Dear Serial Readers,
A quiet week, this past, with no activity from anyone else on this blog. I found this latest installment also very satisfyingly balanced unlike many earlier ones. The first chapter on Planty Pal's transgressive desires for a married woman is the upper-class version of Mrs Lupex. Planty's uncle, the Duke, however, dispenses with serious advice that his newphew should steer clear of an unwise affiliation if he does want to see his way to an ample inheritance. Uncles with monetary and marital advice seem abundant in Victorian novels, clearly in this one.
The last two chapters of this installment are mirrors: Valentine's Day at Allington and Valentine's Day in London. First Lily imagines Crosbie's marriage that morning, initially playing the part of "the forlorn damsel in a play-book" and then becoming that damsel and dissolving in "convulsive sobs." Then we have the dreaded wedding event itself in London where everything and everyone is cold, cold, cold. Clearly there's not going to be a passionate union here. The honeymoon travel to Folkestone is quite depressing, with Alexandrina more concerned with the state of her bonnet than kisses from her new husband, while Crosbie constantly thinks of Lily and how differently she'd behave had she been his partner on this honeymoon. I immediately thought of Middlemarch, and Dorothea's honeymoon in Rome with Casaubon, but this one lacks the grand historical scenery and the metaphoric meanings of the Vatican Museum with its sculptures. This is Trollope's thorough-going realism, sordid, frigid, and completely dreary.
The only other scene I wanted to remark on has to do with Lily and Bell reading books. Lily tries in her preoccupied state on the morning of Crosbie's wedding to read a novel, but finds it totally unengaging, even calls it "the greatest rubbish I ever attempted to read." And adds that she'd rather read Pilgrim's Progress about which she says: "I never can understand it, but I rather think that makes it nicer." What does this reading preference suggest about Lily's occasionally perverse character? Bell, predictably, says, "I hate books I can't understand."
Next week, chaps 46-48. We have 5 installments left. What's next? Romola? Another Trollope? Please vote!
Serially silent?
Susan
2 comments:
A brief reference to chapters 40-42: I also was interested in the effort it takes to keep up appearances, demonstrated by the footman changing clothes, but that the Courcys didn't mind the housekeeper's assistant acting as maid. I was particularly struck by the way Lady de Courcy is now almost contemptuous of Crosbie, whereas before he was engaged to Al'a "the ascendency had been with him." It seems that when he had the social status in the relationship, they both had more fun.
I see the parallelisms with the Lupex marriage, and with the Dumbello flirtations--both Lady Dumbello and her mother-in-law--yet I also see them as an intrusion on my concern for the other characters. Plantagenet gets in my way, a bit, just as his uncle's somewhat silly name seems unlike other, even symbolic, names in this novel. Yet, I chuckle foolishly every time I see Duke Omnium of Gatherum written. Is the Duke omnium all by himself?
In thinking about the passage after reading it, I noticed that I could not repeat anything of the wedding itself, it was so hedged in by examples of other parties, why the father wasn't there, and the trip out of London. Lily's experience of the moment of the wedding was so much more intense than either Crosbie's or Alexandrina's experience.
I also was intrigued by the discussion of books and Bell's preference that "a book be clear as running water, so that the whole meaning may be seen at once." I wondered: Does she mean from the moment the reader opens the book, or after she is done reading the entire text? I find this novel neither "clear as running water" nor "too beautiful to be understood," though I enjoy texts of both sorts, and I enjoy this as well. (And I think of Pilgrim's Progress as clear as water in a basin--clear, but boring.) I wonder if Lily's fondness for books she can't understand accompanies her passion and lack of concern for bonnets. I wouldn't want to say that Bell is *not* passionate, however. . . .
I'm happy with Romola or whatever others decide!
I found this to be a satisfying installment, too, and I was particularly interested in the role of the narrator. In chapter 43, the narrator is a strong force, first reminding readers of the Lady Dumbello/Plantagenet Palliser storyline (so insignificant that readers might have forgotten it?), and then filling in the necessary background information about Plantagenet during a scene in progress. What struck me as unusual is the way that Trollope gives a line of dialogue ("Well, Plantagenet--very busy, I suppose? p. 427) then allows the narrator to explain ("The duke was the only living being who called him Plantagenet to his face...") and then returns to the same line as if there had been no interruption ("Well, Plantagenet,' said the duke, on the present occation, 'very busy, I suppose?"). This happens a couple of times in this chapter. The effect is a running tension between the "real" time of the conversation and the narrator's more ample register that moves beyond temporal limitations. For me, these moments point out how much is left out of the sparse conversations between the aristocratic characters. So little is said, but so much is going on beneath the surface! Trollope captures this so effectively through these narratorial digressions. This allows him to have the sparse conversation and the full explanation for the presumably uninitiated readers' benefit.
I'd love to write more, but I'm afraid I have to call it a night. I'm definitely interested in continuing with another novel, and my top picks would be the sequel to Small House at Allington, Wives and Daughters, or Little Dorrit. All of these would be new to me.
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