Family Friendships with Trollope’s Women
Finally the Bechdel Test! The Bechdel test is the invention of cartoonist Allison Bechdel, who in the 1980s noticed how frequently Hollywood films diminish
Tag: worldbuilding
Bad Women of Trollope
Trollope’s Bad Women As I’ve shown, Trollope clearly had no preference for the patriarchy. He presented the undoubted reality that men had more power, more
Putting into Words What Cannot Be Put into Words
The late and beloved Ursula Le Guin once wrote that the writer’s job is to “put into words what cannot be put into words.” Writers
Research-reading Trollope: The Garden-Variety Bad Husband
The Garden-Variety Bad Husband Now, after the operatically self-destructive Kennedy and Trevelyan, we come to a more conventionally bad husband, Ferdinand Lopez. He was an
Research-reading Trollope: The Poison of Power
Louis Trevelyan, Domestic Tyrant Trollope understood that men can be the victims of masculine power and violence too. There’s Phineas Finn, for example, who is
Another Trollope Trope: Bad Husbands Self-Destruct
Bad Husbands and the Paradox of Power There are two 21st century terms which apply to Trollope’s 19th-century bad husbands: Toxic masculinity and death by
Trollope, the Postal Pillar-box, and the Fourth Wall
But first, a digression into postal history! (British history and literature are so charmingly replete with such odd anecdotes. Trollope most of all would approve,
Trollope: Bad Marriages and Toxic Masculinity
Trollope’s Bad Marriages Anthony Trollope was an advocate of marriage, having famously said that a woman’s “best right” was to a husband, not the vote.
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-19th Century Britain, when ladies wore bustles and
Research-reading Sherlock: Holmes and Money Crimes
In the last post, I discussed currency in the Victorian period, and how the Holmes stories give precise information on the price of everything from
Research-reading Sherlock: Holmes and the Agony Columns
Research-reading Sherlock: Newspapers part 2 by Alicia Rasley Sherlock Holmes and the Agony Column Last post, I discussed how Holmes and Watson used the many
Research-reading Sherlock: Holmes and the London Newspapers
Sherlock Holmes and the London Newspapers by Alicia Rasley The late-19th Century was a time of intense technological innovation, and as I’ve described, Holmes and
More Research-Reading Sherlock: Holmes the Early Adopter by Alicia Rasley
Recording Pictures and Sound Two other technological innovations Holmes encountered were photography and audio recording. By Holmes’s time, cameras and film had evolved enough that