Although the success of the Jalna novels has tended to overshadow [de la Roche's] earlier works, they represent some of [her] most interesting writing and suggest the principal characteristics of all her work and the nature of her contribution to the development of the Canadian novel. At a time when Canadian fiction was dominated by historical novels and sentimental stories of village and rural life, de la Roche challenged the code of conduct associated with Victorian morality and dramatized the tension between instinct and convention. Possession, her first and in many respects one of her most successful novels, reveals her efforts to turn away from the typical local colour story and to temper the essentially pleasant world of escape with realism.

Possession is a mixture of elements of the romance and the novel. On the one hand, the lively and convincing presentation of highly individualistic characters, the immediacy...