The first series of posts was written by the group when we read The Small House the second time beginning in March 2000:
From: Sigmund Eisner March 26, 2000
From: Sigmund Eisner Today is the day we are allowed our first comments about The Small House
at Allington, and I must say first off that it is a pleasure to get back
to one of Trollope's better novels, which The Fixed Period was not.
Trollope, of course is always a delight to read, but then The Small
House is more of a delight than some other Trollope novels.
In preparation for The Small House, I reread Sense and Sensibility.
No one can accuse Trollope of copying Austen; in fact no one can accuse
Trollope of copying any of the copious great literature which he read.
The Dales of the Small House and the Dashwoods have some points in
common, but these are surface points. Both families consist of a
widowed mother and two daughters. Both families live in houses donated
by a more affluent relative. All four daughters are single and nubile.
Both younger daughters become far too fond of a cad. These
similarities might lead some to think that the two novels are alike.
But they are not.
Austen turns her spotlight on the reactions of the elder daughter to the
vicissitudes of her family. We see most of the action through Elinor's
eyes. Although both Marianne and Lily will ultimately suffer
greviously, we see Marianne's misery mostly as Elinor sees it. We see
Lily's misery, when it comes, through other eyes. The peripheral
characters in these novels are totally unalike. The rich relatives in
S&S are mostly described as distant and humorous. Trollope takes the
peripheral relatives very seriously. Austen's humor is very funny,
especially when she describes characters whose own speech gives them
away, for instance, besides John Dashwood in S&S, Mrs. Elton in
Emma and Mr. Collins in P& P. Austen, when she wishes to be, can be
terribly unforgiving, and she often is with the Dashwoods, Eltons, and Collinses
of her novels. Trollope can describe a villain too, but we notice that
he is more tolerant toward the sins of Johnny Eames. In the long run,
Trollope's heroes and villains are more realistic than Austen's.
Let's take, for instance, Johnny Eames. We have only just met him, but
we are told he is a hobbledy hoy, which Trollope describes with a
Fielding-like affection. Anyone who is as much in love with Lily Dale,
as Johnny says he is, has no business trifling with Amelia Roper.
Johnny is much like Tom Jones in that regard. Fielding said something
to the effect that a single act no more marks a villain than does a part
in a play. Trollope takes that attitude too. A lifetime of wicked
deeds does indeed mark a villain, and Trollope does not hesitate to
paint such a portrait when the occasion rises. But Johnny Eames, like
Tom Jones or Joseph Andrewes, is a pretty good fellow. We can forgive
his trifling with Amelia Roper because we know he will never get really
serious about her, even though he has already given her to understand
that he intends to marry her. I don't think you ever meet a young man
like than in Austen.
All this means that Trollope is more realistic than is Austen, but then
all of us already knew that.
Sig
March 26, 2000
Re: The Small House at Allington, Chs 1-3: Landscapes, Houses,
Characters
I read Sig's commentary on the differences between Austen's and
Trollope's art and S&S and The Small House with real interest.
I like Sig's word, 'unforgiving'. Austen is more unforgiving than
Trollope; she is also not a realist in his way; she is a satirist, and
she shapes her narratives to make ironic and often harsh points.
Not only is there no one like Johnny Eames; there is no one like
Mrs Dale. Chapter 3 of this book is plangent. Trollope's grasp
of the yearning of the 40 year old mother for sexual and other
kinds of vivid exhilarating experiences, for adventure, challenge,
and her willingness to give all this up because 1) she can't
know it given her position; 2) loved her first husband intensely
and her girls now; 3) is deeply proud in the best ways is superb.
Mrs Dale cannot be fitted into a satiric perspective.
At the same time, I think the parallels are close and not superficial.
We have to wait until later to see them all: just now it is the 2
girls living in a relatives' house with the 40 year old mother;
Adolphus Crosbie and John Willoughby. At the opening of S&S
Austen sees Marianne from the outside, but as the book progresses
I would argue we see Marianne's experience from within, that
Elinor is a kind of doppelganger for Marianne, and the kind of
deep sympathy for Marianne's erotic enthrallment is rewritten in
the character of Lily Dale, with Belle playing the part of the
sensitive sensible prudent sister. Yes the emphasis is switched:
in Austen Elinor's consciousness is where we dwell, and in
The Small House, Lily, or the Marianne character is the
consciousness where we dwell.
I suggest to Angela that if she had time (she may not) she
reread S&S. I know she takes the train; if she didn't, I
would suggest trying to listen to Sarah Badel read aloud
dramatically S&S.
I too am much relieved to get back to Barsetshire. Not because
I thought _The Fixed Period_ was inferior. I think it's a gem,
a Swiftian satire with an intensely poignant autobiographical
subtext. However, it is not psychological art; there is a sense
in which _The Fixed Period_ is not a novel, but an anomalous
satire, which with a novelistic surface and roots (novels are
often autobiographies disguised) ...
I suggest to Angela that if she had time (she may not) she
reread S&S. I know she takes the train; if she didn't, I
would suggest trying to listen to Sarah Badel read aloud
dramatically S&S.
[The rest of this posting went on to talk about the first six chapters
of the book]
Cheers On that day Catherine Crean wrote happy we were reading The Small
House and Angela opened the following by referring to Catherine's
happiness:
From: "Angela Richardson" From: "Angela Richardson" As you say, Catherine, it will be splendid to discuss The Small House.
I've been thinking about Lily and Marianne. Trollope makes it clear
to us that she is intelligent and witty right from the start, but I am
not sure that we feel that way about Marianne, perhaps because Austen
keeps telling us she and her mother need moderating. On the other hand,
it doesn't seem that Lily reads very much - she certainly doesn't ask
Crosbie to read aloud from Romantic poets as I recall.
Angela
March 29, 2000
Re: The Small House: Adophus Crosbie & the Two Pearls
I forgot to include a sharp line written by our narrator on
the reality that Adolphus could have had Belle had he
wanted her: 'It is almost sad to think that such a man
might have had the love of either of such girls, but I
fear that I must acknowledge it was so' (Everyman
Small House, Ch 6, p. 49).
The narrator of the Barsetshire books is ever tactful,
touches on sore realities of our worlds in a back-handed
way again and again, lest of course he offend the
reader of circulating library books. But he wants
them to see who it is to whom they would allow themselves
to be erotically enthralled.
I have to say I see much of the patterning of Sense
and Sensibility in The Small House. Marianne's
relationship will Willoughby is repeatedly in deep
psychological and more detailed realistic terms
in that of Lily and Crosie. Belle is a variant on
Elinor Dashwood. These 6 chapters even have
several analogues to those who know S&S.
The general ones: both Mrs Dale and Mrs Dashwood
are widows of 40; both have longings for sexual life and
adventure themselves. There is the small house on the
great estate -- rent-free. There is the denseness and dullness of
the inhabitant(s) of the great house.
