Castle Richmond by Anthony Trollope
May. 27th, 2013 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blueinkedfrostSummary: Trollope tries writing a sensation novel. It doesn't suit him. There's a melodramatic bigamy-inheritance plot twist that is very, very obvious. Hints though not full spoilers apply to this ramble about the novel.
The well-born but poor Irishman Owen Fitzgerald is a truly interesting character: larger-than-life, fashioned on a grander scale than most of Trollope's other characters, compelling, intriguing, quixotic, heroic. One suspects that Trollope simply wasn't sure what to do with him. His cousin Herbert Fitzgerald, the official male protagonist, is indeterminate, like a prettily-painted mask - intended to be a pattern of virtue and intelligence, but not terribly deep. Lady Desmond could be an interesting character, but is given insufficient development. She takes the initiative of proposing to a male character and is treated with some sympathy by the narrative - although she is refused. The antagonists are positively Dickensian, without much of the entertainment that Dickens provided: shallowly characterised, with the nadir being their very stereotypical and illogical literary style, in which Trollope's skills fail him in writing dialect. The life and times of a barmaid and her family inn are depicted as a minor subplot, and this is rather well done, although it could have been excised without doing harm to any of the other plots in the story.
The character Clara Desmond also had real potential to be interesting. The novel could be seen as Clara's bildungsroman: at sixteen, she's overwhelmed by her competing attraction to Owen and her ideal of duty to her family. At seventeen, a year later, Clara's grown up enough to consciously make her own choices rather than bow to family pressure. This is not unlike Fanny Price's character development in Mansfield Park - but Trollope didn't allow Clara enough narrative to herself, so her development is left for the reader to infer, rather than creating a truly interesting character like Austen's heroine.
The novel also attempts to depict the Irish famine, but does so as a mere backdrop - few of the major characters are personally affected, though they participate in relief efforts. Little is added to the reader's understanding of the history; the background comes across as a curtain sewn to the back of a Punch-and-Judy show rather than a window upon a three-dimensional landscape. One wonders if the intent was to show how petty the squabble over twelve thousand a year becomes when no one involved will ever have to worry where their next meal is coming from, but this intent wasn't carried out by the novel. The innkeeper's family are more interestingly portrayed.
In regard to that plot twist, I think it would have been a stronger novel without it: it would have given Owen Fitzgerald a greater chance to come into his own, it would have tested Clara and her romance, it would have led to struggle and interesting dynamics between other characters. Perhaps, with the way that the plot twist makes the road easy for the protagonists, the novel would have been improved if told through the eyes of another party - more people affected by the famine, the minor character Mrs Swan and her daughter and the tragedy of their past history connected to the antagonists, and so on.
The well-born but poor Irishman Owen Fitzgerald is a truly interesting character: larger-than-life, fashioned on a grander scale than most of Trollope's other characters, compelling, intriguing, quixotic, heroic. One suspects that Trollope simply wasn't sure what to do with him. His cousin Herbert Fitzgerald, the official male protagonist, is indeterminate, like a prettily-painted mask - intended to be a pattern of virtue and intelligence, but not terribly deep. Lady Desmond could be an interesting character, but is given insufficient development. She takes the initiative of proposing to a male character and is treated with some sympathy by the narrative - although she is refused. The antagonists are positively Dickensian, without much of the entertainment that Dickens provided: shallowly characterised, with the nadir being their very stereotypical and illogical literary style, in which Trollope's skills fail him in writing dialect. The life and times of a barmaid and her family inn are depicted as a minor subplot, and this is rather well done, although it could have been excised without doing harm to any of the other plots in the story.
The character Clara Desmond also had real potential to be interesting. The novel could be seen as Clara's bildungsroman: at sixteen, she's overwhelmed by her competing attraction to Owen and her ideal of duty to her family. At seventeen, a year later, Clara's grown up enough to consciously make her own choices rather than bow to family pressure. This is not unlike Fanny Price's character development in Mansfield Park - but Trollope didn't allow Clara enough narrative to herself, so her development is left for the reader to infer, rather than creating a truly interesting character like Austen's heroine.
The novel also attempts to depict the Irish famine, but does so as a mere backdrop - few of the major characters are personally affected, though they participate in relief efforts. Little is added to the reader's understanding of the history; the background comes across as a curtain sewn to the back of a Punch-and-Judy show rather than a window upon a three-dimensional landscape. One wonders if the intent was to show how petty the squabble over twelve thousand a year becomes when no one involved will ever have to worry where their next meal is coming from, but this intent wasn't carried out by the novel. The innkeeper's family are more interestingly portrayed.
In regard to that plot twist, I think it would have been a stronger novel without it: it would have given Owen Fitzgerald a greater chance to come into his own, it would have tested Clara and her romance, it would have led to struggle and interesting dynamics between other characters. Perhaps, with the way that the plot twist makes the road easy for the protagonists, the novel would have been improved if told through the eyes of another party - more people affected by the famine, the minor character Mrs Swan and her daughter and the tragedy of their past history connected to the antagonists, and so on.
