Final thesis contents to hyperlink July 08

 
 
 
 
 

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4.2. Omissions: Traditional histories cannot tell secrets 
 
Possession explores not only what goes unrecorded by official histories but the 
reasons for this. The characters’ secrets are available for representation in fictional 
texts, but cannot be recorded in the factual versions of their lives. The events and 
emotions that are too powerful, painful or overwhelming to be written or spoken of 
have escaped traditional records in Possession. Outsiders who may have born witness 
to these things may not have been able to interpret their significance: as Roland and 
Maud are aware, there are clues available, but if you aren’t “looking carefully”, they 
are “nothing” (52). Only a discerning reader can piece together the fragmented 
narratives. The scholars’ search is limited to textual evidence, yet the readers are 
offered privileged glimpses of the characters’ interior consciousness and of the 
significant events in their lives that aid in the understanding of the text as a whole. 
Fiction and the imagination have the power to capture those things that have no place 
in a history textbook. 
 
4.3. Reclaiming truth: Possession’s Postscript 
The most significant secret that Possession discloses is in the postscript. Randolph’s 
meeting is an example of the “things which happen and leave no discernible trace, are 
not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that .. such things had 
never been” (Possession 603). The postscript offers the reader a fragment of ‘hard 
truth’, without room for argument about whether or not it happened. In contrast to the 
narration of the trip to Yorkshire, this information is specifically denoted as ‘fact’ 
rather than ‘fiction’; it is not presented as something embellished by the author’s 

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imagination. Byatt is matter-of-fact in her telling: “this is how it was” (603). This 
authoritative tone is matched by her sensitivity that masterfully captures a moment of 
great significance in an understated way. Possession’s ending reminds us of the small, 
seemingly random acts that fill the texture of a life, yet slip past the notice of those 
who create official histories. For Randolph, at least, this small event was one of the 
most significant of his life. The writing is so simple yet the reader is able to 
understand the moment’s significance without its being spelt out: “there they sat on a 
hummock and talked, in a cloud of butterflies, as he remembered it with absolute 
clarity, and she remembered it more and more vaguely, as the century ran on” (604). 
The postscript closes the novel with a non-negotiable finality that reminds the reader 
who has control over the creative process. It is ironic, but also realistic, that the 
scholars (in ‘real’ life) miss this important information, and finally misread the last of 
the novel’s textual clues. This endorses Byatt’s view of biography as “shadow play” 
(“Introduction” xv) - what really matters eludes the scholars, finally underlining their 
naïvety because they, too, think they have the end of the story. 
 
Possession’s postscript tells the “hard” truth (Passions 17) - but the idea of truth in a 
novel is problematic. In a postmodern novel, it is more difficult. However, for Byatt, 
the idea of fragmented, ungraspable truth is only meaningful “if we glimpse a 
possibility of truth and truthfulness for which we must strive, however inevitably