The specific: When Mrs Dale says she would not interfere,
she is repeating the behavior of Mrs Dashwood
who will not interfere. Finally when Belle and Lily
discuss how much money is a 'decent income' for
a married life to begin with, they recall a conversation
beween Marianne and Elinor in which they discuss what is a
competence and what luxury. Trollope reverses
the roles: Marianne Dashwood is not sure
that £2000 is a competence (because, alas,
could one keep horses on that, and Willoughby
has to keep horse); Elinor says
to her £2000 is luxury. Lily wants a 'some
decent income' and it turns out this would
be £800 (just Adolphus's salary -- how about
that for a coincidence?); Belle has high-flown
notions as to the absolute glory of poverty'
(which recalls Marianne's sentiments until
she cites the actual sum she knows she
and Willoughby would need). Later on Belle's
doctor will recall the character of Austen's
Brandon in a couple of way. This may come
from the typing that is often at the heart
of characterisation in the so-called
realistic novel. Novels are not finally
realistic, they depend on certain
stereotypes of conventional life.
That Lily and Elinorboth draw is probably
a result of both authors depicting the same
milieu and type of heroine, but the parallel
is intriguing in the context of the parallel
paradigms and specific close analogues.
Yes the early book is satiric and sharp; this
one psychological and realistic, but both
authors are on about the same thing.
Cheers to all, Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2000 06:49:51 -0000 I enjoyed the posts from Ellen and Sig comparing A Small House at
Allington with Sense and Sensibility and I hope that people will
continue to post on this topic. As we get further along in the book I am
noticing Mrs. Dale more and more. She wants to give her daughters every
chance to be happy but sometimes I think she is too trusting of people
around her. Her family doesn't know much about Crosbie, and yet he enjoys an
intimacy with the family. Didn't Mrs. Dale have an idea that the squire
would want his heir to marry Belle? Mrs. Dale seems like a very "hands off"
parent to me. She seems like Mrs. Dashwood in this regard. Crosbie is not
the obvious rake that Willoughby is, but why is Crosbie the fox allowed into
the Dale dovecote?
Catherine Crean
To Trollope-l
April 10, 2000
Re: The Small House: The Bethrothed Couple
Michael Powe has mentioned Gay's book on sex in Victorian
times as one in which the relatively permissive and flexible
attitude towards sexual activity between an engaged
or bethrothed couple is discussed. More explicit and
detailed are Michael Masson's Victorian Sexuality
and Laurence Stone's Broken Vows and Uncertain
Unions. The reason the engagement period was often
hidden, the experience was seen as putting a girl
in a delicate position, that jilting a girl was justification
for litigation was it was assumed sexual activity went
on. For the Victorian it was not that important that
the young couple did not go all the way; what was
significant was the real intimacy which was fostered
by allowing the couple a lot of time together with
no one else around. I suggest one can read Lily's
words flexibly but that they inscribe an experience which in her
mind makes her Crosbie's morally, emotionally --
and yes, by implication, sexually. It doesn't need
to be made explicit in the text; it is simply understood
that when a couple is left alone for hours in a house
or to go for drives alone or to visit other houses
alone (as Willoughby and Marianne are) or go walking
out together (a charged phrase in the 19th century),
hugging, embracing, kissing, what we call heavy
petting would occur. Practically speaking Trollope
does not set up a situation in which nakedness or
going all the way is possible, but he leaves it to our
imagination to picture what we want up to that in
passages like the following:
'Oh, my love! she said, 'My love! my love!'
As Crosbie walked back to the Great House
that night, he made a firm resolution that no
consideration of worldly welfare should ever induce
him to break his engagement with Lily Dale ...
(Ch 9, p. 85). Trollope has gone as far as a Victorian middle
class novelist can go in indicating time passed between
the intense embrace, her yielding to him, and his walking
away vowing himself to do her justice, be honorable.
It is we in the 20th century who are so obsessed by sex we want to
know how far the couple went in the time that occurred
between the words "my love!' uttered by Lily and the time
Crosbie walks back to the house resolving firmly he will
marry her, that no consideration of worldly welfare will
stop him. I suggest the emphasis on what exactly transpired
loses what Trollope is getting at, which is a moral shaping
of life. As I wrote earlier, what bothers me here is the
moral can be the narrow-minded warning, 'Better not
let the man have anything, especially better not let
him see how much you love him, or he'll take you for
granted'. What an ugly frame of mind. If others are
so sordid and mean, does Trollope want to tell us
we must be so.
I don't deny that this could be what Trollope intends --
as it seems clear to me that there is enormous
class and sexist bias in his portraits of Amelia and
Mrs Lupex and one 'moral' of the Boarding House
incident is to teach genteel middle class women not
to leave their precious sons with low-class women
landladies. The moral stupidity inherent in seeing one
class of people as better than another involved
in this inference explains why Trollope has so often
been dismissed as unintelligent, non-thinking,
giving readers a bland representation of the savagery
of the world whose blandness disguises the cruelty
and injustice of people to one another.
Where I see something better -- paradoxically is in
Trollope's condemnation of the upper class characters,
his implicit castigation of Crosbie for his mercenary
hollowness, and his creation of real sympathy for
Lily, Bell, the mother, Johnny and Earl de Guest
on the basis of their adherence to humane values,
to loyalty, constancy, kindness, respect for
others, whether poorer or unconnected or not.
The moral touchstone of the book remains Mr
Harding, not Mrs Grundy or the kind of narrow
religion we find in the fundamentalists and
evangelists of Rachel Ray, Miss Mackenzie
and other novels.
At any rate, Lily has gone far enough to be so
deeply committed to this man, that his betrayal
of her will wound her permanently. She also
is not attracted sexually to John Eames, and
will not take advantage of his love to conform
to a world whose values Crosbie was following.
Now this is the moral of S&Stoo: Marianne
has probably gone less far than Lily (she
and Willoughby are not quite engaged), but
she too is betrayed, anguished, shattered,
loses self-respect and trust. The paradigm
is the same. I would not say that Austen
necessarily is the more conventional novelist
because she forces marriage on the heroine
at the end since the ending of S&S is
not radiantly happy, but qualified, understated.
Cheers to all, Groups-From: "Catherine Crean" Sig, I've been waiting you post on these chapters! This is my third reading
of A Small House at Allington and I've bee carefully noting every
reference to sexual activity (sounds so clinical!) between Lily and Crosbie.
I'm not convinced that there was any. Are you saying that Lily and Crosbie
"consummated" their relationship? Where does the text support this? Lily is
portrayed (in contrast to Lady Augusta) as a warm, emotional woman who shows
her ardor with her words and with gestures. I'm also rereading Sense and
Sensibility. Although Marianne is left alone with Willoughby, I don't see a
sexual relationship there either.
Catherine Crean
From: "Catherine Crean" I agree with June and the others who say that the love scenes in The Small
House at Allington and other Victorian novels are moving in their
intensity. Why must we always assume that sex is necessary? And as Ellen
points out, modern readers are limited in their vocabulary when discussing
sexual relations. Lily Dale and Marianne Dashwood are well-rounded, full
blooded characters. I think we are looking the in the wrong direction when
we try to find things in the text that aren't there. Whether the authors
wanted us to think that the characters "had sex" or not is beside the point.
The issue of a woman giving her heart, or being sexually "awakened" is a
subtle and more interesting thing to discuss anyway. I adore the scene in
the field where Lily says "My love! My love!" Trollope paints Lily's
physical manifestations of love with deft strokes, especially when he writes
about Crosbie's recollections after he marries an iceberg of a wife. Lily
seems more alive, more vivid in Crosbie's recollections of her than anywhere
else. This is an example of superb artistry on Trollope's part.
