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LADY ANNA by Anthony Trollope
Aug. 25th, 2013 07:37 am(Note: Spoilers in the below review, but this is not a novel that depends on plot twists for its strengths.)
A novel about wealth, titles, and futility in pursuing them--and about love and honour. Lady Anna's title is a joke: her father the Earl claimed most of her life that she was illegitimate, and she and her mother the Countess have absolutely no money. They live on the charity of a kindly tailor and his revolutionary but admirable son. But, when a new Lord Lovel inherits the earldom, he's encouraged to marry his cousin so that the disputes over fortune and inheritance can cease.
Unfortunately, Anna's already in love with the tailor's socialist(*) son...who is deserving of love. Will she turn her back on her old lover for the sake of rank?
Trollope treats the old Earl with absolutely no pity--a thoroughly disreputable, cruel, crude man whose title and money are no excuse whatsoever for his actions. If his blood is noble blood, then it does him no credit at all. Which is a very sensible view to twenty-first century eyes. There's some description that the young Earl has stereotypically 'aristocratic' physical features, but generally this is a modern view of the inherent worth of nobility.
And there's a really interesting description of the Stryd - now the Strid. Cracked also featured a dramatic article about it!
The Stryd is a narrow gully or passage, which the waters have cut for themselves in the rocks, perhaps five or six feet broad, where the river passes, but narrowed at the top by an overhanging mass which in old days withstood the wearing of the stream, till the softer stone below was cut away, and then was left bridging over a part of the chasm below. There goes a story that a mountain chieftain's son, hunting the stag across the valley when the floods were out, in leaping the stream, from rock to rock, failed to make good his footing, was carried down by the rushing waters, and dashed to pieces among the rocks.
Anna's quite an admirable character when she finally tells Lord Lovel that she's engaged to Daniel Thwaite the tailor, even after her lover asked her to keep it a secret. There's often a paradox when a writer wants to set up a love triangle between a central character and two admirable suitors (where polyamory is off the table), and where the writer wants the central character to also be admirable. If the central character has good qualities to make them worthy of love, then surely they have enough good qualities not to let their suitors dangle in the wind, or emotionally manipulate them in order to be flattered by their constantly circling around. Anna passes this test. (Then again, I also found Alice Vavasour extremely sympathetic in CAN YOU POSSIBLY FINISH IT?.)
But as the novel wears on, it becomes mired in the melodrama almost inherent in the premise. Countess Lovel's characterisation just isn't comparable in terms of complexity and interest to the likes of Louis Trevelyan - the effort's there, but it falls flat, perhaps partly because of confusion about which character in the novel most deserves the primary place. Additionally, Trollope's conservatism prevents him from exploring the potentially interesting avenue of Daniel Thwaite's uncharacteristically retrograde views on marital property. (Not that Daniel's an unlikeable character at all - I found him very likeable, and some of his actions in the last part of the novel downright heroic in a delightfully practical way.) In general, there isn't much suspense as to what Anna's choice will be, but the novel mostly has a reasonable pace.
Trollope's assessment of this novel in his autobiography was that he was glad of his decision to make Lady Anna faithful to her first lover, and he interpreted the strong reader responses positively - both of which I agree with in my read of it. A twenty-first-century eye is very likely to praise the virtue of constancy above the virtue of seeking noble rank, and so that aspect of the novel manages to be forward-thinking.
Though apparently this opinion isn't always shared, I was optimistic about the married couple's happy ending from the final lines of the novel. They travel together and see many things together while he perhaps becomes wiser, which sounds like a fine start to things.
(*) Forgive the modern terminology. It's an approximate description of his politics (except when it comes to marriage).
( Most spoilery P.S. )
A novel about wealth, titles, and futility in pursuing them--and about love and honour. Lady Anna's title is a joke: her father the Earl claimed most of her life that she was illegitimate, and she and her mother the Countess have absolutely no money. They live on the charity of a kindly tailor and his revolutionary but admirable son. But, when a new Lord Lovel inherits the earldom, he's encouraged to marry his cousin so that the disputes over fortune and inheritance can cease.
Unfortunately, Anna's already in love with the tailor's socialist(*) son...who is deserving of love. Will she turn her back on her old lover for the sake of rank?
Trollope treats the old Earl with absolutely no pity--a thoroughly disreputable, cruel, crude man whose title and money are no excuse whatsoever for his actions. If his blood is noble blood, then it does him no credit at all. Which is a very sensible view to twenty-first century eyes. There's some description that the young Earl has stereotypically 'aristocratic' physical features, but generally this is a modern view of the inherent worth of nobility.
And there's a really interesting description of the Stryd - now the Strid. Cracked also featured a dramatic article about it!
The Stryd is a narrow gully or passage, which the waters have cut for themselves in the rocks, perhaps five or six feet broad, where the river passes, but narrowed at the top by an overhanging mass which in old days withstood the wearing of the stream, till the softer stone below was cut away, and then was left bridging over a part of the chasm below. There goes a story that a mountain chieftain's son, hunting the stag across the valley when the floods were out, in leaping the stream, from rock to rock, failed to make good his footing, was carried down by the rushing waters, and dashed to pieces among the rocks.
Anna's quite an admirable character when she finally tells Lord Lovel that she's engaged to Daniel Thwaite the tailor, even after her lover asked her to keep it a secret. There's often a paradox when a writer wants to set up a love triangle between a central character and two admirable suitors (where polyamory is off the table), and where the writer wants the central character to also be admirable. If the central character has good qualities to make them worthy of love, then surely they have enough good qualities not to let their suitors dangle in the wind, or emotionally manipulate them in order to be flattered by their constantly circling around. Anna passes this test. (Then again, I also found Alice Vavasour extremely sympathetic in CAN YOU POSSIBLY FINISH IT?.)
But as the novel wears on, it becomes mired in the melodrama almost inherent in the premise. Countess Lovel's characterisation just isn't comparable in terms of complexity and interest to the likes of Louis Trevelyan - the effort's there, but it falls flat, perhaps partly because of confusion about which character in the novel most deserves the primary place. Additionally, Trollope's conservatism prevents him from exploring the potentially interesting avenue of Daniel Thwaite's uncharacteristically retrograde views on marital property. (Not that Daniel's an unlikeable character at all - I found him very likeable, and some of his actions in the last part of the novel downright heroic in a delightfully practical way.) In general, there isn't much suspense as to what Anna's choice will be, but the novel mostly has a reasonable pace.
Trollope's assessment of this novel in his autobiography was that he was glad of his decision to make Lady Anna faithful to her first lover, and he interpreted the strong reader responses positively - both of which I agree with in my read of it. A twenty-first-century eye is very likely to praise the virtue of constancy above the virtue of seeking noble rank, and so that aspect of the novel manages to be forward-thinking.
Though apparently this opinion isn't always shared, I was optimistic about the married couple's happy ending from the final lines of the novel. They travel together and see many things together while he perhaps becomes wiser, which sounds like a fine start to things.
(*) Forgive the modern terminology. It's an approximate description of his politics (except when it comes to marriage).
( Most spoilery P.S. )
