“Legacy. What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see.” - Hamilton
Possession by A.S. Byatt is primarily about the secret relationship between the Victorian poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte. However, it is also about the legacy they’ve left behind and how legacies can change when digging into the past. Randolph Henry Ash’s legacy consists of the poetry he left behind, and the letters that he wrote to his wife and peers. History does not account for his relationship with LaMotte because much of their correspondence has either been burned or hidden by the two. The two protagonists of the book, Roland and Maud start searching and following the few breadcrumbs that may lead them to discovering what ‘actually’ happened.
Ash and LaMotte were defined by their fictional works - Ash was defined as the masculine example of the poetry writer and by contrast LaMotte is defined as more of a feminine inspired writer. Respectively, they both have a majority of same sex academics. For example Roland, Blackadder, and Cropper are all male academics or academic adjacent that are studying and pursuing information about Ash. The novel also tells us that there are currently only females studying LaMotte and there is much more attention given to the study of Ash’s work. The narrative seems to suggest that this is because of the sexism that can run through some academic institutions - pushing women towards more ‘feminine’ subjects, and pulling men towards more ‘masculine’ subjects.
Until Roland runs across the letter from the library there is no reason to reasonably suspect that Ash and LaMotte were connected. Roland’s own legacy is connected to this discovery. If he can manage to make a notable discovery about Ash then he can be recognized in the academic community. He would be able to write the paper that announced this discovery to academia. Maud has the same chance with LaMotte. The novel seems obsessed with the idea of how memory and legacy plays out. Memory is faulty, and no one can know what really happens but we can hope to retrieve an approximation of what the ‘truth’ may be.
The same could be said of Cropper. His fascination with Ash stems from his obsession with wanting and collecting the items of ‘legacy’ that Ash left behind. His point of view is that if you can possess items that a person has owned then you can absorb some simulacrum of them and truly understand them as a person. “My father, who suffered from what would now be called periods of clinical depression […] amused himself from time to time by allowing me to examine these treasures, to the cataloguing of which he devoted his more lucid days, somewhat unsuccessfully, since he could never establish any guiding principle as to how they should be ordered. […] 'Here, Morty, my boy,' he would say to me, 'here is History to hold in your hand.” (6.26). He wants to preserve and save objects of the past by possessing them.
Legacy, overall, is something that troubles the protagonists of the novel greatly. They each want to leave something behind that will mark the world as changed. However, your legacy is never told by you. Legacies are told by the ones who are left behind afterward.
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