Catherine Crean
p>Re: The Small House: Mrs Dale and Austen's Mrs Dashwood
If Trollope used Austen's S&S in the way he
slightly later used old plays, the explanation for the anomalous
behavior of Mrs Dale could be that central the plot of the
story as taken from S&S, we have a mother who is
does 'not drive her daughters or scheme with her daughters
in some kind of marriage market'. Mrs Dashwood is an
idealist'; Austen makes the point that most mothers would
warn Marianne away from Willoughby because he had
no money of his own, or could lose it as a dependent;
or would try to inveigle Elinor's love to marry her because
he might inherit. Also like Mrs Dale, Mrs Dashwood
refuses to interfere with her daughter's love affairs;
both will not question the Lily-Marianne character;
both refuse to push the Bell-Elinor character. Had
the mother in either character been more forceful or
less romantic, the daughter's fates would not have
worked out the way it does. The romantic self-
immolating female (Lily-Marianne) could not have
sacrificed herself; the sensible restrained one
(Bell-Elinor) would not have been left alone to involve
herself with a man who himself has not much money
and humble prospects (Dr Crofts-Austen's Edward
Ferrars who ends up a clergyman).
A smaller but telling parallel is the use of February.
Both Willoughby and Crosbie marry in the middle
of February; both Marianne and Lily wait silently,
scouring the papers to learn of it.
An important difference here is that Aust
en is far
sharper and more critical towards the mother
figure; she satirises her. The mother is also not
given much of a life of her own, though there
are hints she could have had one. Brandon is
not beyond her. Trollope sympathises with
Mrs Dale and makes us enter into her point
of view. Mrs Dale's quiet sacrifice of a life
of her own provides a poignant undercurrent
for this novel. She is at another end of
a spectrum to Mrs Lupex and Amelia
Roper, but none of these three have a
niche in their society from which they can
be independent and create their own
identifies and demand respect. Lily
is thrown away for money; Alexandrina
can be said to be sacrificed to rank.
All she has ever done is an immolation
to that. Which woman in the novel
has some fulfillment that is worth
having? Julia de Guest is her own
woman, but disrespected as an old
maid. Only in terms of Trollope's
scheme the heroine who approaches
conventional ideals of virtue (and
coyness), unworldiness most
closely: Isabelle Dale.
Cheers to all, May 12, 1998
Re: The Small House: Crosbie and Austen's Willoughby
This to Kathleen,
I know my belief that Trollope had memories of _Sense and Sensibility_
in mind when he began his original situation and developed it in
he Small House has not met with approval from all--though some
have agreed enthusiastically. Still, since I am nothing if not
stubborn, I have not let go of my idea.
I will rephrase it this way, let us suppose for the sake of argument
and shedding light on The Small House and Trollope's intentions
and point of view he was remembering some of the central elements
of Sense and Sensibility. Suppose then that Adolphus Crosbie
is Sir John Willoughby re-seen, but re-seen in much more depth
and with a psychological perspective that forces us to take
circumstances into account and see how such man would see himself,
rationalize his selfishness and, when apart from Lily, shallowness
and urge for rank, wealth, and luxuries away. All of us see
ourselves in a pleasant light. So Trollope enters into Crosbie's
mind--as Austen does not, as her technique is much more that of
a satirist and she models more shallowly and especially in _S&S+_
in the direction of antithetical and reinforcing patterns
(Marianne and Elinor are antithetical and they are also a doppelganger
figure; Lily and Belle are much realer but their depiction has
something of the same themes running through).
But although Trollope invites us to go inside Crosbie, he does
not mean us to forget what Crosbie is looked at objectively
and what he is doing to Lily--and also himself. As Austen
too makes us see what Willoughby does to himself. Their
punishment is to be them? to get their wishes? watch out
what you wish for and all that.
I'm just trying to suggest a perspective
which will include in it both a introspective and humane portrayal
of a man like Crosbie with an objective condemnation of him morally
speaking.
Ellen Moody
A series of threads written in 1998:
I started it:
Re: Austen & Trollope
There is a genuine parallel between the
characters and situation in Austen's S&SThe Small House at Allington.
Lily Dale recalls Marianne in several ways;
Belle plays the role of Elinor; Mrs Dale
is in the position of Mrs Dashwood and she
too behaves as Mrs Dashwood does towards
Marianne and Willoughby. Reading The Small House
sheds light on some unexpressed assumptions in S&S
and vice versa
I have noticed again and again that certain critics
write about both Trollope and Austen (Juliet
McMasters is just one familiar instance).
Off-list Carolyn and I have discussed Lizzie
Eustace in The Eustace Diamonds as a more
successful or fully-rounded depiction of the
Lady Susan type. Another two novels which
may be read in tandem are Trollope's Ayala's
Angel and Austen's Northanger Abbey.
Trollope's witty hero, Jonathan Stubbs, owes
a lot to Austen's Henry Tilney.
In an analysis of realism in the novel
by William Dean Howells in which he defends
novels about ordinary life which limit the
perspective to that of the the common middle
class reader he links Austen and Trollope together.
The link is real.
Ellen Moody
Elvira Casal replied:
I agree completely with Ellen Moody about the parallels between Small
House and Sense and Sensibility. In fact I seem to remember having
discussed this with Ellen off-list at some point.
I would like to mention a third book for this "connection." In The
Egoist, George Meredith takes some of the situations and some of the
names from the two novels, stirs them up and spices them up and comes up
with something wonderful. In this case it is not so much "parallels" as
"transformations." I've always wondered if Meredith consciously
recognized the similarities between SH and S&S
Elvira Casal Kishor Kale:
Please could you go into more detail about how 'The Small House at Allington
sheds light on some unexpressed assumptions in S&S and vice versa', Ellen?
Kishor Kale
Re: The Small House at Allington & Sense & Sensibility
Elvira reminds me that she and I talked about the connections
between The Small House and Jane Austen's S&S, and Kishor
says could I go into more detail about how Trollope's book "sheds
light on some unexpressed assumptions in S&S." I think Elvira
is right and she and I discussed the two books as connected; maybe
it happened during the time of the group readings on Austen of S&S.
I can't remember what we said, and wouldn't mind when Elvira has
the time if she would bring Meredith's Egoist into this. I don't
remember The Egoist sufficiently even to guess at the "transformation,"
but I'd like to hear. What I always remember best about the The
Egoist is its Restoration Comedy feel and some splendor under
a cherry blossom tree (I think it was).
As to the comparison of S&S and The Small
House it seems to
me multifold, but the one I was especially referring to when I talked
about shedding light on unexpressed assumptions was the behavior
of Mrs Dashwood and that of Mrs Dale. When thought about side-by-side
it seems to me Austen's is the far more satiric book; the figures in Austen's
book are sharply delineated so as to expose the flaws in Marianne's
point of view on (how shall I say it) how to cope with passion in society
as we find it and must live in it. Mrs Dashwood becomes a character
who is linked to Marianne because Austen presents her repeatedly
as an older Marianne. Mrs Dashwood's behavior is then seen against
a kind of universal scrim of values which includes but de-emphasizes
some psychological and social pressures on her. (Anyway this is
how I would see it). Thus when Mrs Dashwood not only countenances
Marianne's romance but the times the two spend together alone and
when in company their openness about their romance in front of others
we are to criticize her for not looking first to ascertain the young man's
character but his past, by what he has done. She is wrong not to be
more suspicious, more careful. When she will not ask Marianne whether
she and Willoughby are engaged, and even hopes (this comes out in
a conversation with Elinor) that they are secretly corrresponding as
a sign of their engagement which she argues (from no evidence
whatsoever) that the reason she and Elinor do not see the letters is
that would give the engagement away to Sir John Middleton who
is collecting all the Dashwood letters at the postoffice, we are to
say she is risking her daughter's mental peace--and reputation,
for engagements implied a level of sexual intimacy. At the close
of the novel Austen is concerned to show us Mrs Dashwood has
not learnt that much when impulsively she is thrilled by Brandon's
proposal instead of examining his character and the differences
between him and Marianne. In each case we look upon a scene from
the point of view of some universal needs and dangers.
