blueinkedfrost

Oliphant brings more healthy cynicism to the table than Trollope in this tale of clergypeople, though doesn't have as much depth.

Phoebe Junior's bumptious, ambitious enthusiasm and her scheming mind carry the story. Phoebe is a delightful mix of idealistic, practical, and self-centred. Other characters in here are shallow, but Phoebe Junior saves the day.

Phoebe, Junior, is Phoebe Beecham, the daughter of Phoebe Tozer and Beecham the Nonconformist preacher; Phoebe Senior was the socially climbing daughter of Tozer the grocer, who owns a shop and is therefore in trade. Phoebe Beecham is sent by her family to the small town of Carlingford to nurse her ailing grandmother and ensure that her side of the family get some of the inheritance. Contrary to expectations, Phoebe is not a snobbish whiner: she's a talented nurse, loving toward her grandparents, and in short makes herself very welcome in Carlingford by highly impressive social engineering skills. Not so dissimilar from MISS MARJORIBANKS!

Phoebe befriends Ursula May of Carlingford, whom she knew previously in a lucky coincidence. Ursula, a clergyman's daughter, is a cut above the Tozers in class, though not at all in wealth, but she and Phoebe make good friends for a while. Ursula's a subversion of the pure-hearted maiden devoted to self-sacrificing duty: she does her duty fairly well as the oldest of seven children of an impecunious widowed clergyman, but when she escapes through rich relatives she's more than happy to forget about home and concentrate on escaping. Not perfect, nor particularly effective, nor implausibly selfless, she's a rather human character.

And to the young ladies and their families, add a sprinkling of potential love interests: Clarence Copperhead, the dim spoilt son of a very wealthy man; Reginald May, Ursula's brother and a recently minted clergyman; and Horace Northcote, an independent clergyman with independent means.

The Copperhead family are worryingly motivated. Mr Copperhead enjoys treating his wife as a toy he has bought and paid for. She was a poor governess when she married him and is now intimidated, and their son is a clueless, expensive blockhead (in need of a wife to manage him into worldly success in exchange for his riches). The writing of Mr and Mrs Copperhead's psychological condition is interesting enough, but it's not followed through except as background for Clarence Copperhead - who's such an uninteresting character in himself that perhaps he needed this backstory.

Northcote is simply a well-off but decent man, who's essentially in a youthful experimentation stage with religion and trying to follow his ideals by being an independent preacher.

Ursula's brother Reginald is offered a two hundred and fifty-pound sinecure and has scruples of conscience about accepting it, when he is young and not an old man in need of a comfortable retirement. Reginald tries to assuage his conscience by assuring himself he'll do volunteer work to pay back the sinecure to the community - and while the reader maintains a healthy skepticism, the writer does not. (Mark Robarts in Trollope's FRAMLEY PARSONAGE is a more convincing picture of what one expects from a young man who's decent at heart but faces the temptations of being appointed to an easy post for a lot of money.)

Meanwhile, Reginald's father the impecunious clergyman decides to commit forgery to pay off a debt of one hundred and fifty pounds, and proceeds to engage on the normal human self-justifications for it, justifications so traditional they ring as cliched in the story. He's essentially a mix between Trollope's Crawley and Mark Robarts, but without the complexity.

The ethical examination of the sinecure clergy position isn't nearly so strong as Trollope's in THE WARDEN. There's a similar line to Trollope's general sentiments about the sinecure: "Nothing was perfect in this world, and yet things were more good than evil." But Oliphant's novel refuses to examine the ethical question. Reginald accepts the sinecure, helps his family, and works so hard and manages to become held in such esteem by the general populace that the sinecure is never questioned by anyone.

In the case of the forgery, Trollope's LAST CHRONICLE makes the clergyman innocent of theft but possessing an amazing number of other pathological issues; Oliphant's novel is a different clergyman in a different situation, where he has feet of clay, tries to justify himself, and meets a standard Victorian novel end by carking it quite shortly afterwards so as to create a tidy resolution.

There is a tremendously interesting bit here, on women's careers and the substitutes for them in this era:

What was Phœbe to do? She did not dislike Clarence Copperhead, and it was no horror to her to think of marrying him. She had felt for years that this might be on the cards, and there were a great many things in it which demanded consideration. He was not very wise, nor a man to be enthusiastic about, but he would be a career to Phœbe. She did not think of it humbly like this, but with a big capital—a Career. Yes; she could put him into parliament, and keep him there. She could thrust him forward (she believed) to the front of affairs. He would be as good as a profession, a position, a great work to Phœbe. He meant wealth (which she dismissed in its superficial aspect as something meaningless and vulgar, but accepted in its higher aspect as an almost necessary condition of influence), and he meant all the possibilities of future power. Who can say that she was not as romantic as any girl of twenty could be? only her romance took an unusual form. It was her head that was full of throbbings and pulses, not her heart.

In lieu of a career herself, Phoebe's considering marrying the rich but stupid Clarence Copperhead and constantly manipulating him toward success in the world. This is a match to which Trollope would say nay, nay, and thrice nay - for it is an unpleasant business to be bound for life without love, especially if unforeseen disaster should occur. But there's also a practicality to Phoebe's ambition which manages to ring more true than the melodramatic fate of Lady Ongar in Trollope's THE CLAVERINGS. Phoebe's fate turns out to marry the wealthy man and successfully create a career for him while making plenty of friends among her relations and acquaintances: a social engineering genius who chooses a life with affection but not love.

The novel also contains some fascinating observations about class and fashion in this era: the difference between upper-middle-class restraint and ostentatious lower-class spending. This is the Victorian equivalent of bling:

[The brooch] was a kind of small warming-pan in a very fine solid gold mount, set with large pink topazes, and enclosing little wavy curls of hair, one from the head of each young Tozer of the last generation... [T]he panic which rose in Phoebe's bosom when it was offered for her own personal adornment is more easily imagined than described.

The book takes a dismissive slant at Trollope, on whom the central plot point is based:

“Yes,” said Phœbe; “one reads Scott for Scotland (and a few other things), and one reads Miss Yonge for the church. Mr. Trollope is good for that too, but not so good.

And it also contains snark at Charlotte Yonge's THE DAISY CHAIN, which deserves it:

“I see you don't know my name,” said Phœbe, with a soft little laugh. “It is Beecham. One never catches names at a party. I remembered yours because of a family in a novel that I used to admire very much in my girlish days—”

“Oh! I know,” cried Janey, “the Daisy Chain. We are not a set of prigs like those people. We are not goody, whatever we are."

Except for Phoebe, the characterisation in this novel is simply nowhere as deep as Trollope's, especially if May senior's venal exercise in petty crime is compared to Crawley's multifarious pathological issues. But Phoebe - ambitious, enthusiastic, pushy, sensible, good-hearted, often following enlightened self-interest - is worth all prices of admission on her own.