THE WARDEN by Anthony Trollope
Dec. 6th, 2013 12:02 amJohn Hiram was a wealthy and benevolent wool-stapler from 1434, who left a permanent legacy: a house, meadows, and closes near his town of Barchester were left for the support of twelve retired wool-carders, who are to live in an alms-house run by a warden. Four hundred years later, the wool-carders are replaced by other poor old men, since wool-carding no longer takes place in Barchester; the stipend is a shilling and fourpence a day; and the warden pockets a substantial amount of the remaining rents from the properties, eight hundred a year.
The present-day warden is clergyman Septimus Harding. He raises the stipend by twopence extra per man per day, which gives them a shilling and sixpence each and costs him sixty-two pounds a year from his warden's income. The rest is spent on his extensive collection of church music, which he plays beautifully on the violincello.
Then surgeon and social activist John Bold begins an inquiry into this inequitable disposition of John Hiram's will. Septimus Harding is a kind, retiring old man who loves his music and who is loved by the twelve men he looks after; his daughter Eleanor is a sweet and kind young lady; and John Bold wants to do the right thing and is in love with Eleanor.
The complex characterisation and ability to see both sides of a question make this book contain most of what I love about Trollope, in one of his best stories. It's an absolute textbook case for how to write interesting character conflicts between nuanced characters where neither is wholly right nor wrong. Trollope himself discusses this in the Autobiography:
It was open to me to have described a bloated parson, with a red nose and all other iniquities, openly neglecting every duty required from him, and living riotously on funds purloined from the poor,—defying as he did do so the moderate remonstrances of a virtuous press. Or I might have painted a man as good, as sweet, and as mild as my warden, who should also have been a hard-working, ill-paid minister of God's word, and might have subjected him to the rancorous venom of some daily Jupiter, who, without a leg to stand on, without any true case, might have been induced, by personal spite, to tear to rags the poor clergyman with poisonous, anonymous, and ferocious leading articles. But neither of these programmes recommended itself to my honesty. Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
There's a lot in this book: so much that could be (and has been) studied at length. Excellent characterisation, complex ethical issues and philosophies of human morality, contemporary parody and commentary on Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle, criticism of the media, and miscellaneous striking parts and pieces. I think that if I had to choose a Trollope to assign to a high school English class, I'd pick this one - it's relatively short but very complex, and one of his best works.
( Read more... )
The present-day warden is clergyman Septimus Harding. He raises the stipend by twopence extra per man per day, which gives them a shilling and sixpence each and costs him sixty-two pounds a year from his warden's income. The rest is spent on his extensive collection of church music, which he plays beautifully on the violincello.
Then surgeon and social activist John Bold begins an inquiry into this inequitable disposition of John Hiram's will. Septimus Harding is a kind, retiring old man who loves his music and who is loved by the twelve men he looks after; his daughter Eleanor is a sweet and kind young lady; and John Bold wants to do the right thing and is in love with Eleanor.
The complex characterisation and ability to see both sides of a question make this book contain most of what I love about Trollope, in one of his best stories. It's an absolute textbook case for how to write interesting character conflicts between nuanced characters where neither is wholly right nor wrong. Trollope himself discusses this in the Autobiography:
It was open to me to have described a bloated parson, with a red nose and all other iniquities, openly neglecting every duty required from him, and living riotously on funds purloined from the poor,—defying as he did do so the moderate remonstrances of a virtuous press. Or I might have painted a man as good, as sweet, and as mild as my warden, who should also have been a hard-working, ill-paid minister of God's word, and might have subjected him to the rancorous venom of some daily Jupiter, who, without a leg to stand on, without any true case, might have been induced, by personal spite, to tear to rags the poor clergyman with poisonous, anonymous, and ferocious leading articles. But neither of these programmes recommended itself to my honesty. Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
There's a lot in this book: so much that could be (and has been) studied at length. Excellent characterisation, complex ethical issues and philosophies of human morality, contemporary parody and commentary on Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle, criticism of the media, and miscellaneous striking parts and pieces. I think that if I had to choose a Trollope to assign to a high school English class, I'd pick this one - it's relatively short but very complex, and one of his best works.
( Read more... )