Fiction

I’m currently enjoying something of a Trollope Fest. This is a rather indulgent activity, as really I should be focusing on some women novelists. In my defence, I was reliably informed that The Vicar of Bullhampton was inspired by Trollope’s interest in the Woman Question. An unexpected dip in her friend’s pond brings Mary Lowther to her senses, and she realises she cannot marry a man she doesn’t love. Although she is adamant, those closest to her conspire to change her mind and they ultimately come to regret it. This is one strand to the novel and, in my opinion, the least successful. Trollope did a much better job in Miss Mackenzie and Can You Forgive Her?, where he considered whether a woman should marry out of a sense of duty. Rachel Ray also saw a far more nuanced examination of the Woman Question. The authorial voice, reflecting, I assume, the opinion of Trollope, decrees that marriage is a woman’s inexorable destiny and she should not fight it. If only they (and also men) came to accept the fact, then life would proceed more smoothly for everyone. The novel was published in 1870, by which time other writers were highlighting the plight of the “surplus” women, for whom marriage was an unlikely prospect. It’s odd that Trollope appears to have taken a retrograde step, unless it was a personal backlash against his own earlier liberalism. ...

In writing Miss Mackenzie (1865), Trollope was attempting to “prove that a novel may be produced without any love,” but later admitted in his autobiography that the attempt “breaks down before the conclusion”. Margaret Mackenzie is an unlikely heroine, being both plain and middle-aged.1 I shall overlook the fact that at 34 she is described as being clearly past her best. After many years lodging with an older brother and nursing him through his illness, Miss Mackenzie finds herself the beneficiary of a £12,000 legacy. This sum produces a not inconsiderable income of £800 per annum, and she is suddenly a valuable commodity, rather than an encumbrance. Her other, impecunious, brother expects her to move in with him and his large family, seeing himself as more deserving of the fortune. Margaret instead moves herself to Littlebath, a fictional watering-place in the West Country, and establishes a life of her own. ...

According to P D Edward’s introduction, Trollope sent a copy of Rachel Ray to George Eliot, wondering what she would think of his “little story”. History does not tell us her response, but I suspect she would have enjoyed it, as it is not unlike her own Scenes of Clerical Life. He tried to confine himself to the “commonest details of commonplace life” but this anything but a dull novel. ...

Cousin Henry (1880) is something of a rarity amongst Trollope’s novels in that it’s fairly short. Despite its brevity, it manages to include one of the most interesting character studies I’ve encountered in Victorian fiction. Henry Jones inherits his uncle’s estates and conceals the knowledge that another will had been made, this time leaving them to his cousin Isabel Brodrick. His guilty conscience means that he is unable to enjoy his new-found wealth and he becomes increasingly bitter and reclusive. The presence of the legal will torments him, but his weakness of character prevents him from destroying it. ...