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DOCTOR THORNE by Anthony Trollope
Jan. 23rd, 2014 10:54 pmTrollope continues his same philosophy of letting the reader know exactly what's going on as in BARCHESTER TOWERS. Despite the great potential of this story - the usual interestingly assorted and complex bunch of Trollopian personalities, and a pure young lady called Mary Thorne with a decent amount of personality and vehemence going for her - the resolutions are telegraphed too well in advance. (There are spoilers in this review, but they are really obvious.) The characters jog along with little deep emotional trauma to endear them to the audience and it's clear how the financial problems will come through in the end.
Mary Thorne and impoverished future squire Frank Gresham love each other, but there are various obstacles in their way. Mary's uncle, the eponymous doctor, is but a local physician with little personal wealth. Mary herself is of low birth - she is the illegitimate daughter of the doctor's brother and a local stone-mason's sister, who was orphaned when the stone-mason killed the doctor's brother for revenge! Frank's future tracts of land are mortgaged to the local baronet and his dissolute son, and as a result his family insists that he marry money and rank - especially since his snobbish mother Lady Arabella was a de Courcy before her marriage.
Local baronet Roger Scatcherd is more plot device than personality. He has interesting points - an alcoholic with a genius at his profession - but his main purpose seems to be to supply wealth to characters who are much more inept at earning it. Scatcherd is the stone-mason, Mary Thorne's uncle, who achieved his baronetcy in later years due to his professional abilities.
The novel uses a fair number of sudden leaps forward in time, with little account as to how various character developments came about.
Frank Gresham is a nice young man, but his personality is more made up of absences than presences. His single interesting trait is that he sticks to Mary Thorne despite believing she's poor. OOther than that Frank is ineffective and nice (in the modern meaning of the word) on the grounds he has a relative absence of faults, not in the sense that he has any active virtues to speak of. His character seems to fall into the pattern that because a good marriage must have enough money to avoid financial troubles, Frank deserves to have it given him - in spite of the fact that though he's nice enough he is also quite inept at doing anything practical.
There is a touch of genuine tragedy for Augusta Gresham, a daughter of the aristocratic de Courcys on one side and the squire in financial difficulties on the other. Augusta is shallow, unintelligent, and willing to marry for wealth and rank, but when she genuinely falls in love with an attorney and her family pride denies it, there's a lot of tragedy in her lack of a happy ending.
Another tragedy, though one swept under the rug, is Mary Scatcherd's: her brother Roger kills her treacherous lover Henry Thorne, she gives birth to a child, and then she's made to abandon her daughter and never have contact with her again, while she's taken off to America as the wife of another man. The daughter Mary Thorne is raised by Doctor Thomas Thorne. The story says that Mary Scatcherd built a good life with her husband and had many more children, but it's depressing how matter-of-factly it's related that of course it was for the best for her to give up her newborn. These were times with higher infant mortality and different cultural values. Also in Mary Scatcherd's backstory is two competing narratives about her lover: either she slept with her lover consensually because he promised to marry her, or he drugged her and raped her. Both options are told by the narrator as if they're equally morally wrong. Probably because of the harm done in either case: the stigma of having a child out of marriage, that falls on the woman only.
Less genuine a tragedy is Louis Scatcherd's death - no pathos, only inevitability to it. Louis Scatcherd, son of the baronet, is the weak life that's the only thing to stand before Mary Thorne's inheritance of a fortune. The protagonists don't even get the chance for an inner war between wishing for their own material gratification and hoping for the life of another human being. This certainly isn't close to Archdeacon Grantly's dark night of the soul over his father's death versus his own ambition.
This novel prefigures the sensation novel: the hidden family secret, the past scandal, the great fortune, the brush with nobility, and the sudden denouement. Needs a few more murders, though, to liven up a ponderous plot.
Miss Dunstable is a good minor Barsetshire character, who makes her first appearance in this novel: a low-born but wealthy and intelligent heiress, who comes across as if she's skilled at managing her own business, and whose actions are certainly courageous, frank, clever, and justly proud of her own value. I like Dunstable a good deal, and very much enjoy her independence of mind. It's also possible to read Mary Thorne's sudden accession to fortune (this is not a spoiler; it's telegraphed from about the third chapter) as proto-feminist: bringing her to an equality with her lover. (Or even a superiority to him, as due to mortgages she can be said to own his family property.)
Trollope has a great anecdote about this novel in his Autobiography: he finished it one day and began THE BERTRAMS on the very next day. According to him, the plot of this novel was Trollope's brother's idea, which would explain why it's shallow and creaky. (Not to disrespect the brother's literary work, which I haven't gotten around to reading - perhaps his ideas work perfectly well in his own works.) This book sold extremely well, better than Trollope estimated its comparative worth; I think that Trollope was right about this book. Today, as far as I know, it isn't one of the better-known Trollopes.
This novel may contain a cameo of Apjohn from COUSIN HENRY. The name and profession are the same, but this Apjohn seems to want nothing more from life than a well-supplied dinner plate. This novel was published in 1858 - twenty-one years before COUSIN HENRY. Possibly it's a question of Lawyer Apjohn senior and junior. (Apjohn Junior is a brainy detective and much more interesting.)
