POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins

POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins

13 January 2009

The Small House at Allington--chaps 4-6 (Oct 1862)

Dear Serial Readers,

We're off to a roaring start with Trollope! I want to forecast some guest blogging on this novel in the next months including some Trollope scholars (of the well-published variety) and a prominent contemporary playwright who knows Victorian literature inside out! I'll try to give advance notice.

I agree with Burt that Trollope's narrator's intrusions are especially interesting--and prevalent early on in this novel. For instance, the long commentary on the "hobbledehoy." Joshua's post about Trollope's sympathetic eye toward flawed characters also seemed to anticipate this disquisition on the narrator's favorite hobbledehoy Johnny Eames in the first chapter of this second installment. It's clear that Trollope has a penchant for awkward (even borderline--with all the attendant blushing) masculinity in many of his novels, and I can appreciate Eames as part of a larger chorus of Trollopian hobbledehoys elsewhere. This hobbledehoy theory of the modern hero extends the earlier assertion about a "fraction of a hero"--a downsized masculinity from traditional (chivalric, muscular Christian?) proportions. So, is there a feminine counterpart lurking somewhere in these pages? Perhaps Lily?

And Trollope sets this darling hobbledehoy against the "mere" Appolonian Crosbie. And here's a clear difference from Austen (and perhaps a link to Eliot): the narrative steps into a marriage engagement (Lily and Crosbie) early on, but one that's set up to be, well, broken or suspended? Perhaps the Crosbie/Eames comparison also reflects what Mary mentioned about the tension between constancy and change. The comparison of these men also has class implications, like Johnny Eames's two love interests: Lily (the socially superior love he cannot declare) and Amelia Roper, the landlady's daughter (the love he declares rather precipitously, under the influence). Interesting too that these various characters are linked to either the countryside estate or the modern city.

Related to this classing of marriage plot options, one of the most humorous and telling elements of this installment for me was the use of initials--"About L.D." for chapter five and for Lily Dale did make me think of the abbreviations for pounds and pence which Trollope then makes explict in the words of Johnny on "L.S.D." Trollope isn't shy about disclosing the material interests of marriage plotting--money and social status (subject to change). And this reminds me of Maura's comment about Mrs Dale and widows who need to concern themselves with fiscal matters. Clearly Lily's engagement to the "mere clerk" pleases her relatives, especially her mother, even if we have a sense of complicated feelings from Bell on this match. Some of my all-time favorite Trollope heroines are widows (Mrs Greenow in Can You Forgive Her? and Mrs. Hurtle, the fiesty American widow in The Way We Live Now, and Madame Max Goesler) in part because they also exercise more power and knowledge than their younger pre-marital heroine counterparts. These widows are also outsiders in some sense or other (class, nation, race) to traditional elite Englishness. So I'm also hoping Mrs Dale proves THE widow of this series and that her eating alone or neglecting her peas leads to interesting developments.

Looking forward to more: #3 for next week (chaps 7-9).

Yours in installments,
Serial Susan

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I must say, I was a bit disappointed by the early marriage proposal. Perhaps because I am used to reading marriage plot novels and Trollope deliberately plays with this form, but I felt let down when Lily's engagement was announced so early in the story (and only described retrospectively). Of course, this timing of events gives more sympathy to Johnny Eames, for we are able to see all of his feelings as they evolve.

I do like that Trollope reminds us that both Eames and Crosbie are clerks because this similarity only reinforces their differences while also emphasizing the importance of style. As Trollope shows, being a hobbledehoy or an Apollo may be a result of circumstances, but it seems to be expressed almost entirely as style.

Unknown said...

I don't think I share Mary's disappointment, exactly, but I was surprised at how quickly a marriage proposal appeared. (I'm assuming that there's going to be some sort of complication that postpones or cancels the marriage -- if not, I'll be really interested in seeing how Trollope handles an early marriage.)

One of the things I like about Trollope is his view of marriage. He's not really what I'd call cynical -- in The Warden, Barchester Towers, and The Way We Live Now, there's at least one marriage that occurs between people who genuinely love and care for each other. But he's certainly a realist about the financial and social constraints that organize the marriage market, as are his characters. Everyone seems pretty well aware of the material stakes.

And Johnny Eames seems to pose a challenge for Trollope: namely, how do you make a hero out of pretty unpromising ("hobbledehoy") material? We might be able to sympathize with him, but when we see him tie the noose around his neck with Amelia, it seems like it'll be tricky to make him seem heroic (or even a fraction of a hero). Seems interesting as a problem of characterization and technique, though I can see him becoming insufferable if Trollope doesn't handle him deftly. (Not that I don't trust his track record ...)

Julia said...

I'm catching up with all of you, so I'm going to post on the first two installments here!

To begin with the opening, I was so interested in the way that Trollope's narrator positions himself as a kind of tour guide. The meandering way that he explains the social framework in which the characters are operating, as well as the physical environment of Allington, created for me a sense of organic storytelling. This is a narrative style made for the narrator's digressions! It also gives a sense of leisure to the reading, and I can't help but wonder if the early proposal that everyone has been commenting on helps in its own way to preserve that leisure. If there's to be suspense as to the marriage plot, it seems that we as readers have to create it by assuming that some obstacle will arise, etc.

I was lucky enough to find a copy of the novel with John Everett Millais's original illustrations, and they are so fascinating. The frontispiece depicts Mrs. Dale seated on the ground in a contemplative pose with the caption "Please Ma'am, can we have the Peas to shell?" The second is an image of Johnny Eames (facing the viewer) and Amelia Roper (standing with her back to the viewer), with the caption "And you love me! said she." I find these so fascinating because they focus our attention on characters that seem to be in the shadow of the main action. In chapters in which so much of the text's emphasis is placed on Lily Dale, these illustrations suggest interesting comparisons between the various constructions of womanhood: the widow and the still-marriageable woman, the working-class woman and the socialite, the passive woman and the active woman. Perhaps this is a similar kind of fragmentation as we see with Trollope's "heros" and their discrepant modes of masculinity?