The very title of A. S. Byatt’s novel suggests a central tension between ownership and understanding, a conflict the narrative locates squarely in the world of modern literary scholarship. Through the competing ambitions of its academic characters, Possession argues that the scholarly pursuit of the past often devolves into a destructive form of intellectual appropriation, where historical figures are reduced to commodities and their lives mined for career-advancing data. This sterile, competitive form of “possession” is embodied most extremely by the American collector Mortimer Cropper, whose methods stand in sharp contrast to the empathetic, imaginative engagement that the novel ultimately champions. While Roland Michell’s quest begins with his own act of appropriation, his journey with Maud Bailey evolves into a different kind of relationship with the past, one that seeks connection rather than mere ownership.

The most rapacious form of academic possession is personified by Mortimer Cropper, a biographer who treats Randolph Henry Ash as a set of artifacts to be acquired for his collection. Cropper’s ambition is to physically own every object Ash touched, from his watch to the desk depicted in the Manet portrait, creating a sterile reconstruction in the Stant Collection. His philosophy is one of tangible ownership, a belief that he can possess history by holding it “in [his] hand” (112). This desire for physical control reaches its logical and grotesque conclusion in his plan to rob Ash’s grave. Driven by the need to acquire a box of letters Ellen Ash buried with her husband, Cropper is willing to commit an act of desecration, demonstrating that his obsession is focused on the hoarding of relics. For Cropper, the past is a finite resource to be captured, catalogued, and locked away under his exclusive control.

This possessive impulse, while perfected by Cropper, infects the entire academic enterprise. The field is defined by institutional rivalry, such as the competition between Professor Blackadder’s London-based “Ash Factory” and Cropper’s well-funded American collection. Blackadder is consumed by the fear that Cropper will spirit away manuscripts from the British Library, framing the pursuit of knowledge as a zero-sum territorial battle. This possessiveness extends to the realm of ideas, as scholars seek to “own” authors by fitting them into their preferred theoretical frameworks. Fergus Wolff sees the poets as material for a deconstructive paper, while Leonora Stern attempts to claim Christabel LaMotte for a specific feminist agenda. Even Roland Michell, the novel’s protagonist, begins his journey with an illicit act of possession: He steals Ash’s draft letters from the London Library, driven by a desire to have this discovery for himself. These actions show a scholarly world more interested in claiming ownership of texts, authors, and theories than in genuine understanding of their research subjects.

However, the novel proposes an alternative through the evolving quest of Roland and Maud. Though it begins with theft, their secret collaboration shifts from a professional hunt for evidence to an emotional and imaginative engagement with the human story of Ash and LaMotte. They are driven by a powerful “narrative curiosity” to learn what happened to the poets. Their journey becomes a dialogue with the past, rather than a dissection of it. Unlike Cropper, they seek to listen to the dead, instead of possessing them. This empathetic approach allows them to connect with the emotional reality of the poets’ lives, culminating in their own romance. In this way, the novel suggests that the only meaningful way to “possess” the past is to allow it to possess the reader, through an act of imaginative sympathy that transcends the cold acquisition of facts.