Identity and Identity Construction in A.S. Byatt's Possession

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,3, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Hauptseminar Neovictorianism, language: English, abstract: Index 1.Introduction....................................................................................2 2.Concepts of Identity...........................................................................3 2.1. Freud/Lacan..............................................................................4 2.2. Derrida - Poststructuralism............................................................5 3. On the way to self-fulfillment- Identity and Identity construction 3.1. Factors influencing Identity construction ...........................................6 3.1.1. Gender...................................................................................6 3.1.1.1. Christabel LaMotte - poetess within the Victorian Era........................6 3.1.1.2. Maud Bailey - Feminist lecturer in the 20th century............................8 3.1.2. Relationality............................................................................9 3.1.3. Social environment..................................................................10 3.2. Self-perception 3.2.1. Roland Mitchell - identification through others.................................11 3.2.2. Maud Bailey - white coolness.....................................................12 4. Love as the impulse to self-fulfillment....................................................13 4.1. Self-preservation instead of love.....................................................15 4.2. Self-fulfillment through the experience of love......................................17 4. Conclusion......................................................................................19 5. Bibliography...................................................................................20 1. Introduction Possession: A Romance, first published in 1990 marked a turning point in A.S.Byatt's career, with its ability to not only attract a small specialized audience but crossing over and lodging in the popular imagination. Although the author had been writing for almost three decades and her highly literary and intelligent style was well... 2. Theoretical background 2.1. Concepts of Identity '[...] who am I?'( Possession, p.251) are the pondering thoughts of the academic Maud Bailey, the main female Protagonists-maybe the most common question that arises when oneself is reflecting about himself. At the same time this question implies a longing for identity, which is the key theme of the novel discussed in this paper. Possession can be read as a double quest for identity since the protagonists' search for their biographical subjects, the Victorian poets H.R. Ash and C. LaMotte, is closely connected to their own search for themselves. However the term identity is a concept which offers various interpretations so that it firstly will be defined by reference to different point of views: the autonomous self by definition of René Decartes, the Freudian approach, developed further by Jacques Lacan and the deconstructionist view of Jacques Derrida.