To Trollope-l
From: LSieberg@aol.com
August 31, 1999
I think partly what's make the book not quite work for the reader in the way intended is the whole idea of an angel of light.
It's interesting, because I can see what he's getting at by dubbing the perfect or ideal husband as and "angel of light." As a single young woman I reacted almost defensively as I read Ayala's Angel to Trollope's portrayal of his central heroine as, for awhile anyway, unable to come to grips with the realities (i.e. the imperfections) of being human. And I wonder, what makes her think she is deserving of this angel? I'm not saying she's not, but I find it fascinating that she never questions whether she is worthy of her angel.
While I think many women today exhibit this same desire for an "angel of light," that is, a perfect companion, I think our society has trained us to always question whether we are good enough for that perfect person that we picture in our minds. We are constantly aware of our imperfections, and the person who is comfortable with their own flaws is rare.
I certainly wish I was that confident!
I'm at work so I can't develop this further...more later!
Lisa
Re: Ayala's Angel of Light
I had not thought of the situation the other way round: what makes Ayala think she deserves such a perfect male. Who died and left her queen? Maybe I never expected I would have a perfect companion so didn't take this next step into wondering what gives Ayala the presumption.
I have thought that one reason so many marriages in Western Society fail or come to an end is that each partner expects too much of the other. As individuals they think marriage gives them some right to make high demands. Or they are driven to make such demands by the society around them.
Ellen Moody
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Down in Scotland
Here's a question I've been meaning to ask of our Trollope friends in the UK for some time. Reading the weekly Ayala calender and seeing the title of chapter 18 brought it to mind again. Why is travel to London always "up" and away from London always "down," regardless of the relative altitudes or positions on the map of the beginning and end of the journey? This is apparently normal usage the UK, and seems to have been so for centuries, but it sounds odd here in the U.S. I can't imagine anyone in Albany, New York, for example, saying she indended to go "up to New York City." The chapter title "Down in Scotland" sounds especially strange to my ear, as it implies the even stranger phrase "Down in the Highlands." Does anyone know the origin of this usage?
Re: Down in Scotland/Up to London/On monte à Paris
"On monte à Paris". It's more than the way it's phrased. Richard Cobb in his wonderful Paris and Its Provinces titles his first chapter "La Montée à Paris". It isn't just London or the British landscape.
Early in said book, Cobb writes:
"My subject is, literally, as well as mentally, a two-way one: after la montée, la descente (for one always comes up to the capital, even if, i nfact, one lives on the heights aboe it, in Sèvres, in ?Clamart, Chaillot, on the Butte Montmartre, or in Belleville)" (Paris and Its Provinces 1792-1802, Richard Cobb, p. 26).
I don't remember how people who lived in the boroughs of New York City which were not Manhattan (meaning Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, Staten Island being never considered, really part of New Jersey) referred to going to Manhattan beyond the phrase "into the City". That's not up or down. It is, however, curious as New York City as an entity emerged in the late 19th century when Manhattan merged with 4 other boroughs.
Wayne is probably onto something which has to do with the value of cosmopolitan life. Vienna, Venice, Berlin, cities like these exist apart from some other realm. Such places offended the Nazis deeply; they did what they could to destroy the cultural life therein. I remember how in one of Jane Jacobs' books, The Life and Death of Cities (wasn't it?), she argued that such cities should be able to secede from the region in which they were embedded.
Cheers to all,
Ellen Moody
January 27, 2001
To Victoria
Re: Query on an Allusion in Trollope's Ayala's Angel
On Trollope-l, we are reading Anthony Trollope's Ayala's Angel and I have come across an allusion, the editor of the Oxford Classics paperback, Julian Thompson was unable to locate ("I have not been able to identify ..."). The hero of this novel, a sort of Henry Tilney cum-beast (supposed very ugly, but enchantingly intelligent, witty, kind, with much savoir faire and penetrating common sense about life and people), one Jonathan Stubbs, lacks a quality the heroine, who is walking around the world with a dream of an ideal prince she labels 'an Angel of Light', feels such a Prince must have. Our narrator suggests that a proposed 'Angel' could do without many things, but he must have this quality; in the heroine's mind it's an unconscious sine qua non.
The quality is caught thus:
She [Ayala] hoped she might meet him [this hero, Jonathan Stubbs] again very often. He was, as it were, the Genius of Comedy, without a touch of which life would be very dull. But the Angel of Light must have something tragic in his composition -- must verge, at any rate, on tragedy. Ayala did not know that beautiful description of a "Sallow, sublime, sort of Werther- faced man', but I fear that in creating her Angel of Light she drew a picture in her imagination of a man of that kind.
Can anyone identify 'Sallow, sublime, sort of Werther- faced man'? My guess is Thackeray; it sounds so insinuating. I remember a funny poem by Thackeray mocking The Sorrows of Werther where Charlotte is pictured endlessly cutting bread and butter (which she was doing when in the novel she first saw him). Perhaps it is too light to be Bulwer-Lytton? Could it be Disraeli? Rhoda Broughton (whom I've never read)? Wilkie Collins? All these novelists Trollope read assiduously.
If one could know the novel in which the original passage occurs, or the character to whom it refers, one might have a clue to the satire upon naive sexuality embedded in this clever novel.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Cheers to all,
Ellen Moody
Ellen2@JimandEllen.org
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel: Sexual and other Anxieties in Trollope's fiction
Toward the end of Chapter XVIII, 'Down in Scotland,' Isadore Hamel and Jonathan Stubbs fall into talking about Ayala. Stubbs remarks, "I don't suppose any amount of experience will teach Ayala how many shillings there are in a pound." Hamel thinks this is as it should be: "I don't think a girl is much improved by knowing how many shillings there are in a pound." To Stubbs' observation that the skill might come in handy, Hamel replies that while it might, "here, as in other things, one acquirement will drive out others." This gives remarkably trenchant expression to what we might call masculine anxiety about feminine delicacy. Imagine trying to argue today that any skill constituted a drawback!
RJ Keefe
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel: Blue china
Hello all
Near the start of Ayala's Angel, I was interested to see that the artist Egbert Dormer's little luxuries in life included "a blue set of china for his dinner table" and that he also threw "a few little dinner parties to show off his blue china."
This reminded me of Oscar Wilde's famous remark "I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china," but to be honest I didn't really think of Trollope and Wilde as contemporaries and thought it must be a coincidence.
However, it says in the Penguin Companion that Trollope may well have had this comment in mind - Wilde said it while he was still a student at Oxford in the 1870s. (According to Richard Ellmann's biography of Wilde, the blue china in question was a pair of Sevres vases.)
Mullen comments: "This fatuous remark was apparently making the rounds of Society two years before Trollope began the book. Such an attitude was completely at variance with Trollope's own concepts of both art and life." Mullen also mentions that Dormer is keen on "art for art's sake", which again sounds like Wilde. I like the reminiscences about Dormer's conversations with Hamel where he lectured the young sculptor to "let his art be everything - above wife and children, above money, above health, above even character" - but completely failed to live up to his own sermons!
Even if Trollope didn't approve of the "art for art's sake" ideal, though, he himself makes quite a few Wilde-style comments as narrator in this book. I love the moment where Tom goes round to the Crescent to propose "in the plenitude of all his rings" - and we are told "Tom, moreover, had a waistcoat which would of itself have been suicidal." You can just imagine Wilde making this comment.
On the question of possible alternative titles for Ayala's Angel... I wondered if "The Artist's Daughters" might have been a good title, because the artistic background seems so important to the way in which both Ayala and Lucy see the world.
I also like Trollope's titles where he uses a colloquial phrase, for instance Can You Forgive Her? or He Knew He Was Right. There are one or two chapter headings in AA which have this sort of flavour - "You Are Not He" is one example which might fit the book as a whole. But I suppose it must have been important to Trollope to have the angel image in the title of the book.
Bye for now
Judy Geater
I think at this time the "Willow Pattern" (blue on white) went into commercial production. At back of my mind I have some recollection of a "blue china" reference in the William Morris exhibition catalogue - I'll check it out later.
Rory O'Farrell
In the catalogue of the 1996 William Morris retrospective exhibition at the V&A Jennifer Hawkins Opie says "Nineteenth-century Dutch patterns too were a continuing tradition... most particularly in a distinctive blue on the white tin-glazed background." She illustrates with photos of several exhibits of Dutch and or UK manufacture. I haven't put my hand on the willow pattern reference. The Oxford World's Classics Ayala notes that "blue china was...fostered by Murray Marks" and the above Opie article says that Morris had contacts with Marks, who supplied Whistler and Rossetti with Chinese 17th & 18th c blue and white porcelain.
Rory O'Farrell
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 . . . Ayala did not know that beautiful
description of a "Sallow, sublime, sort of Werther-
faced man', but I fear that in creating her Angel of Light
she drew a picture in her imagination of a man of that
kind. Concerning Ellen Moody's query on the phrase "Sallow, sublime, sort of
Werther-faced man" cited in Trollope's Ayala's Angel:
I suspect the phrase is rather earlier than Ellen thinks and comes from a
poem rather than a novel. I'm at home today, and don't have the resources to
hand, but seem to recall that Byron allows cites the phrase "Werther-faced
man" in describing Don Juan to his publisher. Perhaps the annotations in
the LA Marchand edition of the letters would sort out where it originates.
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 The phrase "sallow, sublime, sort of Werter-fac'd man" occurs in Thomas
Moore's poem "The Fudge Family in Paris" (letter 5, line 98).
Marc Plamondon Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 In response to my query, Michael wrote that he found through a
search-engine on the Net the following paragraph by Byron:
On Victoria I got the following answer:
Graham Law Since Trollope couldn't have read Byron's private correspondence,
he came across the phrase in Don Juan. It's interesting how
Trollope returns to Byron as a poet and figure again and again
in these books.
