Byatts purpose within her novel Possession is a very serious critique of Postmodernism and its respective philosophies. Although the novel has been written in a rather playful manner which is suggestive of game playing, the actual fact becomes a deconstruction of the central foundations which uphold postmodern thought. The game like nature of Possession is only valid insofar as Byatt playfully exploits postmodern techniques to reveal the incoherencies of the foundations. Additionally Byatt dictates the lives of the theorists as being devoid of meaning and thus any deficiencies in the characters lives can be seen as a deficiency in that particular ideology, in this case being postmodernism. Through both content and technique, Byatt constructs a very serious game about postmodernism and plays it directly with her readers.

Possession is a romance, as noted in the books by-line and this genre is explored through the comparative, game-like structure of the two relationships investigated in the book. Byatt uses the romantic genre, as a vehicle to challenge the contemporary experience of romance. Through contrasting this contemporary experience with a nostalgic vi

Roland and Maud think that they pertain to a superior position in that they see the world objectively; however through the characters of Ash and LaMotte, they are shown to have an inferior existence. This is highlighted in the contexts of the dual love affairs. Roland and Maud live in the twentieth century, post World War II times, where the people pride their freedom of expression. Ash and LaMotte lived in the nineteenth century, the Victorian Era, a time where repression of emotion ran rampant. Byatt displays the epitome of irony when she shows that the “repressed” Victorian society characters are able to live life with more expression and meaning than the postmodern scholars, who live a vicarious life. Even though postmodern thinkers delve into the mysteries of life, in essence they crave the simplicities, “…What I really want is to have nothing. An empty, clean bed. I have this image of a clean empty bed in a clean empty room, where nothing is asked or to be asked.” They desire an existence in which there is no hidden meaning. Thus Byatt demonstrates the postmodern world to be stripped of simplicities such as beauty, by juxtaposing it to the glorified Victorian times.

Through Roland and Maud, Byatt implies that love and romance, in a postmodern world, has been ruined, it has lost its mystery. No longer can love be enjoyed for its simplicity, rather it is analysed in terms of human knowledge. The seriousness of Byatt’s critique seems to be that knowledge is self destructive and devoid of meaning, “We are very knowing. We know all sorts of other things, too – about how there isn’t a unitary ego – how we are made up of conflicting, interacting systems of things – and I suppose we believe that? We know we are driven by desire but we cannot see it as they did, can we? We never say the word love, do we? – we know it�

Some topics in this essay:
Victorian Era, Roland Maud, Cristobel Randolph, Additionally Byatt, Maud Byatt, Ash LaMotte, , Roland Bathe’s, Leanora Blackadder, According Jameson, roland maud, twentieth century, ash lamotte, biography industry, postmodern world, possession serious, serious game postmodernism, game postmodernism, serious game, biography industry possession, textual fragments, playful manner, exploiting textual fragments, possession serious game,