Trollope's novel is more psychologized, set more deeply into a social
context. His opening portrait of Mrs Dale in Chapter 3 (I think it is)
is deeply sympathetic and in it he has no satiric thrust at all.
His satire is not aimed at this character in the way Austen's
is; it is rather aimed at various values and institutions by
which she is surrounded and at characters who embody
values he is concerned to expose as inhumane or false. Thus
he satirizes--but somewhat gently--the Squire who has made
Mrs Dale's life uncomfortable and in some basic ways
impoverished (Mrs Dale can know no romance--Mrs Dashwood
seems never to want any.)
But Mrs Dale is very like Mrs Dashwood in most ways, and especially
important is the two are neither of them mercenary. This is important. Like
Mrs Dashwood Mrs Dale is idealistic in her whole approach towards life.
She will not force Bell to marry Bernard even though it would be in her best
interests. Mrs Dale's outward behavior also resembles that
of Mrs Dashwood: she allows the open behavior; she allows
the long periods alone; she does not question the engagement
though she knows she has no money to offer with Lily. She
too has risked Lily's mental peace--and in Trollope's
books the hints about this are much stronger--and she has allowed
a level of sexual intimacy to occur between the young couple when
left alone for reasonably long and vulnerable periods of time. Now
with Mrs Dale we see a different kind of perspective set on the situation.
She too is a widow alone with very little who wants her daughter to
be happy, and she has not much power over another individual's
inner life This is Trollope's emphasis.
What I'm trying to say is this: that a reader who reads Austen's novel
can be puzzled about why on earth Mrs Dashwood countenances
the romance. We are only given enough to understand for the satiric
thrust. But there's a hum and buzz of assumptions about social
position, psychology, and customs (behaviors) Austen is not not
concerned to fill out. Trollope is. Now I could equally have compared
Belle as older sister advising Lily to Elinor as older sister advising
Marianne. There are a couple of comparable scenes in which
Belle plays the sensible one. In particular there's a dialogue
between Belle and Mrs Dale in which Belle seems to try to warn
Mrs Dale not to allow the romance to go this far, and Mrs Dale
is dismissive. In Austen we have a satiric nexus, in Trollope
a psychologized one. Willoughby is driven by his shallowness
and frivolity to marry wealth; so too Crosbie will be. Both betray
their "better" natures for an ambition which when the men get
what they want turns to bitter ashes in their teeth. Belle's
beau Dr Crosby is shy, inarticulate, and has no wealth. There is
a parallel with at least the character of Edward Ferrars. And so
it goes.
Of course there are differences. There is no pregnant abandoned
girl in a spunging-house in Trollope. There is no Brandon--instead
we have Johnny Eames, so very different. We have gone from
a Knightley to a portrait of our author when young. But when
we can put the books side-by-side, there is much to be gathered
about what is unexpressed in both. I would say that Austen is
rather the more daring or more determined and darker in the
emphasis she gives to sexual passion as a driving force in the
triangular parallel stories of Marianne-Willoughby-Eliza. She then
sheds light on Trollope's assumptions too.
Ellen Moody
Rr: Trollope's Small House at Allington & Austen's S&S
Now that I am about 2/3's the way through Trollope's Small
House, the close parallels in plot turn, kind of attitudes explored,
types of characters and situations between Austen's S&S
and this book have continued to mount up to such
a number that I am beginning to wonder if it's
isn't a commonplace in criticism of The Small House
that Trollope had Austen's book firmly in mind as he
wrote his, and if not, why not?
In some cases Trollope shapes a situation in The
Small House which is parallel to one in S&S so as
to partly to repeat in a modified form what happened in
S&S. When Lily is first told of Crosbie's betrayal,
she refuses to bend, refuses to be sick, holds it all
in; she will not give way. The language used suggests
she is right not to indulge in misery, right not to prefer
pain or exalt it, but that nonetheless she will have
to give in or be shattered. And a week later she
lays down for a week, and gets up better for it,
if somewhat changed and subdued forever. Again
when a crisis comes to the Small House and they
are about to leave, Lily falls very sick, and the language
of this sickness harks back to Marianne's in S&S.
She is delirious, refers to Crosbie; we are told all
trouble is heaped upon the three woman now.
Again and again Mrs Dale seems a more sympathetically
portrayed, more rounded psychologized portrait of
type like that of Mrs Dashwood. Sometimes her responses
to Lily in her distress reminded me of Mrs Dashwood's;
the conversation the two hold over Crosbie's letter
put Mrs Dale in Elinor's place when she and Marianne
converse.
When the three women decide to leave the small
house because they are pressured or feel pressured
by the Squire, and have the problem of their small
income, the fall in status, the sense of nowhere to
turn to easily, the book recalls S&S in the
early stages. The picturing of Mrs Dale and
her daughter's come-down into a small series
of rooms or tiny part of a house or lodgings in
the provincial town of Guestwick and the
consequent sneering, lack of visitors or visitors
coming in a very different sort of mood recalled
to my mind Miss Bates's rooms above the
stairs versus Miss Woodhouse at Hartfield.
This is not S&S, but it's a similar point of view
operating on the action.
I guess this posting is also written partly
in response Roger Batt's feeling about Austen's
style or mood that Austen is more severe, and her portraits
have sharper edges because she is satirizing. There
is a kind of rigidity in her focus because she wants to
exclude certain kinds of information. Her art arises
from satire and not a tradition of a realistic novel.
On the other hand she brings a trauma out very sharply
when she wants to (as in S&S); she again and
again can trace a nervous intensity in her heroines
(Elinor, Anne, Fanny) which excludes all else or
sees everything from this point of view exclusive
of all else while this consciousness is to the fore.
Everything is more subdued, more realistic in Trollope.
The perspective is wider, details of social codes,
customs, so many are brought in for us to
consider but not necessarily agree to, just
to consider. Behavior is rationalized, understood,
sympathized with, and the sardonic perspective
not really that of satire but a kind of moral
realism which shades back and forth,
In S&S Austen takes us into the trauma
of Marianne; Trollope keeps us looking at
it from the outside, or keeps us aware when
we look at the world through Lily's eyes why
she should think and feel this way is
reasonable and why it in fact could be.
But trauma does happen, and it is often
unreasonable, and more than half-crazy
so S&S has truths The Small House
doesn't. And it has a satiric perspective
on our emotional lives which is central;
Trollope is more diffuse, he has more
to cover than just this, so this diminishes
in importance.
I am really intrigued by the closeness of
these two books.