Cheers to all, From: "Judy Geater" Dear Ellen,
Many thanks for the tips on short stories.
I have read quite a lot of the tales including "La Mère Bauche" which I
loved - quite like An Eye for an Eye in its tragic power - and also "The
Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne" which cast an interesting sidelight on
some of the novels. But I haven't yet read "The Spotted Dog" or "Frau
Frohmann", so I will hope to get to those soon.
Thanks also for your previous message - I have once again been getting very
behind with answering email, I fear, after another busy week at work. I am
hoping to jump in some more on Ayala's Angel this week and am also reading
He Knew He Was Right with Lisa Guidarini's reading list, the Rogue Book
Group. There are nice people there but it is really too small and quiet for
a workable list and they tend to read books very fast (they are allowing
three weeks for this 1,000-page novel!) so I don't post there so much these
days.
I must say I would love to read your comments about the art world and why
Trollope didn't include more about the Bohemian lifestyle in Ayala - you
said you might go into this more on the list, and, if you do, I will read
with great interest. I see Trollope does touch on the unconventional
lifestyle in Rome and mentions that Hamel is illegitimate, but doesn't go
into this theme as much as he does in "Mrs General Talboys" which, I see
from Sutherland, caused a lot of controversy!
Cheers again To Trollope-l
January 29, 2001
Re: Ayala's Angel, Chs 13-18: Scattered Thoughts on Art, Money
& the Thick-Skinned
RJ's quotation from the conversation between Hamel and
Stubbs prompts to say how curious it is that when Trollope
has described such an apparently unconventional pair in
an unconventional setting (it's clear Stubbs does not
build his home to make a setting for approved social
castes to get together in a manner that endlessly
flatters their hierarchical position, a desire that may
fuel many a get-together still), the words he puts in
their mouths have nothing to do with art or unconventionality
but once again (as in much of this book) turn on sex
and money. We could ask, Would such a pair of
men really utter such quips at one another? The
conversation is actually a performance on a stage
put there for our amusement. We accept it the
way we accept a novelist's putting into the mouths
of supposedly teenage characters thoughts which
come from the mature novelist him or herself
I return to Sig's early comments about his reservations about
this book. It has real problems if you are going to it for
any kind of investigation or dramatization of realities in
life -- which we are entitled to think about since, like
much of Trollope's fiction, it is presented as 'true to life'.
Those reviewers who discussed the novel favorably
praised it on grounds of its 'undeniable reality, as regards
the sayings, and doings, and correspondence of the
various personages ... the style of writing is pleasant,
chatty, sprightly, amusing": "Mr Trollope is undoubtedly
an adept at describing society in its everyday life. He
reveals the motives of the most trivial actions". One
writer hit a central impulse in it: "money troubles in
each case are the difficulty which makes the
story possible" (Anthony Trollope: The Critical
Heritage, ed. DSmalley, pp. 482-483, 485).
The above is a bit unfair: Ayala's troubles with Tom
and his with her derive from causes very different from
money, from the physiological and the imaginative.
And the book does repeatedly delve into art as a
solace to existence, the imaginative being available
though, only after you can dismiss from your mind,
the material. Perhaps that is the crux of the book,
where Aunt Dosett's as the supremely impoverished
life comes in.
Judy and I have been talking off-list about how Trollope
doesn't include the Bohemian lifestyle of the artistic
community which he nonetheless continually alludes
to: Hamel is illegitimate. It may be that this is not
put into a novel meant not to bring a blush to the cheek
of a young person, and instead of it we get the inanity
of young girlish conversations between Nina and
Ayala, both of them figuring forth how they are the
product of an environment. The Marchesa comes
in as the luxurious disillusioned nurse: time for
beddie-bye, girls.
Still others in the period were writing this way. Perhaps
one of the reasons Trollope couldn't sell his book was
he was also beginning to seem old-hat. He was mocked
by a caricature of the Barsetshire series shortly before
he died. And there is the question of why he omitted
all discussions of art when they would have been
realistic coming out of the mouths of people like
Hamel or Stubbs. Instead we get simply floating
suggestive allusions. It certainly makes his book feel
strongly philistine and curiously obsessive about what
the author wants apparently wants us to reject on the
grounds it's dangerous or we can't afford it and have
that nice pension at the end too. Just think a
luxurious coffin and lovely funeral, much respect at
the wake as all wait to hear the will read. Also
during our lives people like the Baldinis will visit
us; we too can get to go to the ball in acceptable
gowns. Alice Thomas Ellis passes lightly over these
themes, ironically put: young Tom is someone who
today would be 'advised to seek psychiatric help';
Sir Thomas is 'the real hero of the book' (Folio
Society edition, Introduction, p. xii). The latter comment
is arguably correct.
What to me is the problem in the book is its
nature as softened caricature. That's where the thinness,
deficiency lies. Aunt Dosett is a caricature: no one
would be as obsessive as this, without any inner
life whatsoever -- or she'd be driven, more like
Austen's Mrs Norris. If a woman was like this for real,
she'd be getting back at others all the time. Uncle
Reginald would not be so emotionally comfortable
(if not all that physically) over his gin and tonic in
the evenings. He would walk very slowly. The walk
is part of the book's sort of realism: there are studies
of cities when people had to walk home from work --
mid-19th century. The outside acceptable trip was
45 minutes. This coheres with what people are
willing to accept easily in a car today. 45 minutes.
This is just about what it would take Uncle Reginald
who is also this way not only saving fare (horse-
drawn omnibuses) but avoiding the underground --
which was there at the time. It might be the stops
didn't cohere with his house, but Trollope is also
registering to those who know the underground was
there and infra dig for the upper middle class
that Uncle Reginald chooses to walk for more
than the peace and quiet and escape of the moment.
Recently there was a good thread on Victoria about
just this rejection of the underground as mixing
one with people beneath one's caste.
So reality is there, but its reality of surface.
Sig points to the unreality of the young couple
at the center. The plot line is too symmetrical,
the switching artificial. We can see the
softening in the sudden invitation to Ayala to
come back; the fairy-godmother Marchesa who
turns up to take our princess to a ball. Poor
Aunt Dosett must always play the dour witch.
Still probability of the daylight mind, of social
experience as seen in the drawing-room is
what novels of this type usually offer. Trollope
gives us that in abundance.
The most interesting question is why Trollope plays on
this theme of money versus romance, the imagination
versus things -- beyond the self-expression of his
own anxieties (sexual and otherwise) through the
males. He longs for bright romance while preaching
to himself about the necessity of financial prudence.
He wants to convince himself and justify his own
public image -- one he worked hard to present
in his An Autobiography, which paradoxically
did him much harm with the critics and artistic
and intellectual community when it was published.
He doesn't go into the art world for real as he would
have to present the realities of their financial as well as
sexual lives -- and his readership wouldn't have liked
that. One of the sharp memorable scenes in The
Last Chronicle of Barset happens when the
artist tears up the painting of the rich heiress in
front of her witch-mother's face. He defies the
£750 (or so) she is offering him. Yet we can see
in his life that he is painting pictures which flatter
people just like her. His talent is continually
prostituted. Henry James invented a style that
avoids such 'vulgarities' -- he always did call
Trollope vulgar, but it is in the dramatisation of
this kind of vulgarity Trollope finds his real strength.
When I talk of the problem of Trollope not bringing
in the art discussions, I don't mean to suggest
that he should have presented his characters talking
like Walter Pater. I mean he had heard real art
talk which is often a mix of sudden strains of
idealism and intense personal expression and
concern for something being done which means
something and sudden leaps of enthusiasm over
whatever is at the moment enjoyed as
beautiful, tasty, sensuous, lovely, or funnily
ugly or outrageously hideous or whatever the
thing captures -- and the intensely vulgar:
how much did you get for that picture? why
did you paint that? the woman wanted it that
way. I have to get my manuscript under 90,000
words or it won't do. He had it in him to write this
kind of thing and that way -- he had heard it
himself. He was a connoisseur himself of
paintings. Maybe he hesitated because his
targeted audience would have felt alienated as this
wasn't them. He was seen as writing for the
circulating library crowd, for the Dosetts and
Ayalas. It is only in the 20th century that
novels move away from the love-social plot
into these areas -- including in the 20th century
novels that dramatise people in the business
world, with its ups and downs and hypocrisies
and terrors being the center of the book.
As it is, Trollope's book is curiously empty at
the center, and we are left to contemplate
the thick-skinned outrageous conversation of
a Frank Houston to Gertrude as he pretends
to play Allan-a-Dale. One of the themes of
the book is the contrast between the thick-
skinned (Frank Houston, Traffic, Tom Tringle at first)
and those who shrug at such talk (Sir Thomas,
Marchesa, Gertrude, Augusta) and accept it in
order to get the physical being they want.
Gertrude is willing to allow this guy Frank to
talk in the crassest ways to her, to on the surface
threaten her with his old girlfriend. This is on
a par with young Tom's acceptance of Ayala's
brutal insults.
I'll close with a comparison of this book with Is
He Popenjoy? since that's the book we just
read. In a recent London Review of Books,
Lorna Sage describes the novels of Henry Green
and says what is good about them is they
'explore the dissolution of the old social and
sexual plots that kept -- still keep -- the heritage
[of the novel and novels] on the road'. In
Is He Popenjoy? Trollope exposed the
discontinuities between the social and sexual
plots: how hollow is the social, but how that's
all we have to keep the savagery of human
beings in control. In this novel he has
closed up this gap, and one reason for
this is his inability to go into the art part of
his theme beyond except as something out-there
not defined, not dramatized which somehow
strongly affects sexual life, happiness, and
some people's finances (Dormers, Hamels).
But then he had such trouble placing "Mrs General
Talboys". Rejected by the Cornhill after
much fussing, it appeared in The London
Review, and then once again when he gathered a group of
short stories for a single volume publication.
