(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

I love Tooth And Claw, but this nonetheless seems like a rather unfair take on Trollope to me...

For one thing: yes, Mark Robards is a fool. That’s not a matter for discussion, really, the narrator is quite clear about it, while also showing us why Mark behaves in this abysmally stupid way. Of course the particular circumstances are not ones that would arise today, but is it really incomprehensible that vanity, loneliness, and a desire to be in an in crowd you can’t quite afford to run with - and having those weaknesses exploited by someone cleverer and more ruthless than you - should get someone into serious trouble?

Comments

[gelliaclodiana]

The bit about only falling in love once? I suppose I'm amazed because the last Trollope I read was Can You Forgive Her? where both of the major female characters are in love with more than one man at some point in the story. I suppose Glencora isn't in love with teo men consecutively rather than simultaneously but Alice is absolutely in love with two men at the same time.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think she’s read the “Small House at Allington” and for some reason decided that Trollope thought that a) all women were like Lily Dale and that b) he thought that was a good thing.

[gelliaclodiana]

There are times when I too find Trollope's ingenues infuriating, but it seems like such a bizarre misreading -- they are infuriating in part because it is so clear that he can do better in his female characters!

[sartorias]

Trollope does pick up this theme again. For example, in THE DUKE'S CHILDREN. And one of the Phineas books brings it up again.

[selenak]

Haven't read "Framley Parsonage", but the idea that Trollope believed (good) women can only love once surely is refused by the existence of "The Warden" and "Barchester Towers" alone? And speaking of Barchester Towers, the Stanhope Sisters, Madeline and Charlotte, aren't either "good" or "bad", and delightfully ambigous and shady without being villains. While the most malicious female of the novel, Mrs. Proudie, is a self righteous hoot but one that gets satirized in the same way the male CoE characters do. So I really don't know where the idea that Trollope could only write delicate flowers comes from.

[tree_and_leaf]

It’s bizarre, isn’t it? I think she must be thinking of Lily Dale, who does strongly believe she can never love again, but she’s quite atypical, and also not viewed entirely positively by the narrator.

[coughingbear]

One of the things I like about Trollope is that he does follow through on characters having developed them (at least in many cases). It always feels to me that he would like to settle Lily down with Johnny but just knows that while some characters would be fine with that, Lily never would. Laura Kennedy is another one who has a horrible life but it rings true; I don't think Trollope wanted to live in a world where a woman could have a public career, but he does get, almost in spite of himself, what the terrible cost of that is for women.

[tree_and_leaf]

I love the Stanhope family! They’re such a wonderfully awful creation.

[selenak]

Same here, I adore them.

[gramarye1971]

...wow, that is a skewed read of Trollope indeed. Last Chronicle of Barset made it pretty clear to me that Trollope was making a snide cut at the romantic novel notion of the Forsaken Maiden Who Can Never Love Another, while making it also clear (if less overtly) that Johnny Eames didn't necessarily "deserve" to get her in the end and in fact Lily was better off without him.

In modern times, Mark Robards is definitely every guy who dumps his life savings into a rich friend's hot new venture capital concept and gets taken to the cleaners.

[tree_and_leaf]

every guy who dumps his life savings into a rich friend's hot new venture capital concept and gets taken to the cleaners

Ha! That’s dead on. He doesn’t understand the ramifications of what he’s agreed to, and is too embarrassed to ask anyone for advice. (You mean, I can’t get back my initial investment? It’s just gone?)

[legionseagle]

I've done one lot of "Being infuriated at Jo Walton's take on life and literature " recently but this is, if anything, even more wrongheaded.

[antisoppist]

Is she not the right age to have seen the BBC Barchester Chronicles in 1982? None of this seems compatible with having seen Mrs Proudie, Mrs Bold (and Alan Rickman's Mr Slope) at a formative age.

[legionseagle]

She'd have been about 17 I think. So, yes.

[tree_and_leaf]

Or la Signora!