Written in about 1925, Possession travels territory already covered in Bromfield's first novel, The Green Bay Tree. In that story, a minor character, Ellen, is helped out by the novel's heroine, Lily, who lets Ellen stay with her in Paris while Ellen studies piano. In the second novel, Possession, Bromfield looks more closely at Ellen and follows her life and her struggle to remain in control of her own destiny.
Hailing from the same home town as the beautiful and wealthy Lily, Ellen is a poor relation of Lily's. But Ellen also a very gifted pianist whose driving ambition is to leave her home town forever and establish herself as a famous pianist, known throughout Europe and the USA. Even though Ellen has very rich relatives, for some reason, they decline to help her continue her training. Ellen has surpassed her teachers and needs to go to New York and Paris to finetune her craft. The only way she can find to escape is by a hasty marriage to a chance-met fellow from New York. After she is married, she realizes that her new husband truly loves her, a feeling that she does not reciprocate. Instead, she becomes enamored of Richard Callendar, who is passionate, desolute, wealthy and exotic, everything Ellen's husband is not. Knowing her husband's devotion to her, Ellen declines Callendar's attentions, finding she just can't inflict such a terrible wound on her loving but weak husband. Callendar, in a fit of pique, marries Sabine Cane, an old friend. Then Ellen's husband dies and she is free to go to Paris, to Lily and also to where Callendar and his new wife have settled.
Ellen is a cold-blooded character. She is so obsessed with her career and her ambitions that it is hard to like her. The way she used her poor husband was really not attractive. I didn't really care about Ellen. Later on, when she reunites with Callendar and discovers just how depraved he is, she only gets what she deserves.
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