It is rarely discussed. Obliquely it has much
to tell us about the people in Italy Trollope saw
on his visits to his brother.
At the same time he had to wait three years
to get Ayala into print and it never took,
still hasn't with the general public.
There is a lesson here about the artist
and his public, and questions to ask
which have no good answer, among
them, Who should you write for? where put
your trust? And also about breaking away,
how important it is even if so very painful.
Otherwise you endlessly tell stories about
Tom Tringles and how Gertrudes accept
the horrors that Frank Houstons represent
with the justification that so many young
men are just like Frank Houston. To which
the answer is, So what?
Cheers to all, Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 Ellen wrote
I must mildly disagree with Ellen's assertion about the thinness of some of
the characters, such as Aunt Dosset. I know lots of people with apparently
no inner life whatever, and I find Aunt Dossett sufficiently realistic to be
believable. And I know at least one or two real people (at least they claim
to be real) who are much more unbelievable than any of Trollope's creations,
and who would be right at home amidst any of Dicken's caricatures. Aunt
Dossett is not nearly as obsessive as ... well, I won't mention any names,
in case any of my relatives is listening.
Ellen's excellent post is going to require rereading and pondering before I
respond to it further, but I did want to make that point ;-)
Wayne Gisslen
Re: Ayala's Angel, Chs 13-18: Reginald Dosett's daily walk
Off-list someone has suggested to me that Reginald Dosett's
daily walk would have taken an hour and a quarter. That's a
lot of walking each day. At that rate -- with this kind of
exercise, he should drop the insurance policy. He will
outlive his wife sitting there sewing her towels and
sheets. But if so -- if he's a heroic walker --
the ironies are then somewhat harder. Though I don't
see the time as wasted -- nor in the novel does he.
Cheers to all, Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 Trollope has a few female characters whose fear of fun has led them to hate
it. In this regard, Aunt Dosett reminds me of Dorothea Prime in Rachel Ray
and also a little of John Caldigate's in-laws - although Aunt Dosett is a
much more sympathetic and character than either of these - perhaps because
she seems to be acting the part of a puritan because she thinks he
circumstances deserve it, rather than because it is her first choice of how
to live.
From: "Catherine Crean" In Ayala's Angel Aunt Dosset has to observe strict economies in running
her household. Her limited resources are stretched even further when her
niece joins her. Mr. Dosset has to resort to gin and water after his meals,
which induces a sense of shame since gin and water is "lower class." In an
outburst, Ayala makes a remark to her Aunt about hating the smell of gin and
water. Aunt Dosset has to explain to Ayala what sacrifice the family is
making in order to keep a roof over Ayala's head. Yes, Ayala is young and
self-centered, but I find Trollope's depiction of Ayala masterful. Ayala's
selfishness is shown to us in interesting ways. She is good hearted. She
tries to attend Aunt Dosset's teaching on how to stretch a joint of mutton,
but in the end Ayala is no stoic. The depiction of Ayala is honest,
sometimes brutally so. She is one of these people who doesn't intend to be
hurtful or disruptive, yet manages to be so.
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 At 13:53 01\01\29, Ellen Moody wrote:
I would think that is about right. We must remember that the centre of
Notting Hill has moved somewhat over the years. The Dosetts live in
Kingsbury Crescent - look at a London map and you will see that the
various Crescents are for the most part to the west of the centre circle
around which Notting Hill seems to be laid out (A-Z page 59 H7).
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 The discussion of art that Ellen Moody finds lacking in Ayala's Angel
stands in nicely for all the discussions of imaginative matters that don't
appear in Trollope's novels. He excludes such talk as rigorously as Henry
James hews to point of view. This occurred to me during a reading of Dr.
Thorne, although I can't say what it was about that novel that triggered
such a reflection. Every novel that I've read since bears it out.
Why does Trollope excise the kind of conversations that must have added
interest not only to his own but to his characters' lives? I can think of
two reasons, each good enough to stand on its own. First, such conversations
are highly allusive as anybody discovers upon entering a sophisticated
circle. References to paintings, books, plays, and the like make up most of
the topic sentences. Trollope and his friends may have been au courant about
paintings, but his readers would have known them only from somewhat
inferior - and colorless - engravings. To talk about another book is to
venture into literary criticism. And so on.
Second, such conversations are beside Trollope's point - about which he's as
I say as relentless as James. There must be exceptions, but I can't think of
any: the point of each of Trollope's novels (even La Vendee is the
settling down of a 'happy' couple. Sometimes the settling down happens only
at the very end, after many trials; in Is He Popenjoy?, interestingly, the
'settling down' takes place at the beginning but the 'happily ever after'
waits until the end. All I mean by happiness is this: a couple's finding its
place in the adult world. Certainly the stories of ancillary characters are
interesting - Roger Carbury, for example, discovers, in The Way We Live
Now, that he will not be settling down with anybody, while his
sister-in-law finds companionship long after stopping to look for it. But
even the ancillary stories are stick to the point. Whether Trollope intended
to write moral guidebooks for young readers or not, the business of marrying
and settling down (as I keep putting it) seems to have been the only one
that interested him as a novelist.
RJ Keefe
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 While it is true that Trollope presents his stories using a realistic
style, he nevertheless seems to be working from a fairy-tale pattern in
this book. No one has commented so far on the references to Cinderella
and Beauty and the Beast, but surely it is in Trollope’s mind that his
main characters are playing out a similar plot-line? I don't mean that
the story follows either of these tales in parallel fashion but that
Trollope seems to be suggesting that his story is a kind of fairy tale.
Consistent with this model is the arbitrary arrangement involving the
two orphaned daughters, which we would readily accept in a fairy tale
and perhaps object to in a realistic novel. But other elements fit the
pattern as well: the wealth of the Tringles, the poverty of the
Dosetts, and the ugliness of Jonathan Stubbs. (Not to get ahead, but in
Chapter 20 we have references to Ayala as a damsel being held prisoner
by a dragon.) I suppose the whole concept of the Angel of Light also
fits.
Ayala referred to young Tom as the Beast. She saw herself in the role
of Beauty -- but not in the physical sense: “Her assumed superiority
existed in certain intellectual or rather artistic and aesthetic gifts,
-- certain celestial gifts” (Chapt 13, pg 123 Oxford). This was her
non-material inheritance from her deceased father.
My knowledge of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast is pretty sketchy,
but Cinderella was a poor orphan girl who suffered abuse at the hands of
her foster family. In Beauty and the Beast, Bella fell in love with the
ugly beast thereby transforming him into a handsome young hero.
If we read the novel as a fairy tale instead of as a traditional
realistic novel, does it make any difference?
Todd
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 In response to RJ, while Trollope does often leave out many kinds of
areas of experience which we wish he would have dramatised, he
has far more interests in his novels than the business of the young
couple settling down and marrying. Even on the level of mere plot,
many of his stories focus on other matters, especially political and
larger social arrangements. He is interested in colonialism,
in church politics, male violence, financial money arrangements
and how they are the basis of society, and are being corrupted
(as he understood it). The latter is the core of The Way We
Live Now. Trollope quickly grew bored of the Carburies as
such. They don't carry the story.
IThese many different kinds of plots weave back and forth from the
obligatory love story which sometimes Trollope has at heart and
sometimes doesn't. In all of them too, these stories are the clotheslines
on which all sorts of other meditations and interests amd
themes, moral, psychological, ethical, and personal, are explored.
In Is He Popenjoy? Trollope's very purpose is to expose to us
the disjunctions and losses in the arrangements in ways which
reflect on aspects of social experience that have little to do with
the young couple at the center. In Ayala his hero may well be
Sir Thomas; his themes are about romance and imagination and
many other things too. It reduces the books to their barebones
and makes one wonder why we would find any interest in them.
There's so much more there.
Sir Walter Scott has some good lines lamenting the necessity of
the young couple at the center. They must be there, and he has
real interest and sympathy for them at times. But it's the marginal
or side-shows that are the electrifying cores of his books.
And he does discuss art: in his Editor's Tales and there makes
the stories of artists relevant to our world today. I forgot about
these. I would adduce the real interest, moving and funny of
stories like Fred Pickering's and Mary Gresley's, of "Panjandrum"
and "The Spotted Dog" to show Trollope could tell such a story
at the center of his tale when he wanted to.
Cheers to all, Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 Hi Catherine,
You asked a bit ago about AT's interest in the Pre-Raphs and
in art in general. During a bout of insomnia last night I
start reading Mullen & Munson's The Penguin Companion to
Trollope and came onto the Art entry. He was indeed very
interested having been "encouraged" by his mother and in
later life visited galleries wherever he went at times
bringing a "chair with him in order to study the paintings
at leisure."
Do you remember me pouring over Angela's edition of
Orley Farm last November with the beautiful Millais illustrations?
Joan
To Trollope-l
January 29, 2001
Re: Ayala's Angel, Chs 13-18: Cinderella and the Beasts
In response to Todd, Wayne, and Jeremy,
This novel is indeed consciously modelled on a fairy tale.
Of particular interest is Trollope's use of the word 'beast'
for Jonathan Stubbs as well as Tom Tringle. In many of
his novels we see him creating parallel plots and
character types who reinforce, undercut or ironically
comment on one another and the various themes of
the book; however, it's rare to catch him acknowledging
what he's doing. This suggests that in this novel
Trollope has more to the fore of his mind that this is
a novel he is writing; he is not quite as lost in the
world of his creation as if it were real as he is in some
others. He also has more than one Cinderella: later
in the book Imogen becomes another variant on
the type both Ayala and Lucy figure forth.
There is an allegorical quality to the type casting as
well as the language and literary allusions here.
