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Durham E-Theses Trollope in perspective Hamilton, N. D. How to cite: Hamilton, N. D. (1980) Trollope in perspective, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/8062/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk TROLLOPE IN PERSPECTIVE N.D. Hamilton The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. TroUope in Perspective N, D, Hamilton ABSTRACT The Thesis opens with a brief summary of the ups and downs of TroUope's literary reputation. In the first chapter the extent of his range and his ability to create characters convincingly are examined. This is pursued further in Chapter Two with an analysis of some of the characters as moral beings and some consideration of the writer's claim to intimacy with his readers. In Chapters Three, Four and Five, I have looked at a representative selection of the novels in chronological sequence in order to show the development of his art and his ideas together with a steady growth towards ironic detachment. The relationship of individual characters to some of the main institutions of Victorian England is investigated in Chapter Six, while the wider background of the nineteenth century and the ways in which we view it today are the subject of Chapter Seven, In Chapter Eight TroUope's own perceptive view of man is discussed. In the last chapter I have sought to assess TroUope's artistic contribution in the context of a discussion of some current ideas about the value of literature. (i) CONTENTS Page no. Preface (ii) Introduction Viewpoints 1 Chapter One Naturalism 12 Chapter Two Character, Author and Reader 46 Chapter Three Ireland and Bar set shire 78 Chapter Four Public and Private Life 108 Chapter Five Certain Assumptions Questioned 136 Chapter Six Some Institutions and Individuals 173 Chapter Seven Ways of Looking at the Nineteenth Century 198 Chapter Eight The Lessons of Experience 221 Chapter Nine Perception and Perspective 236 Bibliography 254 (ii) PREFACE No one becomes a Trollopian overnight and my own interest in TroUope grew out of a sixth-form study of Barchester Towers for 'A' level. This interest was developed during the time I was at Durham and after graduating I decided to pursue research as a part-time student. Although the reading and study has bean spread over several years, the initial writing was compressed into the sximmer holidays of 19V5 and 1976, since when several new books have appeared, confirming the revival of academic interest in TroUope, I would like to record my thanks to the following, without whose help this thesis would not have reached its present form: Mr, B, Stokes, who helped me to appreciate much of the comic irony in the early writing; Dr, A, Morrison, who encouraged me to begin; Dr, J.W. Blench, who as my supervisor has monitored the progress of the writing and given particular help and encouragement in the later stages; Mr, N, Lee, for help in obtaining books and some help with the notes; Mrs, M, Dale for her painstaking typing of the script, I would also like to thank relations and friends without whose tolerance and encouragement part-time study would have been impossible : in particular, my, parents and Mr, and Mrs, R,B, Smyth. Most of all, I want to thank Debbie for her unfailing interest and support. The footnotes will be found at the end of each chapter and bibliographical details of texts and critical works referred to or used in the thesis are given in the Bibliography on page .254.. Claverham, Bristol Nigel Hamilton 1980 INTRODUCTION Viewpoints 'It is very hard to come at the actual belief of any man, ' 1 TroUope wrote in 1866 . The same caution can usefully be exercised by anyone attempting an appraisal of the work of Anthony Trollope himself, for he has received little enough serious consideration in spite of his enduring popularity. There has been a revival of critical interest over the last few years, but his novels have not commanded the attention and respect that has been accorded to the works of other great Victorian writers. Much existing criticism has tended to confirm the view that for all his popularity Trollope is not to be taken seriously. The immense quantity of his output - he wrote forty-seven novels as well as a number of other full- length books - and the prosaic manner in which he approached his art have tended to make people think that he was incapable of deep thought or artistic creativity. But whatever criteria one adopts in considering Trollope's work, patience and a degree of humility are essential before one can hope to perceive the full extent of his achievement. It will be as well to begin by considering some of the reasons for the adverse nature of much of the criticism written about Trollope, One reason seems to arise from the expectation that all really important novelists of the nineteenth century were vitally and visibly concerned with tackling the hypocrisies and in particular the social injustices of their age. Dickens still occupies a central position because he shows up in such a clear light those abuses and ,)'' inequalities which others subsequently sought to put right, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy have attained critical acceptance because they too challenged the consciences of their readers, making them question many of their basic assumptions about the ordering of society. It has been generally held that Trollope had no such message for his fellow-men and ever since Frederick Harrison likened his art to that of photography^, he has had a reputation as a recorder of middle-class, mid-Victorian society, capable of describing the ordinary lives of ordinary Englishmen and making a readable, if somewhat voluminous, story out of very little in the way of plot-mate rial. He has generally been considered along with Scott, Disraeli and Thackeray and his reputation has nnt always gained from the comparison. This general censure of Trollope as being out of touch with the major issues of his age still has currency today: Raymond Chapman expresses this view of Trollope's superficiality in describing his work as 'a guide-book to the age'^, and William Myers, writing in 1971, says that 'the treatment of major social questions in Trollope's novels, though impressive at a documentary level, is finally uninteresting The skeletal thinness of his achieve• ment,., emphasises his failure to experience social fact'4. If Trollope has failed to attract att^ention alongside those novelists who pricked the consciences of their readers about the social wrongs of the age, so too has he fallen short of the stature of another group of novelists, centred around Jane Austen and the BrontS sisters. These have been excused the narrowness of their backgrounds and the virtual exclusion of the wider social problems on the grounds that their outlooks were restricted by their domestic situations. Yet Trollope has been adversely criticised for the limitations of his range in the novels set in Barsetshire, Not even that imaginary county is as isolated as Highbury, for example, and although the outside world of politics, journalism and railways obtrudes more into the Barsetshire scene than it does into Emma or Wuthering Heights, for example, it is still true that in the early part of his writing career Trollope felt more at home writing about a secluded country society than in portraying the much more confused existence of man in town society. It was a natural choice that he should begin with the smaller more intimate circles of country society and build steadily towards the more open community of mankind at large as his confidence in his artistic ability grew. Had he attempted from the beginning to portray the heart of changing thought and ideas about society that existed in London, Trollope would undoubtedly have been overwhelmed by the mass of humanity and the variety of ideas with which he was confronted. It is hardly surprising that his first real literary efforts came to fruition in the quieter existence that his posting to Ireland brought him in 1841, 5 'This was the first good fortune of my life, ' he later wrote and he based his first novel on the small though diverse society of County Leitrim. Many of his later novels are set against a background as restricted as that of The Macdermots of Ballycloran, though they do encompass an increasingly wide range of ideas and contemporary thought if one considers his entire opus chronologically. Throughout his writing career, however, he concerned himself primarily with the way individuals think, act, react and interact, and it is hardly surprising that for some of the time he should choose, like Jane Austen before him, a small piece of ivory on which to carve his intricate studies.