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