In all Trollope's books he makes use of types -- that's
why readers find it easy to move into them. In this
one the types are as essential in the evolution of
the plot as the individual idiosyncracies he gives
them -- or their imagined psychologies. The stories
of Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella are age-old,
perhaps the earliest polished ones were in late
17th century France. The interest or irony of the
Beast story is this ugly shaggy slightly awesome
powerful monster turns out to be a Prince Charming
after all. In most variants he sheds his ugliness by
the end of the story through some magical potion,
however, in all before that Beauty has learned to
love him. She has seen his inner nature and yielded
to that; then the outer transformation happens.
In Trollope's story we won't have any magical potions,
and the princely nature of only one Beast will be
recognised by Beauty.
I'd go further and say Trollope is aware he has
given us some real Beasts: Traffic, Houston.
The word 'lout' continues to appear. Trollope
is asking us to decided who is the true lout
in this book. It's not Tom. Trollope did dislike
the false conclusions about life some types of
romance encouraged in people: among them,
Byron's seductive poetry about the tortured
psyches; the tinsel of pseudo-medievalism.
The latter allows Frank Houston to flatter himself;
Trollope's rereads the Walter Scott poem to
show us how Allan-a-Dale is anything but
unselfish, chivalrous, charming.
It does make a real difference is we read the novel
as a modern fairy tale -- as it makes a real difference
if we read Is He Popenjoy? as a psychologized
replay upon the sordid parables found in the
railway stalls of Trollope's period. We can then
follow the larger lines of the story as well as
pay attention to the allusive language which has
dream resonances. The book announces itself
as playful so we don't truly worry about the
grim economic and other insecurities we see
in the lives of the Dosetts. Our Heroines cannot
end up in the street. So we can enjoy the
book in a different way from the way we would
a novel that really demanded we believe in
what is happening in its pages.
To look at the novel this way also makes the softened
caricature nature of many of the ancillary characters
more acceptable. Wayne says he has known people
who apparently have such little imaginative life,
so few thoughts and resources outside the grind of tasks.
I italicised his use of the important qualification. I can't deny
we may seem to see such dull miserable souls and
have to cope with them; there may even be such.
However, in my experience -- and in my earlier
family life I knew a lot of working class people who
seemed to sit and watch TV endlessly, have
no thoughts beyond the most banal --
if you pay ever so little attention to them, be courteous
or show a sympathy which clearly has no threat
whatsoever, from any point of view (like one which
would seem to suggest they have failed themselvs),
someone who seems to be this way will after
a while open up and tell you about some interest
of theirs. It need not be in the arts at all. They
may never indulge it by buying anything. But they
do dream and somewhere in their days or nights
they are doing something in their minds
about it. Even a dog has its aspirations for
enjoyment; even dogs dream. (Not that I have
anything against dogs or mean to seem to
condescend to them; I use this animal merely
as metaphor for the kind of animal life we
regard as living wholly in the immediate moment.)
Aunt Dosett is a simplified character: she is not
allowed life beyond the role Trollope wants her
to play in the allegory.
Aunt Dosett is also softened. We are not asked to believe
that she never ever has a really mean, small
petty revenge on those she gives up her days
for, but we are never shown her taking her
frustrations out. The comparison to be
made is with characters like Mrs Norris or many
another woman novelist's frustrated impoverished
type. I say woman novelist because women are
particularly good at this sort of thing: it's
what they have had to endure from one another
in their past experiences. The angel in the house
poisons the existence of others in small ways
as she is allowed none at all. All people want
to get something for themselves out of
life for real. It is true that many Victorian
novelists deny heriones real aggression,
real violence, real anger. This is not allowed.
But in this novel this kind of softening extends
to the males too: for example, Sir Thomas.
Such a man would be much more ruthless
than he appears at home. And Trollope knows it.
That's why we don't go to the office to watch Sir
Thomas raking in those millions and making
sure they stay in his columns on the ledger.
We are only allowed to see Mr Traffic in
relationship to his boots and to Sir Thomas.
If we extend this outwards to political or general
thought -- which Trollope's novels encourage
us to do -- In a sense to think that
such people -- say working class, or agricultural
labours, or the hard-working business
types of the world -- are without this kind of burden of
antagonism and adult complexities -- is to
condescend and to reinforce the beliefs upper
class leisured and educated people have had
about lower class, poorer, uneducated people
or people 'busy in the world' which allow them to
dismiss such people as 'other', as not able to,
not wanting, the 'finer' things of life. Trollope's
texts are by no means free of such
condescension, but in this case his aim is
merely to free us of the distinctly unpleasant,
what is really misery-making in desperate
people.
This softening does begin to dissolve away
as we get into Frank Houston and Imogen
Docimer's story. It also softens away
when we get thoroughly into Tom's
inner story. Ultimately Tom and the
story of Frank and Imogen are not readily
assimilated into the fairy tale nature of the
book. To say that Tom needs psychiatric
treatment is to make him the Malvolio
of the piece, but as the novel moves
on this 'deviant' critiques the so-called
norms as cruel, dense, inhumane.
We must see the woman who is reading
Frank's crass letters, who he is willing to
use as a obvious threat to Gertrude,
before we can go any further about
Imogen.
The letters in this part of the novel are
numbered; that means Trollope wants us
to pick up ironies having to do with
their placement, when they are read
and who reads them. In Ayala he is both a
conscious artist and a man making
an overtly pleasant book which he
hopes will sell popularly.
Cheers to all, Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 I've just read Ch 18 and am wondering about Trollope's references to
Allan-a-Dale and the relevance to Frank Houston. The name is familiar to me
from my childhood and somehow I have a feeling there may be a connection to
Robin Hood? But I could be wrong there.
Cheers Re: Ayala's Angel, Chs 13-18: Frank Houston as Allen-a-Dale
Elizabeth asks about Frank Houston's parody of Allen-a
Dale. At the back of the Oxford Classics paperback edition
of Ayala's Angel, Julian Thompson tells us it is the song
Scott gives Edmund of Winston in Rokeby: "Allen-a
Dale, poacher and freebooter, is in search of a wife. The
full passage runs:
The father was steel, and the mother was stone; As Charley Tudor in The Three Clerks Trollope parodied
this romantic gallant hero in a piece supposed to be
composed for the Daily Deligh newspaper. Charley
Tudor relates the adventures of one Sir Anthony Allen-
a-Dale". It's significant that the hero is called Anthony;
this are numbers of places in the novels where we find
Trollope using his initials (Anton Trendellson in Nina
Balatka comes to mind) to suggest some relationship
in Trollope's mind with a character.
Frank quotes the lines in one of the remarkable if brief letters
scattered and carefully placed (numbered in sequence) in
this week's chapters. It is a remarkably crass one: if
hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, Frank sees no
need to pay any tribute. He is off to marry for money
and makes no attempt even to speak of the girl he
is to marry with any respect or affection. The allusion
show us his shallow conceit. He is congratulating himself
on his likeness to Allen-a-Dale who (he thinks) was so
admirable as to demand a girl from her parents; when
when they stoutly refused, the girl longed so for his
"laughter" she fled away after him.
This is one of those letters which requires that we
read it through the eyes of the person intended:
it is addressed to Imogen Docimer whom we are
told Frank wooed, and who we are given to understand
loves him. Because of the name of the person to
whom it is addressed, it gets a very different overlay
of meaning than the surface text: instead of
mere self-congratulatory boasting on how he's
now got a "good head of cabbage" (Gertrude --
who, it must be admitted, has not behaved
in any way meriting a much better analogy)
even if he had to give up his "flower", the letter
takes on the aspect of dense cruelty. It's one
thing to be thick-skinned in one's mind; it's
another to reveal it to someone whom such
sentiments will hurt. He opens the letter with
a teasing reference to her expected love for
him:
This moment in the text is a good example of
how epistolary writing conveys much meaning
by the very nature of the act and situation.
In my lecture to the Trollope society I called
this Trollope's use of epistolary situations.
If Frank had written this letter to anyone else,
it would not be cruel; but then he would not
write such a sentiment to anyone else. That
he can follow it up by referring to the girl
whom he is going to take from her parents
as "cabbage" suggests that Ayala is calling
the wrong young man a lout.
There is something else here: the use of the
original text throws a curious light on Trollope's
response to it. Somewhere in his writing, he
talks of how dull he finds Scott's texts -- really;
yet they appeal to the large general audience
as romance. Scott's readers accepted such
ballads as that above straight: Trollope
read them with the robust scorn of the
sceptic.
The other allusion to a romantic text in this
week's chapters offers another perspective
on the workings of Trollope's imagination
and why he decided to write this tale of
a girl who who dreams of an 'angel of light'.
This angel is as complicated a figure as
the angel in the house (in this novel, Aunt
Dosett). Trollope's earlier reference to a "sallow,
sublime, sort of Werther-faced man"
could have come either from Don Juan or
Thomas Moore's parody of it in The
Fudge Family in Paris (I got the second
explanation from Victoria too). I don't own nor
have I had time to look at Thomas Moore's
"The Fudge Family in Paris", but I know that Moore's
work often parodied romanticism like Byron's
with a robust scorn similar to Trollope's
on Scott's poem. But in either case
Trollope's memory and use of it shows
another kind of irony playing across
romance: like Moore, Trollope is
bothered by these portrayals of
anguish as real, even when done in
a half-mocking vein like Byron's. Moore
burlesques it, squashes it, mocks it
out of court. Trollope takes it a more
seriously: he understands that young
women really do long for a medium of
self-distruction in their "angels". The
angel must also have some elements
of Jung's animus figure.
For my part, I'd take the "sallow,
sublime, sort of Werther-faced man"
over this "Allen-a-Dale" any time.
