Dear Serial Readers,
As you may have guessed by my silence last week, I decided to read the last two installments of Small House before posting a final comment on the novel. As Julia noted, the chief characters seem almost perverse in that they do what they shouldn't do, yet we are not surprised. Lily declines Johnny's second proposal and he accepts this answer (as a "lackadaisical lover"), despite all the head-shaking of others.
I'm intrigued by a shift in the fate of the marriage plot that the end of this novel marks. There is one marriage (and another promised--Cradell and Amelia R), true, for this "happy" ending, but these are relatively minor characters and not the hero and heroine. At least, Bell seems a fainter narrative interest than her sister Lily. The Crosbies go through a total separation, he "again a happy man" (title of chap 56) because she has left him and gone indefinitely with her mother to Baden-Baden. For both Alexandrina and her mother, marriage "had by no means been the thing she had expected." Instead, we have sighs of relief to be out of these marriages.
Lily's refusal to marry Johnny, her steadfast faithfulness to the unfaithful Crosbie, seems "perverse" (a word used by the earl to describe her), a stubborness that seems too principled for her own good. But maybe not. The narrator does push the question of whether Lily as "an old maid"--if her "life be blank, lonely, and loveless to the end"--could still be happy, as she insists she is. With this question hanging at the novel's closure (but not the serial's end), I was intrigued that she and Mrs Dale go through the business of restoring their places at the Small House rather than moving on. While this might seem a regression rather than progress, I think the plans for renovation--the new paint, for instance--suggest that these Dale women at the Small House will be different, improved, brighter, richer. Lily's uncle has given her the small fortune of three thousand pounds, the exact amount he's given Bell on the occasion of her marriage. So Lily doesn't require marriage for material security. And at her sister's marriage "no one...was so gay as Lily." Is this noble suffering, or something else, a new kind of heroine on the horizon, one who can enjoy an independence quite apart from marriage?
For his part, Johnny's removal from Mrs. Roper's lodgings to the Great Western Hotel establishes him too as a new kind of hero, a post-hobbledeyhoy hero, as the narrator leaves him "without any matrimonial prospects" (end of the penultimate chapter).
To find out about the fate of this unmarried new heroine and hero, I have already started reading The Last Chronicle of Barset where Lily appears in the second installment. But in these digital pages, I bid farewell to Trollope and his odd heroes and heroines for now, since next week we'll start on Romola--the first five chapters. If you are receiving this post automatically, let me know if you are not planning to read Romola next, so I can remove your email address from the list. Or, let me know if you'd like an email notice whenever a new post appears on the installments.
Serial salutations,
Susan
POOR MISS FINCH by Wilkie Collins
3 comments:
I think that Lily actually gave away her ability to be a wife when she threw it all at Crosby only to have it dismissed in such a careless way. I think she doesn't trust love itself anymore. And somehow Trollope admires this. Or at least he understands the perversity of the heart, which now cannot imagine collecting itself again around the idea of romantic love. When I was reading it I thought it was merely perverse of her but then Trollope seemed to really think it was sensible in some way so now I'm not so sure. Maybe she is the character who's heart truly has been definitively 'broken.'
On my digital way to this blog, I found this: http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/never.bretharte.html
a "burlesque" of Small House principally parodying Lily's fidelity to Crosbie. It's interesting to me that she is not portrayed entirely as broken-hearted but as still committed to her one love.
I was quite surprised by Lily's refusal to marry Eames even to the end--surprised by the non-conclusion of the last chapter. But yes, I think Trollope admires Lily's constancy and likes to think she can be happy in this new, financially stable life with her mother.
I was struck, though, by Lily's statement about Crosbie that "I think that he was right," just after discovering that the only way he could find even a partial level of the happiness he had before his marriage is after Alexandrina moves out and leaves him to live on less money and with less social success than he had before. Lily also says she looks forward to hearing about "all his success," although we know he'll have little. So, Lily is explicitly wrong about Crosbie, and the reader knows it. So, aren't we to judge her a bit, even as we admire her (if we do) constancy? After all, the novel sets up readers to admire Johnny's constancy, I think. They are parallel and both passionate.
Well, I may try to find the Last Chronicles of Barset on line, though I believe it will not be as playful as the Small House.
Onward to Romola!
Regarding installment 18, Susan marked the packing and unpacking of the small house as emblematic of what was happening in the story line at that time. I would go further and say that the unpacking and packing is emblematic of the whole book. As readers, we gradually unpacked this book as a Lily marriage-plot, surrounded by the other marriage plots echoing the central one. As the book ends, and we find our presumptions disappointed, we are packing the romantic hopes of our characters back up, unused.
I, for one, don't know what Trollope intends for Lily--is she to become a "new woman" a proto-feminist? That hardly seems likely. A spinster? That seems more socially sensible but narratively unsatisfying.
It is interesting to look at the book from the view point of our five suitors. Only one got what he came for-Crofts, and he did so with no particular trouble, as the Bernard entanglement was only a challenge in the eyes of B. himself and the squire. One suitor gets something other than what he looks for-I speak of Caudle and Amelia Roper, who, whatever her faults, was a superior catch to Mrs. Lupex. Bernard and Johnny are wholly disappointed, of course. Crosbie is twice victorious in his seductions and ultimately the most disappointed of all, now content (as others have said) to be happy with less than what he came in with.
So, there is very little growth or change among the young people that is positive, either in making them happier or beginning their road to maturity.
The delightful thing that happened in the meantime is the growth of the elder set. Mrs. Dale and the squire finally make their peace, find an understanding, develop compassion and affection for one another. Add to this their new friendship with the Earl and Lady Julia. And those two worthies have been enlivened by their affection for the young people. The announcement that Bernard's parents will attend the wedding suggests a further development of a web of mature friendships and a breakdown of of old grudges. Perhaps a cook-out for six, chicken, brats, corn-on-the-cob, when the weather is fine.
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