Possession: I Think She Wrote My Diary

"The strangest thing about jeallousy is that it can populate an entire city -the whole world- with a person you may never have met." (Ernaux 15)

I have to say that I underestimated Possession. To begin with, I made a poor judgment based on its volume. I thought that a book of 68 pages cannot possibly contain anything too strong in flavor, however, I was ridiculously wrong. The book, though without explicit chapters and corresponding titles, grabbed my attention on its very first page. It is remarkable to see how I am not the only person in the world who likes to contemplate writing something that would only be discovered after their passing away. I was captured by this echo, before I was -to some extent- shocked by the blatant expression of the narrator wanting to grab her partner's cock. 

I like the novel because of its rhetoric. Ernaux employs a language that appears to me very intimate. She does not hesitate in using delicious metaphors. For example: "I was an echo chamber of all pain everywhere (Ernaux 18)." She also does not hesitate in using phrases like "I felt" and "I was". That being said, this is an extremely intimate account of one's first hand experiences of jealousy and obsession. It gives me a sensation that is so poetic and irrational here and there, just like the random trail of thoughts that humans can engage in when they ruminate and contemplate. For the rest of the time, this novel also reads diagnostic. It is like a patient's journal of self-reflection, only this type of pain and suffereing that jealousy encompasses are not officially logged and named in any of the contemporary medical encyclopedias. Ernaux could be the first author who have done it with such provoking details. 

To me, Possession is successful and powerful because it feels real. It makes me relate to it. It creates an echo in me that digs up ancient memories from teenage years when I was had my own obsessions about my intimate relationships. I guess possesion in this novel can be analyzed in three levels. The first being the most literal, of wanting to re-take possession of her lover. The second being central to the content of this narrative, a woman taken over -in other words, possessed- by her jealousy and thus the relentless imagination of another woman. The third, I guess, is the process of universal possession of jealousy in everyone's heart. For it is a state that is so easily relatable and captivating. As written in the book: "to which I was both prey and spectator (61)."

So, maybe this novel can be given a nickname, The Universal Handbook for Jealousy?

I think part of the anonymity we observe in the novel also serves to enhance the universality of its content and its intended goal. When a person is jealous, their perception of the whole world can be so distorted that names and titles would lose their significance. I am in love with my M. So I do not care if it is J. or K. that is with M. today, I hate all of them. Jealous is a gun that shoots often too wildly. Once you lay your fingertip on its trigger, everyone is guilty, and pleading an excecution from your deathly touch. It is worth noting what a wonderful job Ernaux did in depicting the imagination, investigation and rumination that are all parts of being jealous. The metaphors she deploys and the syntax she creates go hand in hand. They are vivid, touchable, meaningful and credible. It fascinating, no matter how many times I say it, how easy it is for her language to echo with you. For example: "My talent for connecting the most disparate facts into a relation of cause and effect was prodigious (33)." Gosh, I have done that no less than a million times...

Morever, I love how Ernaux portrayed the state of jealousy in a way that it almost feels like a priviledge. And to my surprise, I related to that part as well. Being able to devote oneself to the seemingly endless abyss of jealousy and allowing oneself to sink deep in its turbulences is a kind of luxury. Because unfortunately, being sad takes time, and time is money. Yet it pleases me to read a protagonist who is at a place where she can -and is capable of being- spend time and sit with her suffering, because she has the social status of doing so. That to me, may be read as an elegant personal choice. That jealousy can be reclaimed by a woman, not out of necesity or compulsion, societal pressure or stereotipical projection, but out of choice.

The question left to be asked for me is: Can this novel be read as a story of a woman's growth? Or, does it in some way emphasize the stereotypical impression that it is only female beings who are so susceptible to the capital sin of jealousy? Or, does it intend to breaking down this stereotypical impression by voicing it out with a female narrator, who explicitly writes that the words floating on these pages -as they are being read now- are no longer her jealousy? 

I look forward very much to discussing this novel with you all this Friday!

A song to go with the novel: