To Trollope-l

December 3, 2001

Re: An Eye for an Eye, Chs 17-20: Brilliant character portraiture: Fred Neville

On a wholly academic list I'm on (they call it a continuing conference) the members often talk of books as if there were real people inside them and set about psychoanalyzing the characters and the book's narrator. The list is called Psychological Approaches to Literature and the listowner is Norman Holland, and sometimes these learned folks (they are learned, not just literary critics, but psychologists, people who study anthropology, philosophy and so on) feel it necessary to justify themselves because they know there aren't people in the books and they know that we are usually not given all that much information about characters even in books as laden with content as Tolstoi's. In most of Trollope's books we are given hardly anything about the childhood of the characters; we are usually fed only such information as enriches and explains and keeps the plots moving along. This is the old conundrum of "How many children had Lady Macbeth?" Or, recently on Victoria, was Daniel Deronda circumcized? (aka "Why didn't Danny look down?" and spare himself much heart-searching?)

There is an important difference between autobiography and travel letters -- which we are going to start reading in January -- and fiction. There is a real person who took the trip; a real person with a life outside the Autobiography; equally the people he or she names have lives which they need to protect, public scrutiny usually being far less than charitable. As I wrote in my book on Trollope,

"Readers understand they are not to ask about what Mr Harding is doing while the narrator takes us to another part of the novel in question. In The Warden we do not worry whether Mr Harding has gone to retrain himself for another position, has other children or a mistress we don't know abput. We do not accuse him (as some do Trollope in An Autobiography) of making mistakes, or not telling us everything about his sex life and finances, or of winning a prize he forgot about."

The idea seems to be that in novels, hollowed and working functionally in a story though the most rounded character be, we are given an outline which is so suggestive that taking from our own experience we fill in where the novelist leads us. We are not to fill in beyond that or absurdly -- that's when people end up writing wretched sequels.

would argue that in An Eye for an Eye Trollope provides three such palimpests: one for Fred, one for Mrs O'Hara and one for the Countess of Scroope. It's done with great concision: each nuance is weighted so that we have very complicated presences whose behavior escapes easy moral categories, indeed defy them.

This week's chapters this emerged particularly strongly in the depiction of Fred. When we last saw Fred he had been rallying based on our narrator's resonant comment ("Great and terrible is the power of money"): he comes into a lawyer's office backed by a very solid amount which is almost immediately enforced by his accession to the title of Earl.

So Fred is Earl of Scroope. Now what? Most fascinatingly, he doesn't want it. He says to Jack,

"'For the life of me, I don't know how to begin my life,' said the new peer to his brother as they were walking about the park together (Oxford An Eye for an Eye, ed Sutherland, Ch 18, p. 149).

He wants something within that is meaningful to him and it's not here. Where it is he doesn't know, but this is not it. It's not simply a matter of boredom, for he takes pleasure in doing well and being respected. Indeed he wants to follow in his uncle's footsteps. His heart rises at the tenant's respect for his uncle. A world of psychological meaning is inscribed (make visible to us suggestively) here, partly because Fred isn't simply a sleaze either; he does not want to get woman, gamble, lounge about like so many of Trollope's useless drone-like aristocratic males. He takes not a single step to behave in the manner of a Dolly Longestaffe or other of Trollope's males -- like Harry Clavering who is the gentleman about town.

Indeed, he actually intends to return to Ireland, to the lair of a woman he intuitively feels but has not made sufficiently conscious to himself is dangerously angry at what the world has been willing to give her and her daughter. We are told that he "hated himself" when the thought crosses his mind that he might just send them regular amounts of money. As the Countess suggests, most men in his position, would have. He respects the women; he really thinks they are people, if people beneath him:

"The girl was good and had trusted him altogether. The mother was self- denying, devoted, and high-spirited. He knew that money would not suffice" (Ch 17, p. 146).

The Countess is not so sure. After all, he would be out of their reach. The mother might have the fare to come to Scroope once, but what then? She has no power to compel him to marry a girl whom he impregnated outside marriage. That he can see Kate and Mrs O'Hara in this light still speaks very well of Fred.

At the same time he cannot get himself to marry Kate -- and this after he is told by those who had told him before he could leave and forget her if he wanted to that they would in his case marry her. Jack tells him if he does not mean to forget her and send money, he must not "lose a day -- not a day" (Ch 18, p. 150). If you listen to Jack, while he wavers, after he considers the real circumstances, what Kate really is, what Fred promised, he comes down that Fred is morally obliged to marry her, with the implication that he must also then bring her to Scroope and make the best of it:

"'As a rule a man should keep his word'.

'Let the consequences be what they may?'

'A man should keep his word certainly. And I know no promise so solemn as that made to a woman when followed by such conduct as yours has been' (Ch 18, p. 150).

The conduct referred to here is having sexual intercourse with Kate after promising to marry her; keeping on having it and therefore impregnating her. Says Jack at last:

''If I were in your place I think I should marry her', said Jack, -- 'but I will not speak with certainty even of myself' (Ch 18, p. 151).

And later just when Fred is returning to Ireland,

"'Upon the whole, Fred, if I were you I should marry that girl' (Ch 23, p. 170)

One of the reason my students got so excited about Fred and talked about him passionately was he reminded them of themselves: compared to Jack he is very adolescent. I would put it, Fred is afraid of life. Fred is afraid to take a decision, to make a decisive act. His reasoning is he doesn't know what he wants out of life; he has yet to grasp that a person becomes what he acts slowly and it is necessary to act and take the consequences be they what they may -- because indeed we never do know what all the consequences of any act will be as we cannot know other people very thoroughly nor how circumstances can change them or us.

Even Lady Scroope says to Fred in that peculiar way people have, if he cannot get himself to abandon Kate or to send her money, he ought to marry her. Note how real this is: it shows us how people are ultimately such pragmatic animals, not emotionally sentimental at all. I've known (when I was younger) people who would say when a girl got pregnant outside marriage, either marry him or get an abortion and never see him again. Two opposite decisions posed as if the emotions attached to each were automatic, didn't matter, as if people could easily move from one to another. In fact, people really do behave this way. To Jack if Fred goes to Ireland, he should marry the girl, not just keep her. To the Countess "pride of birth" is so strong that it overcomes all morality (Ch 19, p. 164), but what makes her switch to say to Fred that he should marry the girl seems simply to be a moral decision from the point of view of the way it will make her look to herself in her heart and the way it will make Fred appear to himself in his. That Fred can't get himself to behave in this illogical way is partly to his credit.

He wants to have a meaning. Then he looks into himself and sees nothing. Freudian language probably won't get us very far in understanding this; Trollope may also be providing us with a sociological portraiture of a decent young man who has been given nothing to live by that counts to him personally.

The conundrums here -- and I have only covered a couple of angles -- reminds me of the complexity and ambiguous evasiveness of the way Lily Dale emerges in two long fictions of the Barsetshire books. In both cases Trollope has made visible a presence whose very mystery and irrationalities and combination of good and bad, strong and weak impulses is just like life. So we want to psychoanalyze him -- as we do Lily, and also Adolphus Crosbie, Johnny Eames and many many more.

The difference for me between these novellas of Trollope's and his big books is not that the novellas have not as complex presences as the big books. It's that the novellas do not have as many and that our attention is not distracted by alternative foci or moods so that we fix on a particular trajectory. The trajectory that is Fred is that of an ordinary young man grown up in the later 19th century world with all its falsifying twisting values but some of its virtuous mores too, and he is very real. Even to his not quite grasping who he faces in Mrs O'Hara -- which will finally be revealed to him in the instant before he steps over into eternity. Even then all he seems to be able to know is what she is capable of, not why. Trollope does prefer to have at the center of his books people who are not superintelligent in the manner of Henry James's characters. I suppose that makes them more typical, more believable yet.

I have no time to write about Mrs O'Hara and the Countess Scroope just now, and would love if someone would like to. Cheers to all,
Ellen Moody

To Trollope-l

Re: An Eye for an Eye: Turning the Novel Inward through Letters; Dramatic Scenes; or How to Skim a Trollope Novel

Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001

This is another of Trollope's novels to use letters in significant and interesting ways. Letters keep the Scroopes informed; bring Fred back and forth between England and Ireland; letters reveal the inner life of the characters and are juxtaposed to make for ironies.

This is a short novel and its about people who don't write as a matter of course. They are non-writing people: this is typical of Trollope's short stories and all the Irish books. Nonetheless, in a miniature you can trace the story of the novel and the significant crisis points of the novel simply by jumping from letter to letter and there are a large number of them proportional to the omniscient text. This is very Trollopian.

If anyone ever asks how to skim-read a Trollope novel, tell them turn from letter to letter: the only difficulty will be that after Dr Thorne, they are interwoven into the text as well as dropped in, so they are not as easy to spot as in most partly epistolary novelists.

If anyone wants to try the effect quickly and has the Oxford I've pulled out the pages of just the 10 dropped-in letters, the ones which leave a space between the text of the the book and have a salutation and signature:

1) pp. 15-17(Oxford Classics An Eye for an Eye, ed JSutherland), Lady Mary Quirk to Lady Scroope 68-69 , : she is spying on them, has ugly mind-set, suspicious, narrow. The kind of mind that hierarchies depend upon.

The letter places what might be beautiful privately in the harsh light of mercenary point of view and status.

2-4) Dramatic conversation through letters. When authors do this, the novel turns into a sort of play inside the mind.