Cheers to all, Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 Clearly, I rolled out my notion of Trollope's central story before it was
fully baked. Let me just clarify one point: by 'settling down' I don't mean
'love story.' I mean, for example, the way Archdeacon Grantly is upset by
his son's interest in Grace Crawley, and how the meeting with Grace changes
his mind. When two people settle down in the world, room must be made for
them by their elders. Individuals may fall in love, but it's families and
sometimes whole neighborhoods that get married. Paul Montague's troubles
with Winifred Hurtle and Roger Carbury (not to mention the railway board)
are as much a part of his 'settling down' story as any of his meetings with
Hetta.
It might seem that I'm trying to reduce everything in Trollope to one
narrative. Not so. But I find that with time he became less and less
interested, as a novelist, in strolling far from what I see at his work's
center. I don't believe that he regretted 'the young people' for an instant.
RJ Keefe
Re: Ayala's Angel: Silences
In response to RJ, well, he might not have regretted
dramatising the 'young couple', especially in some of
his earlier conventional English fictions (e.g. Dr
Thorne) and his more subversive ones (e.g.,
The Bertrams), but it is to be noted that his passion
in his latter books goes elsewhere: into the older
men, into older women, and his stories (especially
in the shorter books) begins to marginalise
them. He was in the period and by ultra-
sensible critics later (like Bradford Booth) criticised
for this multiplication of love stories: said Booth
(and says Mullen) these are hopeless padding.
There are many who have written that Ayala is
nothing more than a book strained out, a made book.
There is some truth to that. He is drawn to the
young man who doesn't make the girl, from his first
book to his last. There is also this curious
pattern of the older man longing for young
ones. If we start to look at his love stories,
they do reveal things people have yet to come
to terms with -- by which I mean openly discuss.
Cheers to all, Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 Hello all
I've been very much enjoying the art discussion.
As Ellen suggested, it seems a pity that Trollope, who knew the Bohemian
lifestyle so well, doesn't allow us to eavesdrop on any actual artistic
conversations between Egbert Dormer, the young sculptor Isadore Hamel and
the others who would have dropped in at the bijou to admire that blue china.
In these early chapters, although there are several flashback passages, we
never see the artists talking about specific pieces of work at all. The
nearest we get is probably the passage where Hamel remembers how Dormer told
him that "to an artist his art should be a matter to him of more importance
than all the world besides".
Although there is so little detail, and although conversation in the novel's
present tends to focus on money rather than art, I do think the artistic
background is very important to the novel.
Ayala and Lucy both built their world view in that "bijou", where their
father wore his jewels and velvet and spent all he had on finery and
tasteful objets d'art, That is surely why neither girl can really be happy
with either the rich but vulgar Tringles or the penny-pinching Dosetts, who
save money by failing to subscribe to the library.
I suppose that Ayala is more obviously the sister with the artistic nature
(it has already been mentioned that there are similarities with Marianne in
Sense and Sensibility). She is the one with the romantic yearning for the
"angel of light" (perhaps a figure in one of her father's paintings?).
But Lucy also yearns foIdylls of the King - a deeply romantic work about as
far removed from Aunt Dosett's world as you could imagine - and also in her
attraction towards Hamel, who has the same unworldly quality as her own
father. She wants to get back to the bijou rather than living in the dreary
world of the Dosetts.
Ellen wrote
I'd agree that Aunt Dosett is "supremely impoverished", but I also think
that she has a certain similarity with the Rev Crawley (even if her family
income is about 10 times what he has to live on!) She has the same obsessive
determination to live within her means even if it kills her, paring to the
bone, serving the cheapest cuts of meat and letting her husband drink
gin-and-water rather than considering spending their savings or, heaven
forbid, asking the Tringles for a hand-out.
The big difference between her and Crawley (perhaps because, as a woman, she
wouldn't have had access to the same education) is that he still treasures
the life of the intellect even in his greatest bitterness. He might not be
able to feed or clothe Grace and the other children properly, but he still
teaches them Latin and reads with them.
Ellen mentioned Austen's Mrs Norris. I found Aunt Dosett reminiscent of her,
too - she is like a more sympathetic re-imagining of the same sort of
figure. In Mansfield Park, Mrs Norris (an unforgettable character because
she is so gloriously and wickedly alive) seems to put down Fanny out of
sheer spite and determination to assert herself.
By contrast, Aunt Dosett, even though she might seem like a Norris-style
dragon, bears first Lucy and then Ayala no ill-will. She is trying to teach
them to lower their expectations as she has had to lower her own, and
genuinely believes she is being kind by taking away their books and
lecturing them about buying cheap cuts of mutton and hemming sheets!
On the housework front, one of the things I love about Trollope is his
unsentimental and clear-eyed depiction of the sheer drudgery of cooking and
cleaning in Victorian times. He doesn't surround the role of the "angel in
the house" with the sort of glamour which both Dickens and Thackeray tend to
give her, but fully realises that it means endless hours sewing petticoats.
He also recognises that his heroines would prefer to read Tennyson!
Bye for now Re: Self-Respect, Money & Aunt Dosett (Was "Art, Money, and Ayala ...)
I enjoyed Judy's posting on Art, Money, and Ayala. I renamed
it to focus on a perspective on this novel she suggests in her
parallel between the way the Rev Josiah Crawley deals with
his marginalisation and potential (and actual in his case)
humiliations and the way Aunt Dosett does. I had only been
considering Aunt Dosett as a grim depiction of the realities
of the lives of angels in the house -- when, of course, they
don't have children. One of the things that makes us bring
Austen's Mrs Norris and Trollope's Aunt Dosett together is
they are both childfree. I use the modern word because had
Mrs Norris had children, she would not have had to look for
tasks and for people to dominate; had Aunt Dosett had
children, she and Uncle Reginald might have had to live
in a less respectable house, and if her days would have
been so much more hectic and difficult, they would not
have been so empty of meaning beyond the grind of
making ends meet.
She is a good example of what could happen to women of
this class when there was no child to give them something
to do and they hadn't the inner resources to create some
life out of themselves.
However, I am moving away from Josiah and Margaret.
Both seem to be grim puritanical figures to those around
them who cannot understand what it is they are
desperately holding onto. We see it: the tangible
trivia that brings respect from other people. We might
say Aunt Dosett keeps her pride clean, endlessly sews it
together. She has the option of not having to go outside
her door and cope with gaining self-respect and
pride outside it. In this sense she is safer. More
ambivalently, that less is expected keeps her in
her place. She has no opportunity once she has married
this particular male at his level of income. The
reality that less has been expected of women until
recently is something often overlooked in understanding
why women seemed to cling to their chattel status.
Then comes into her home these two girls, each one
of which is a reproach. And how is she to handle
them? Her dilemma is not one which is gone from
us today. Something is being asked of her which
she's not got & has no way of getting.
When Lady Tringle comes to call at the Dosett's
house to invite Ayala to return to live with them,
we may think of the cliche about eating humble pie --
though Trollope by no means does justice to the inside
writhing such a step would make such a woman feel.
Many readers will concentrate on what is to the
fore in the scene: Lady Tringle versus Ayala,
nd Ayala's exasperation at and fear of Tom.
The scene is meant to parallel Uncle Tom
versus Ayala. However, there is a difference. Aunt
Dosett is allowed to sit there when Lady Tringle
comes. I noticed how she got out of her own
room when the Big Man arrived. I also noticed
how Aunt Dosett's words went for nothing
when she stayed.
Lady Tringle need not say, "But nobody is asking
you", her silence and turning away says it all
for her. Lady Tringle is not ashamed to come
into a house she normally never goes to, one
she doesn't send Lucy to. She's not ashamed
to dismiss this woman before her eyes.
Nor is her goodbye particularly courteous.
Imagine what a really indepth portrayal of this
type of women would be: Mrs Norris is not
such a caricature as people suppose.
We couldn't rename the novel "the angel
in the house" because of Aunt Dosett's marginalised
presence -- she takes up little of the verbal space.
But she is important. Later on she comes to
be seen as a mean witch-barrier to Ayala,
keeping the poor lovely princess caged
up with the torn towels. But this is to look
at her from the point of view of a single
character, Ayala who in this particular
instance stands for a spoilt child's
inadequate vision. The whole carpet
Trollope has spun for us shows us she stands
for what Ayala and Lucy don't want to be --
and what Imogen may become if she takes
our Allen-a-Dale because his "cabbage-head",
i.e., Gertrude is refused him by the novel's
Big Brown Bear (Sir Thomas Tringle).
Not that Ayala always stands for a spoilt child.
Although written too largely, generally, her
dialogues with Tom and Sir Thomas make her
speak for a woman's point of view _vis-a-vis_
the patriarchy which we see in other of
Trollope's novels when men are pushed on
women "for their own good".
Re: Ayala: Money, Power (?), and Thomas Tringle (Was "Self-respect, Money
& ...)
On the theme of money and its curious
non-relationship with power (at times):
Another very good dialogue is Sir Thomas
versus Mr Traffic. If Trollope doesn't give us anything
to go on to understand why we are to feel
grim about the Tringles and Dosetts and like
Jonathan Stubbs, he certainly gives us much
about sex, money, and how people can
take advantage of one another. One of Trollope's
interests in the dominance-submissive patterns
of human behavior: Mr Traffic has learnt to
short-circuit it. The question is, How does he
get away with it? Why?
We are continually told about how Sir Thomas
is making millions, just millions and millions.
Yet he seems powerless before his family.
I answer: he is yet another variant on Trollope's
inarticulate males.
This is a book about the power of language:
that's what Jonathan Stubbs has got.
Cheers to all, Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 I've been thinking some more about the realism, or lack of it, in Trollope's
characterisations and about our discussion in the last week about the
qualities of allegory or caricature in this book. I mentioned in an earlier
post, in response to Ellen's comments about Aunt Dosett, that I knew people
with apparently such little imaginative life. Ellen quite rightly noted my
intentional use of the qualifier "apparently." But I wonder if we can't also
use this word in the same way with respect to a fictional character.
