Miss Mackenzie, Nina Balatka andLinda Tressel

It was in very early May 2004 that a small group of us on Trollope-l embarked on three of Trollope's heroine's texts: Miss Mackenzie, Nina Balatka and Linda Tressel. Not many members participated but the discussion of Miss Mackenzie in particular was very lively. In my postings I explore a paradigm which ignited this discussion now and again: how Trollope made his plot-design and central characters out of what Nancy Miller defined as "the heroine's text." I also have put up pictures of and by women of the era. Other strongly effective heroine's texts which Trollope wrote are: at novel length, Rachel Ray and Marion Fay; in the short story form, "La Mère Bauche", "The Parson's Daughter of Oxney Colne", "Journey to Panama", "Mary Gresley", and "The Telegraph Girl".

Participants included Catherine Crean, Kathy Curtin, Sigmund Eisner, Adele Fasick, David Gilbert, Howard Goldstein, Tom Hughes, Crystal Johnson, Suzanne Silk Klein, Kristi Jaliks, Pat Maroney, Howard Merkin, Daniel Millstone, Richard Mintz, Ellen Moody, Martin Notcutt, Teresa Ransom, Angela Richardson, Rose Rowland ("Sophy"), Sam Silverman, Geoff Swainson, Emma Townsend, Dagny Wilson.

Miss Mackenzie

• May 23: Introduction: Miss Mackenzie and Ontologically "Other" Human Beings; Some Introductory Remarks: Miss M as Trollope in Drag, On P. D. Edwards ("Fiction Shorn of Romance"), Jane Nardin (He Knew She Was Right), Mary Hamer (Miss Mackenzie as a "modern Griselda"); Books as Mirrors: Trollope, Freud and La Fontaine's "L'homme et son image"; N. Miller's The Heroine's Text, Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing and The Poetics of Gender; Feminocentric Writing.
• May 30: Chapters 1-5: Miss Mackenzie as Tennyson's Mariana in the Moated Grange; A Victorian Cinderella; Retail Shame; Family and Retail Matters; Oilcloth Shame; Evangelicals in Trollope; Humor in Miss M; LittleBath & Castes: Bath in the 19th Century; General Babblings on the Comedy; LittleBath as Cheltenham; Miss M Reinventing Herself; Miss Todd as Frances Power Cobbe; Miss Todd as a Great Comic Character; The Dullness of John Ball; an Austenish Book; What Does Stumfold Do for a Living?; The Complications of Class.
• June 6: Chapters 6-10: Miss Mackenzie goes to the Cedars; Miss Mackenzie Leaves the Cedars; Mrs. Tom Mackenzie's Dinner Party; Miss Mackenzie's Philosophy; The Stumfolds' tea party; Stumfold's joke; Plenary Absolution; In Defense of Mr Rubb; Mr Slow; Class and Money; Mr Rubb as a Con Man?; Fanny Trollope's Widow Barnaby and Michael Armstrong: Character Types and Disastrous Dinner Party; Mr Rubb as self-deluded; Bath as Batheaston: other Littlebaths and 19th century Bath; Middle Class and High Status Ways of Eating; Trollope's Readership; Dinner parties in Trollope; Anti-Rubb Still; Trollope and Dinners 'a la Russe'; Miss Mackenzie's balance & the dreadful Balls; Mr Grandairs; The suitors; The philoprogenitive Mr. Ball; Mr Rubb's business ethics; Mrs Stumfold and Trollope's attitude towards Evangelicals; Mrs Stumfold: AT's Hate-filled Monster-Bully Women; not quite as Soul-withering and Life-destroying as Lady Ball and Mrs Tom.
• June 13: Chapters 11-15: Mrs. Todd Entertains Some Friends at Tea; Mrs. Stumfold Interferes; Mr Maguire's Courtship; Tom Mackenzie's Bed-side; The Tearing of the Verses; Mr Ball's Large Family; Gower Street; Trollope's Philosophy on Marriage; St. Margaret of Female Submissiveness; Austen Parallels in P&P; Miss M and Trollope's Fred Pickering; Miss M as Trollope himself; Miss M Comes Out Most Strongly Here; Independence; Financially independent women; Independence? Or pleasure and usefulness; John Ball, Margaret -- and the fairy godmothers of this book (Mrs Mackenzie and Lady Glen); Trollope afraid of women who don't submit to men; Miss M a Fighter; Yellow Gloves.
• June 20: Chapters 16-20: On behalf of the Ugly, Plain and Apparently Dull in our World; Devices and Paradigms: Orphans and Those who Will not Serve Mammon; Last Chronicle of Barset v Miss Mackenzie; Lisping and Squinting; The Tearing of the Verses; The Outer and Inner in People; Jonathan Ball's property; Squints; An "American" View; John Ball as a Good Match; Not an "American" View; Stigmatizing and Ridiculing People of a Lower Caste; The outer and Inner in People; Moving Into Faerie Tale Realm; A "Heroine's" Text; Squints as US people understand them?; Bypassing the Text; Noble self-sacrifice: Grace Crawley and Miss M; Miss M a far more complex character than Grace Crawley; Carving out Psychosocial space for oneself; Homesite Picture & Pathetic & Powerless Heroines and Heroes.
• June 27: Chapters 21-25: Sympathy for Vituperative Spiteful Women in Trollope -- and Miss Mackenzie; John Ball's Sexual Anxiety (He's no cold fish, rather a much-threatened male); Miss Mackenzie vs. sweet young things; The Last Chronicle and women's occupations in Trollope; The Divine Miss M; John Ball Again; The Negro Orphans Bazaar; Thwarted Woman of Letters? (Joke Alert); The Grotesqueries of the bazaar; Trollope himself acknowledged he was not urbane, but violent: Trollope's "violence" and hostility to women having power and displaying themselves in public space.
• July 3: Chapters 26-30: A Disappointing Ending; Miss Mackenzie's Future; Typical Women's Poetry of 19th Century Poetry: Emily and Charlotte Bronte; Happy Ending?; A Return to Quiet Desperation; The happiest person in the book: Miss Todd; Bazaar and yellow gloves; More yellow gloves; Mr Rubb at the close of the novel; For Trollope kindness and words count; More Women's Poetry: Frances Browne's The Australian Emigrant.