It's p. 78: Fred to Kate, pp. 86-7: Kate to Fred; and then p. 103 Fred to Kate again: Fred is nonchalant, but he is not lying, and speaks directly, not a manipulator, not a hypocrite; this is not a Lothario, Don Juan. She too is simple, open, yearns for him. In fact she's too open. In reply he is eager, but he is a boy rebelling

5) Countess interrupts. She has read first letter. p. 107: Her approach is based on twisting emotions; what he owes to the uncle: "Oh, Fred don't break our hearts"

Moral question brought up in letter: what do we owe to people? Which ones? Their demands are often in conflict. Who shall we hurt? Why is there this conflict?

6) The appearance of the captain important and he appears through a letter: p. 114: Captain's letter: he wants money. The interesting thing about this letter is Trollope writes it so the reader can see the distance between the rhetoric and the purpose. Really the words are irrelevant. No need to read his words.

7) Drumbeat begins. P. 124, from Mrs O'Hara. This one tells us of the central act of the book which changes all: sexual intercourse, Kate's pregnancy. It is a deeply emotional one, and by contrast to the captain, the words do count. What does she say: you must marry her, and she doe say it's for her safety.

8-10) Last three: Kate to Fred, pp. 152-53: deeply vulnerable girl, touching, hurt, will be damaged forever; again the mother calling on him, p. 154: his last; he hates signing his title. Yet he does not promise marriage.

Even this easy pull-out shows the pivotal instinctive nature of Trollope's imaginative letter writing.

Now if you count letters described, letters quoted, notes which move back and forth, dispatches and letters described from the past and also planned, there are 29 letters altogether in An Eye for an Eye For example, when we are told how the Earl of Scroope wooed the Countess, we are given part of one of his letters and it is embedded in significant detail:

Earl of Scroope wooed Lady Mary Wycombe by a letter: 'asking her to share his gloom'; happened three years before the heir died; his daughter died around time that heir told him he was married to a 'painted prostitute from France'. Second wife as poor as Charity .. very proud of her blood

At another point, when Fred is told his uncle is ill, it is done through a "dispatch:"

A dispatch from Lady Scroope to Fred marked 'Immediate': 'Your uncle is very ill - dangerously ill, we fear. His great desire is to see you once again. Pray come without losing an hour', p 67; this is brought in again to show scenes which gave rise to it, pp 69-70;

The method of these interwoven letters is to give a letter, then the scene which gave rise to the letter or which surrounds the reading of it. So there are a number of short letters from the Captain; of one we are told that Mrs O'Hara has got it and is readintg it. In one of these Father Marty is brought forth and we see his thoughts and how he grasps what is to come quickly, but too late:

He wants money, I suppose'. 'Just that, Mr Neville' 'It makes a difference - doesn't it? 'How does it make a difference?' ' Well; it does. I wonder you don't see it. You must see it'. From that moment Father Marty said in his heart that Kate ... had lost her husband ..., p 115.

Father Marty is also the near recipient of a letter Fred plans and thinks about (so part of the feel of the text is in Fred's thoughts), but does not send also plans but does not send. Fred thinks to himself that he will explain

in the ordinary sense of the word he could not and would not marry Miss O'Hara, but that in any way short ... he would be true to her for life. He would make any settlement ... explain obligation to his uncle ... [he'd use] excuse of not having been informed of Captain O'Hara ... [but it] seemed to him ... poor & mean, cringing & at the same time false ... he must go back, tears it up (p. 155).

The torn up and planned letters are the most interesting of all Trollope's types. Johnny Eames does this sort of thing a number of times. I wonder if Trollope himself did. It is perfect to have this for Father Marty who himself a planner, a hesitator, a well-meaning but inadequate and failed manipulator. Fred is not; he is transparent, but he approaches Father Marty instinctively in a way appropriate to Father Marty's character.

The effect of all these interwoven letters is to turn outward narrative into inward.

Letters dramatize much that is significant in this novel; you can, if you will, pick out the bold bones of the book this way.

In other of Trollope's mid-, and later novels the technique is similar, only the content of the story and letters (mood, vision) is different and there may be many many more because the text is so much more complicated (more stories, more characters, more hinge-point scenes).

When I was looking into Victorian novelists for their uses of letters for my talk to the Trollope Society at the Reform Club, Partly Told in Letters: Trollope's Storytelling Art, I discovered that novelists who rely heavily on imitations of psychological reality to move their story along and are good at dialogue (naturalistic talk) use letters frequently. Perhaps not as heavily as Trollope, but still centrally and effectively. Among these are Elizabeth Gaskell. A couple of the stories in Cranford are just about comprised of letters. Gissing has yet fewer letters but they are effective and important. Thackeray can do letters very well, but he eschews them: that's revealing.

Novelists who do not use imitations of psychological reality, do not delve into characters' meditations and whose dialogue is not realistic but rhetorical use few letters. Dickens typically has few to no letters for long stretches of time; when a letter appears he does not invent a characteristic idiolect that persuades the reader immediately we are in a given characters' mind. Often we have to look at the signature to see who wrote it.

Cheers,
Ellen