Let me try to explain. Granted, the characters in a novel are, by
definition, fictional, and they have no life or reality outside the words
that the novelist uses to describe them or puts into their mouths. This is
so obvious that it hardly needs stating. This means that the only thing that
there is to know about a character is what we are told by the novelist. If
the novelist gives us a shallow portrayal, then of course the character is
shallow. However, what if we approach the characters and the novel in
another way? What if we assume that the characters are real people, and the
novelist has chosen to portay them in greater or lesser depth? This means
that there may be -- indeed, there are -- things to know about the
characters that the author hasn't told us. This idea was brought home to me
last evening as my wife and I watched the first episode of The Pallisers on
our fresh new set of DVDs. (!) Here were Planty Pal, Lady Glencora, The Duke
of Omnium, and others seen from a somewhat different point of view. One
could feel that one learned a few things about them that Trollope hadn't
told us, yet they were unmistakably the same characters, or should I say the
same people.
From this point of view, it makes sense to say that Aunt Doset apparently
has no imaginative life. Maybe Trollope hasn't told us everything that's in
her mind. Perhaps he doesn't know everything that's in her mind. (Unlike,
say, Henry James, who seems to tell us everything that passes through a
character's mind. But of course, that isn't possible, either, because one
thinks not only in words but in images and feelings. And for all that, I
don't find James's characters any more "realistic" than Trollope's, for all
the sometimes nearly impenetrable fog of words that surrounds them.)
A caricature, it seems to me, is not merely a flat characterization but one
in which certain characteristics are exaggerated, especially if exaggerated
beyond the realistic. I don't find Aunt Doset exaggerated or unrealistic at
all. As I wrote in an earlier post, I know people who are much more
grotesquely obsessive than she is. On the other hand, if we are talking
about realism, what about the dialog between Stubbs and Hamel in Chapter 20?
Has any human being talked extemporaneously in such consistently well
structured paragraphs and sentences? (For that matter, one could say the
same thing about some of the dialog in James.)
None of this is intended to contradict Ellen's extended commentaries about
the realism, or lack of it, of Trollope's portrayals in Ayala's Angel.
Rather I am suggesting a different approach to reading that, I think, also
has some validity. No doubt I am too gullible; one aspect of reading fiction
that I never have trouble with is the willful suspension of disbelief --
perhaps to a fault. Professors criticised more than one of my college papers
for being more "appreciative" than "critical," criticism that never bothered
me in the slightest.
Has any of this made sense? If not, perhaps I could have another crack at
it. Most of the wording of this post that I thought of while in the shower
this morning abandoned me by the time I got to the computer.
Wayne Gisslen Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2001 Wayne, your comments made perfect sense to me. I am
another one of the people who is quite able to suspend
disbelief in an instant when reading or watching a
movie or television. Then of course by disbelief comes
out with a vengeance when watching the news. My
husband drives me crazy if we are watching a
television show together--he picks everything to
pieces as not being realistic. Yet, he loves science
fiction.
I like Aunt Dosett and think her kindly, more kind
than Lady Tringle. As a youngster I can remember a
couple of aunts that were rather like her.
And the dialogue between Stubbs and Hamel jarred upon
me as I was reading it. It was almost like they
weren't really friends but were being formal, though
sometimes people that haven't seen each other for a
while do tend to be more formal than with daily
acquaintances.
Dagny
Re: Ayala's Angel: Realism and Allegory
I guess I would respond to Wayne that it doesn't have to
be either or. That is you can read a book as at once
allegorical and realistic. When I said Aunt Dosett
was something of a caricature, I didn't mean I didn't
believe in the character at some level. I do. I got
indignant on her behalf when Lady Tringle snubbed
her. It's a subtle shallow modelling.
I'll go further and say that while reading a chapter
which has allegorical resonances and characters
who are believable enough or very believable, one
can at the same time feel yourself in contact
with the author. After all the real person in each
text is the spirit who wrote the words originally.
One way of reading need not preclude the other,
and they can go on at the same time, sort of
subliminally. Just as when we sit in our chair
we half-forget we are in the chair and think we
are seeing these scenes and hearing these
voices, while at the same time we never forget
that we are sitting in the chair. The mind
can hold many possibilities at once, now
this one comes to the fore and now that.
There is a fascinating & entertaining book by Umberto
Eco called Six Walks in Fictional Woods on
this problem of how far we can fill details into
a character's life which the author did not give
us. What kinds of questions can we ask or
objections can we make. I talked about some
of his comments in the chapter in my book
on Trollope's Autobiography: for example,
what is the difference between the character
called Trollope in the Autobiography and
the character called Mr Harding in The
Warden. Literally none at all. However, we
as readers take a different attitude towards
them because we know Mr Trollope as a
character refers to a real man who once lived,
and who is writing his book, so if he doesn't
tell us things we think we've a right to know,
we can complain. We can't complain at
Mr Harding for not telling us things. We
also know of real people they keep secrets
from us. Mr Harding is not going off doing
things he's not telling us. All we can
ever know or deduce about Mr Harding
we have to get from the book: we may
deduce a lot, but it has to come from the
book. Not so Mr Trollope or a real person.
Eco has a chapter where he brings forward
incidents novelists like to play with where
they make fun of some of these faultlines.
For example, in Emma, Emma Woodhouse
paints a picture of Harriet sitting outdoors.
Her father comes along and says he doesn't
like the picture; it upsets him. Why? Because
she hasn't painted a shawl on Harriet and
Harriet will catch cold. Emma does not
say to him, this is not an appropriate
deduction; instead she reassures him by
saying, but Papa, don't you see, it's
summer in the picture. Harriet doesn't
need her shawl.
Austen likes to play games in this
manner: in Northanger Abbey,
Mrs Allen reads a gothic novel
and gets upset because the description
of the ruined broken down kitchen in
the vast castle disturbs her: she
worries about how the servants get
through all the work in such inadequate
facilities. This is the a variant on the
same joke.
There are other novelists in the
18th century who like to play
with the reader and yet have
real enough characters: Laurence
Sterne in Tristram Shandy is
one. Modern writers who do
this include Italo Calvino. He
loves to wink at us through his
novels, teasing as he goes. It's
the half-belief that permits
the real delight in his The
Non-Existent Knight.
There are other chapters in Eco's book
about how we respond to landscapes
in books and art and how this differs
from how we respond to when we
see them in life. For after all, we are
talking endlessly about mental life.
Proust (I am just now listening to an
unabridged audiocassette recording of
Swann's Way in my car) says all
we ever really respond to is our
perceptions of things. To respond
adequately to your post, the question
I would offer as food for thought in
reply is, Why narrow the possibilities
as you read? You are free to make
what choices you like, take what
perspective, play what games you
like with your imaginative in response
to someone else's (Trollope's in
this case). To me Ayala is
a highly playful book, and probably
that's why my postings have been about
the levels of play in our book. The characters
are not allowed to get out of the picture;
they are not allowed to get away from
the candied frame (in the manner of Mrs
Proudie who would not have permitted
even a qualified happy ending to
The Last Chronicle so she had
to be killed off), except maybe at the
end Tom.
I recommend Eco's book. It's in print.
It is no harder to read than John
Sutherland's Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?
and is ultimately much richer in what
it has to say about the pleasures of
the imagination.
Cheers to all, Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2001 Wayne writes; 'what if we assume that the characters are real people, and the
novelist has chosen to portray them in greater or lesser depth? This means
that there may be - indeed there are - things to know about the characters
that the author hasn't told us.'
If we substitute a play for a novel here, then it is this shadowed side of
the character which the actor tries to discover and show to the audience.
Every actor will play a set character in a different way, and try to show
'their' interpretation of the role within the words given to them by the
author. In the same way, as readers, I imagine that we do tend to interpret
Trollope's characters slightly differently. We cannot escape from our own
subjective backgrounds, both cultural and social.
As Ellen says we can, and do, read books as both allegorical and realistic,
but I wonder if we tend to lean to one side or the other. As an actor (and
writer) I tend to search for the character behind the written word, this is
my preference, but am always intrigued by others interpretations.
Isn't it this different way of looking at Trollope's novels which makes a
discussion group so interesting?
Cheers, Teresa Ransom
To Trollope-l
February 8, 2001
Re: Ayala's Angel: Jonathan and Ayala
I'd like to add to my posting of the other day
that to recognize Trollope himself in the portrait
of Jonathan Stubbs and Ayala as a displacement
of Kate Fields lends the book a level of
poignancy and unresolved conflicts which
deepen it. Take Stalham which we are supposed
to admire so, or think so very pleasurable,
a kind of pleasure the narrator suggests is
not available to the Tringles since they are
"nouveau riche", not really aristocratic-
comfortable with themselves. Well, Stubbs's cottage
is imagined in stark contrast to Stalham --
and in stark contrast to the Dosett home.
The inference: there is a third choice; it's not
either/or. Stubb is clearly idyllically content
on his mountain: again a stark contrast, this
time to Sir Thomas who emerges from the
narrative suddenly to meet Hamel as he climbs
away from Stubb's cottage. Why does
Sir Thomas emerge at this point: he's on
Trollope's mind. We are told he is only
really happy in Lombard Street. Merle
Park, Queen's Gate, Glenbogie itself don't
make the cut for him. He's an alter ego
in the scheme of Trollope's deeper
imaginings to Jonathan Stubbs.
