Dear Serial Readers,
I was amused to open up my browser to the homepage of the Independent where I found this headline: "The Return of Scarlet Fever." I'm assuming that's roughly the equivalent of the scarlatina Lily falls ill with--yet another in the series of falls suffered by Lily and her family.
Mrs Dale's and her daughters' decision to vacate the "Small House" (somewhat rash and precipitous, as the narrator encourages us to believe, yet also believeable) does seem to me more of the unraveling of marriage plots the novel seems committed to carrying out in its own way. That is, if anyone entertained thoughts that the squire might in his elder years marry his deceased brother's widow (the deceased wife's sister was a popular second marriage option for Victorian widowers), this segment puts a firm end to such speculations. And the same with the cousin marriage plot between Bell and Bernard. Still, I was intrigued by the pride of the Dale women, that they should not be beholden to their benefactor brother-in-law or uncle and his wishes that they marry accordingly. Here is a blatant refusal of the old marriage of convenience, and a rousing endorsement of marriage for love, but with the understanding that such marriages may not come to pass at all (w/ Lily, because Crosbie foolishly placed money over love).
Trollope hints that this desire for independence in matters of marriage can be quite literally costly to women--we know that "lodgings" (that odious, vulgar word) or whatever housing the Dale women are able to acquire will be meager and beneath the modest paradise of their "Small House" with its treasured garden (and gardener Hopkins from the Big House). Is this self-imposed expulsion of sorts from a Barsetshire Eden? Or the unmaking of such illusory prelapsarian imagery in Trollope's ordinary kind of realism?
Nevertheless, this segment makes clear an emptied out Small House at Allington, or at least, vacated by the Dale women whose residence there, and perhaps a dismantling of some kinds of marriage plots.
Thoughts out there, anyone? And even if you're not reading along now, or if you've already finished (as I know at least one Serial Reader has confessed), let me know your vote for our next serial novel.
Sparingly serial, this time,
Susan
I was amused to open up my browser to the homepage of the Independent where I found this headline: "The Return of Scarlet Fever." I'm assuming that's roughly the equivalent of the scarlatina Lily falls ill with--yet another in the series of falls suffered by Lily and her family.
Mrs Dale's and her daughters' decision to vacate the "Small House" (somewhat rash and precipitous, as the narrator encourages us to believe, yet also believeable) does seem to me more of the unraveling of marriage plots the novel seems committed to carrying out in its own way. That is, if anyone entertained thoughts that the squire might in his elder years marry his deceased brother's widow (the deceased wife's sister was a popular second marriage option for Victorian widowers), this segment puts a firm end to such speculations. And the same with the cousin marriage plot between Bell and Bernard. Still, I was intrigued by the pride of the Dale women, that they should not be beholden to their benefactor brother-in-law or uncle and his wishes that they marry accordingly. Here is a blatant refusal of the old marriage of convenience, and a rousing endorsement of marriage for love, but with the understanding that such marriages may not come to pass at all (w/ Lily, because Crosbie foolishly placed money over love).
Trollope hints that this desire for independence in matters of marriage can be quite literally costly to women--we know that "lodgings" (that odious, vulgar word) or whatever housing the Dale women are able to acquire will be meager and beneath the modest paradise of their "Small House" with its treasured garden (and gardener Hopkins from the Big House). Is this self-imposed expulsion of sorts from a Barsetshire Eden? Or the unmaking of such illusory prelapsarian imagery in Trollope's ordinary kind of realism?
Nevertheless, this segment makes clear an emptied out Small House at Allington, or at least, vacated by the Dale women whose residence there, and perhaps a dismantling of some kinds of marriage plots.
Thoughts out there, anyone? And even if you're not reading along now, or if you've already finished (as I know at least one Serial Reader has confessed), let me know your vote for our next serial novel.
Sparingly serial, this time,
Susan
4 comments:
I think that the Dales sometimes sound vaguely hysterical in their hyper-rationality. There is so much pride in these people! It becomes finally an obstacle to the love they all yearn for. Trollope's compassion for all these trapped women strangely gets them to a place where their interior lives provide another whole set of traps. I keep thinking oh be reasonable but not so reasonable!
I like the idea of Romola, which I’ve never read. I also like the idea of Chuzzlewit because I’m reading it for the Dickens Fellowship next year anyway. For that same reason, I think I’d rather postpone Little Dorrit, maybe until 2010. Beyond that, any Trollope or other unmentioned novelist. I don’t like the idea of doing a book that’s just a series of stories, however, and I don’t think I would participate in that.
I found the meeting between the Squire and Mrs. Dale very interesting. I look at it as a further development of those earlier paragraphs (from some time ago) where each softened a bit towards the other, considering perhaps that s/he had misjudged or been unfair. Added to that was the development of the Squire’s affections for Lily in her distress. We all assumed a rapprochement. The fact that we got the opposite I think is a stroke of realism on Trollope’s part. He shows us that even a softening of heart or a broadening of perspective does not instantly change everything. We still are who we are and we can’t get out from under the “rules” of a relationship and the injuries it entailed over decades over night. Each still has the prejudices, expectations, and hurt feelings s/he had before. They don’t know what we know, that they really need to step back and appreciate the small changes that have occurred and move from there to make large changes.
Back to Crosbie and A’drina—it is hard for me to imagine that they are really going to get married, probably in the next installment. I think at this point Crosbie looks a lot like Johnny Eames in his early entanglement with AR. He foolishly said he loved her, he really can’t stand her, and feels like he has been trapped by her. Luckily for Eames, I assume that he isn’t really trapped
A newcomer here. I wish I had known about you all earlier; I've been wanting to read Small House forever! I'm excited to be a part of the next endeavor, though.
Romola's not a favorite of mine, but reading it in a group might make it more palatable. I'd be even happier with the other titles you've been mentioning. Here's one more proposal for the group: might Gaskell's Wives & Daughters be fun?
I had scarlatina/scarlet fever as a child! Even then I knew it made me more likely to become a romantic heroine (but being pre-puberty and having penicillin made that disease much less dangerous).
I realize I'm happy to be back in the country, perhaps because the more attractive women characters are there.
I agree with TR that I would like Mrs. Dale to be a little more sensible. In fact, I almost wonder whether Trollope is trying to make her a little less purely right in relationship to Squire Dale's emotional limitations.
Yes, when I read that Squire Dale is 70, I pretty much gave up on him marrying Mrs. Dale, but I still have hopes for rapprochement! I have a hard time believing that the Small House will really become empty, but if it does I look forward to finding what happens to it.
After writing about marriage as a political and social exchange, I wanted to note the quotation from an earlier chapter, 35, when Crosbie thinks that the DeCourcys had "taken possession of him and swallowed him whole." And I was struck in chapter 36 by "how mean is the policemen in his own home, and how few thought much of Sir Raffle Buffle as he sat asleep after dinner in his old slippers!" These quotations in part take domestic power away from men.
I am interested to see more what sort of imagery is used in relation to Bell and Dr. Crofts--I do like the pleasure she takes in thinking about him in her room, but it doesn't seem all that different from the pleasure that A'drina was lacking that made her want a husband. I don't mean to criticize Bell or to suggest (much) sympathy for A'drina--just to note that male affection gives a great deal of validation, its own sort of capital.
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