Possession

by A.S. Byatt

“I wrote a paper on Victorian women’s imagination of space. Marginal Beings and Liminal Poetry. About agoraphobia and claustrophobia and the paradoxical desire to be let out into unconfined space, the wild moorland, the open ground, and at the same time to be closed into tighter and tighter impenetrable small spaces—like Emily Dickinson’s voluntary confinement, like the Sibyl’s jar.” “Like Ash’s Sorceress in her In-Pace.” “That’s different. He’s punishing her for her beauty and what he thought of as her wickedness.” “No, he isn’t. He’s writing about the people, including herself, who thought she ought to be punished because of her beauty and wickedness. She colluded with their judgment. He doesn’t. He leaves it to our intelligence.” A disputatious look crossed Maud’s face, but all she said was “And you? Why do you work on Ash?”