To see Ayala in this light is also to make sense
of the book in terms of Trollope's oeuvre. Ayala
is endlessly called an anomaly; something that
doesn't fit. Not so. It is linked to what
we see in An Old Man's Love, Mr Whittlestaff's
Mary Lawson turned into something our
narrator can have with no Mrs Bagget in sight;
the obverse side of a mirror which gives
us Mr and Mrs Neverbend. An Old Man's
Love and The Fixed Period are Trollope
responding to what is: in the first place with
grief, in the second with savage irony. Ayala
is his dream-idyll whose full implications
(erotic needs) he has not been able to face
in life but can work out through his dream
work imagination. I wonder (though can't
know) if Geary knew the photograph
of Kate Fields that appears in C. P Snow's
biography for his illustrations provide a
young girl closely similar, even to the dark
ringlets. This week's illustrations show us
Stubbs hunting: a big looking man,
reminiscent of Trollope as he describes
himself and appears in caricatures of
himself hunting.
For me on this level this book becomes
alive, mature, is given explanatory purchase.
The sneering is a form of keeping at
bay, justifying to himself his own
sublimations, compromises. People
have not sufficiently gotten underneath
the carapace of a portrait Trollope made
of himself in An Autobiography -- in
order of course to fend off others.
Cheers to all, By the way, I agree that Ayala's Angel is a good example of a novel
centered round a single female character. It is one of my favourites,
simply because of its ruthless deconstruction of romantic love. It
reminds me of the way that Chaucer satirises the conventions of courtly
love in some of the Canterbury Tales. It's another example of a girl
feeling pressured by her friends, as well--the pressure to accept the
suitable partner. The way that Trollope runs the real love story
parallel to the "social" one is very witty.
Marcella
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 Thank you Ellen for a very interesting interpretation of Ayala's Angel.
I had not been bringing to mind those rather awful Trollope photographs
where he does look particularly bristly but now that you mention it, there
could well be a connection with Stubbs.
My partner has two pictures of Kate Field on his website, which you can
find, if you wish, by going to
www.paullewis.co.uk
selecting Wilkie Collins from the menu, going to menu once there and then
selecting letters. There are two letters to Kate Field with two different
pictures of her attached. She is quite wonderful.
I think Collins met her at a dinner at the Trollope's.
Angela
From Angela
Re: Victorian against Hunting
To return to modern views of the fox hunting sections of Trollope's novels,
I'd just like to bring forward evidence that fellow Victorians also shared
modern views against hunting and shooting.
The Victorian writer and naturalist Richard Jefferies was just such an
advocate, who wrote of his preference to put down the gun and just admire
the beautiful bird. In the 1870s, protest against battue shooting was a
feature of the 19th century journals. This is where massive stocks of game
birds are bred and become almost tame they are so well fed, and are then
driven to a position where a group of sportsmen can get easy shots. The
sheer numbers slaughtered appalled Victorians. In Hardy's novel, Tess
wrings the necks of the wounded birds, left to die by bad shots.
Trollope gives us the other side of the hunt in the American Senator where
tenant farmers object to protected birds eating their crops and hunters
tearing up their land. He puts the contrary view forward in such a way that
we know he has no time for it, but this was just his view. Tenant farmers
and their advocates were also writing in the newspapers and journals,
particularly at the time of the agricultural depression when opinion moved
in their favour away from the landed interest in hunting and shooting.
Bear in mind too that throughout this period, tenant farmers were becoming
enfranchised, culminating in male labourers getting the vote in 1883. So
their views were gaining weight from their increased political power.
Angela
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2001 A brief addendum to Angela's point that fox-hunting in Trollope's
day had begun to be controversial in England -- it clearly carried
strong class connotations in Ireland according to Trollope's
The Landleaguers. Trollope himself wrote a couple of
strong pieces in defense of fox-hunting; he would not have
bothered or been so strong had he not felt the "sport"
vulnerable to criticism and possibly eventually at risk..
Cheers to all, September 3, 1999
From: "Catherine Crean" September 4, 1999
Re: Numbered Letters in Ayala's Angel and The American Senator
In response to Catherine:
I have discovered that in a number of his novels Trollope names
a chapter the So-and-so correspondence, and gets the best of
both worlds: omniscient and epistolary narration, interior
monologue and satiric exposure, mirroring of the heart
and commentary thereon. Through these kinds of chapters
Trollope tells his story through letters which offer all kinds of
information like a picture does: implicitly, explicitly, and
psychologically. They are also often ironic in context.
At the same time the narrator talks away and we get dramatic
scenes which shape and guide the reader's response.
Sometimes Trollope also provides us with a character who
is reading the letter, sometimes to another character, so we get to
share their responses and active responses (sometimes in the form
of more letters, sometimes in the form of acts) too.
There are a few cases where he goes so far as to number these
correspondences. One we saw in The American Senator: the
Rufford Correspondence. The reason Trollope numbers the
letters of Rufford and Arabella before they meet at Mistletoe
is these letters are not written as the direct
outpourings of the writers' hearts, but rather in response
to a previous epistle. After the first unwary one, they are
calculated and wary responses to one another. In other words
it matters what order these letters were written
in.
First we get Rufford, and his is careless and spontaneous,
not to say mindless: he writes to complain he is stuck in a
house where the Master of the Hunt, Caneback, has died. What
a nuisance the funeral is. She ought to feel sorry
for him. Arabella Trefoil tries to use his words to further
along a half-plan he and she had that they would meet to hunt
together in another house. Rufford then answers, now wary.
It seems he might not show at said house. Arabella replies
if he doesn't show, she shall just about commit suicide because
since seeing him at Rufford Hall she has worked so hard to get
an invitation; she has altered all her plans. This male fish
seems half-caught because Rufford writes back he will certainly
be at Mistletoe. He will not disappoint Arabella.
Then in the next chapter we are told there was another correspondence
going on at the same time. People who just read the book will
remember that Arabella was engaged to John Morton; at just the
time of Rufford's first letter (No. 1), John Morton wrote
Arabella a serious, long deeply affectionate letter in which he
asked her if it was her intention to become his wife or not.
Now she doesn't reply to this because she has just received
Rufford's first. She is waiting to see how Rufford responds
to hers to him (No 2); after he writes so warily (No 3), she
is careful not to break with Morton. Then Morton
writes again and she must answer, only she now has only
had the letter in which Rufford tries to weasle out of
meeting her. In other words the two sets of letters
are intertwined and the responses of the second set are
the result of the responses of the first.
Why not arrange them as they would be in an epistolary
novel?
I dunno. I think because they are more fun to read with the
narrator intervening. It's more suspenseful this way. We get two different
views of each set of letters. Trollope is getting an enormous
amount of mileage out of each word. He numbers them so we can
follow him.
The letters themselves enable the characters to escape from
Trollope's view: Arabella's later letter to Rufford after he
flees Mistletoe, which she calls playful is pathetic in ways
she and the narrator seem to be unaware of. 'Your going off like
that was, after all, very horrid. My aunt thinks that you
were running away from me ... I don't for a moment think that ...
I know you don't like being bound by any of the conventionalities
... I am so stiff ... everybody cross ... nasty, hard, unpleasant
people'. Her second letter demands that Rufford acknowledge
an engagement, but the one that counts for the reader is the
first. There we see the difference between how people who
have lots of money can behave, and who those who are desperate
to live minimally respectably have to behave.
The numbered letters in Ayala's Angel are also pieces of posing.
Frank Houston to Emmeline, Lady Tringle, is a calculated posing.
Right before it the narrator enables us to enter Frank's mind and
this shows how Frank cares nothing for Gertrude Tringle. (We never
enter Rufford's mind, but then he doesn't sit around considering
things.) The second one of Frank to Gertrude seemed to me filled
with cliched cant of loverly language.
The third one is best of all. There Frank writes to Imogen Docimer
and unwittingly reveals how much he loves Imogen. The irony here
is he affects to despise the Tringles for their materialism,
for their shallowness, and what is he? He indicts himself.
He alludes to Sir Walter Scott's poem Allan-a-dale and boasts
of making Gertrude fall in love with him. Gertrude prefers the
blue vault of heaven with him to the bright spangles offered
her by her parents' money; they wail and cry; Gertrude has fled
to the forest to hear his love cry.
The whole thing is in such bad taste: here he's writing to
Imogen, a girl who loves him, and whom he has affection for;
he preens over the parents whose daughter he has persuaded
to prefer him for the great poetical vibes he supposedly emits;
and he affects to despise them. One result is that
Gertrude emerges as more than something of an ass too.
One could infer that were she to marry Frank, they deserve one
another. Whether Sir Thomas should be wasting his money this
way is another question.
I thought perhaps the reason for numbering them was that the
order counted. It's true that this set of letters is not
followed by another intertwinted set. However, it is followed
(somewhat later) by one from Frank to Imogen describing his
time in Scotland with the Tringles. In this letter he
again exposes himself unwittingly far more than Arabella Trefoil
ever does.
Whatever you may think of Arabella Trefoil, she has a dense presence;
she really means what she tells Rufford when she says she has worked
so hard to wrest an invitation from dense unsympathetic
people. Hunting is an exhausting challenge for her. Everything
she does and feel she does with a terrific intensity. Not so
Frank. Or at least not apparently so.
Did you notice that a good deal of the Frank Houston-Imogen Docimer
plot is told through letters. It proves that letters need not force
a novelist to be prolix. In fact you can swiftly offer a tiny novel
(the story of Frank and Imogen) within a bigger novel (the stories
of Ayala and Lucy) -- if you are Anthony Trollope.
Ellen
October 4, 1999
Re: Ayala's Angel: No Joking Matter
In Colonel Stubbs Trollope shows us he has a good
grasp on what charms most women in a man.
At least I think so. His sudden quiet turning to
Ayala on the train, and talking frankly, easily
to her in downright realistic complaining tones
which are so confidential, the sweetness of his
smiles, his gentleness are all perfect. Sometimes
I think to myself Trollope must have known some
of the Italian poetry called Stilnovisti: there
what we find are these gentle quietly laughing
lovers. A gentle heart has Stubbs.
