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The title is farcical; the story anything but. Like VICAR OF BULLHAMPTON, there is a Fallen Woman among the cast who is presented in a sympathetic light - however, she isn't present enough to leaven the story with her interest.
The novel is a character study of an utterly worthless well-born wastrel, Sir Harry's nephew George, whose thorough selfishness brings no rewards either to himself or the people around him. But it's hard to decode meaning from a novel that ends with a poor, melodramatic device. I found it difficult to be interested in or admire a female character whose strength of character is shown by faithfulness to her selfish, rotten egg of a lover and who dies out of sorrow for him - a Victorian novel death worthy of one of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's characters. I'd more willingly admire a character with the strength of personality to *change* her mind.
(If Trollope had tried to write a detailed character study on Emily Hotspur and a mental illness that today we might call clinical depression, this might have been more convincing, but as it stands, it's random and illogical.)
(Enid Blyton's NAUGHTIEST GIRL series wrote about the strength of character required to change one's mind, which inspired me as a child. Obviously Blyton is from a much later era, but if a writer like her picked up on this nuance, then...)
The best interpretation I can muddle out of the novel is that it's a tragedy about the decline and fall of a once-noble house in the modern era, but the theme is rather thoroughly confused. The plot is too linear, being focused on repeating the extensive saga of George Hotspur's misdeeds long after the reader has comprehended the point. The ending makes no sense and kills Emily Hotspur from plot. It's also extremely difficult to see if Trollope is saying anything constructive - is he really making a case that young ladies should be segregated from society so that there is zero chance they will meet anyone who turns out to be a scoundrel?
There is a moral here that it's a bad idea to marry a man of the Wickham or Willoughby type and it's a good idea to listen to your family if your family is decent, but Emily listens to her family and tries her best with her horrible fiance. Obviously, it is also a horrible idea to dump the selfish douchebag and then go off and catch some random Victorian novel disease that causes you to spontaneously pop your clogs.
In my view of this story I greatly differ from Trollope, who in his autobiography regarded it as quite good; he compared it to NINA BALATKA and LINDA TRESSEL, which I think are both much better and have stronger thematic weight to recommend them.
The novel is a character study of an utterly worthless well-born wastrel, Sir Harry's nephew George, whose thorough selfishness brings no rewards either to himself or the people around him. But it's hard to decode meaning from a novel that ends with a poor, melodramatic device. I found it difficult to be interested in or admire a female character whose strength of character is shown by faithfulness to her selfish, rotten egg of a lover and who dies out of sorrow for him - a Victorian novel death worthy of one of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's characters. I'd more willingly admire a character with the strength of personality to *change* her mind.
(If Trollope had tried to write a detailed character study on Emily Hotspur and a mental illness that today we might call clinical depression, this might have been more convincing, but as it stands, it's random and illogical.)
(Enid Blyton's NAUGHTIEST GIRL series wrote about the strength of character required to change one's mind, which inspired me as a child. Obviously Blyton is from a much later era, but if a writer like her picked up on this nuance, then...)
The best interpretation I can muddle out of the novel is that it's a tragedy about the decline and fall of a once-noble house in the modern era, but the theme is rather thoroughly confused. The plot is too linear, being focused on repeating the extensive saga of George Hotspur's misdeeds long after the reader has comprehended the point. The ending makes no sense and kills Emily Hotspur from plot. It's also extremely difficult to see if Trollope is saying anything constructive - is he really making a case that young ladies should be segregated from society so that there is zero chance they will meet anyone who turns out to be a scoundrel?
There is a moral here that it's a bad idea to marry a man of the Wickham or Willoughby type and it's a good idea to listen to your family if your family is decent, but Emily listens to her family and tries her best with her horrible fiance. Obviously, it is also a horrible idea to dump the selfish douchebag and then go off and catch some random Victorian novel disease that causes you to spontaneously pop your clogs.
In my view of this story I greatly differ from Trollope, who in his autobiography regarded it as quite good; he compared it to NINA BALATKA and LINDA TRESSEL, which I think are both much better and have stronger thematic weight to recommend them.
