Orley Farm: Anthony Trollope

[poliphilo]

A young woman who has been treated as a sex toy and chattel by her elderly husband urges him to leave some property to their infant son and when he refuses forges a codicil to his will. Twenty years later evidence of her guilt emerges and the matter is raked over for 400 closely printed pages and people say things like "She's so beautiful she must be innocent" and "One must forgive her because that's what Jesus would have done" but nobody- not once- not even the woman herself- ever suggests she was justified in what she did and that it's the system that's wicked and needs smashing.

I find it frustrating. And it's just possible that Trollope- sly dog that he is- wants me to feel that way.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I suspect that Trollope probably did want you to feel the injustice of it all. But he had to stick to the conventions and appear to uphold the status quote whilst also subtly attacking it. It's like Jo's marriage in Little Women. I have never met a reader who felt it was right, and Louisa M Alcott must have felt the same because she is on record as saying that she had no choice but to provide the regulation "happy ending" required by the publisher.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think you could well be right.

I sometimes think Trollope must be raging at the moral imbecility of his characters- but if he is he's keeping his anger wonderfully under control.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I just finished Barchester Towers and am trying to decide whether to go on to Thorpe Farm or back to the Palliser novels. I like the idea of a character named Plantagenet Palliser.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You mean Dr Thorne?

Personally I think Dr Thorne is one of the weaker novels.
Ditto Framley Parsonage (I had to pick it off the shelf just now and riffle through it to remind myself what is is all about.) The series picks up with The Small House at Allington and The Last Chronicle of Barset- which are excellent- and essentially one novel in two parts.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Yes, Dr Thorne.