The Small House at Allington--chaps 1-3 (Sept 1862)

Dear Serial Readers,

One of Trollope's stylistic features is his narrator's addresses to readers--there are many of them even in this first installment. Trollope uses "I" and "we" as if to suggest that the narrator and reader are partners in this telling/hearing of story. The second sentence of the novel begins "Our story...." Much of the first two chapters is exposition, backstory: who are the Dales and why a "small" house at Allington? Trollope delights as much here with establishing his characters ("our Christopher Dale") as places, particularly that titular "Small House."

By the third chapter, I have the decided impression that one character stands out among the rest--Lily Dale, with her "spice of obstinacy" as a hallmark of Trollope's most endearing heroines such as Glencora Palliser or Madame Max. And the narrator is determined that the reader should know at this early stage that "my story will be nothing to him [generic male reader] if he doe not love Lily Dale." What about women readers who love Lily? Aren't they more legion than the presumed men readers? Besides her spicy obstinacy, we learn that she is "queen of the croquet ground" and likes to use slangy vulgar language, much to her more restrained or refined sister Bell's dismay.

Does this portrait of the two Dale sisters living as poorer relations, with their mother, on the Dale estate remind anyone of a Jane Austen novel? But updated--how? Clearly two marriage plots are underway--Bell and Dr Crofts, and then Lily and, well, two possibilities--Johnny Eames and Mr. Crosbie. I couldn't help but think that Lily's complaining about this "mere clerk" may be a telltale sign that she will come to revise this estimation. That there will be more than one suitor also seems evident by the narrator's insistence on the heroes as cut into fragments, with Crosbie as one such "fraction of a hero." Or does this kind of division suggest a different kind of hero, one who is more ordinary than loomingly extraordinary?

Next time, chapters 4-6. After this week, I plan to read on Sundays and post Sundays or Mondays. Looking forward to your comments on this inaugural episode! If you just get your copy, say, next week, you can easily catch up.

Question: If this were a WOVEL (see sidebar item and NPR story), what direction would you like to see the courtship plots take?

Yours in Trollopiana,
Serial Susan