Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2008

Hello:

I found this definition:
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possessiveness:
excessive desire to possess or dominate
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but it doesn't quite fit the "possessiveness" in last part, as it's IMO
difficult to assume the a "idea" has a "desire," except if personified.

Is the author talking about:

- the idea having a possessive control over them
or about
- them really possessing that idea, being imbued by it

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Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have
seen that charming and instructive sight--an upper middle-class family
in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed
the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and
properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only
delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In
plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family--no branch
of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom
existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy--evidence of that
mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit
of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature. He has been
admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood
something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the
rise and fall of nations.

....

Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of her
calm old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the family idea.

Forsyte Saga,  p. 4
By John Galsworthy
http://www.dailylit.com/books/forsyte-saga-1-man-of-property/1
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Thanks.
Marius Hancu