The purpose of the essay is to discuss the power narration has over our gender roles. John Fiske and Pierre Bourdieu´s theoretical texts have been used to discuss the connection between power and culture in A.S. Byatt’s novel Possession: A Romance. Possession demonstrates how male academics take part in shaping knowledge about the past and the present from their perspective. Byatt uses allusions to myth and folktales to emphasise both the romance theme of the novel and how the past has formed us and continues to affect us in our relationships and social roles. The novel reveals how women are trapped by cultural myths about women’s roles in society. The female characters’ fates demonstrate the complexity of heterosexual relationships for independent women in a society where women are supposed to be taken care of by men. The roles imposed on women in romance stories in particular can be seen as a reductionist patriarchal view of women. Byatt emphasizes how women who at varying levels do not collaborate with men are punished for their chosen lifestyles and how some, like homosexual women, have been removed or have chosen to remove themselves from society in different ways. Byatt attempts to demythologize social myths concerning women and men by rewriting traditional myths and fairy tales. Still, Possession does not ultimately challenge the importance of the heterosexual relationship or the male and female characters’ gender roles.

According to Scripture God created human beings "in our image, after our likeness". The likeness used to be conceived in terms of the rational nature human beings possess. Modern thought has come to conceive of the likeness rather in terms of being person, who receives her identity in relationships from others and at the same time mediates the others´ identity to them. The author presents the historical development of the concept of person as well as selected contemporary approaches, which she evaluates in light of the personal life of the Triune God as it is witnessed in Scripture and incessantly communicated in the liturgy of the church. She also presents ways of conceiving of created personhood she has attained in this light. Created persons are created in order to receive divine self-communication and to be able to participate in it, which they can in dependence on the one, who is the true revelator of God, as participation in his revelatory activity. By accepting their dependence, they become capable of acting freely through themselves and fulfill the task entrusted to them by creation.