Not one of Trollope's best - the machinery of this story is always creaking and droning. Nonetheless, the county of Barsetshire is always a pleasant and worthy place to visit.
Mary Thorne and impoverished future squire Frank Gresham love each other, but there are various obstacles in their way. Mary's uncle, the eponymous doctor, is but a local physician with little personal wealth. Mary herself is of low birth - she is the illegitimate daughter of the doctor's brother and a local stone-mason's sister, who was orphaned when the stone-mason killed the doctor's brother for revenge! Frank's future tracts of land are mortgaged to the local baronet and his dissolute son, and as a result his family insists that he marry money and rank - especially since his snobbish mother Lady Arabella was a de Courcy before her marriage.
Local baronet Roger Scatcherd is more plot device than personality. He has interesting points - an alcoholic with a genius at his profession - but his main purpose seems to be to supply wealth to characters who are much more inept at earning it. Scatcherd is the stone-mason, Mary Thorne's uncle, who achieved his baronetcy in later years due to his professional abilities.
The novel uses a fair number of sudden leaps forward in time, with little account as to how various character developments came about.
Frank Gresham is a nice young man, but his personality is more made up of absences than presences. His single interesting trait is that he sticks to Mary Thorne despite believing she's poor. OOther than that Frank is ineffective and nice (in the modern meaning of the word) on the grounds he has a relative absence of faults, not in the sense that he has any active virtues to speak of. His character seems to fall into the pattern that because a good marriage must have enough money to avoid financial troubles, Frank deserves to have it given him - in spite of the fact that though he's nice enough he is also quite inept at doing anything practical.
There is a touch of genuine tragedy for Augusta Gresham, a daughter of the aristocratic de Courcys on one side and the squire in financial difficulties on the other. Augusta is shallow, unintelligent, and willing to marry for wealth and rank, but when she genuinely falls in love with an attorney and her family pride denies it, there's a lot of tragedy in her lack of a happy ending.
Another tragedy, though one swept under the rug, is Mary Scatcherd's: her brother Roger kills her treacherous lover Henry Thorne, she gives birth to a child, and then she's made to abandon her daughter and never have contact with her again, while she's taken off to America as the wife of another man. The daughter Mary Thorne is raised by Doctor Thomas Thorne. The story says that Mary Scatcherd built a good life with her husband and had many more children, but it's depressing how matter-of-factly it's related that of course it was for the best for her to give up her newborn. These were times with higher infant mortality and different cultural values. Also in Mary Scatcherd's backstory is two competing narratives about her lover: either she slept with her lover consensually because he promised to marry her, or he drugged her and raped her. Both options are told by the narrator as if they're equally morally wrong. Probably because of the harm done in either case: the stigma of having a child out of marriage, that falls on the woman only.
Less genuine a tragedy is Louis Scatcherd's death - no pathos, only inevitability to it. Louis Scatcherd, son of the baronet, is the weak life that's the only thing to stand before Mary Thorne's inheritance of a fortune. The protagonists don't even get the chance for an inner war between wishing for their own material gratification and hoping for the life of another human being. This certainly isn't close to Archdeacon Grantly's dark night of the soul over his father's death versus his own ambition.
This novel prefigures the sensation novel: the hidden family secret, the past scandal, the great fortune, the brush with nobility, and the sudden denouement. Needs a few more murders, though, to liven up a ponderous plot.
Miss Dunstable is a good minor Barsetshire character, who makes her first appearance in this novel: a low-born but wealthy and intelligent heiress, who comes across as if she's skilled at managing her own business, and whose actions are certainly courageous, frank, clever, and justly proud of her own value. I like Dunstable a good deal, and very much enjoy her independence of mind. It's also possible to read Mary Thorne's sudden accession to fortune (this is not a spoiler; it's telegraphed from about the third chapter) as proto-feminist: bringing her to an equality with her lover. (Or even a superiority to him, as due to mortgages she can be said to own his family property.)
Trollope has a great anecdote about this novel in his Autobiography: he finished it one day and began THE BERTRAMS on the very next day. According to him, the plot of this novel was Trollope's brother's idea, which would explain why it's shallow and creaky. (Not to disrespect the brother's literary work, which I haven't gotten around to reading - perhaps his ideas work perfectly well in his own works.) This book sold extremely well, better than Trollope estimated its comparative worth; I think that Trollope was right about this book. Today, as far as I know, it isn't one of the better-known Trollopes.
This novel may contain a cameo of Apjohn from COUSIN HENRY. The name and profession are the same, but this Apjohn seems to want nothing more from life than a well-supplied dinner plate. This novel was published in 1858 - twenty-one years before COUSIN HENRY. Possibly it's a question of Lawyer Apjohn senior and junior. (Apjohn Junior is a brainy detective and much more interesting.)
Not one of Trollope's best - the machinery of this story is always creaking and droning. Nonetheless, the county of Barsetshire is always a pleasant and worthy place to visit.