Ellen Moody
Re: Trollope's Small House at Allington & Austen's S&S
I always think the "proof" that convinces people that one
book has directly influenced or led to some aspect or
part of the writing of another may only be found in small
textual details. Novels are often so alike; the larger
patterns of so many of them may be likened to Cinderella
or Snow White and Rose Red or Beauty and the Beast
that it is hard to convince the confirmed sceptic that
a given novel really gave rise to another. Thus we
want to find not only larger exact parallels in
situations (as in the above 2 the three women
left alone with a tiny income, the cottage,
the living on the relatives' estate, the sensible
older sister and the extremely sensitive and
passionate younger); we want the author to use
a name from the previous novel, or to repeat
an exact phrase (this is even
better when it is quoted directly with quotation
marks around it). The best is when
the author him or herself tells
us he or she had this previous novel in mind.
This last does sometimes happen. In Barchester Towers Trollope
mentions Henry Fielding and has a mock-heroic
contest which is strikingly like one in Tom Jones;
Austen names Radcliffe's Italian and Romance
of the Forest. I suggest though that this is uncommon
for both of them; they are not "literary" novelists in
the sense that they do not create skeins of allusion
which embed their book in previous books. Their
primary subject is life; they create to imitate life
through books, but they do not look at life through
books. Most of the time both resist any claim
their novels are book-like or point out how far
from romance they are. Thus in The Small
House Lily says she wishes she was reading
about some heroine of the old school, some
book where
Trollope thinks of Scott, of Jeanne
Deans in The Heart of Mid-Lothian and of
a scene I'll never forget in Ivanhoe Rebecca
telling the sick Ivanhoe of how the battle
proceeds by peering out a narrow hole
in the war of a tower. Those novelists who
do embed their books in allusions, see their
world through books are often romancers. Such
a novelist is Umberto Eco, or in the 18th century
Richardson. I have always thought the mark of
the romance mood, that someone is
writing a romance rather than a realistic
story is a heavy use of literary allusion.
At any rate all this (besides meditating
this wonderful book of The Small House
Trollope himself, and different kinds of novels
and their relationship to fairy tales), all this,
I say, is to excuse my today quoting
a (to me) couple of tiny textual details which in the
context of the larger parallels and similar types
and situations and literal details of the two novels suggest
that Trollope had Austen's S&S in mind while he
was writing The Small House--and was in a way
rewriting it (I suppose Bloom would call this "overcoming"
the predecessor).
Those who have read S&S may remember
that Elinor Dashwood is very self-contained
and far from telling Edward that she is in love with
him could be interpreted as encouraging him to
marry another heroine (Lucy Steele) and as herself in love with
another hero (Colonel Brandon). Indeed Edward so
interprets her thus, and it depresses him mightily.
Well I believe that in a scene between Lucy and
Dr Crofts which occurs after what appears to
Dr Crofts to be Bell's refusal of his love and
proposal of marriage, Lily's description of Bell
to Dr Crofts in order to make him aware Bell
does indeed love him, there is a brief passage
which recalls Austen's characterization of
Elinor Dashwood. Lily says: "You know her
nature, how silent she is, and averse to talk
about herself" (Ch 42). The idea of the whole
passage is Bell is deeply emotional, but
cannot show it.
There are many details of Lily's illness which
recall Marianne's. Lily's is the more "realistic"
because we are given a name for it--scarlatina.
But the progress of the illness and the way
she manifests it recalls Marianne's in small
details. Thus she becomes
Again Lily recovers very rapidly because her
"constitution is good." We are told "her
recovery was retarded by no relapse or lingering
debility; but, nevertheless, she was forced to
keep her bed fo rmany days after the
fever had left her" (Ch 42).
The emphasis on knowing exactly what day
Crosbie is marrying Alexandrina, Lily's
attempt to deal with it, her collapse all
recall Marianne on Willoughby's marrying
Miss Grey. Both marriages occur in
February--but I wouldn't make too much
of that. Still. There it is.
Also very moving is Lily's repeated genuine
attempt to put Crosbie out of her mind, and
her failure to do so. In one scene she
finally cracks. We get lines like "she was
still strong in her resolve which she had made, that her
grief should ot overpower. As she had herself
said, the thing would not have been so difficult,
had she not been weakened by her illness"
(Ch 45). This is a direct recall, and it is as
if Trollope is rewriting and saying Austen was
far too harsh and unforgiving of Marianne;
the reality is one cannot forget; even those
who don't indulge a deep emotional
loss and humiliation, who fight it, must
succumb a little. They must bend or they
will break.
To move back to general patterns. At the close
of S&S Elinor and Marianne talk of how Willoughby
has claimed he is now miserable with his rich
wife, and the lesson he has learned is that riches
don't count. Only love and companionship count.
As those who have read the novel will remember
Elinor says, wryly, yes, and had he married you
Marianne he soon would have found that love
and companionship matter little when he lacked
the money for his horses, his beautiful clothes,
his level of existence. I suggest that as we
read Crosbie's "misery" in his marriage to
Alexandrina for mere money and social
status, and how he begins to think passion
and companionship so central to a real or fulfilled
married life, we are expected more than
half to realize that had he married Lily he
would have regretted the loss of that money
and status and started to think how love is
not all that important after all.
And now to a tiny neat parallel within the
larger parallel situation of the young
men: by the close of S&S
Willoughby has learnt had he married Marianne
he probably would have inherited Mrs
Smith's estate at least; he would have
been rich enough. So too does Crosbie
find his expectations of penury with
the woman he loved wrong. He is not
given ready money for himself with
Alexandrina. No. She is to be made
a rich widow in future. In fact, he
probably has no more money
to spend married to Alexandrina than
he would have had married to Lily.
Perhaps less. He is promoted on his
own bat, and yet finds himself very straitened
for funds when married. While she brings no big sums for
him to spend upon himself, she fully expects
him to spend on her in a way Lily would
not have. Lily would have bought him
lovely dinner; Alexandrina wants a
fancy carriage. His dressing
room in Alexandrina's house
is a cubbyhold below stairs. Lily
would have given up to him her bedroom
rather than have done that.
As I said in one of my earlier posts on
the connection between these two novels
(and I believe it really is thre) is that an
important use of recognizing the novel
"behind" a novel is that putting
the two side-by-side deepens our understanding of
both; reveals some of the assumptions of
both. They become a kind of conversation.
Ellen Moody!
Re: Trollope's Small House at Allington & Austen's S&S
I have not yet done with these two books--the former I listen to daily
in my car as read aloud by David Case; the latter I am writing an
academic-style two part paper on. Whence the obsession--as well
as my knowledge a number of people on this list, as well as
many scholars (not to omit Wm Dean Howells in talking about the
finest realistic fictions) agree that Trollope read and was influenced by
Austen. Their works may be compared profitably.
First I want to bring out one more place where it seems to me Trollope
is rewriting Austen. At the close of The Small House Lily refuses
to consider marrying John Eames; there is a conversation between her
and her mother in which she declares she still loves Crosbie as passionately
as ever, is his wife in her heart, will spend the rest of her life mourning his
loss, and, as if this isn't enough to convince her mother that at this point
she's not ready to consider anyone, goes on to insist she does not and
cannot ever love John Eames. Affection, respect, love-in-friendship,
similarity of background, interest, moral attitudes--all these she grants
she has for him, shares with him, but marry him she will not because
intense passion "that way" is not there.
