Dear Serial Readers,
I found this installment far more satisfying, with three varied chapters, and the courtship / marriage plots moving along with twists that prompt intriguing speculations. The questioning of cousin matches is interesting here, since these were fairly frequent in novels earlier in the century. The appeal of cousins marrying as a way to keep property within the family is evident, but Dr. Crofts (who of course has his own personal reason for advancing this view about Lily and Bernard, in contrast to the Squire) tells Mrs. Dale, "I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry." That he's a medical man, and that it is the time when Darwin's theory of natural selection (happy two hundredth, CD!) populated periodical pages, gives this comment some additional heft for me.
And about Lily's love letters--her rereading Crosbie's words, kissing the paper, her obsessive visits to the the post office (Trollope's inside joke, no doubt!) and those comical exchanges with the post-mistress Mrs Crump, and her own letter writing--all this points out, again, how narrow her circumstances are, how this relationship *is* her life. Trollope continues this contrast between the lives of Crosbie and Lily, whose letter "had no incident to relate" to him, or to us for that matter, since it's excluded from the text.
I have more to say, but I also want to encourage SHORT posts, especially for those of you reading this log regularly, but think you have nothing much to relate. Short is good, even about long Victorian serials!
Next week, chapters 22-24.
Serially shorter,
Susan
2 comments:
I was happy to learn about the 20 issues standard. Part of me is making up fantastical plot twists: Squire marries Bell, has son, disowns Bernard! But, more sensibly, the statement that Isabella Dale "was quite certain" she "was not in love with Dr. Crofts" strongly suggests a future wedding between the two, more strongly than the fact that the Squire has always been fond of Bell.
It was good to finally learn a bit about Dr. Crofts, although he still seems a bit distant--almost as distant as the women characters! I did enjoy the work/money ratio between older doctors who get all the money and younger doctors who do all the work. If only it were so at my work place. I also enjoyed the chapter title of "John Eames encounters two adventures and displays great courage in both" and it was fun for the chapter to live up to its title. I'm eager to see "Lord De Guest at Home" in the next section!
In this latest installment, I think I was most interested in the description of Lily's response to Crosbie's love letter. Once again, fear is linked closely to letter writing, but how different it is! Here, Lily's fear is not about how to properly manipulate others through the written word (what to reveal and what to conceal), but rather that "the postman might be in the village before her letter was finished" (p. 201). This, we learn, is "a sweet, good, honest love-letter," as opposed to Crosbie's, which is in part "preparing...a mode of escape in those allusions to his own worldliness" (p. 179).
Lily's response to Crosbie's letter was also fascinating in that she reads selectively--believing all of the most favorable parts and "excusing" the less favorable comments about worldliness (p. 200). I'm wondering if this will be a model for the way Amelia Roper reads Eames's letter. At this point, he wonders how she will respond, but it's still unknown.
Like others, I'm interested in the marriage plot twists that the past two installments seem to promise. Crosbie is looking worse and worse as things progress, and Eames seems to be gaining ground (although the threat of Amelia Roper looms large!).
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