I still grow very irritated with the book from time to
time. There is reality of a sort here. In
Ayala Trollope has probably caught a certain
type of young female who may yet exist. I think
I glimpsed them in the upper class girls I saw
in Leeds University, the ones 'up' for the first
year, around 18, away from home the first time.
They would speak in high voices of 'Mummy'
and 'Daddy' and giggle. They seemed still to
think that their parents knew what they were
doing and thinking and moved about in terms
of some preconceptions of the world which were
all-sheltering and all-constricting. The tones
of Nina's letters strike me as just like them.
She really believes the world exists to play
lawn tennis in, and is a happy gay stable
place for Lord George's to command Ninas
in. Ayala is afraid of sex. Catherine is right
there: her 'I cannot' to Stubbs can only
be explained this way: Trollope includes
innuendoes which seem to me to point to
this as the explanation. A flesh and blood
man is frightening to her.
Nonetheless, I have a hard time understanding
why I should care about this girl particularly.
She seems so privileged -- even if she's an
orphan. The Dosetts aren't really going to
throw her out. I have read so much about
England in the 19th century that shows how
a majority of people lived in abysmal poverty,
hardship, and there was so much to talk
about and teach for real that Trollope
should spend hundreds of pages on the fate
of this curled darling and the world of the
idle rich is dismaying. I shall be glad to read
Hardy -- I like the look of the photograph of
the real girl by Julia Cameron on the Penguin
edition of A Pair of Blue Eyes.
It's not that I can't identify at all. Trollope
shows an accurate knowledge of teenage girls,
here in America, especially around the
ages of 15-16. They often have naive dreams
and act perversely to harm themselves. Sometimes
knowingly. And they act these ways
sometimes and make decisions that may ruin
their existence for years and years. Such
as a foolish marriage based on nonsensical
ideas of romance. Sometimes as I read I
am reminded of perverse ideas or behavior I had
when I was young. But then is this matter
for humour? Is it a matter of teaching some
kitten a lesson? Trollope's private letters
suggest to me he really thought his niece
was not much more mature when it comes
to the complicated thing reality is than
a five year old. Maybe. But the five year
old can choose to marry. And she's not
going to learn anything from a book.
Ayala's near throwing
away of what could give her happiness,
Gertrude's running away with an ass don't
strike me as matters for joking.
If I am to take the topic as serious, I would prefer
a serious treatment -- one such as we partly find
in Imogen Docimer. There, however, Trollope gives
us a girl who is sexually aware and not perverse. She is
not making a decision stupidly or unaware
of her own impulses. To Victorians Shakespeare's
Imogen was the most romantic and interesting
of Shakespeare's good heroines partly because
she was so loyal, strong -- and married. As I said
that she loves Frank knowing him to be so callow
and says it, and clings to him because it's
better with him than without is well done in the
context of her life and psyche as presented
to us. There's no joking here.
And the middle aged women are in general
insufferable. So self-satisfied -- except for
Mrs Dosett who is living a miserable existence.
There are hints that Lady Aylsbury is bored
silly by Sir Harry and were she less chaste
would be having an affair with Jonathan.
(Imagine her switched to Is He Popenjoy?)
Emmeline, Lady Tringle is a priceless
hypocrite, in some ways a Mrs Bennet
given full roundness in her concern for
her imbecilic children. Sir Thomas knows
he has brought up silly sheep.
Still, the book also conforms to the strange
Victorian presentation of women whereby
one day they are unmarried and therefore
all innocence and in love or not in love,
and then the next day married and suddenly
competent, knowing, and dismissal of
mere sexual love. I much prefer the females
of La Vendée: there is a scene between
wife and husband which shows them sexually
kissing and in love; the girls are not twits or
brats one day and smug matrons the next.
Of course he means us to dislike Lady Rufford.
Trollope is carrying over characters from An
American Senator and Rufford has certainly
gotten the woman he deserved.
Tom would be an interesting portrait of a young
man totally without self-esteem, someone
near a nervous breakdown, neurotic if he
would given an adequate objective correlative
for his strong feelings. It's like Hamlet without
the dead father. I am to believe his state of
mind comes solely from wanting this girl?
Throughout this book I feel Trollope is hampered
by the middle class plot of young innocent
girl loved by boy; obstacles, obstacles overcome.
Everything must be presented in terms of
this trite paradigm. I think back to Lucius
Mason with his serious troubles, and again
see Trollope as unable or unwilling to go
further into developing some story which
will carry this character adequately. Tom
would not be such an ass if his misery
were presented in terms of real humiliations
and inadequacies that counted -- meaning
threatened his self-respect from the
point of view of his well-being, status,
nice clean soft bed.
Ellen Moody
Dear Ellen and All,
Ayala was the first Trollope I ever read and I
absolutely loved it. It was, for the most part, light
and airy. I loved the humor and the irony. The
emotions felt real. If I had to choose one word to
describe it that word would be Charming. I couldn't
put it down and read it quickly which is why I haven't
said much during the discussion.
Cynthia
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel
From: "Robert J Wright" I had lunch with John Letts today at the Reform Club. He said he was
enjoying the contributions to the list aboutAyala's Angel, but being
"technologically challenged" had to wait for his daughter to print a digest
of the list, by which time it was too late to make a contribution.
There are two points he would have made about this book.
One is that it is a particularly humorous book.
The other is that it reveals more about the attitude of the well off to the
poor and servants, and the attitude of the poor and servants towards the
rich than any other Trollope novel.
I may have paraphrased his words wrongly (and was listening to him over a
bottle of fine St Emilion 1994 Grand Cru, which tends to make speech blurry
after a while I find) but that was the gist of what he said.
Robert Wright
From: Graham Law
Subject: Query on an Allusion in Trollope's Ayala's Angel
On Trollope-l, we are reading Anthony Trollope's Ayala's
Angel and I have come across an allusion, the editor
of the Oxford Classics paperback, Julian Thompson
was unable to locate ("I have not been able to identify
...") . . .
From: Marc Plamondon
Subject: Query on an Allusion in Trollope's Ayala's Angel
mplamond@chass.utoronto.ca
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Query on an Allusion in Trollope's Ayala's Angel
"I meant to have made him a Cavalier Servente in Italy, and a cause
for divorce in England, and a Sentimental 'Werther-faced man' in
Germany, so as to show the different ridicules of the society in each
of those countries, and to have displayed him gradually gate and blase
as he grew older, as was natural." -- Lord Byron, describing Don Juan
in a letter to his publisher search-engine shows how effective computers can
be. "
I suspect the phrase is rather earlier than Ellen thinks and comes from a
poem rather than a novel. I'm at home today, and don't have the resources to
hand, but seem to recall that Byron allows cites the phrase "Werther-faced
man" in describing Don Juan to his publisher. Perhaps the annotations in
the LA Marchand edition of the letters would sort out where it originates.
Ellen Moody
To: "Ellen Moody"
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001
Judy
Ellen Moody
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel, Chs 13-18: Scattered Thoughts ... Aunt
Dosett
"What to me is the problem in the book is its
nature as softened caricature. That's where the thinness,
deficiency lies. Aunt Dosett is a caricature: no one
would be as obsessive as this, without any inner
life whatsoever -- "
Ellen Moody
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel, Chs 13-18: Scattered Thoughts on Art, Money &
the Thick-Skinned
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel, Chs 13-18: Scattered Thoughts on Art, Money &
the Thick-Skinned: Addendum
Off-list someone has suggested to me that Reginald Dosett's
daily walk would have taken an hour and a quarter. That's a
lot of walking each day.
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] The Art Discussion
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] AA as Fairy Tale
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] The Art Discussion
Ellen
Reply-To: trollope-l@egroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Trollope's interest in art
"He was a regular visitor to the Royal Academy's exhibitions
and it was rare for him to visit a foreign city without
hurrying to see 'the pictures.' He knew artists like Holman
Hunt and Leighton through his membership of the Moray Minstrels
and was a particular friend of Sir John Millais, whom he met
at the first Cornhill dinner in 1860."
Ellen Moody
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel, Ch 18:
Elizabeth
Allen-a-Dale to his wooing is come;
The mother, she ask'd of his household and home:
"Though the castle of Richmond stand fair on the
hill,
"My hall", quoth bold Allen, "shows gallanter still;
"Tis the blue vault of heaven, with its crescent so
pale,
And with all its bright spangles!" said Allen-a-Dale.
They lifted the latch and they bade him be gone;
But loud, on the morrow, their wail and their cry:
He had laugh'd on the lass with his bonny black eye,
And she fled to the forest to hear a love tale,
And the youth it was told by was Allen-a-Dale."I do not in the least want to be in
love with you, -- but I do want to sit
near you, an dlisten to you, and look
at you, and to know that the whole air
around is impregnated by the
mysterious odour of your presence"
(Oxford Classics Ayala, ed
Julian Thompson, Ch 14, pp. 133-134,
p. 641, n134).
Ellen Moody
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Back to the Drawing Board
Ellen Moody
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Art, money and Ayala
And the book does repeatedly delve into art as a
solace to existence, the imaginative being available
though, only after you can dismiss from your mind,
the material. Perhaps that is the crux of the book,
where Aunt Dosett's as the supremely impoverished
life comes in.
Judy Geater
"'If you ask me ... I think that as Ayala has
come to us she had better remain with us. Of course
things are very different, and she would be only
discontented'. At this Lady Tringle smiled her
sweetest smile -- as though acknowledging that
things certainly were different -- and then turned to
Ayala for a further reply (Folio Society Ayala,
intro ATEllis, Ch 13, p. 102).
Ellen Moody
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel, allegory and realism
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] AA: Allegory and Realism
Ellen Moody
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] allegory and realism
Ellen Moody
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Ayala's Angel: Ayala as Kate Field
Reply-To: trollope-l@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [trollope-l] Victorian against hunting
Ellen Moody
Kensington, London
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