Those who have read S&S will remember that Marianne in less than 2
years after Willoughby deserts her marries Brandon--and we are told without
that intense passion, but with the all those other things Lily says she has
for John, shares with him. They will also remember how some critics have
castigated Austen for this cop-out, this unnatural punishment of the
heroine, even though Austen tells us that Marianne soon learned to love
Brandon with the same intensity she once loved Willoughby--she could
never love by halves (&c &c). They will also remember how critics
and readers have said Austen's ending is not believable, distanced,
curt; she dismisses Marianne to Brandon's arms in a couple of paragraphs.
Now I call attention to the response Lily Dale's refusal of John Eames has
garnered since the novel was written. Many readers and critics have
castigated her. Trollope's epithet of "prig" is aimed at her refusal of
Eames. When the lady takes the worthy man because she
can't get the wild, we are agin it; when she refuses the worthy man
because she can't get the wild, we are agin it. But my point
is not just the joke, it's hard to please readers, isn't it? It's that
Trollope rewrites Austen in such a way as to lead us to the same moral
stance; he believes, as Austen did, the sane person will not
remain entrenched in a self-destructive love of someone who has
badly maimed them. (Lily is presented as more than half-crazy,
slightly disturbed in her conversation with her mother.) But
in lieu of presenting the action as exemplary, he presents it
with an intense psychological sweep that leaves us believing
in the situation though we may deplore it.
My second point is to acknowledge the difference between the two novelists.
Again Austen is a satirist. As A. C. Bradley says of her art, she
emphasizes the salient; she does this in order to keep our minds and
hearts within an intensely conceived but narrowly framed picture.
Trollope is your realist; there is no narrowly conceived controlled frame.
At the close of The Small House there is real sympathy for Crosbie
(we return to see the world as he lives it in his wretched marriage), for
Lady Alexandrina (equally unhappy), even for Miss Amelia Roper.
And we get a portrait of the landlady, Mrs Roper as a type, a portrait
which touches on so many issues and has nothing much to do
with the immediate story but gives the book the depth of reality and
what seems to be a bottomless compassion within the ability
to judge clearly that is Trollope's own:
It recalls to my mind what my father used to tell me of old people he
saw when he was a boy (we are talking the 1920's) before social
security. It has an upfront kindness and full-throated direct
emotionalism one does not find in Austen. But there are many rooms,
as James said, in the mansion of fiction.
We now move back in time. I wrote the following series of
postings during the time I was on Ms Thompson's list (1997);
during this time Elvira Casal and Duffy Pratt and Carol
McGuirk answered me.
April 7, 1997
To Trollope List
Re: The Endings of The Small House & S&S
I tend to agree with Elvira that neither Austen nor Trollope
is "forcing" the heroine not to take the novel's truly
romantic hero--and also agree that part of the point
of both novels is to make us redefine what is a good
man. As she says, readers just want a fairy tale
ending. They long for a wholly tragical Marianne
who obligingly dies, and wouldn't mind a scene
in which Willoughby (very like Lancelot at the
moving close of Malory's long book--funny I have
this book on my mind recently, can't say why),
Willoughby, I say, Lancelot-like, sees his
lady buried in the ground and weeps disconsolately
over her.
But I do like Duffy's pointing out the irony so concisely:
"Readers do not accept Lily's refusal to wed;
nor do they accept Marianne's precipitous marriage."
Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. I also
think there is a difference in mood and presentation
between the two novelists, or maybe I should call
it emphasis, the one (Trollope) intently psychological
and fully-rounded inwardly with lots of realistic
details about Crosbie's life with Lady Alexandrina
towards the close, the other (Austen) patterning
the action so that we concentrate on its meaning
rather than what is going on inside the characters.
Another interesting point of comparison I thought
of as I read Duffy and Elvira's replies was this
curious one: when Willoughby tells Elinor how
he still loves Marianne, she is immediately on
guard lest Willoughby be thinking of seducing
Marianne this time as a married man, yet
when he goes away for a flitting instance she
finds herself wishing that at least the new
Mrs Willoughby might obligingly die real
soon. I would say this stays within the
purview of accepted taboos in the period.
Lily herself half-talks of Lady Alexandrina's
death, speaks of herself as Crosbie's wife,
and in her passionate assertion that
if Lady Alexandrina were to obligingly
remove herself from this earthly life she
would take Crosbie back without hesitation.
This is a breaking of taboos. Lily is
intensely sexually passionate to the
end. In the concluding chapters again
and again we are made to remember
with her how Crosbie kissed her and
she returned his kisses and lived only
for him to kiss her more. In her statement
there are glints of hints that even if Lady
Alexandrina didn't pop off, and Crosbie
came back, Lily if not tempted would
have to run and hide from him not to
be tempted to run off with him--like who,
well, like Lady Glen.
Great novels both, fascinating. To: trollope-l@teleport.com Dear Marcella and Trollope friends,
Marcella asks if anyone has ever written up the connections between
The Small House and S&S I have. On Ms Thompson's Trollope
list--or at least I began there, but was stopped by a series
of attacks on Austen by someone claimed to loathe her. Two
days ago John Letts said I am going to make a book for the
Trollope Society for 2 years from now; I mean to begin writing
it this spring holiday and work all summer. It's to be
a series of interwoven conversations and interludes. Now
one of the interludes will be a rewritten, concise version
of what I began on old Trollope, a comparison between
The Small House and S&S.
I still have the first three "beginning postings," and when
I come back from work later today I'll post them again here.
I would very much appreciate any comments, qualifications,
additions, and so on.
I don't know the criticism on The Bertrams at all. I
suspect there isn't much. I will carry on reading and
see if I see more parallels and report back.
I do have yet another vaguer parallel: I think memories
of Northanger Abbey and Henry Tilney lie behind the
relationship between the witty, kindly, teacher-like
hero, Jonathan Stubb and Henry Tilney. I know the
teacher/tutor-student relationship is a paradigm for
relationships between men and women in novels of
the later 18th and throughout the 19th century,
but at the time I saw some striking parallels in
conception and in a couple of dialogues.
Trollope said Pride and Prejudice was the best novel
in the English language. In his defense of novel
reading ("Rational Amusement") and the abortive history
of the novel, he begins with Austen and Edgeworth and
it's clear he knows Austen's novels very well.
There are also many many parallels between his art
and vision and that of Austen's. I will take the
liberty of reposting something written on Ms
Thompson's Trollope by Carol McGuirk too--later
today.
Ellen Moody
To Trollope and Austen-l
Re: The Small House At Allington: Trollope and Austen
I am again cross-posting and hope I may be forgiven. On Austen-l
there has erupted (on Austen-l things always erupt) a thread in
which people are comparing Austen's art to that of Trollope,
and as opposed to a similar eruption on Ms Thompson's
list here where a few people have berated Austen with all their might,
on Austen-l, a few people have berated Trollope with all
theirs. One Dorothy Willis attempted to bring some
thought to the matter, and I thought my response to her
comments might be of interest to some of us, especially as
we are now having a subgroup read of The Small House.
So here's my post:
This morning Dorothy Willis wrote:
In regard to _The Small House at Allington_, I think that his version of the
end to Marianne's story is much more likely than Austen's.
"I have a theory that all novels which were originally published as serials
benefit by being read slowly. Originally a reader got only a few chapters a
month. No wonder so many modern readers are impatient. It takes a while to
get acquainted with the characters and situations. Does anyone remember
"Upstairs, Downstairs"? Only someone who watched episode after episode
faithfully understood all the implications and undercurrents. It is the same
with Victorian novels." I am going to repeat Dorothy's claim, and expatiate just a bit on it.
he Small House at AllingtonThe Bertrams
reworks some of the themes and even conversations we find in Mansfield
Park. Trollope often deals with similar issues and often expresses
closely similar ideals about private life. It should come as no surprize
that one finds the same critics writing about Austen and Trollope:
Juliet McMaster has a wonderful book on Trollope; Barbara Hardy
writes on both novelists; John Halperin too.
I also agree that _The Small House_ is written in a much more realistic
way. The characters are developed far more slowly and shown as emerging
from a specific time, cultural group, and class. They are more fully
developed and the way the story slowly evolves makes us enter into it
in a way that makes it very difficult to enter in on anyone's side
such a strong way as to exclude sympathy for another point of view.
In this Trollope's Small House reminds me of Mansfield Park --which
is in some ways a proto-typical great 19th century novel.
I'd like to put it this way to those who are interested in this thread:
a very revealing way to understand the roots of an author's work is to
look at their first novel or novels. Often they are giving it their
all at that point; often they are not subdued; they are working the
essence of their material out for the first time. Austen's first texts
are her juvenilia. They are highly satiric parodies of other literature;
they are often harsh and hard in their response to any sentimentality,
never mind Austen's attitude to false sentimentalism. They are hilarious.
The themes of S&S grew out of the anti-romantic stance of the
Juvenilia; there are tiny sketches of characters, situations, and
names found in the Juvenilia which are also in S&S. Of course
S&S is more mature and acknowledges seriously the depth of
attraction and reality of romantic emotions in every day life,
but Austen began with funny satire. She also never leaves off
using caricatures, and her general milieu--as she saw it--was
late 18th century satire which veered between melancholy and
wit. She says in Sanditon whether we find Miss Esther
Denham "striking and amusing" or she makes us "very melancholy:
will depend upon whether "satire or morality prevail."
Trollope's first novel was a tragic and realistic delineation
of Ireland in the late 1830's, just before the great famine
was beginning to take it first victims. It is long; while it
has some funny parts, it is for the most part sombre. He
analyzes with great care the police state that had been
set up by the British, and how this kind of thing attracts
corrupt types who themselves feed off the necessary corruption
of the Irish as they desperately try to make a living. He
shows us why law is irrelevant in Ireland. When his hero
murders the police officer who has seduced his sister,
and is hanged for it we are treated to a full-length
depiction of a trial wherein Trollope is concerned to point
out to us how the decision any jury makes often has nothing
to do with the truth of what the state claims the defendant
did. Trollope argues that does not matter; the purpose
of a trial is to provide some solution everyone agrees
to believe in. He shows us that in the case at hand
his hero is hanged not because of what he did, but because
in this time and place he is identified with the Irish
rebels whom the establishment hates and the average
person in Ireland feared. Trollope's art does not grow
out of satire. We might see him as one of those who
followed in the footsteps of Scott, Victor Hugo, and
in Italy, Manzoni. There are those who don't like
his views--or don't like the kind of thing he does.
I would not be surprized to find some people on this
list finding Elizabeth Gaskell or George Eliot tiresome,
though they like Trollope share many of the concerns
of Austen and at times their work has close parallels
to theirs.
Another way to look at this that might be helpful would
be to ask who are the later 19th century ro 20th
century practitioners of the novel
closest to Trollope or Austen. For Trollope I would
turn to Turgenev, Tolstoi, George Gissing, Arnold
Bennet. For Austen I would turn to many of Thackeray's
less well known sketch books and maybe _Vanity
Fair_, to some of Elizabeth Bowen's books, to
Evelyn Waugh, to (also) Barbara Pym, Dorothy
Sayers, Margaret Drabble--and Bobbie Ann
Mason (very like really very like). It's hard for me to
think of a parallel for Trollope's kind of novel
today probably because I don't read enough long
realistic modern novels, but I also think that
maybe these kinds of books are no longer finding
favor among serious writers.
Ellen
"From: Carol McGuirk Hello Trollope List,
I've been puzzled by the Austenism/Trollopism debate, as I had always
assumed the two tastes went together. Evidently not, which is v. interesting.
Several posters have said that the -ism is crucial, but I don't know
much about the cults themselves. So I've made a list focused on the two
writers--ways in which they are similar. I conclude with a few differences.
(I do love JA, yet I always feel when closing *Pride and Prejudice*
that Darcy and Elizabeth are going to have a lot of shouting matches at
Pemberley. AT, who was married himself--that probably makes the
difference--idealizes marriage less than JA. Nonetheless, he too, like JA,
sees marriage as the making or breaking of many of his characters, both
women and men.)
Both AT and JA generate worlds that reflect character; both write
characters that reflect worlds. I mean that every detail they offer
explains characters' motivations and brings the world of that character's
options and possibilities fully before us. We know the people they create.
AT said that Mr. Palliser "stands upon his feet" well, and he was so right.
Both writers are in one sense realistic when they show characters in
such believable peril of such common outcomes as bad marriages (Sir Hugh and
Hermione Clavering) and undisciplined kids (Lydia Bennet). But in another
sense, both writera are unrealistic in that both offer fairy tales in which
the good usu. end happily and the bad unhappily. ("That is why they call it
fiction," as Wilde's Miss Prism says to Cicely.)
Differences? There are many of those, too, of course. Trollopeans
must be interested in the workings of English politics to feel the full
appeal and scope of his novels: we come to care almost as much about the
fate of Mr. Palliser's penny as Mr. Palliser's marriage. Austen's novels
tantalizingly exclude most politics, even though she wrote or rewrote them
during the Napoleonic Wars. I know there are many scholars who have said
otherwise, reading JA as a political writer; really I'm just saying that JA
in no way is as interested in showing how the political process works; AT is
completely interested in this.
Trollope's readers learn a great deal about the work-spheres of men
of the middle and genteel classes, the clergymen and clerks and squires and
MPs and attorneys and even the yeoman farmers like Larry Twentyman. Most of
Austen's memorable characters are young women, though she is the first
novelist to describe the new professional man of the l9th century (in Emma's
brother-in-law--the guy who goes to his London warehouses each day and
returns to his little family in Brunswick Square). The point about John
Knightley, if that's his first name, isn't original with me, but is in Julia
Brown's book *JA's Novels: Social Change and Literary Form* (Harvard UP,
l979). It's getting to be an old book, but then Judy is an old friend, and
she writes wonderfully well on Austen.
Finally, the novels of AT are far larger in scale than JA's, and
Trollope lived longer and wrote many more of them.
I couldn't do without either writer. My feeling (and one reason I
enjoy this list so much) is that Our Anthony's appeal and excellence are
easy enough to experience, but very hard to quantify and analyze. I much
appreciate the insights and ideas that appear daily in this forum. In my
experience, Austen criticism is much more varied and lively--and it
occasionally seems to be describing the same writer whose books I love. I
often have trouble with the Trollope criticism, feeling that it isn't
capturing the essence of AT's writings...
