Dear Serial Readers,
I was intrigued to find in this episode an implied comparison between Johnny Eames (who constructs his "castles in the air") and the serial fiction writer. The narrator observes, "He would carry on the same story in his imagination from month to month...." (chap 52). Yes, it does seem to me that Trollope has a special fondness for his hobbledehoyish hero, but it was this passage that tempted me to indulge in that promiscuous identification between character and author! The tedium of Johnny's clerk-work, where even the promotion to private secretary promises no relief from day to day, contrasts with his creative energies "from month to month," although of course Trollope suggests a kind of repetition here as well. But this "same story" could also remind us of the series (rather than the serial), or the sequels to each story or novel. As Trollope approaches the conclusion of this novel in the Barsetshire series, readers can contemplate the promise of another "same story"--like the suspense about the next season in a favorite television series (will there be another season of "Mad Men"?).
Along with this mild allusion to the serial and the series forms, I was intrigued by the references to packing up the Small House and, in this installment, even the possibility of unpacking and restoring all those items back in their places. In a way, this packing up of the house and the removal of the Dale women correlates with the novel's impending closure--and the possibility of a suspended ending through the series where readers can be restored to the "Small House" and its environment of characters in the next novel. Again, these serial novels often ran in twenty parts (like Dickens' part issue numbers), so readers would've anticipated the end at this point, the eighteenth installment. Trollope wrote The Last Chronicle of Barset--the concluding serial of the series--in 1866-67 (two full years after Small House) and it was published in 32 separate weekly parts from December 1866 to July 1867. By that time he'd already launched the Palliser series with Can You Forgive Her?
As we near the end of this serial, I'm still on the fence about the next. I wish someone would post a very strong interest in one of these three: Romola, Little Dorrit, Wives and Daughters. Does one have a special appeal for summer reading? Rather than an installment a week, I had thought we'd do two at a time.
Still serially stalling,
Susan
2 comments:
I'm excited for Romola!
I enjoyed your comment, Susan, about Johnny as serial novelist--and the ending of this section, of Chapter 54, where Johnny sees his story as over, but Lady Julia suggests it might be. It intrigues me that the next chapter (as true serial readers would *not* know) is "Not Very Fie Fie After All," thus explicitly demonstrating that a story can go on even when it seems it's been finished--as indeed did Lady Julia's story. I had written her off as a disagreeable hag (no sympathy for *that* spinster, in this early reader), and now I see her as wise and sensitive! Okay, wise and sensitive in small doses to people she has come to care for.
So, the change Johnny has started to like since Amelia became fond of Cradell, is occurring throughout the novel, and giving the sense that characters can grow and plots can shift.
I enjoy that Mrs. Dale and Lily seem to be deciding to stay almost as a lark, though also out of kindness.
You know, I still don't entirely see why Lily is so likable other than that we have been told so, and we see *other* people liking her. It's true, she's remarkable in contrast to Amelia, Mrs. Luxor, and the deCourcy sisters, but surely they were not the only young women she could be compared with. It's almost like the narrator is a bit like Lady Julia: able to see change and promise in those he has grown to like for some reason, and not in others.
I am still wondering what will lead Lily to change her mind, as I am sure she will come to.
I'm coming late to this post--once again--but I wanted to write briefly about my serial reading experience. I am really fascinated by a pattern in the novel of characters doing exactly what they shouldn't do, almost as if it were a compulsion. We see Lily doing this in the installment (rejecting Johnny Eames despite his devotion), just as Crosbie did it earlier with his decision to marry Alexandrina. We also saw it with Eames' relations with Amelia Roper and Mrs. Dale's decision to leave the Small House. I find this to be an interesting pattern because it doesn't exactly set up suspense (as a reader I feel that I already know what will happen) but it does create a certain tension. It's almost as if the reader experiences (over and over again) a hope that maybe a character won't make the wrong decision, only to be disappointed.
I'm still trying to decide how to interpret this pattern. Does it suggest that "life" (the novel/then the series) continues despite readers' disappointments? And is this an uplifting or depressing message? I'm hoping the final chapters of the novel might help to shed light on the pattern that has developed!
I'm excited for Romola, too. Since it's summertime, I may try going to the library to read Eliot's novel in the Cornhill itself!
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