Research-reading Anthony Trollope: Trollope’s Women

The Sexist or the Feminist? Anthony Trollope and His Women

By Alicia Rasley

I’m back in the mid-to-late-19^th Century Britain, when ladies wore bustles and men still fought duels and weighty matters were debated to a stalemate in Parliament. The greatest advantage of mentally parking in the mid-to-late 19^th Century is that most of the contentious issues have been long since settled, and all of the contenders are long dead.

No! The greatest thing about that time is that it was the golden era of novels in English, both in Great Britain and in the US. The novel had overtaken the poem and the play as the predominant literary form, and many of the most important authors wrote realistic novels that reflected (at least in their view) their times and fellow humans. While plotting could be clunky (Dickens never met a coincidence he couldn’t use to solve some character’s problem), characterization was deepening with more understanding of psychology and sociology.

Most of all, these novels were LONG. They were long enough to span decades and continents, with huge casts and complex conflicts. While Dickens was by far the most important novelist of the mid-century, Anthony Trollope was the more “modern”. His characters were recognizably individualized, often both self-aware and self-deceiving, and their relationships were correspondingly complicated. And Trollope himself was modern—almost post-modern, in fact—in his droll and sardonic use of meta-fiction. He frequently “broke through the fourth wall” (to use a television metaphor) to address the reader—author to audience, as here when he confesses an unwillingness to do the research necessary for a ceremonial scene:

This narrative is supposed to commence immediately after the installation of Dr. Proudie. I will not describe the ceremony, as I do not precisely understand its nature. I am ignorant whether a bishop be chaired like a member of Parliament, or carried in a gilt coach like a lord mayor, or sworn like a justice of peace, or introduced like a peer to the upper house, or led between two brethren like a knight of the garter; but I do know that everything was properly done, and that nothing fit or becoming to a young bishop was omitted on the occasion. (Barchester Towers)

He even commented negatively on his own characters:

I cannot say that with me John Bold was ever a favourite. I never thought him worthy of the wife he had won. (Barchester Towers)

Trollope’s true greatness was his character relationships.  His novels are replete with antagonistic and congenial relationships—rivals, lovers, friends, families. He enjoyed delving into how human systems worked, both big (Parliament, the Anglican Church) and small (tea parties, parsonages). His relationships were fascinating because his characters were interesting and interacted in understandable and yet intricate ways.

Trollope and the “Right to a Husband”

Anthony Trollope used to be accused of being a sexist or anti-feminist, especially based on his oft-proclaimed belief that women’s best life would be served with a husband and children. More recently, feminist literary critics have argued that Trollope was more of a feminist than most men (and women) of his generation. (This debate is summarized in a thesis by Denise Kohn, “The Feminist Trollope: Hero(in)es in The Warden and Barchester Towers.”)

So let’s look at that “a woman needs a husband more than a vote” statement of his:

 “That women should have their rights no man will deny. To my thinking neither increase of work nor increase of political influence are among them. The best right a woman has is the right to a husband, and that is the right to which I would recommend every young woman here [in Britain] and in the States to turn her best attention.” That is, women didn’t need the vote or jobs if they had a husband to protect them.

Obviously, this is a problematic view from our perspective, especially those of us who grew up hearing, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” But the truth is, marriage was one of the very few options women had in a time when they were legally barred from most occupations and starvation was a real possibility. (Trollope was a civil servant in Ireland during the time of the famine, and set one of his early books then—mass starvation was not just theoretical for him.) Even among the very poor, a couple had a better ability to scratch out a living than a single woman. And as countless Victorian novels (c.f. Jane Eyre) show, even the most educated and gently bred women were in danger of penury if they didn’t find a man, a home, and a place in society.

Even a generation later, American writer Edith Wharton described the trajectory of a woman who didn’t secure a husband—Lily Bart in House of Mirth fails to marry a financially secure man, and descends into social scandal, poverty, and drug addiction before committing suicide. (It’s really depressing how many Victorian-era heroines chose that ending.)

What Trollope left out of his advice to women is that they needed not just a husband but a “good husband.” And as many of his novels demonstrate, a “good husband” wasn’t just a socially acceptable one. In fact, he knew from personal experience the financial and emotional complexities of family and marriage.

Like Mother Like Son

Trollope was the son of an important woman writer (Frances Trollope), an abolitionist and social reformer as well as a novelist. She wrote 41 books after she turned 50, first raising 6 children (4 of whom eventually died of TB). Her husband must have seemed like a good catch. He was an educated man from a “squirearchy family” (the “landed gentry”), but he failed as a barrister and a farmer due in great part to his angry and reckless temperament. In his autobiography, Anthony Trollope recognized his mother as the mainstay of the family, but also evinced some resentment of her leaving the family to seek writing material and fortune in the United States. This ambivalence probably shaped his ability to create women with both virtues and faults, and independent values and desires.

Trollope himself had by most reports a successful marriage to Rose Heseltine, and called his wedding “that happy day as the commencement of my better life.” He credited her contribution as essential to his ability to write dozens of novels while maintaining a stable career as a civil servant.

As a Victorian gentleman, he lived in a paradoxical era where a woman reigned over the entire empire, but all other women were denied the right to vote and to divorce an abusive husband or to fully own property.  (Legal historian Linda McClain has a comprehensive exploration of Trollope’s connection to the politics of his time, and the effect on his novels.) This was a time when he could openly support women writers and women’s magazines, but the most important woman writer (“George Eliot”) had to take a male penname.

We should not judge Victorians by 21^st Century standards. Few men or women for that matter of his time were open to the notion of full human rights for women—or for non-white men of the landowning class. (John Stuart Mill was an exception—he even introduced a bill to replace the word “men” with “persons” in laws granting rights.)

It is true that Trollope didn’t go to Parliament and argue for The Married Women’s Property Act of 1870 or other liberal legislation. He was a writer, not a politician (though he did run for Parliament once, coming in last and later describing this campaign as “the worst fortnight of his life”). When he wanted to espouse a theme or cause, he wrote a novel (or 20). And within his own specialty, Trollope displayed a central tenet of feminism: He understood that women were people too—complicated, individual, and interesting.

Trollope’s Women

In fact, I’d argue he found his women characters more interesting than his men. And as a “social novelist”, he was fascinated with how humans interact with each other in both large spheres like politics and religion, and small circles like families and friendships. In this blog series, I want to discuss one particular type of relationship that Trollope excelled at—women’s friendships.

I’m going to use this series to explore Trollope’s women and their friendships, and what these relationships show about his viewpoint on women and their abilities, conflicts, and situations.

First, I will deal with that pesky issue of husbands—the good ones and especially the bad ones—and why despite his “husband right” comment, Trollope’s novels show that marriage is really one of the less reliable relationships available to women.

Then I’ll outline a few of Trollope’s women friendships, including the centrality of non-marital relationships in his novels.

I’ll explore the good and the bad, especially the really toxic relationship of Kate Vavosel and her cousin Alice.

And I’ll finish with one of the longest and most satisfying of women’s friendships (before Laverne and Shirley, anyway)—Lady Glencora Palliser and Madame Max.

BTW, if you’re not up to spending your entire summer immersed in Trollope (though that would be a worthy project!), the invaluable BBC has two wonderful Trollope video series: The Barchester Chronicles and The Pallisers. The Pallisers is available on Amazon Prime, but I could find Barchester only in DVD. BBC Radio One also has audio adaptations, though they aren’t always faithful to the novels.