Regards, Carol McGuirk
Now we move forward in time. I wrote the following series
in March/April of 1998 during the first group read of The Small
House held on Trollope-l:
To: trollope-l@teleport.com Since Marcella has gone off-line for the rest of the week, I will
hold off posting on the real connections between The Small House
and S&S. I think I have found enough and continual striking
similarities and close variations on similarly construed themes
and characters in these two works to say that Trollope had
the earlier book in mind. In the case of Ayala's Angel or
The Bertrams it may be a case of both authors using a
similar paradigm available throughout the culture, though I
have to say the name Bertram and some other details of the
two situations (in Austen's MP and this of The Bertrams)
give me pause.
But in the meantime I thought some of the newcomers to this list
might like to read a really fine posting by Carol McGuirk in
which she answered how she felt about rereading The
Small House at Allington in terms of our debate
over its likeness to Sense and Sensibility:
As to The Small House at Allington
Second time around, the novel seemed very similar to *Sense and
Sensibility* in basic plot: Lucy is a sensible sister who tries to underplay
her own romantic difficulties, and Ayala is an irrepressibly adolescent
younger sister, very willful and lovely, with a far too idealized vision of
the "angel" who will arrive to become her husband. The two sisters are
co-heroines. And the novel begins with the sudden death of a much-loved but
improvident bohemian father: like Elinor and Marianne (I'm sinking Austen's
Margaret here), Lucy and Ayala, despite their beauty, intelligence, and
refinement of taste, are severely handicapped (by their lack of fortune) as
candidates for marriage. Brilliantly, Trollope explores the economic angle
and the sisters' jeapordized future by providing a wealthy aunt (who adopts
Ayala) and a debt-ridden uncle, a clerk who adopts Lucy. So in Trollope the
bereaved sisters lose even each other. (I'm not spoiling--this is the
opening premise.)
There's a worldliness in this novel, and a light-heartedness too
(despite the gloomy circumstances on which the curtain opens) that I found
rather unusual for Trollope. He frames Ayala's excessive dreaminess with
considerable humor, and his portrait of the vulgar rich relatives,
especially their efforts to social climb in Italy, is priceless.
It was a novel I'd thought would be too "lite" or at any rate simple
to engross on a second reading, but I liked just as well, and noticed
different things. Many on the list will have already read it; I envy those
who haven't yet.
Carol McGuirk
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 09:16:37 +0000 Subject: TROL Trollope and Austen I'm delighted to feel that someone else thinks that The Small House is a
rewrite of Sense and Sensibility. I have often felt this; mentioned it
when I was an undergraduate, but--alas!!--my tutor was not at all
interested in Trollope and thought this a very dull idea. But it
fascinates me. I sometimes wonder if the way in which Trollope resisted
the happy ending option was because of S&S. It's interesting how
Marianne becomes more "conventional"--tames down (is beaten down) and is
grateful for the love of a good man, whereas Lily Dale becomes less so
in her refusal to marry the young man everyone else approves of, and who
she really likes.
Lily has so much more spark in her!
I have recently re-read S&S and was again struck by the similarities. It
is interesting how in S&S the second suitor is older, more "grown-up",
so that Marianne has to grow up to appreciate him, whereas John Eames
(the diminutive "Johnny" emphasises this) has to grow up in order to be
even possibly worthy of Lily. She herself is always making remarks that
emphasise her age and the feeling that she has of it all being too late
for her. I think that Trollope has great insight into the problems faced
by respectable but not rich Victorian girls vis-a-vis marriage. Brings
it into the realm of the "political", you might say.
Yes, I can see The Bertrams and MP
work in a similar way. Has this ever
been written up? What an interesting article it would make! I haven't
read "The Parson's daughter of Oxney Colne" for ages, and didn't think
of Emma as I recall, I shall have to rush off and find a copy. This list
is just too tempting--I keep getting distracted from work!
Marcella
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 1998 13:47:22 +0000 I'm interested by the Wilkie Collins comparisons as well. It's
fascinating to speculate about who else might have been picking up on
Austen; presumably she was immensely influential. In some ways, though,
the sort of episodes Kishor describes belong to a different kind of
influence--more what is going on vis-a-vis MP and The Bertrams,
perhaps.
What particularly interests me about The Small House is how overt it
seems to me the comparisons are. Less a result of influence than a
direct riposte, almost--as though Trollope needed to address some of the
"what if"s in the novel. It is in some ways an unsatisfying one,
compared to say P&P or Persuasion. Edward Ferrars as a hero, for
instance--does anyone else feel that he is a great falling-down from the
witty and kind Henry Tilney or the bitterly self-knowing Darcy?
I would need to get a copy of Armadale, but would love to read it again,
I'm all for that suggestion.
By the way, I shall be going off line in about an hour for about a week
while they fit a new computer system here. Sorry in advance to miss any
discussions--I'll catch up when I return!
Marcella
We missed Marcella very much when she found she had to
leave cyberspace.
Reply-To: trollope-l@onelist.com
Subject: [trollope-l] The Small House at Allington, first comments
Ellen
Ellen Moody
Groups-From: "Catherine Crean"
Reply-To: trollope-l@onelist.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Sense and Sensibility
'Because -- ', said he; and then he
stooped over her and pressed her closely while
she put up her lips to his, standing on tiptoe
that she might reach his face.
Ellen Moody
From: "Catherine Crean"
Reply trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Sig's post
To: trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] "My love!"
Ellen Moody
ecasal@frank.mtsu.edu
"the heroine is really a heroine, walking
all the way up from Edinburgh to London, and
falling among thieves; or else nursing a wounded
hero, and escribing the battle from the
window" (ch 42).
"delirious. she would talk to her mother
about Crosibie, sepaking of him as she used
to speak in the autumn that was passed. But
even in her madness she remembered that they
had resolved to leave their present home; and she
asked the doctor twice whether their lodgings in
Guestwick were ready for them" (Ch 39).
"Poor woman! Few positions in life could be harder to bear than
hers. To be ever tugging at others for money that they could not pay;
to desire respectability for is own sake, but to be driven to confess that
it was a luxury beyond her means; to put up with disreputable belongings
for the sake of lucre, and then not to get the lucre, but be driven to feel
she was ruined by the attempt! How many Mrs Ropers there are who
from year to year sink down and fall away, and no one knows whither
they betake themselves! One fancies that one sees them from time to
time at the corners of the streets in battereed bonnets and thin gowns,
with the tattered remnants of old shawls upon their shoulders, still looking
as though they had within them a faint resemblance of long-distant
respectability. With anxious eyes they peer about, as though searching
in the streets for other lodgers. Where do they get their daily morsels
of bread, and their poor cups of thin tea,--their cups of thin tea, with
perhaps a pennyworth of gin added to it, if Providence be good! (Oxford
Ch 51, p 562).
Ellen Moody
From: Ellen Moody
Subject: TROL Trollope and Austen
Cc: mmccarthy@oup.co.uk
"Although Trollope was a great admirer of Austen's books, and reworked many
of her ideas, it is only fair to warn people that they are very different
from Austen in many ways. I like Trollope, but I seldom laugh aloud while
reading his books. He is much less "light, bright and sparkling."
Subject: Austen/Trollope
From: Ellen Moody
Subject: TROL Austen and Trollope
From: Marcella McCarthy
Sender: owner-trollope-l@teleport.com
From: Marcella McCarthy
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
Subject: TROL Re: Trollope and Austen
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