Doctor Thorne (1858) is the third in the Barsetshire Chronicles and became Trollope’s most successful novel. It must surely have been a source of annoyance to him, therefore, that the sensational plot was the brainchild of his brother, Tom. Whereas the two previous chronicles (The Warden and Barchester Towers) focus on characterisation and are mainly episodic, Dr Thorne features a strong narrative arc, employing many of the techniques of the sensation novel, which was poised to become the dominant literary genre of the following decade.
The story beings strikingly with the dissolute Henry Thorne drugging and raping young Mary Scatcherd. Her brother Roger, then the local stonemason, murders her seducer and is sent to prison. Meanwhile, Mary gives birth to an illegitimate child, also called Mary, and a former sweetheart agrees to marry her and emigrate to America if she relinquishes the evidence of her misfortune. Henry’s bachelor brother, Dr Thomas Thorne, decides to adopt baby Mary and bring her up as his own, telling Roger that she had died. He is keen that Roger should be able to start a new life after serving his sentence, and not be reminded of the past. Roger becomes a successful railway contractor and inordinately wealthy, achievements recognised in a knighthood for service to Empire.
Mary grows to be an attractive and intelligent woman, and attracts the attentions of the squire’s son, Frank Gresham. His love for her is reciprocated, but his father’s financial incompetence means that Frank is obliged to marry for money. He moves in circles where “instead of heart beating to heart in sympathetic unison, purse chinks to purse.” When Frank’s family become aware of his determination to make the penniless and illegitimate Mary his wife, they embark upon concerted efforts to impugn her origins, and try to coerce him into courting the wealthy heiress Martha Dunstable.
Dr Thorne is aware that his niece has a wealthy uncle, whose love of brandy means he is not long for this world. His son Louis, with a fondness for liqueurs, is destined for a similar fate, so Sir Roger’s immense fortune is likely to fall to the eldest child of his sister. Dr Thorne is placed in a difficult dilemma: should he reveal Mary’s potential wealth, or keep quiet to ensure that Frank marries her for the right reasons?
Trollope was criticised for making a country doctor the hero of the story (doctors were considered little better than trade at the time), but it is his professional position that makes him uniquely placed to enter the homes of all classes and to gain their confidence. Dr Thorne is pompous, but extremely endearing in his earnest desire to do the right thing. His sagacity and quiet wit are reminiscent of the Vicar of Bullhampton, as is his ability to put principle before public opinion. His niece Mary is also brilliantly drawn. Her true and constant love for Frank Gresham is contrasted with the machinations of those higher up the social scale who seek to marry for political or material advantage. She is looked down upon for her illegitimate birth, but behaves far better than her supposed “superiors”. She asks herself:
“What makes a gentleman? What makes a gentlewoman? What is the inner reality, the spiritualized quintessence of that privilege in the world which men call rank, which forces the thousand and hundreds of thousands to bow down before the few elect? What gives, or can give it, or should give it?”
Whilst sensitive to the delicate feelings of Frank’s family, Mary refuses to prostrate herself in acknowledgement of her inferiority:
“If I humble myself very low; if I kneel through the whole evening in a corner; if I put my neck down and let all your cousins trample on it, and then your aunt, would not that make atonement? I would not object to wearing sackcloth, either; and I’d eat a little ashes – or, at any rate, I’d try.”
Although Trollope is a redoubtable champion of the lowly Mary, he is relentlessly harsh on those elevated beyond their appointed station in life. His evocative, and often uncomfortable, descriptions of Scatcherd Pere and Fils’ descent into alcoholism borders on the literary realism later credited to the likes of George Gissing and George Moore.
Doctor Thorne lacks the comic delights of Barchester Towers, but it is a more ambitious and powerful novel, offering a showcase of Trollope’s talents as sensationalist, realist and delineator of character. The conclusion is ultimately conservative, but throughout the narrative Trollope engages with radical ideas and difficult subjects, making the novel one of his greatest achievements.
Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope