To Trollope-l
July 24, 1999
Re: Barchester Towers, Chs 1-6: In a War Two Sides Emerge
What we see in this week's chapters is the formation of two sides in a war -- Trollope calls it War in Chapter Six. On the one side are arrayed the Bishop and his wife, Mr Slope, and behind them those whom their behavior has pleased; on the other, Archdeacon Grantly, Mr Harding, and all those people hitherto in positions of authority or in the way of getting income from the church as an institution at Barchester. Although Trollope sets this war out comically by giving us characters whose personality clashes make us laugh (or grimace) and by providing us with the delights of all sorts of literary jokes (metaphors, allusions, salacious language, a continual vein of irony), the war is nonetheless meaningful to us on a serious and realistic level. That's why the novel's got grit; that's why we can still read it and find our emotions involved beyond the personality clashes.
When we first began The Warden we had a long thread on high versus low church and said that while it didn't seem to be applicable to The Warden particularly, it was applicable to Barchester Towers. At the time we talked politics, and I contributed a posting about how 'high' v 'low' behavior was to be and still is understood in terms of class, though at the end of it I talked about religion. This morning I'll take the liberty of reposting what I wrote in early June, and here add to it more about the religious theme in Barchester Towers.
Robin Gilmour opens his introduction to the Penguin Barchester Towers, with a long quotation from a comparison by R. H. Hutton of Jane Austen's novels to those of Trollope. According to Hutton, the larger society and controversial social institutions and thought are in Austen
above all things, mild and unobtrusive, not reflecting the greater world at all ... while the latter is, above all things, possessed with the sense of the aggressiveness of the outer world, of the hurry which threatens the tranqullity even of such still pools in the rapid currents of life as Hiram's Hospital at Barchester, of the rush of commercial activity, of the competitiveness of fashion, of the conflict for existence even in outlying farms and country parsonages ... Mr Trollope's clergy are the centres of all sorts of crowding interests, of ecclesiastical conflicts, of attacks of the press of temptations from the great London world ... Everybody in Mr Trollope is more or less under pressure, swayed hither and thither by opposite attractions, assailed on this side and on that by the strategy of rivals; everywhere someone's room is more wanted than his company; everywhere time is short (from Anthony Trollope: The Critical Heritage, ed. DSmalley New York: Barnes and Noble, 1969, "From Miss Austen to Mr Trollope", Spectator, 16 December 1882, pp. 509-11)
Consider our opening chapter: there we have the Archdeacon torn between wanting to sit by his father's bedside and mourn his death and the need he has to send that telegram off, not just soon, but NOW, and it would be much better were his father to die quickly so as to make sure those people are in power who would give Grantly the Bishopric. This is again not a matter of days, but hours. Had the Bishop died a few hours sooner, Mr Harding's hurried trip to the telegraph office would not have been in vain. The Archdeacon is embarrassed to have it seen as much he longs (to use Hutton's terms) for his father's 'room', but the pressure of time and the movement of men in positions and his own desire for power and control over others (it's not a matter of money, the narrator tells us) drives him to drive Mr Harding down to that office. Has anyone among us just missed a position because the wrong people were in charge when we were up for it? Or been lucky enough to have been in the right place at the right time?
So much for the notion we have a slowly moving idyllic realm in Barchester. Hutton talks also of 'the conflict for existence even in outlying farms and country parsonages ...' We saw this in The Warden: Quiverful and Mr Smith (or other versions of him) will figure as needy pawns in the coming war. Mrs Proudie's power stems from 'the conflict for existence even in outlying farms'. Who you will kowtow to determines how you will behave vis-à-vis high or low church practices in a church grounded in a society that is capitalist and hierarchical to the core.
However, I do not want here to talk about the conflict merely in terms of social behavior which may or may not be read religiously. Robin Gilmour says that in Barchester Towers Trollope struck another 'original seam' which rang strongly in the ears of middle class English people (the first was struck in The Warden with the political conflicts we discussed for weeks). The new 'original seam', according to Gilmour, was 'the predicament of the Church of England, considered as an institution. Gilmour goes on to talk of how in Parliament the church could no longer count on only wealthy Anglicans (or their various flunkys) being able to vote. One John Keeble in a famous sermon in 1833 attacked 'the government's plan to suppress ten Irish bishoprics' and, says Gilmour, the speech marked the beginning of the Oxford Puseyite movement which increasingly looked for spiritual sustenance for individuals in the authority of a highly ritualised, hierarchical arrangement in church government and doctrine. The breadth or unconventional grounds of Trollope's own stance may be seen in his having supported the disestablishment of the Anglican Irish church in his essays, for as we can already see, in this novel, he is on the side of Grantly as someone who wants maintain ritual and respect for powerful authorities, a church governed from the top, not from the bottom (or by consulting its people, i.e., its 'grass roots '). There is also a problem with Gilmour's thesis (and Keeble's over anxious sermon too): in fact, Parliament remained mostly Anglican until the Labour Party came into Power; the first non-Anglican Prime Minister was Wilson.
Sure, the conflicts we see in these scenes are partly class-, and caste-interest rooted: Slope is your interloper, your man without manners, your non- gentleman, and Bishop Proudie is someone who has risen high by appearing to accede to the changes a growing number of people like Slope were making as they began to appear in various positions of power in government and industry and agriculture. Bishop Proudie is a trimmer. He is a man whom the new people coming into power -- Evangelicals for the first time, people who are for toleration, people who are willing to reform other institutions, just bit (sufficiently to further their own interests, not so far as to hurt them). The very fact that Proudie is not very smart and could sit for hours with dignity at a board was part of his value, and with the flickeringly sharp irony of this book, our narrator comments: 'If he did not do much active good, he never did any harm' (Penguin Barchester Towers, ed. RGilmour, Ch 3, p. 17).
However, it's more than that. It's sex or gender rooted -- that I'll save for another post tonight or tomorrow. Mrs Proudie should not be acting like Bishop because she's a woman; she is also bucking male authority in the home as a wife by the way she manipulates the Bishop's weaknesses and desire for a quiet life. It is also a matter of religion, and that's my theme for this post: a war which may seem comic and amusing, but is about our souls, and Trollope's stance is one readers have liked. This book presents an inward conflict about what constitutes a true Christian. For Trollope (and also Austen by the way) Christianity is not presented as a matter of mystic beliefs but as a set or moral behaviors. The arguments about keeping Sunday a day on which one can do nothing but hear sermons, and the whole repressive stance of Mrs Proudie and as well shall see the hypocritical Mr Slope are aligned with the worldliness of the Archdeacon against the ideals we see lived in Mr Harding.
Mr Harding is again our hero, our moral touchstone, but this time as the man whose charity, self-abnegation, forbearance, kindliness, desire to see in places of power kindly and good people -- are the mirror against which we are to measure everyone else we come across. As they come near to Mr Harding in their moral behavior so they answer to a spiritual crisis that was going on in England -- by which I mean a loss of belief, a breaking away from older modes of control, and breathe to the reader a sense that life can have meaning and beauty. Some of the characters are unconventional in their alignment with Mr Harding; that is, they act self-sacrificingly without any doctrine or authority behind them: the Ullathornes, and yes the Signora Neroni (who we have yet to meet but will soon). Bu adhering to older ways of life, pre-capitalist, feudal, with bonds and obligations of loyalty through blood and family and history intact Trollope invites us to dream we are safer and will be secure, at any rate not unsettled and anxious about tomorrow. By showing us people who can rise above (or evade from below) the perversions of nature that ambition and aggression in the modern world of places and positions and opportunities for big money demands, he extends our sympathies. Other of the characters come near to Mr Harding through alignment with doctrines and their own natures: Arabin -- who we have yet to meet but also will appear very soon.
Perhaps this makes the story sound too serious or solemn. However, I think the book's power does stem from its ability to answer some of the deeper yearnings of the human heart while making us laugh. That's one of the reasons it sold so well. Dr Grantly is better than Slope because he does not attempt to impose his will on our inner selves; he may try to make people behave with common decency publicly to one another and will not tolerate out-and-out amorality or criminality as it was understood in Victorian England (no living with a woman outside marriage for a clergyman, obviously no stealing, breaking laws &c), but he leaves your desire to enjoy your existence quietly alone, he leaves you to your natural pleasures, and he does not, like Mr Slope, attempt to become 'all powerful' over your soul (Ch 4, pp 26-27, the comparison of Slope and Grantly). However, neither of these two sides of the 'church militant', warriors on behalf of interest groups and their own power or drive for luxuries, embody what Trollope is again trying to teach us what is most good and happy in life. It's as if we switched our ambiguously good and bad angels. In The Warden, the ambiguously good and bad angels fighting over the soul of Mr Harding to make him act the way they wanted were Grantly, Bold, Towers. Now they are the Proudies and Slope on the one side, and Grantly and Arabin on the other. Only it's not a fight over what decision Mr Harding should make alone: it's over how all of us shall be allowed to live and believe.
Ellen Moody
NB: If someone wants to take up the anti-feminist depiction of Mrs Proudie here, feel free. I probably will not do justice to this vein in the novel, as I cannot bear the character as a personality.
Sig and Robert referred to a scene where there is an "improper exclamation by the Archdeacon:
Re: Barchester Towers: The Very Improper Exclamation
Sig and Robert have referred to the scene where the Archdeacon's frustrated and shocked (remember this house wherein he finds himself so harassed and set upon was his home), I say, shocked indignation leaves him so in need of release that he, as it were helplessly,
raised his hat with one hand, passed the other somewhat violently over his now grizzled locks; [and] smoke issued forth from the uplifted beaver as it were a cloud of wrath, and the safety-valve of his anger opened and emitted a visible steam, preventing positive explosion and probable apoplexy (Penguin Barchester Towers, ed RGilmour, Ch 6, p 37).
This is the first of many hilarious parodies of epic language to come.
The very mild Mr Harding tries to come up to this zenith of dismay: the Archdeacon looks up 'to the grey pinnacles of the cathedral tower, making a mute appeal' to what we might today call the Management. Mr Harding offers what is for him the very uncharitable supposition that he does not think he shall ever 'like that Mr Slope'. To the hint of which possibility the Archdeacon roars: 'Like him! ... like him!' -- alerting the ravens who caw their assent (the mournful disposition of the raven to utter variants on Nevermore was understood before Edgar Poe). Still Mr Harding soldiers on: 'Nor Mrs Proudie either' (p. 37).
It is then that a mystery or enigma appears in our text. We are told the Archdeacon 'forgot himself'. In modern words, he lost it. At this our storyteller has a problem, for he vows not to
follow his example, nor shock my readers by transcribing the term in which he expressed his feeling as to the lady who had been named. The ravens and the last lingering notes of the clock bells were less scrupulous, and repeated in correspondent echoes the very improper exclamation' (italics mine, p. 37).
Much scrutiny of Trollope's texts (a dirty mind is a joy forever) has taught me to understand that in a number of his novels when males seek to insult a female either to her face or to another male and Trollope draws a line, the word intended is not 'whore' but 'harlot'. (I am nothing if not thorough.) However, here I am stumped. What word could it have been the narrator is trying to convey to us by telling us the bells repeated it 'in correspondent echoes'?
What was the improper exclamation by which the Archdeacon relieved his exacerbated mind and heart? My editor remains silent upon this point, i.e., there is no annotation in the Penguin edition. Do you think Gilmour couldn't figure it out?
Any guesses?
Ellen Moody
Robert Wright answered: "trollop, trollop, trollop". I objected, playfully,
To Robert,
No. It cannot be. Bells do not echo trollop, trollop, trollop, or, wallop, wallop, wallop :).
There is something specific in mind here that Trollope cannot say, but that he hints broadly at, and we are not getting the hint. It is not necessarily a scurrilous or (today) a proscribed word. All it is, is improper. I'm not sure that it's even bawdy.
Ellen
Phoebe Wray asked about "rule the roast"!?
Re: Barchester Towers, Ch 3: 'Rule the roast ...'
Dear Phoebe and all,
I own the Penguin and Oxford editions and both read 'rule the roast'.
He [Dr Proudie] was biding his time, and patiently looking forward to the days when he himself would sit authoritative at some board, and talk, and direct, and rule the roast, while lesser stars sat round and obeyed, as he had so well accustomed himself to do (Penguin BT, ed RGilmour, p. 17).
I was inclined to agree with you and think it a typo which has yet (surprisingly) to be silently corrected. My immediate way of reading the phrase was rule the roost by which we mean be master over the hen-house or that part of a bird's house where all the birds perch and sleep. However, I went to the unabridged Concise Oxford and found that 'rule the roast' is a secondary meaning for 'roast' and means 'to have full sway or authority; to be master. Here is a Victorian line the Dictionary quotes: Kingsley: 'He had it all his way, and ruled the roast'.
We might say if this was Dr Proudie's idea of a 'reward' ('his time had come') for all these years of worldly accommodation, he was to be very disappointed. We are what we have become.
Ellen
Again people talked about Mrs Proudie; someone suggested he disliked her so because of how she talked in front of others. The important point was again brought up that Mrs Proudie was an embarrassment to me; she was too powerful for Dr Proudie; she was an anti-feminist figure.
Re: Barchester Towers: What is Said Behind the Doors Counts Too
Could it be that Trollope dislikes Mrs Proudie because what she says in public, and were her comments and demands done in private it would be acceptable? There are other novels where various wives (Lady Aylmer in Belton Estate, Mrs Bolton in John Caldigate), married daughters (Dorothea Prime in Rachel Ray), mothers (Lady Ball in Miss Mackenzie) do their work behind closed doors, curtains, in whispers, hints, and by simply making life wholly unpleasant. What Susan Grantly asks of the Archdeacon is not anti-pleasure; it's not mean-spirited; it's not intended to be cruel or hard or repressive to other people. In fact she restrains the Archdeacon from useless domineering. Lady Ball is a cruel woman who loathes people who have no rank; she makes her son's life as miserable as she can. Mrs Bolton is poisonous; Lady Aylmer withers people with her petty and spiteful behavior. Dorothea Prime is a repressive evangelical fundamentalist.
We really have to take into account Mrs Proudie's religion. Once again: this is a novel about religion. She and Slope are evangelical fundamentalists, and like Dorothea Prime, they are presented as bigots who want to take the pleasure out of existence for others. It's what Mrs Proudie says; it's her values that make her so obnoxious to Trollope. We have to remember our own focus on women and their rights or deprivations was not Trollope's emphasis. Trollope's emphasis is on Mrs Proudie's determination to wither people's joys -- including those of her husband. They are dangerous these joys.
On the contemporary example: I agree with John Mize that it seems that Nancy Reagan had a strong influence on what her husband did in the public as well as private arena when she was First Lady, but because she didn't present herself as his Equal Partner, it was acceptable.
Ellen Moody
July 24, 1999
Subject: [trollope-l] The Slimy Mr Slope
From: RansomT@aol.com
I have been reading the mailings with much enjoyment though have not had the time to contribute. However, here we go.
In answer to a previous posting - the dinner a la Russe was featured in Miss Mackenzie.
I believe Mr Slope to be based on the Revd. J.W. Cunningham the vicar of Harrow in the 1820s. He was of the Low Church pursuasion and much disliked by the Trollopes and their friends who thought him unctuous and insincere. His nickname was 'Velvet' Cunningham and he had the reputation of being rather too eager to bestow 'the kiss of peace' on the young women in his parish. When Byron requested that his illegitimate daughter Allegra be buried in Harrow Churchyard it was the duplicitous Mr Cunningham who led the howl of disapproval.
His reasons? He feared the example of Byron's daughter might lead the schoolboys into vice! Fanny Trollope wrote a very long poem, Salamagundi, in which she set out all the events and the cast of characters involved. It has been edited by N.John Hall and published, with the comments added by Anthony who had no love for Mr Cunningham.
When Fanny wrote The Vicar of Wrexhill, in 1837 she called him the Revd. W.J. Cartwright, and her contemporaries thought she had used the Revd J.W Cunningham as her model. It seems likely that the Vicar of Wrexhill and Obadiah Slope come from the same source. There are scenes of Fanny's Vicar caressing, kissing and praying with (and on) young women parishioners. One reviewer in The Athenaeum described the Vicar of Wrexhill as:
'handsome, silkly spoken, with his black eyes and caressing hands, which make such sad havoc among the bevy of admiring village ladies. He glides on his way, like a serpent - glossy, silent and poisonous - throwing out hints here, innuendos there; blighting with the language of brotherly love, and under the mask of Scriptural sanctity, creeping steadily upwards towards wealth and power. His is a fearful character.'
Obadiah Slope, too, is creeping steadily upwards towards wealth and power and: 'can reprove faults with so much flattery, and utter censure in so caressing a manner, that the female heart, if it glow with a spark of low church susceptibility, cannot withstand him.'
Interestingly there are several passages which link these two characters to the same role model in both mother and son's books. I imagine the exploits of 'Velvet' Cunningham would have been much discussed in the Trollope home.
Cheers,
Teresa Ransom.
I responded to Teresa by trying to get up enthusiasm for a coming subgroup:
Reading Teresa's interesting persuasive posting makes me want to remind or inform everyone that we have talked of reading Fanny Trollope's The Vicar of Wrexhill along with a short novel (I suggested Arnold Bennett's Anna of the Five Towns) as strong candidates for our next non-Trollope books or books (after Bleak House). I know I recently threw out the suggestion of a Henry James book, but I have never read The Vicar of Wrexhill or Anna of the Five Towns and think we would enjoy them both. This novel by Fanny Trollope is available from Amazon and it is said by some critics to be among her finest. (NB: A group of us from Trollope-l later read Anna of the Five Towns on Litalk-l; some of the same people were on both lists.)
I shall quote Teresa's book at her :), and us. Shortly before Trollope wrote The Warden, his mother wrote a book called _Uncle Walter_, and Teresa's summary and commentary on the book demonstrates that it too is centred on conflicts within the church, and has characters who are repressive puritans (evangelicals), characters who are Puseyites; she says Uncle Walter has as one theme, women's rights (which we don't find in The Warden or Barchester Towers), but does contrast "the living and behaviour of clergy from the different religious factions", and her quotations show characters examining the nature of of their beliefs. Uncle Walter has a gentle nature much like Mr Harding's, and another character from the book, Dr Harrington "would have felt at home with Archdeacon Grantly" (TRansom, FT: A Remarkable Life, pp. 200-4).
Cheers to all,
Ellen
Reply-to: trollope-l@onelist.com
Subject: Re: [trollope-l] Who Was Then the Gentleman?
From: john dwyer John Dwyer quoted Gene:
I have never liked Slope, not surprisingly, for who would? Yet the more we
exchange postings about him, and the more I re-read passages about him, I
find Trollope's descriptions disturbing. Especially on this concept of
"gentleman." No doubt many list members are thoroughly acquainted with Tristram
Shandy. Trollope's literary pedigree for Mr. Slope points to an
interesting would-be gentleman: Tristram's Uncle Toby. Since leisure seems
the basis of culture and a gentleman is a cultured man, Uncle Toby's
hobby-horsical focus might psychologize one for us.
The muddy end of Sterne's Obadiah's mission to fetch Dr. Slop's green bag
of high-tech obstetrical equipment seems to merge the two characters in the
case of knots. Dr. Slop's (a papist's) very amusing mode of reading the
*Excommunicatio* (while lovable Uncle Toby whistles Lillabullero) rather
ingratiates him to the reader--even though the reader's opinion is also
influenced by thinking that Slop's waiting time in the parlor should have
been more usefully spent in getting his medical gear. Even his failure to
manufacture an adequate *bridge* in the kitchen is less than a major
downfall. And we have Locke's association of ideas as an unmistakable
allusion.
Mr. Slope's "adding an 'e'" and his family's changing its religion (at some
indefinite time in the interim) has not altered his genetic heritage. Even
his nose being "his redeeming feature" possessed "a somewhat spongy, porous
appearance, as though it had been cleverly formed out of a red coloured
cork." It calls to mind something of revenge for his predecessor's raking
over Tristram's less-than-Slawkengergian equipment: such equipment perhaps
having more to do with being a gentleman than one might at first imagine.
Remember Uncle Toby's problem with Mrs. Wadman. Mr. Slope appears not to
have that problem.
Moreover, "none of his hearers, when [his sermon] was over, could mistake
him either for a fool or a coward" (ch. 6). So we must be careful. I
think Mr. Slope is not what V.P. Agnew might have meant by "an effete
snob." The dean's and doctor's and chancellor's "abominable"'s hearken us
back to the ladies' (the "enthusiastically religious young ladies and the
middle-aged spinsters"'s) reactions: "what a nose! 'tis as long, said the
trumpeter's wife, as a trumpet" (Tristram, Vol. 4.0).
John Dwyer
Re: Barchester Towers: Obadiah Slope, or The Character of a Sabbatarian
Trollope savages Slope. As with portraits throughout his
novels of people who stand for ideas Trollope is concerned to
directly to excoriate, more subtly to undermine, or merely to
mock as ridiculous or absurd (so therefore we need not worry
they will harm us as we can't follow them anyway), Trollope
uses many weapons in his armory to make us dislike Slope.
He uses class-bias directly and it seems to us realistic or
probable or Slope would be no gentleman as fundamentalist
evangelists got their basic support from those classes of
people in England just below the gentry, the rising lower
middle class. He makes Slope very ugly:
This could come straight out of Dickens. Trollope repeats the
bad quality of that beef-like coloured skin twice -- lest the reader
miss it. I don't know that he makes Slope any stupider than
a number of the characters: many of them in this book are
dense when it comes to understanding any point of view outside
their own 'take' on the church order, their incomes and ways of
life and religious & class doctrine (e.g, Mrs Proudie, Grantly, Vesey
Stanhope, the Ullathornes); nor is he any more duplicitious as they
are all ready to produce 'spin' on any given area which twists the
truth round to validate whatever it is they are saying. The
stupidity and unconcious hypocrisy of the characters in this
book is part of the basis of the comedy: we laugh at them
as we do at Ben Jonson characters; they are unable to break
from their moulds so emit steam or lose their dresses or go
into dithering distresses when thwarted.
Why does Trollope pick on Slope in just this way, meaning
the technique. How about the idea that in a 19th dress Trollope
returns to the techniques of satire in
the 17th century, and gives us a character (meaning a highly
satiric and pointed sketch) of a Sabbatarian. Let us look at
the portrait of him in Chapter 3, and see what is emphasised
over and over again, what Trollope constantly comes back to,
and ends on: Slope is a spiritual tyrant; his religion is a
means for him to denounce, terrify, mortify, control, and
become master over the behavior of other people. Trollope tells
us Slope cares little for the specifics of doctrine; but when he
'walks through the streets, his very face denotes his horror of
the world's wickedness, and there is always an anathema
lurking in the corner of his eye'. 'Forms he regards but little,
and such titular expressions as supremacy, consecration,
ordination, and the like' are matters of indifference to him.
No, what he cares about is getting the 'sins' of his parishioners,
particularly on Sunday (Ch 3, pp. 23-25)
This may seem so strange to us today. Not only in this but
other books now and again Trollope returns to his rage
against Sabbatarians. Robert Kennedy will not allow
Lady Laura even to read a novel on Sunday; she is not
to go for pleasant walks. He demands that she sit
and listen to sermons -- preferably read aloud by
him. She can of course read the Bible, but he prefers
she do that silently. In Barchester TowersTrollope develops
this theme not use as a shorthand way of indicting a tyrannical
man, he brings to the fore the whole array of behaviors and
clerical types that go with it -- and also some of the strains
of thought that lead up to it. In Barchester Towers he
will again and again return to Mrs Proudie and Slope's demand
that people not do anything on Sunday but listen to sermons,
read the Bible (preferably to themselves), and sit. They would both like
to stop people from drinking, dancing, flirting, doing
business, travelling without regard to God (who in this
formula always seems in practical terms to be the
equivalent of them, without regard to what their parishioners
owe them) far more than on Sunday, but Sunday will have
to do. After all that is the day the average person had
off. That was the one holiday of the week for most people
who worked in England in the 19th century. Many worked
all day Saturday, and some a half day. Monday through
Friday, and for long hours, goes without saying.
Dickens loathes sabbatarians too. Chadband is endlessly
going on about how we must not do anything on Sunday.
There is something interesting at issue here than what
is permitted to a novelist to show us in a secular form meant
to entertain and not offend. Remember Trollope wanted
this book to sell -- later he was willing to offend (as in Rachel
Ray and later books on topics beyond religion). It's hard
for middle class educated people (which is what most of us
on this list are) to understand what's at stake in all this
anger over Sunday, and most writers aren't daring or simply
smart enough to spell out the connection. I found it the
other day in Henry James's father's Autobiography (written
in the 1840s). The connection is Sabbatarians were trying
to enforce a way of life and set of beliefs about the self
that told people what was natural was evil. It is natural to
want to be active; most human activities involve physical,
sensual pleasure; we have fun when we play games of
challenge. The Sabbatarian and Evangelical Fundamentalist
was in this behavior obeying a Calvinist version of God
which many sensitive people of the time found to be the
basis of a vision of the world which made themselves
and all around them evil with the Head of it an accumulation
of 'insane superstitions' and attitudes worthy the brain
power of a 'savage tribe' (these are James's phrases).
They turned a beautiful world, what was natural in man,
what could be an ultimate force for goodness, peace,
into continual violations of the human spirit. Most middle
class people today do not find themselves subject to
demands and doctrines of authority figures which resemble
what Henry James Sr knew as a child; but many middle
class people of the 19th century did -- or they ran
across them. Some people in the 19th century developed
frightening psychological syndromes because of such
beliefs. I'll instance John Ruskin who couldn't get himself
to have sex with his wife, partly the result of his upbringing
which included constant whipping for 'wickedness'. William
Cowper went mad; he was convinced he was going to hell.
Why? He had never had this conversion experience people
who were elected were supposed to have. The one thing
about High Church practices is they leave your inner self
to you.
If Archdeacon Grantly has some serious faults -- his worldliness,
his bullying, his love of power and adherence to the hierarchical
status quo which leaves him on top -- these are not as bad
as Slope's. Listen to the end of the paragraph in which our
narrator compares the faults of the two figures:
What is? How evil we are; how we need him. Trollope's
attitude towards women's sexuality always includes the idea
that women really like to be forced to yield, like to be just
a wee bit insulted, punished, and dominated. They get a
kick of thinking they are wicked. Add to this Slope's 'gift
for using words forcibly' (Ch 6, p. 47); his shameless
flattery' his 'silky whispering' voice; the reality, says
our narrator, that women don't care about men's appearance
in the way men care about women's; and beyond all that
his constant visiting of them, paying attention to them,
and you begin to understand why Slope is so appealing.
Let us look at his sermon. What is it he objects to? the
comfortable seats. The beauty of the place. The music. Why
the music especially? we not only enjoy it, it distracts us
from him, his words. As Henry James Sr in his Autobiography
says enjoyment, pleasure is itself suspect; things of this
world, thunders Mrs Proudie more than once, are anathema
to her. Think of how Charlotte Bronte loathed Brocklehurst:
why, because his existence and that of his daughters was
the epitome of luxury, and he wouldn't let those in his
power have butter on their bread: the excuse, it was the
devil's way of inveigling us into worldliness. (The reality:
he made a bigger profit.) Mrs Proudie's gowns are fine
because somehow that is excused as she has to stand
for the Church before the rest of us as the Dignified
Representation of God himself.
Let's be fair: the evolution of Protestantism in the Renaissance
derives from an intense caring of what happens in the soul of
people. Rituals and the like were seen as instruments of
power; as things which controlled people; confessions were
a means by which priests made money by selling 'indulgences'.
When Slope in his sermon tells us his point of view is that what is
important is 'inward feeling' not outward practice, and that
we have to throw off the this reliance on external things which
our ancestors used because we are better educated, can read
and think and decide for ourselves, the thought is a noble line
of argument that lead to more people learning how to read,
and toppled the Roman Catholic church in numbers of countries.
Slope doesn't use the word 'superstition' but rituals and
relices were thought to be superstitious. Science and an
informed historical understanding began to make inroads
on people's minds -- and made them look at miracles and
the Bible differently.
But to Trollope and many people, this line of thought was merely
a ruse for people who were ambitious and wanted power to take
over. Has there been a movement in this world which started
out with good noble thoughts that was not in the end taken over
by ambitious, competitive, ruthless types and used to put
them in power? That's what happened to Communism; originally
an ideal in the minds of people writing during the desolation
and abyss of the 1840s in London. What was real in Luther,
becomes a weapon for self-aggrandizement in Trollope's
Mr Slope. Trollope tells us he gives that sermon, knowing he
will make enemies, but thinking he has to push people aside
to make room for himself. Might as well be hung for a sheep
as a lamb. He'll make waves; he'll make people afraid of
him; the Quiverfuls will quiver in front of him as Bishop's
Chaplain.
This is a novel about conflicts in religion which
inform the wars we see between two groups of people
for control of the church as an institution and the people
who pay the tithes and are asked to subject themselves
to this hierarchy.
Slope never re-appears in another Trollope novel.
Towards the end of the book I think Trollope pace himself
begins to enter into Slope's case and Slope himself gets
out of hand with some of his adventures, but Trollope never brought
him forward again. In the next novel where we see an underdog
figure in the church, it is the Rev Mr Crawley, perpetual
curate of Hogglestock. Crawley is a figure who comes from
the same class as does Slope; he is a gentleman by nature,
but he is made to stand for a very different type in the
church: the exploited curates who in 1789 provided a decisive
vote when they were allowed to vote by headcount; it was
they who opened the first fissures in adamantine rockface
of privilege that undergirded the ancien regime. The money
in France also went to the Bishops, Abbots, Deans,
Deacons, Vicars (in absentia); the world was also done
by starving curates -- and Trollope gives us a deeply earnest
and sincere evangelical in Crawley. Crawley is not stupid nor
does he ever tell a lie knowingly -- he is one of the smartest
and perhaps the most noble of all Trollope's figures in the
canon. Trollope thought again and replaced Slope with
him: the gain is a quantum leap in depth of portrayal,
and sensitivity. The loss is of course in the comedy.
We cannot laugh at Crawley. But then what we have in
Slope is a satirical character in the old style who has
been psychologised, given all sorts of traits we recognise
and who is as believable as he needs to be for the purposes
of this book.
If Trollope is even-handed, it is not in his
portrayals of characters; he is passionate and will
denounce vicious types as vicious, not look into their
hearts and 'understand' from The Macdermots on
through Mr Scarborough's Family. The even-handedness
is in the underlying vision that controls the figures as
a whole. Trollope is forceful and uncompromising
when it comes to creating characters and situations
which critique our inhumanity to one another and
all that sustains this.
In our culture too much praise is given to people
who say they can see both sides: sometimes this only
means your mind is a sive. Trollope is often for taking a
real stand: think of Monk; he is only a trimmer as it
suits his need to bring what reform he can into Parliament;
he quits his office when it is necessary for him to make
public and strong his stand on voting rights. Rather
than praise Trollope as even-handed, I would praise him
as remarkably intelligent with a grasp of human nature
that is rare.
Ellen Moody
RE: Barchester Towers: 'The conscience of the curé'
I saw the same quotation Jill did -- we must read the same newspaper.
I can add another. In this week's TLS (July 16,
1999, pp 6-7), Robert Darnton opens a brilliant review of
John McManner's magisterial volumes on Church and
Society in Eighteenth-Century France with the following
sentence:
Well so is Barchester Towers another tiny pocket.
Later in the review Darnton mentions The Little
World of Don Camillo as the Italian version of
comic yet profoundly serious fiction about clerical life
in a small provincial corner of a modern country.
The author is one Giovannino Guareschi and the
book is not a novel but rather a book made up of
hundreds of sketches and stories that came
out surrounding the life and character of one
Don Camillo, a gentle yet sceptical priest
who may be regarded as a cross between Trollope's
Father John (in The Macdermots), Mr Harding
with a strong dollop of Italian culture and attitudes
nowhere to be found in Trollope. The comedy
there is also the result of the conflict between
a worldly disillusioned society and its structures,
the madness of the average person and the
well-intentioned acts of our Don. I have read
a few. They are exquisitely good: filled with
the same understanding of human nature we
find in Trollope, but with a different way of
expressing the importance of spiritual
inner goodness (charity, compassion, and
all the happy 'c' words of our language).
Don Camillo is the soul of courtesy.
Barchester Towers is a voice in a conversation
that is still going on.
Ellen Moody
Every once in a while June Siegel still wrote in and in this posting she jumped ahead to the
end of the novel to defend Trollope's conception of Mr Slope and show it is much more
ambiguous and sympathetic than the rest of us had been allowing for:
Thanks to RJ for providing me with the word I needed to describe
Trollope's characterizations --- they are not ambiguous so much as ambivalent.
And I was inspired by his perceptive analysis following to hunt up one of my
favorite examples of the richness and subtlety of Trollope's delineations of
character. Recently several of us have spoken of Doctor Thorne as being a
favorite, but I could not have been happier when I was rereading Barchester
Towers this past summer. One of my favorite characters in that novel, the
slippery, unctuous, odious Slope affords a good example of Trollope's methods.
I would need to quote all of Chapter IV to illustrate, but I have decided it
is probably not a good idea. This much, however, should show what I mean.
Here is what Slope looks like:
But here, eighteen pages later, we are shown something very different, Slope,
at Barchester, ascended into the pulpit, delivering the sermon, is invested
with clerical dignity:
At the end of the delightful chapters on the fete champetre at Ullathorne,
Slope tries to make love to Eleanor Bold, and here Slope is hilarious:
He is about to try to "give her some outward demonstration of that affection
of which he had talked so much."
So much for passivity in Trollope's women. Although he says that she should
not have dealt him this blow, she nevertheless has, and Slope is infuriated:
Trollope asks, "But how shall I sing the wrath of Mr Slope....?" in a
deliberatley mock-Homeric passage, then shows the man to us, and suddenly it
is not as funny as it seemed:
Slope, consumed with wrath, thinks of the sermons he could preach against his
enemies, but then he thinks of his other escapades, and his state of mind
again, is no longer laughable:
There he stood fixed to the gravel for about
ten minutes. Fortune favoured him that so far
no prying eyes came to look upon him in his misery.
Then a shudder passed over his whole frame; he
collected himself, and slowly wound his way round
to the lawn, advancing along the path and not
returning in the direction which Eleanor had
taken. (387) No matter what else we feel about Slope, at this point, I believe we are intended
to be moved. There is no simple way to see Slope; we either see him whole or
we don't really see him at all. In the autobiography Trollope says, "In the
writing of Barchester Towers I took great delight. The bishop and Mrs.
Proudie were very real to me, as were also the troubles of the archdeacon and
the loves of Mr. Slope." ( 87) Trollope had great affection for all his
characters, indeed for all of Barchester. Here, in the autobiography,
speaking of Framley Parsonage, he says:
Perhaps because Barchester was so real to Trollope, he invested all his
characters with at least as many dimensions as those we generally like to
perceive in our own lives. But he was a benevolent creator, seeing above and
beyond the immediate. Perhaps to see his people as Trollope saw them is to try
to remain outside the confines of the novel as well, or maybe to be inside and
outside at the same time. Perhaps we need to view the loathsome Slope with
the same degree of impassivity and fondness as Trollope seems to bring to the
writing, and to remind ourselves from time to time that we are not only in the
sunny, country lanes of Barchester, but also seated in our chairs, in the
lamplight, book in hand.
I wrote in to say "Dear June, what a pleasure are your postings. I love them.
Then I supported her idea:
Re: Barchester Towers: On Behalf of Obadiah
Even the name stigmatises the man -- it's curious how so
much in our society is continually understood in terms of
which group of people chooses it. Names betray class
and religious and other biases too. I see a direct
connection between Josiah Crawley (who we will
meet later in this book), Dickens's Uriah Heep and Obadiah Slope;
the names seem to me variants: while I can see RJ Keefe's
point that to Trollope Slope has become a man who
has broken away from his proper place, I would argue
that at the same time he is seen as someone who
is not a gentleman either by virtue of his birth
or his inner nature. We are not given a parentage --
which has the effect of keeping Slope a literary
caricature, but we are told he is 'a sizar at Cambridge'
by which was meant 'a poor undergraduate in receipt
of an allowance from his college, in return for which
he had at one time (but not by Mr Slope's day) to
undertake certain duties subsequently performed
by the college students'. My husband went to a
public school as a day boy based on his superb
grades on an 11-plus: he had to wear a different
coloured shirt; I wonder if Mr Slope asked to
carry some insignia of his inferiority in some way.
While we probably ought to remember that Trollope
was himself someone who was tormented by
having to go to schools with boys from aristocratic
or very wealthy families while he turned up in
a worse state than a farmer's boy; still, it's
clear the narrator who cannot bear to shake Mr
Slope's hand has not identified with him at all --
as yet. Later in the book we will find the kind
of curious half-sympathy Dickens gives to Uriah
Heep. I think what is off-putting is the sense I
have in Trollope's fiction here -- and occasionally
elsewhere -- is the idea that innately gentlemen
are superior to 'the lower orders'. Although again
to be fair in other and later stories Trollope presents
us with people who are given equal and better
intelligence than their so-called betters, better
hearts, more tact, sensivity and so on, in this book
and in the portrait of Louis Scatcherd (in Dr
Thorne) , Trollope allows the reader to infer
that the differences between the classes
are not merely a matter of nurture and
education but something in the genes. Were
Mr Slope presented as a black man, we would
(I hope) be enraged at Trollope. I think when
Trollope presents a Jewish person using the
same techniques we ought to be discussing
his similar use of anti-semitism.
This morning I read in this week's Times Literary
Supplement another way of dividing feminisms
from those I outlined earlier last week which I think
bears on Trollope's presentation of Slope. In my
categories I was attempting literally to describe
the actual positions of differing feminists in our
decade. There is another way to divide feminists:
by abstract overriding principles. According to
Nicola Lacey, if we think this way we can see two
main schools of feminist thought: "the first 'liberal
feminism' sees the law as capable of achieving gender
neutrality and the abolition of discrimination; it inherits
the traditions of Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart
Mill. The second, 'difference feminism', believes
that gender neutrality is unattainable, at least without
profound changes in society beyond the reach of any
law reform per se'" (quoted from Michael Beloff's
review of Nicola Lacey's Unspeakable Subjects,
TLS, July 16, 1999, p. 29).
The first school is actually an optimistic one. The idea
is behaviors are mostly social constructs which we can
reshape; we can through laws change behaviors too,
which all too often can mean teaching women to act
like men traditionally have in order to succeed in the
world outside the family. However, this is thought to
be possible and certainly we see women behaving
differently in the 1990s than they did in the 1890s.
Men too can be freed from unfair discrimination when
they don't come up to 'manly' ideals (see below) or
are homosexual or bisexual.
The second school would today be called
more pessimistic, and I would place Trollope there. He believes
men and women are fundamentally different: they
respond to sex in different ways; women are shaped
by their biological roles as mothers; men are when they
are strong aggressive, seek to make some long-lasting
impression on people through achieving of place and
position in social hierarchies; they will be more easily
shamed than women, and need to duel. I tend to agree
that men and women have fundamental differences,
but part company from Trollope probably in the way
I define these differences. In addition, Trollope rejoices in
these differences. They are Good Things. They make for
beauty in life, pleasure, variety and happinesses
that are close to natural rhythms and deeper
dreams of the psyche. I find this idea of a strata
of unchangeableness which takes us back to our
animal ancestry with all its aggression, amorality,
and modes of competition an occasion equally
for dismay. These are truths about human nature which
lead to much misery and frustration for many
individuals who have other gifts and qualities which
lose out in the dominance-submission competition
of life. Rousseau said men are born free and
everywhere in chains; alas, that's like saying
sheep are born carnivorous and everywhere eat
grass (I owe that to a writer on Maistre).
I wonder though if we are all of us not that offended
by Trollope's looking at women as fundamentally
different from men -- at least we accept this
position as not outrageous. Does then Trollope
present Slope as someone fundamentally different
from, say, Arabin? Should we accept this
position as outrageous? Is it not the kind of
thinking that underlies racism?
I offer this up in the spirit of devil's advocate -- for
this post is on poor Obadiah's side. He needs
to eat; why should he not claw his way up too?
To take a position in our society is often to
take it from someone else. They are not
infinite in number.
Ellen Moody encouraged by June into playing devil's advocate
Sigmund Eisner answered a query from Penny Klein:
Penny: I think what AT means when he says that Mr. Slope does not know
the New Testament is that the Old Testament was believed to preach an eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but the New Testament was supposed to
preach love and forgiveness. Mr. Slope is incapable of knowing love or
forgivness. Some Biblical scholar (which I am not) may correct me in the
next post. But this is what I think.
Finally Michael Powe joined in on this Barsetshire Marathon:
It's a bit of a joke by Trollope. He's making fun of the way The Rev
tortures his Sunday listeners with his sermons -- Sunday being "that
one law given for Jewish observance," that "seventh part of man's
alloted time here below"; for him "the mercies of our Saviour speak in
vain" when it comes to giving his wearied listeners a break.
In the background is a reference to the doctrinal separation between
Christians who rely heavily on the doctrines of the OT and those who
rely heavily on the doctrines of the NT. Not an inconsiderable
subject, actually. And it does recur throughout his work. Indeed, it
was a major theological issue.
mp
Subject: [trollope-l] Trol: BT: Primates and Unintended Jokes
From: John Mize Dr. Grantly finds it demeaning to have to fight Mr. Slope. Trollope
says that Dr. Grantly wouldn't have minded fighting with an ape as long as
the Queen had made the ape a bishop, and the ape was fighting his own
battles, but he can't stand having to fight a vulgar nobody like Mr. Slope.
If I didn't know that BT was written in 1857 before Thomas Huxley and Bishop
Samuel Wilberforce's famous 1860 debate on Darwinian evolution, I would have
thought Trollope was taking another shot at poor old Soapy Sam. Huxley said
he would prefer being related to an ape than to Bishop Wilberforce, and Dr.
Grantly would prefer an ape as bishop of Barchester to someone who allows
Dr. Slope and Mrs. Proudie to control him. If not for the dates, I would
have assumed that Trollope was suggesting that Wilberforce wasn't his own
man either.
Subject: Barchester Towers, An Uncomfortable Story?
Ellen, I love your postings. You said you could not think of a male figure
equivalent to Lady Ball. Would you buy Mr. Slope in Barchester Towers?
Re: Mr Slope As a Figure in Another Arch
To answer Sigmund's suggestion, I'd say Mr
Slope is not an male analogue for Lady Ball,
partly because he does more harm to himself
than he does to anyone else. Finally, he
is an ineffectual figure. She is not ineffectual.
She has just about destroyed her son--though
he was willing enough to go along with her,
when the only joy of his existence, whom she
hated, the poor first wife, Rachel died. The
fairy tale element in the book is that her
power is simply broken by a speckled hat
and the good witch Mrs Mackenzie who
drops in out of nowhere, quite like the Witch
of the North in The Wizard of Oz.
In his inability to hurt others (partly
because of his enemy Mrs Proudie), though in
a book which is redolent of spring, he resembles Mr
Jeremiah Maguire of Miss Mackenzie far more than he does
Lady Ball. Jeremiah Maguire is also a religious
hypocrite; so too Mr Stumfold (though he
combines it with sex); their religious position is to them
a way of getting on in the world; Maguire nearly
does a great deal of damage to Margaret,
and is aided and abetted by Lady Ball insinuating
not he but Margaret is the liar (which she knows
is not so), but finally Maguire, like
Slope, is defeated and his punishment,
as is the punishment of other of Trollope's
seriously presented religious hypocrites is to be
himself and to value and have to live with
people like himself. He deserves Miss
Colza where the narrator tells us "we will
leave him, not trusting much in his connubial
bliss." Slope's punishment is to be Slope;
some of this brings us right back to Fielding's
Blifil who everyone remembers marries
a rich old woman who makes his life a
misery, but then this is all he understands.
Blifil can't get at Tom because Tom's Tom,
so Maguire can't get at Margaret because
she's Margaret. Not finally. They are
strong in their fundamental decency, and
have the confidence of decency.
What's interesting in the later books is that
that which is more or less good-natured in
its approach --- the satire of a worldly clergy -- the
heart after all of Mr Harding's son-in-law
is finally as worldly as that of Mrs Proudie,
and yet he is treated nowhere as harshly
and is presented as a man with some noble
and decent instincts and a kind of beauty
in his character after all. What those who
write about Trollope say is that what Trollope
really is getting out is the fundamentalist
idea of religion and their ways of practicing
it. Mary Bolton, Hester's dark mother, practices
religion as a way of hating life, and of worshipping
death; she also practices it (as does Mrs Stumfold
in Miss Mackenzie) as a way of gaining power
over people, of mastering them. And she will
take any dishonest tactic that comes her way,
no matter how much it hurts the victim whose
welfare she is supposedly "caring for." Mr.
Bolton whose life she makes into a kind of
death sees this, but cannot break away because
this would be "immoral:"
Harrassed, angry, embittered, he remains under
her hypocritically religious tongue (John
Caldigate, 175-6).
It's not funny in the way the presentation of
Slope is because it's so deeply internalized in
a passionate relationship.
Perhaps Robert Bolton, Hester's brother,
comes close to Lady Ball at times, but at
last he turns round and on the last page
of the book, while some of the things
that Caldigate did still "stick in his throat,"
he can bring himself to see he was wrong
and try to be a good brother to his sister
once again--earlier in the book he was determined
to destroy her if necessary, but again, even
here his motive is not prestige or money
so much but what he sees as a moral
betrayal of his sister; he truly believes that
Caldigate has bigamously married her. Lady
Ball is all hard avarice and prestige.
The strains of religious satire and what
one make call the presentation of the
Phil Gramms (now I can think of a many
males, but stay with just the one)& Christine Whitneys (people
often forget she not only has endangered
the pensions of thousands of people in
her state to return tax dollars to the
wealthy but is herself the wife of a millionaire)
of their time criss-cross, and after all
Gramm (I'm not sure if it's two "m's") appeals to
modern fundamentalists and is a rival
to Pat Robertson. But I think the target
is distinct and analyzed in somewhat
different terms.
In Miss Mackenzie Trollope also drops the Stumfoldian
group about three-quarters of the
way through the novel, where in John
Caldigate he successfully intertwines
the web from the strands of 1) Mrs Bolton's death-
worshipping mastery of her husband
and all who she says she "loves" and
are in her grasp 2) the anger
of the Bolton family at their disgrace,
shame; 3) Daniel Caldigate's role as
a non-religious man who misunderstood
or underestimated his son and had to
learn forgiveness in order himself to be
forgiven and to be loved; and 4) the sex
and marriage plot involving the shaded
mirror of "bigamy" instead of coming
out openly and presenting a liaision without
marriage. I thought John Caldigate was
one of Trollope's hard masterpieces;
as Barchester Towers is one of his
more cheerful ones.
So we need numbers of arches with
characters fanned out along schemes of
judgements upon their characters, values,
and behavior.
Ellen Moody
Robert Wright wrote in with a story of one way
to define a "gentleman". A gentleman was a man
who didn't do anything for a living. What is wrong
with Obadiah Slope, I replied quickly, taking up
the rhetorical question, is that he is not a gentleman.
John Dwyer and Gene Stratton replied (I can't
find their postings) and then R. J. Keefe:
Re: Barchester Towers: On Behalf of Obadiah
From: "R J Keefe" The issue of gentlemanliness in Trollope is one I'm still inclined to stay
away from. Last fall, on the other Trollope list, the discussion surrounding
Shirley Letwins' The Gentleman In Trollope, a somewhat ramshackle book
studded with, I think, brilliant insights into both Trollope and the larger
idea of the 'English gentleman,' took off in a direction that I found so
uncongenial that I withdrew from the group permanently.
I will always be grateful to Trollope for having shown me, in his
Autobiography, the importance of being a gentleman. I had been brought up
as one, but permissive times had dulled my sensibilities - not so much,
however, that Trollope's book didn't make me sit bolt upright. I've
identified keenly with flounderers like Paul Montague and Harry Clavering
ever since.
Jill Spriggs calls our attention to Brooke Astor's endorsement of Trollope.
While I wish that more of the people photographed with Ms. Astor week in and
week out in what remains of the Times's society pages would take her advice
on this point, I wince at the connection of New York's grandest of grande
dames with an author who's been dismissed as pandering to the upper middle
class. I can't say what Trollope looks like from outside this class, but I
far from feeling pandered to I read in Trollope (among other things) a
bulletin of responsibilities that I only wish I could meet more completely.
But as to Ellen Moody's assertion that Obadiah Slope is 'not a gentleman,'
this is as true as death and taxes are inevitable.
RJ Keefe
July 25, 1999
Re: Who Was Then the Gentleman? or Slope, the Rake
I liked Robert's story of the lady who said her husband didn't 'do' anything;
he 'was' a gentleman. It does seem that a common definition of the
gentleman in the 19th century was he who didn't have to work for
a living; this is the way Charles Darwin consistently uses the word
in his Voyage of the Beagle. He, Charles, is a gentleman, because
he need not make money to support himself; instead he can devote
his life to scientific learning, exploration, and spending five years
travelling round the world. Behind this definition lies the connection
John Dwyer made explicit for us: 'leisure seems the basis of culture and
a gentleman is a cultured man ...' Good manners, tact, sensitivity,
continual courtesy are things the man who is not trying to wrest
money from the world, can, as it were, afford: Trollope's Daniel
Thwaite, ex-tailor by the end of Lady Anna, makes just this
point to Sir William Patterson at the close of that novel.
However, there is in Darwin also a strong sense that there are people
who are nature's gentleman -- and nature's gentlewomen. People who
are gentle by virtue of their genes, home environment, a stroke of luck which
brought them within the province of someone who could educate
them, another which brought them to some remunerative task which
was not degrading in some way, nor regarded as somehow dishonest.
Gene points out to us examples of this kind of person in Trollope, not
from the working or labouring classes, but from those just beneath
those with highly secure incomes -- the Hugh Stanburies of Trollope's
world, those who have to earn their living somewhat precariously,
the Josiah Crawleys, and the Slopes. Some of these we find are
by virtue of their moral nature and intelligence gentleman; at the
same time, we are shown many aristocrats who are sleazes,
bullies, corrupt, amoral -- I think of Sir Hugh Clavering, Sir Harry
Hotspur's heir, George Hotspur. In a remarkable passage Trollope
declares the ordinary woman he lives with outside marriage, and
who supports him (and writes his letters for him) is far above
him as a human being. She ought not to throw herself away
on such a sleaze.
And yet we have passages like that Gene quoted in which Dr Vesey
Stanhope meets Slope and turns away because he will not associate
with someone so clearly, so innately beneath him. Is this innate
inferiority a matter of his inner nature (genes), nurture (education and
life experience) or rank? Does one of these three weigh more strongly
than the other with Trollope -- with us? We too differentiate between
manners and morals. Samuel Johnson said Chesterfield taught his
son the manners of a dancing-master and the morals of a whore.
Yet such manners go a long way. Most of us meet one another only
on planes where we interact through manners, and our deeper
morality or natures only come into play when it's a matter of
demanding reciprocation, loyalty, during those moments when,
as people say, push comes to shove.
RJ mentioned Shirley Letwin's The Gentleman in Trollope:
Individuality and Moral Conduct. I suppose any book can become
the basis of an uncomfortable conversation, and our own period's
public discourse demands that we all appear to adhere to
egalitarian ideals. I thought her book idealistic, though she
doesn't say the ideal of a gentleman as someone who is so
through his nature and not rank is so much Trollope's as one
she can infer from many incidents in his book. Talk about
slick turn-around? What she does is weigh heavily all those
instances where virtue is the true nobility, and discount
or count less heavily those instances where rank is insisted
on. When I read her book I think of Count Pateroff in The
Claverings -- a gentleman everyone in the book agrees,
but a more corrupt luxurious drone you would be hard put
to find. The book appears to meditate the irony that Pateroff
and Sir Hugh are the gentleman -- and Harry who is spineless
-- and the courteous perfect gentle knight of the book,
Theodore Burton, hard-working, decent, compassionate,
the man who supports others, somehow doesn't quite
'make the cut'. I agree with John D and John Mize that
a man's nose, an aspect of his manliness in the Shandean
sense underlies the less idealistic meanings of gentlemen.
You had better duel when you are challenged (this is
in Gay's book on the cultivation of hatred and aggression
in gentlemanly 19th century culture).
Arthur Pollard's more old-fashioned literal insistence in his 'Trollope's
Idea of a Gentleman' (Trollope: Centenary Essays,
ed JHalperin) that for Trollope social rank, 'gates,
barriers, differences' set up by one's class and social
heirarchy are never forgotten provides a salutary
antidote for Letwin's book-length essay. In his Autobiography
Trollope declares that 'Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of
Omnium, is a perfect gentleman. If he be not, then am I
unable to describe a gentleman' (Oxford 1950 ed., MSadleir
and FPage, Ch 20, p 361). I think Trollope could not
have regarded Mr George, the trooper, of Bleak House
as a gentleman; though to me he's just as surely one
as Dickens's John Jarndyce.
What's all this to us? We still care about hierarchy. People
today still marry to position themselves and gentility is still
a result of a group of conditioners which include money,
who your parents were as well as what they did, and your
inner nature and education. There was another interesting
review of a book in this week's TLS, Harvey Mansfield's
of Francis Fukuyama's The Great Disruption. Fukuyama
is a philosopher and his book is about 'the loss of social
order in advanced democracies since the late 1960s. The
'great disruption' is apparently 'rampant individualism that goes
beyond cutting traditional, hierarchical, often oppressive
social bonds to overturning the elected authorities and
denying the voluntary obligations that were intended
to replace them'. Fukyama seems to believe that many
of the norms of measurement which characters adhere
to in Trollope are important for the maintenance of
civility, harmony, and security in our world: like
reputation, pride in rewards and prizes, fear of
shame. Says Fukuyama, 'Human beings by nature
like to organize themselves hierarchy'. I suppose
the military must then be the most natural organization
on this earth (joke alert). The philospher also says
people don't dislike hierarchies so much as those hierarchies
in which we, as individuals, end up on bottom.
How far do any of us identify with Slope? or Mrs Proudie?
Insofar as you do, you will not be comfortable with
Trollope's use of anti-feminism, class-bias and other
stigmas to satirise them as bullying, amoral tyrants
somehow (to Trollope's mind) characteristic of
Evangelicism. Mrs Slope's little boy and the niece
of an Earl are energetic, filled with life.
John Dwyer mentions Slawkenbergius's Tale in Tristam
Shandy wherein, as Shandy laments, the word
'nose' is ruined forever which is when read aright
so salacious and raw as to be hard to find
acceptable quotes, e.g., O Julia, my lovely Julia -
any I annot stop to let thee bit hat thistle (=nose)
-- that ever the suspected tongue of a rival should
have robbed me of enjoyment when I was upon
the point of tasting it. That 'low silky whisper' of Slope
is accompanied by one 'redeeming' feature, says
our narrator, his nose: it is pronounced straight
and well-formed; though I myself shoudl have
liked it better did ot not possess a somewhat
spongy, porous appearance, as though it
had been cleverly formed out of red-coloured
cork' (Penguin Barchester Towers, edRGilmour,
Chs 3, p. 25 and Ch 8, p. 55).
Ellen
From: John Mize As Ellen says, there is a lot of class bias in Trollope's hatred of Dr.
Slope. Slope is vulgar, narrow-minded and low church. All three seem to go
together as far as Trollope is concerned. Church affiliation in the United
States, especially in the South, is still primarily determined by social
class. The Episcopalians are on top, followed by the Presbyterians, the
Methodists, the Baptists, and then the Church of God, Church of Christ,
Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. I don't know the order of the social hierachy
below the Baptists. Since our family belonged to the Baptist Church, we
just called everyone below us Holy Rollers and dismissed them. We were more
aware of the distinctions between those above us than those below. Jews and
Catholics didn't really count, because no matter how long they lived here,
we considered them to be transplanted Yankees. There seem to be similar
class-based religious distinctions in the North. My favorite line in the
movie, A River Runs Through It, comes when the Presbyterian minister learns
that his son is dating a Methodist. He says something like "A Methodist,
that's a Baptist who can read."
I also found it interesting that Trollope says that Mr. Slope's power is
primarily over women. You get the impression of weak-minded, emotional,
ignorant women being swayed by Mr. Slope's moral bullying. What about the
low church men? Are they less religious than the women and simply spend
their Sundays drinking? Or do they think for themselves and are too manly
and independent to let Mr. Slope intimidate them?
RJ Keefe wrote in again on the subject: BT: Class, Gender and Religion
From: "R J Keefe" It strikes me that Mr. Slope is no-class rather than low-class, and I take
my cue from the trope of his ancestry. Slope is that most detestable of
Trollopean types, the man on the make. Not to be confused with the ambitious
man. The ambitious man in Trollope seeks an outlet for developing and
profiting by his talents, whether as an engineer or a barrister or a
politician. The man on the make has but one talent, and that's the
manipulation of others. In August Melmotte, Trollope confers a certain
grudging dignity on the type, but there's never any question that the world
isn't a better place without him. Melmotte's effect on the City is pretty
much that of Slope upon his ladies. (Speaking of ladies, Trollope's women on
the make are an altogether more attractive bunch. They wouldn't have a make
to be on otherwise.) It's interesting to consider that a man with Slope's
clammy propensities would make no headway whatever in today's corporate
world. (I don't think he'd make any headway with today's women, either.)
It's impossible to avoid the bearing of the concept of 'breeding' on Slope's
profile. The term seems to have been borrowed by the English squirearchy
from the world of animal husbandry - when? Shakespeare has the Prince of
Morocco, suing for Portia's hand in The Merchant of Venice, assert "I do
in birth deserve her, and in fortunes,/In graces and in qualities of
breeding." (II, vii, 32-3; thanks, OED!) These qualities of breeding are
understood to spring, at least partially, from one's forebears. An aspect of
this idea is that unpleasant characteristics will fall away in the course of
generations of 'suitable' marriages. But Trollope declines to tell us what
kind of marriages produced Slope, just as he never really identifies
Melmotte. Aren't both men, in the Trollopean universe, monstrosities?
Somewhere, I think, Trollope writes of a character who knew, or didn't know,
who his grandfather was: this knowledge is a sine qua non of respectability.
Denying it to us is Trollope's way of placing Slope and Melmotte outside the
social system altogether.
RJ Keefe
To which John Mize replied:
Yes, but couldn't he be a successful televangelist? I don't know about the
modern day UK, but he'd probably do just fine here in the US. I can easily see
Mr. Slope on television talking to Jerry Falwell and Tammy Fay Bakker about the
threat to America posed by the witches of Lilith Fair.
Jill Spriggs responded to an older thread:
Subject: [trollope-l] Meet the Slimy Mr. Slope
From: Oldbuks@aol.com
A hasty post between two trips ...
Near the beginning of Barchester Towers we meet the shudderingly icky Mr.
Slope, and reading again the description that so effectively seals our
distaste, as Sig has already told us, " I never could endure to shake hands
with Mr. Slope. A cold, clammy perspiration always exudes from him, the
small drops are ever to be seen standing on his brow, and his friendly grasp
is unpleasant." (Oxford University Press Barchester Towers, ed. Sadleir and
Page, p. 29) A sweaty man seems to be an aversion that spans the
generations; just remember how the moist Richard Nixon with that five
o'clock shadow roused the distaste of the masses.
Interesting that Mr. Slope, and Mr. Arabin, his antagonist, were both
scholarship students. Both serious young men who seemed to have sown no wild
oats. But Slope was a graduate of Oxford, while Arabin was an alumnus of
Cambridge. I have heard that there is a friendly rivalry between the
educational institutions, on the line of that between Harvard and Yale. Does
Slope's low church propensities, and Arabin's high church affinity, in any
way correspond with the atmosphere of the two universities?
In The Warden we had the worldliness of Tom Towers and Archdeacon Grantley
contrasted with the idealism of John Bold and Mr. Harding. In Barchester
Towers we will have the same conflict between Mr. Arabin and Mr. Slope. But
Mr. Arabin, whom we will meet in Chapter XIX, is made of sterner stuff than
Mr. Harding. A more comprehensive discussion of these opponents' ideals will
have to wait a couple of weeks.
Jill Spriggs
Gene Stratton corrected her, and she replied to him:
Ah, Gene, you are right. I turned them around.
Jill Spriggs
Then Gene wrote in:
From: "Ginger Watts" POTENTIAL SPOILER
Here Ellen is playing my role as devil's advocate while I blithely defend
orthodoxy. O tempora o mores.
In BT, Trollope goes out of his way to induce us to dislike the Reverend
Obadiah Slope. Not only could Trollope not endure shaking hands with this
man who always exudes cold, clammy perspiration, but he even uses one of his
most severe adjectives to describe him: Slope has a "greasy" way about him.
Too, as Ellen points out, his name sets him apart. "Obadiah" would have
been fine 200 years earlier during the Puritan Protectorate, or even 100
years earlier, when distinctly Biblical names were still in fashion, but by
the Victorian Age they had become rare with an musty attic-like odor. Yet
it does fit Low-church clergymen, for they were the heirs of the Puritans.
It has been been observed that Slope is a clergyman on the make. Ambitious.
But, as Conrad said, "All ambitions are lawful except those which climb
upwards on the miseries or credulities of mankind." The trouble with Mr.
Slope is twofold.
First, he is duplicitous. His dealings with Mr. Harding, Eleanor Bold, Mr.
Quiverful, Mrs. Proudie, and even Signora Neroni, all show this. Promise
them anything and then shrug your shoulders when you obviously cannot
deliver to all.
Second, and even more unforgivable, he is stupid. His duplicity could not
help but become known to his detriment, as Signora Neroni eventually shows
him in song. And as Mrs. Proudie likewise demonstrates to him most
painfully. What is the expression? -- When you strike at a king (or a Madam
Bishop), make sure you kill him. And yet the poor man followed his chosen
course as if he had no choice but to lead himself to the slaughterhouse.
But what I don't understand is where is Trollope's much-lauded
even-handedness in dealing with Mr. Slope? In his 3rd novel, La Vendee, he
painted black-and-white figures. In his 4th, The Warden, he began on the
path that henceforth distinguished most of his writing. But now in his 5th,
BT, his depiction of Obadiah Slope seems atavistic. I can only feebly
suggest that the needs of the story -- which should always be the paramount
consideration -- demanded it. To his everlasting credit, Mr. Slope did
perform one good deed: he was highly instrumental in making Barchester
Towers one damned good novel.
Gene Stratton
gwlit@worldnet.att.net
John Mize then elaborated further on another point he and I had
made:
Subject: [trollope-l] BT: Slope the Rake
From: John Mize I certainly agree with Ellen that Trollope emphasizes the sexual nature
of the attraction Mr. Slope has for women. Trollope explicitly identifies
Slope with John Wilkes, the famous 18th century rake and political
troublemaker. All the gentlemen know that Slope is no good, but the women
are blinded by Slope's oily, insistent, slightly bullying sexuality. Slope
is a little like Jane Austen's Mr. Collins, but while Slope dazzles most of
the local women, very few women are impressed by Collins. Collins' patron
enjoys his groveling, and Collins' wife marries him, only because he has an
income, and she fears she can do no better. As another Austen character,
Anne Elliot in Persuasion, reminds us, it often does make a difference
whether the storyteller is a man or a woman.
As Ellen says, female sexuality for Trollope always involves a willing
submission, which at times approaches masochism. That and Trollope's
insistence on lecturing us on what constitutes appropriate manliness or
womanliness always annoys me a little. I suppose that's because Trollope
celebrates the fundamental differences between men and women. Even if there
are fundamental differences between men and women in the aggregate, there is
a lot of overlap between the two groups, and I tend to like the people in the
overlap better than those on either end of the spectrum. Trollope is not
overly fond of the women in the overlap, although he often tries to be fair
to such women, for example, the Miss Tristrams in Orley Farm.
July 28, 1999
Re: Barchester Towers: Ruthless Dispatch
Catherine Crean asks about the metaphor of the clinging vine
which Trollope uses for Eleanor Bold and Thackeray for
Amelia Sedley. I read the passage as a comical rendering
of a cliché. In Chapter 2 Trollope is concerned to untie
those knots he had tied in the final chapter of The
Warden and tease out from some open-ended threads
a rehearsal of the previous story in new terms. He is
as ruthless with Bold in this book as he will be with
the Duchess of Omnium (poor Lady Glencora that was)
in The Duke's Children. He is swept away in four
words: Mrs Bold 'now, alas a widow' (Penguin, Barchester
Towers, ed RGilmour, Ch 2, p. 10). So much for
him.
In The Duke's Children Trollope immediately makes
up for the hard-heartedness by having us enter the
devastated shock of the Duke and his loss; in Phineas
Redux where he rids himself in a similarly inexorable
fashion of Phineas's wife (and babe too), again we
get a sense of the loss through Phineas's consciousness.
But this is to be comedy, and as with The Warden
Trollope is not intent on persuading us we have an
utterly individual consciousness in Eleanor. So while
due justice is done for a few paragraphs, which however
begin on a half-overdone repeated note 'Poor Eleanor!',
and we get a serious feel with the knowledge she
was pregnant, but this was God's way of tempering
'the wind to the shorn lamb'; nonetheless, this
'affectionate, confiding, manly' man is not really
to be missed. We are reminded he had faults;
that his were not 'first-rate abilities, and I see the
language here as deliberately distancing us so
as to move us into the spirit of comedy as soon
as a necessary bow to the conventions of grief
for the supposed imagined dead will allow. Within
about 8-9 paragraphs, we are told that this baby,
'as a baby.. was all that could be desired'. 'Is
he not delightful'. And the grandfather -- Mr
Harding -- would gladly admit the treasure
was delightful, and the uncle archdeacon would
agree, and Mrs Grantly, Elanor's sister, would
re-echo the word with true sisterly energy; and
Mary Bold -- but Mary Bold was a second
worshipper at the same shrine' (Ch 2 p. 14). I don't know
what words to use for this tongue-in-cheek
way of saying something that is more than
half-serious: the tone enables Trollope to
reinforce the genuine feeling while undercutting
it through the panache of chummy shared
exaggeration:
What more could you want? As our storyteller
avers,
The key is in the pronoun 'our'. This is our baby
for our story. She is our heroine who clung like
a vine with perfect tenacity, but now that the oak
has vanished, is available for new adventures.
Eleanor is also going to be a conventional heroine,
and one we are supposed to like. The similes and
descriptions of her convey that like a sort of
shorthand. As the story opens, she has her
baby, she is 'tranquil', has asked her father
to come live with her, but he, wise and prudent
as ever, 'could not be prevailed upon to forego
the possession of some small home of his own,
and so remained in the lodgings he had first
selected over a chemist's shop in the High
Street of Barsetshire' (Ch 2 p. 15).
There is a beautiful use of the simile which makes
it come alive -- not a cliché -- at the close of
Cymbeline: Imogen is suddenly brought
face to face with Posthumous Leonatus after
they have been long separated, and she intwines
herself around him, and he says, 'Hang there like
fruit, my soul/Till the tree die'. Trollope pulls on that,
but with comic verve.
Ellen Moody
"Thanks to Teresa for some most interesting background material regarding the
Reverend J. W. Cunningham as the model for Mr. Slope. Note that in the same
place where Trollope calls Slope "greasy," he also calls him "pawing." Hall
gives Cunningham's full name as John William Cunningham, so apparently
Trollope has gratuitously thrown in a name like Obadiah as another measure
of prejudice.
'His hair is lank, and of a dull, pale, reddish hue.
It is always formed into three straight lumpy masses,
each brushed with admirable precision, and cemented
with much grease ... He wears no whiskers, and is always
punctiliously shaven. His face is nearly of the same colour
as his hair, though perhaps a little redder; it is not unlike
bad beef -- beef, however, one would say, of a bad
quality. His forehead is capacious and high, but square
and heavy, and unpleasantly shining. His mouth is
large, though his lips are thin and bloodless ...
(Penguin Barchester Towers, ed RGilmour, Ch
3, p. 25).
'The "desecration of the Sabbath", as he delights to
call it, is to him meat and drink: he thrives upon that
as policemen do on the general evil habits of the
community. It is the loved subject of all his evening
discourses, the source of all his eloquence, the
secret of all his power over the female heart ...
'Thirty-nine years ago, there appeared one of
those unlikely books by an unknown author
that has left an indelible mark on scholarship.
French Ecclesiastical Society under the
Ancien Régime: A Study of Anger in the
eighteenth century by John McManners seemed
doomed to gather dust on the shelves reserved
for esoteric erudition. Who would want to curl
up with a monograph on the clergy of Angers?
But those who strayed into its pages were
swept away into a fascinating world on the
other side of a well-wrought looking glass.
Choirboys leaning how to swing the incense
boat, curates confronting plebian sin in the
confessional, canons conniving against
bishops, ti had a bit of Barchester Towers,
but was mainly a world of its own, a tiny
pocket of intense clerical life ...'
His hair is lank, and of a dull, pale, reddish hue.
it is always formed into three straight lumpy masses,
each brushed with admirable precision, and cemented
with much grease; two of them adhere closely to the
sides of his face, and the other lies at right angles
above them.... His face is nearly of the same colour
as his hair, though perhaps a little redder; it is
not unlike beef -- beef, however, one would say, of a
bad quality. (Penguin,25)
'Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman
that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the
word of truth.' These were the words of his text, and
with such a subject in such a place, it may be supposed
that a preacher would be listened to by such an audience.
He was listened to with breathless attention, and not
without considerable surprise. Whatever opinion Mr
Slope might have held in Barchester before he commenced
his discourse, none of his hearers, when it was over,
could mistake him for either a fool or coward.
'Sweetest angel, be not so cold,' said he, and as
he said it the champagne broke forth, and he contrived
to pass his arm round her waist. He did this with
considerable cleverness, for up to this point Eleanor
had contrived to keep her distance from him. (384)
She sprang from him as she would have jumped
from an adder, but she did not spring far; not,
indeed, beyond arm's length; and then, quick as
thought, she raised her little hand and dealt him
a box on the ear with such a right good will, that
it sounded among the trees like a miniature thunder-clap. (384)
There are such men; men who can endure no taint
on their personal self-respect, even from a woman;
men whose bodies are to themselves as sacred temples,
that a joke against them is a desecration and a rough
touch downright sacrilege. Mr Slope was such a man....
(385).
There he is, however, alone in the garden walk,
and we must contrive to bring him out of it. He
was not willing to come forth quite at once. His
cheek was stinging with the weight of Eleanor's
fingers, and he fancied that everyone who looked
at him would be able to see on his face the traces
of what he had endured. He stood a while, beoming
redder and redder with rage. (386)
He had an inkling, a true inkling -- that he was a
wicked sinful man; but it led him in no right
direction; he could admit no charity in his heart. He
felt debasement coming on him, and he longed to shake
it off, to rise up in his stirrup, to mount to high
places and great power, that he might get up into
a mighty pulpit and preach to the world a loud
sermon against Mrs Bold.
I need only further say, that as I wrote it I
became more closely than ever acquainted with
the new shire which I had added to the English
counties. I had it all in my mind,--its roads
and railroads, its towns and parishes, its
members of Parliament, and the different hunts
which rode over it. I knew all the great lords
and their castles, the squires and their parks,
the rectors and their churches. (129)
And she was dishonest with him.
Because she felt herself unable to advocate
in plain terms a thorough shutting up of her
daughter,--a protecting of her from the
temptation of sin [which in her mind is really
equated with joyful sex in marriage] by absolute
and prolognged sequestration,--therefore she
equivocated with him, pretending to think that
he was desirous of sending his girl out to have
her hair braided and herself arrayed in gold and
pearls. It was thoroughly dishonest, and he
understood the dishonesty..."
"[Mr. Slope] had been a sizar at Cambridge, and had there conducted himself
at any rate successfully ..."
and ... "From Winchester [Mr. Arabin] went to Oxford, and was entered as a
commoner at Balliol."
(Oxford University Press Barchester Towers, ed. Sadleir and Page, pp. 25 and
187)
'The baby was really delightful; he took
his food with a will, struck out his toes
merrily whenver his legs were uncovered,
and did not have fits'
'These are supposed to be the strongest
points of baby perfection, and in all these
our baby excelled' (Ch 2, p 14).
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