Anthony Trollope Archives - Victorian Secrets

Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope (1864)

March 18, 2012 By Catherine Pope

Stephen King once rudely referred to the first Palliser novel as Can You Finish It? It’s certainly true that Trollope wasn’t known for his brevity, and this handsome new OUP edition of Can You Forgive Her? is 700 pages long. However, Trollope grapples with an ambitious range of political and social themes and, in so doing, presents a compelling and provocative narrative.

The central question raised is ‘What should a woman do with her life?’ and it is examined through expertly-drawn characters who all make very different choices. Alice Vavasor is a young woman with an independent fortune who has ended up engaged to a stuffed shirt by the name of John Grey. Although eminently respectable, Grey (as his name suggests) is interested mainly in propriety and is ill-suited to a wife who seems likely to prove a handful. Alice’s cousin and quondam lover George predicts: “He’d make an upper servant of her; very respectable, no doubt, but still only an upper servant.”

George Vavasor is the antithesis of John Grey: he lives for excitement, caring little for respectability. His financial speculations go disastrously wrong, he is disinherited by his grandfather, and he even assaults his loyal sister, Kate. George’s reckless behaviour prompted Alice to break their earlier engagement, but Kate is now determined that they should be reunited. Her motive is two-pronged: George needs Alice’s money in order to fulfil his parliamentary aspirations, and Kate wants a closer union with Alice.

As Dinah Birch discusses in her excellent introduction to this edition, Trollope hints at the idea of female marriage, with Kate effectively pursuing the courtship of Alice on her brother’s behalf. “Oh, heavens! how I envy him!”, she says when she imagines George caressing Alice. This unusual triangulation leads to a more equal marriage, with George referring to Alice as his “partner” and “a dear friend bearing the same name”. In marrying George, Alice is not obliged to change her name, thereby retaining her own identity, which otherwise would have been subsumed into that of her husband.

The plot concerning Alice has become rather overshadowed by the introduction elsewhere of two of Trollope’s most famous characters: Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser. We see Glencora as a wealthy young heiress, stultified by her arranged marriage with an austere and serious-minded husband. She is distracted by the dubious charms of the ne’er do well Burgo Fitzgerald and comes within a gnat’s whisker of breaking her wedding vows. The prospect of losing his wife to a bad ‘un rouses Palliser from his stupor and the planned elopement is foiled in a dramatic ballroom scene. Glencora “had been counselled that it was not fitting for her to love as she had thought to love, and she had resolved to give up her dream.” Essentially, she receives an early lesson in the sexual double standard. Whereas George Vavasor is able to maintain a mistress and visit prostitutes, a young woman must accept that her life is circumscribed.

Trollope’s answer to the question “what should a woman do with her life?” is “marry and have children”. There’s no other option, so they should simply stop mithering and get on with it. As Dinah Birch writes in the introduction, “In Trollope’s view, Alice’s suffering is rooted in her persistent indecision, not in the limited choices available to her.” Although she strives to resist her fate, Trollope is careful not to make her one of those pesky feminists: she was “not so far advanced as to think that women should be lawyers and doctors.” As such, her struggle is futile, as she gives no serious consideration to anything other than the status quo.

Although Trollope’s conclusion is, as ever, morally conservative, he does allow his heroines some feelings along the way. Female chastity is shown to be a matter of resistance, rather than an innate quality. He also shows through George the disastrous consequences of men being given too much liberty. His handling of relationship dynamics is incredible and his portrayal of Lady Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser’s marriage is genuinely moving, setting a keynote for the rest of the series of novels.

Yes, it’s a long book, but one in which the reader can become utterly absorbed, luxuriating in Trollope’s exquisitely-imagined world.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

January 22, 2011 By Catherine Pope

Cover of Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope Although readers often struggle with The Warden, their efforts are amply rewarded by Barchester Towers (1857), the next novel in the Barset Chronicles. The story begins with the death of the Bishop, followed by a great deal of manoeuvering amongst those who seek to fill the much-coveted position. The triumphant candidate is Thomas Proudie, although it is his wife who wears the cassock in their household. Mrs Proudie – the “Medea of Barchester” – is perhaps Trollope’s most famous character and one of his finest comic creations. The plot mainly concerns her battles with the ambitious and oleaginous Obadiah Slope, who is determined to bend the Bishop to his will. The confrontations between Mrs Proudie and Slope are brilliantly drawn and sublimely funny. Bishop Proudie himself is a study in inertia and simply defers to whichever of the two rivals happens to be in the ascendant.

Not content with seeking political advantage, Slope also resolves to secure for himself an advantageous marriage, having no mean opinion of his appeal to the opposite sex. He has his evil eye on Eleanor Bold, the recently widowed and wealthy daughter of Septimus Hardy, but is distracted by the specious charms of Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni. Although permanently crippled by her estranged husband, Madeline proves irresistible to the men of Barchester, much to the disgust of their womenfolk, and uses her power to deadly and comic effect. Slope is no match for her, or indeed for any of the other formidable women he attempts to conquer. It takes a hard slap in the face from Eleanor to convince him that his attentions are unwelcome.

