the three parallel sets of main characters connect the past and present closely. This thesis probes into Byatt's historical consciousness from the perspective of the juxtaposition of the two plots in the novel, including relations between the past and present, relations between dead artists and modern scholars, and relations between the female and their ancestress. Byatt's feminist consciousness is explored through the analysis of three parallel sets of female characters, which represent different aspects in women's social lives. The female's existence of being suppressed and distorted in the male-dominated society, their dilemma of enclosed space, their conflict of love and career, the meaning of friendship and marriage to them are explored.