Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great entrée of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.
"When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume, had he professed to be writing a Novel. The latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the very probable and ordinary course of a man's experience. The former—while as a work of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart—has fairly a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or creation… The point of view in which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is flitting away from us."
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, Preface to The House of the Seven Gables
"And if at whiles the bubble, blown too thin,
Seem nigh on bursting,—if you nearly see
The real world through the false,—what do you see?
Is the old so ruined? You find you're in a flock
O' the youthful, earnest, passionate,—genius, beauty,
Rank and wealth also, if you care for these:
And all deposit their natural rights, hail you,
(That's me, sir) as their mate and yoke-fellow,
Participate in Sludgehood—nay, grow mine,
I veritably possess them—…
And all this might be, may be, and with good help
Of a little lying shall be: so Sludge lies!
Why, he's at worst your poet who sings how Greeks
That never were, in Troy which never was,
Did this or the other impossible great thing!…
But why do I mount to poets? Take plain prose –
Dealers in common sense, set these at work,
What can they do without their helpful lies?
Each states the law and fact and face o' the thing
Just as he'd have them, finds what he thinks fit,
Is blind to what missuits him, just records
What makes his case out, quite ignores the rest.
It's a History of the World, the Lizard Age,
The Early Indians, the Old Country War,
Jerome Napoleon, whatsoever you please.
All as the author wants it. Such a scribe
You pay and praise for putting life in stones,
Fire into fog, making the past your world.
There's plenty of |'How did you contrive to grasp
The thread which led you through this labyrinth?
How build such solid fabric out of air?
How on so slight foundation found this tale,
Biography, narrative?' or, in other words,
'How many lies did it require to make
The portly truth you here present us with?'
—Robert Browning, from 'Mr Sludge, "the Medium"'
What's up with the epigraph?
Almost all of Possession's chapters begin with an epigraph, but since we cover those in our Detailed Summary, here we're going to focus on the two epigraphs that precede the novel as a whole.
The first of these epigraphs is an excerpt from Nathaniel Hawthorn's Preface to his 1851 novel The House of the Seven Gables. This epigraph sets up the very definition of romance that Possession itself is working with, and it tells us exactly how A. S. Byatt would like us to read her novel. Above all, we shouldn't quibble if Possession dares to stray a few steps away from reality, this epigraph tells us. After all, the novel is working with very different aims in mind.
Possession's second epigraph is an excerpt from Robert Browning's 1864 poem "Mr. Sludge, 'The Medium'," which appears in his collection Dramatis Personae. This clever excerpt from "Mr. Sludge" does at least two crucial things for Possession.
First, it draws a connection between poets and novelists and nineteenth-century spiritualist mediums (R. H. Ash would say "swindlers"). Browning's Mr. Sludge is basically saying: If it's true that I lie, how are my lies any different from or any worse than the lies of those storytellers who claim to tell us truths about the past? Since Possession itself is a historical novel that presents its readers with a vision of nineteenth-century England, Byatt's nod to Mr. Sludge's "lying" adds a touch of self-deprecating irony to the book.
Second, the epigraph foreshadows the appearance of Randolph Henry Ash's similarly anti-spiritualist poem Mummy Possest. As it does, it draws our attention to the likelihood that Robert Browning is one of the real-world models for R. H. Ash, and it prompts us to keep our eyes peeled for other allusions, echoes, and correspondences throughout the text.