Eleanor Bold is one of Trollope’s strongest female characters. Independently wealthy, she is “fair game to be hunted down by hungry gentlemen”, but bats them away vigorously, refusing to accept that she should be grateful for proposals from importunate suitors. Eleanor shows dignity, courage, and spirit beyond that permitted to many Victorian heroines. It is unfortunate, therefore, that Trollope ultimately reduces her to wifely submission when she finally does remarry:

She has found the strong shield that should guard her from all wrongs, the trusty pilot that should henceforward guide her through the shoals and rocks. She would give up the heavy burden of her independence, and once more assume the position of a woman and the duties of a trusting and loving wife.

Possibly Trollope lost his nerve and decided that leaving Eleanor independent and happy at the novel’s conclusion would create an alarming precedent.

His portrayal of Madeline remains radical, however. There are relatively few clear depictions of marital violence in nineteenth-century fiction, but Trollope makes little attempt to obfuscate Madeline’s sufferings:

She had fallen, she said, in ascending a ruin, and had fatally injured the sinews of her knee; so fatally that when she stood, she lost eight inches of her accustomed height; so fatally that when she essayed to move, she could only drag herself painfully along, with protruded hip and extended foot, in a manner less graceful than that of a hunchback. She had consequently made up her mind, once and forever, than she would never stand and never attempt to move herself. Stories were not slow to follow her, averring that she had been cruelly ill-used by Neroni, and that to his violence had she owed her accident.

Trollope’s handling of such a harrowing issue could easily weigh down the entire narrative, but he undercuts the tragedy with the ludicrous reactions of the other female characters to this exotic creature:

“But you say she has only got one leg!”
“She is as full of mischief as tho’ she had ten. Look at her eyes, Lady De Courcy. Did you ever see such eyes in a decent woman’s head?”

Some of the humour elsewhere is perhaps unintentional, the following innuendo-laden scene a good case in point:

Here to her great delight she found Harry Greenacre ready mounted, with his pole in his hand …
“Shall I begin, ma’am?” said Harry, fingering his long staff in a rather awkward way.”

Maybe I’m just being smutty, but Trollope is not averse to the occasional double entendre in his other fiction.
Barchester Towers manages to be entertaining, incisive and provocative, and is representative of Trollope’s talents and range. It lacks a strong narrative arc, but with such superb characters and scenes, it is hardly necessary. In his Autobiography, Trollope wrote: “In the writing of Barchester Towers I took great delight.” His delight is evident on every page.

The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope

January 7, 2011 By Catherine Pope

Cover of The Fixed Period by Anthony Trollope The futuristic utopia depicted in The Fixed Period (1882) is a radical and unexpected departure for Anthony Trollope. Imagine Thomas Pynchon writing a chick lit novel, or Maeve Binchy turning her hand to slash fiction. It’s a radical departure for me, too, as essentially I’ve been tricked into reading science fiction. The story is set in 1980 in the fictional republic of Britannula, created when a group of ex-pats occupy the South Island of New Zealand and claim independence from Great Britain. The 25,000-strong community is led by President John Neverbend, who almost bursts with his own self-importance and civic pride.

The tiny nation is initially peaceful and well-ordered, serving as a model democracy. However, disharmony prevails when President Neverbend introduces his pet theory of the Fixed Period. Concerned that people should not be allowed to outlive their usefulness, he introduces a programme of mandatory euthanasia for anyone reaching the age of 67 and a half. His fellow legislators initially agree with the plan, although with an attendant degree of unease. The trouble comes when the first man to be “deposited”, Gabriel Caswaller, mounts a spirited defence, and his popularity in the community means that he is also able to rouse popular support. Neverbend is appalled that his carefully-planned scheme could fall at the first hurdle, and is completely intransigent. His difficulties are compounded by the fact that is own son has fallen in love with Caswaller’s daughter. Nevertheless, he perseveres with his extraordinary policy and is stopped only by a dramatic deus ex machina.

The Fixed Period is darkly comedic and one of Trollope’s most entertaining novels. He clearly enjoyed himself enormously coming up with inventions for the 1980s and imagining what life would be like. Although he doesn’t quite predict the ZX81 or Bananarama, he does suggest mobile telephony and a form of podcasting. The Britain from which Britannula has seceded is essentially the same, however, with a strong hereditary principle in politics and Gladstone’s great-grandson as Prime Minister. The character of President Neverbend is a fine creation, as is his wife, Sarah, who pricks his pomposity with Mrs Caudle-style lectures.

Contemporary reviewers weren’t quite sure what to make of The Fixed Period, and the Times described it as “essentially ghastly”. It’s difficult to know whether Trollope seriously supported the idea of euthanasia, voluntary or otherwise. In a curious twist of fate, however, he died not long after the novel was published, at the age of 67 and a half.

Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World by Stephanie J. Snow

December 12, 2010 By Catherine Pope

I hadn’t given much thought to anaesthesia until I read a biography of the writer Fanny Burney, who in 1811 underwent a mastectomy while fully conscious. Extraordinarily she survived, living until the ripe old age of 87. Burney’s is one of the many stories told by Stephanie Snow in Blessed Days of Anaesthesia, in which she charts the discovery and development of anaesthesia.

The story begins in 1844 with Horace Wells, an American dentist who discovered that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) could eliminate pain during dental surgery. Unfortunately, his major public demonstration went wrong, leaving his patient squeaking and Wells’ reputation in tatters. The ignominy was too much for him and he later committed suicide.

It was left to others to exploit and capitalise on this exciting new possibility. Another American dentist, William Thomas Green Morton, successfully established ether as the anaesthetic of choice, and there was an unseemly struggle amongst his peers to patent the procedure and therefore maximise its earning potential. Meanwhile, it was the physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes who came up with the term “anaesthesia” to describe the remarkable effect of ether on the body.

This groundbreaking discovery soon crossed the Atlantic, although the initial reaction was mixed. It was John Snow, more famous for his work in identifying the causes of cholera, who seized upon the possibilities of ether, employing it in his surgical work and meticulously recording the results. He soon developed an inhaler to replace the rather low-tech hanky method. The trick was to control the inhalation of the ether so that the body would be anaesthetised without impairing any core functions.

Although some doctors were not convinced by this new discovery, others quickly grasped its potential. An Edinburgh physician, Dr James Mathews, successfully experimented with chloroform, which rapidly overtook ether as news of its benefits spread. Not all patients responded well to the new drug and there were tragic casualties along the way. Mind you, it must be said that nineteenth-century surgery was a risky business in any case. John Snow, however, suffered only one chloroform fatality out of more than 4,500 procedures.

Patrick Brontë was one of the early supporters of anaesthesia. Having undergone painful cataract surgery in 1847, he could well imagine that the elimination of pain would be a great boon to humanity. His daughter Charlotte’s immediate response to ether was that she would have her front teeth “extracted and rearranged” (anyone else for nineteenth-century orthodontics?) Others were more distrustful of anaesthesia, believing pain to be an important bodily response and necessary to the preservation of life force. Needless to say, it was mainly women who were expected to suffer. An obvious application of the new wonder drug would be to alleviate suffering during childbirth, but not everyone believed this to be a Good Thing. Zealous Christians and traditionalists though women should suffer to atone for Eve’s sin, and any attempt to mitigate the pain would allow them to get off far too lightly.
Religious scruples, therefore, stood in the way of many women benefiting in the early days of anaesthesia. Some men, unwilling to watch their wives suffer, pushed themselves into the vanguard of medical science. Charles Dickens, not generally credited with being a good husband, insisted, in the face of considerable medical opposition, that Kate should be given chloroform in 1848. In 1850, Charles Darwin administered the drug to his wife with a hanky after she begged for relief.

Queen Victoria was the most famous recipient of chloroform. She has a history of difficult births and was becoming increasingly distressed during the weeks leading up to Prince Leopold’s birth. His impressive record in anaesthesia meant that John Snow was appointed the diminutive monarch’s anaesthetist. The controversy surrounding this treatment meant that any hint of chloroform had to be suppressed, although rumours abounded. The medical establishment, represented by The Lancet, condemned the use of anaesthesia in childbirth as irresponsible, and the Queen could not be seen publicly as having taken the ‘easy option’. Unsurprisingly, however, Snow was thereafter in high demand, and he earned the eternal gratitude of many women. Sadly, Snow died in 1858, aged only 45 years, but his legacy endured, and his principles of anaesthesia are still recognised today.

Of course, there was also a dark side to chloroform. Excitable Daily Mail-style editorials reported on helpless victims rendered instantaneously insensible by baddies with chloroform-soaked hankies. Some people eyed the opportunity of explaining their way out of tricky situations: a solicitor discovered naked in a locked bedroom claimed to have been overpowered by a pair of chloroform-wielding female burglars. Arthur Conan Doyle fully exploited the narrative possibilities of the drug in his Sherlock Holmes stories, and Anthony Trollope used chloroform for his dystopic vision of enforced euthanasia in The Fixed Period.

One of the many joys of Snow’s book is her interweaving of medical and social history with literature. In a relatively short account, she manages to embrace a wealth of fascinating detail without ever overloading the reader. Furthermore, the balanced is pitched just right for the non-expert: Snow doesn’t presuppose detailed medical knowledge, but neither does she feel the need to explain the obvious. The book is also mercifully free of the breathless narrative style favoured by many current writers of popular science. The Blessed Days of Anaethesia is an important and absorbing contribution to our understanding of a remarkable medical advance that is so often taken for granted. I just wish it had been available to poor Fanny Burney.

Blessed Days of Anaesthesia: How Anaesthetics Changed the World by Stephanie J. Snow