How we cite our quotes: Possession: A Romance. London: Vintage Books, 1991.
Quote #7
For the last year perhaps I have been in love with another woman. I could say it was a sort of madness. A possession, as by daemons. A kind of blinding. At first it was only letters—and then—in Yorkshire—I was not alone.
When Randolph Henry Ash tells his wife, Ellen Ash, about his affair with Christabel LaMotte, he speaks of his love for Christabel as a kind of demonic possession. Luckily for us, it didn't involve any pea soup explosions or terrifying crab-walks down the stairs. But the point is that it is something inexplicable, at least partly beyond human control.
Quote #8
I have been so angry for so long—with all of us, with you, with Blanche, with my poor self. And now near the end 'in calm state of mind all passion spent' I think of you again with clear love. I have been reading Samson Agonistes and came upon the dragon I always thought you were—as I was the 'tame villatic fowl'—
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame
And as an evening dragon came
Assailant on the perched roosts
And rusts in order ranged
Of tame villatic fowl—Is not that fine? Did we not—did you not flame, and I catch fire? Shall we survive and rise from our ashes? Like Milton's Phoenix? (28.118-20)
In her final letter to Randolph Henry Ash, Christabel LaMotte describes the two of them as having been consumed and burned up in the fire of their love. What do you think, Shmoopers? Did their brief affair produce a phoenix in the end, or not?
Quote #9
When I feel—anything—I go cold all over. I freeze. I can't—speak out. I'm—I'm—not good at relationships. […] I feel as she did. I keep my defences up because I must go on doing my work. I know how she felt about her unbroken egg. Her self-possession, her autonomy. I don't want to think of that going. You understand? (28.168-77)
In their final scene together Maud Bailey tells Roland Mitchell why she shies away from romantic relationships. Like Christabel LaMotte, Maud is worried about losing her "self-possession," and about being perceived as someone else's "possession" instead.