Nina Balatka

• July 11: Introduction: Dating, Where Published, Some Ideals for Novel Writing; AT's decision to go anonymous and Robert Tracy's Preface; Josef Mánes's The Dressmaker; Marriage Boundaries in Trollope and Nina.
• July 18: Chapters 1-3: Trollope's Handiwork: An Abundance of L-Words; Steeling One's Nerves for L; Money and Position and the L-experience.
• July 25: Chapters 4-6: A Different Way of Telling a Story; Prague; Madame Zamenoy and Mean Gossip; The Intermarriage/Nationalism; The Pathologies of Family Life; Rough Arguments and Encounters; Torments and Conflicts; Other Contexts: Realism, The Macdermots and Last Chronicle of Barset, Dreams of Suicide; From the Hindsight of the 20th Century; Intolerance and the Power of the Family/Books?; Jews in Prague; St John Nepomucene.
• August 1: Chapters 7-9: The Nobility of Rebecca Loth; Nina as another Lucy Robarts; The Old-New Synagogue in Prague (Still There): Picture and History; The Encounter on the Bridge; At Home and On the Bridge Again.
• August 8: Chapters 10-13: Pawning Goods; Hounded Relentlessly; Characters' Ages; "Josef Balatka might die"; The Noble Rebecca; Money Low, Utter Distrust and Treachery; Religious Belief and Bigotry; Anton under the archway; Old Jewish Cemetery; The Young Women in the Tale to the Rescue; Are we in Prague, or England?; Old Town Bridge Tower; Ruth's basket -- and Rebecca.
• August 15: Chapters 14-16: The Pendulum; Polarization; The Near-Suicide; Prague Pictures in Trollope-l Photo Archives; A New Life? A Fresh Start; What Will Happen Now?; What Will Happen Now: The happiness of exile, a new life: Lady Anna and Nina; Nina and "heroine's texts" by Trollope.

Linda Tressel

John Everett Millais, The Widow's Mite (1870)