Christabel's poems are fascinating, partly for their mythic quality, but particularly because they are concerned with her experiences as a woman in Victorian society. Christabel's emotional inhibitions and wariness are reflected in Maud. Both women are identified with fairytale figures who live in towers - the fairy Melusina, and Maud with Rapunzel. The fairytale motifs with which they are associated signify their emotional defensiveness and mistrust, which they both eventually overcome through the experience of love. Possession is a sumptuous novel in which many threads of story are slowly interlaced to form the rich fabric of Christabel's and Randolph's romance, which is set within the story of Maud's and Roland's romance, a romance which unfolds through their literary search for the truth about Christabel and Randolph.
Possession is an enthralling, entrancing and eminently readable tale of love and literature.