blueinkedfrost

Clerical warfare and the glorious Mrs Proudie. May her name never die among famed literary characters!

Archdeacon Theophilus Grantly, son-in-law to former hospital warden Septimus Harding, begins the novel in sad straits - his father the bishop is dying and the government is changing, and Grantly doesn't know whether to pray for his father's life or that his father should die in time for him to become the new bishop. Grantly's not so heartless as this summary makes him sound, being a mortal man who's surely allowed to have some ambition in his chosen profession. Grantly's emotional turmoil, guilt, and final choice make a fine start to the novel.

The government does change before Grantly can be made the new bishop, and Bishop Proudie is promoted instead. When the new bishop and his family come to Barchester, battle lines are drawn - battle lines that have much more to do with personality than ideology, though the narrative prejudices lie against the Low Church (and seem to make a pretty good case of it). Dr. Proudie is a harmless, passive hack who's willing to agree with any convenient opinion shown him; often that opinion belongs to his wife.

Mrs Proudie is a reason for the feminism that Trollope's narrative voice claims to hold in disfavour - a tremendously energetic, efficent woman, who's wasted in a position without enough outlet for her personality. Proudie is not a pleasant person nor an altruistic person. But she would be tremendously efficient in modern days as a corporate organiser, or committee president, or a bishop in her own right - or even a televangelist (whether of the Serena Joy mode one is unsure). Proudie is fully detailed by a grand writer of character, a detailed and convincingly human individual. Even while the narrator proposes that Proudie does wrong by failing to accept a feminine role, the narrative is too honest not to show that confining Proudie's personality to feminine roles is inadequate, impossible, and wrong.

The bishop's chaplain Obadiah Slope (a Dickensianly appropriate name!) is deliciously unpleasant and also given tremendous amounts of characteriation. An oily, insinuating chap, who's able to gain female followers through religion, a selfish and hypocritical man, who meets his match in connivance through La Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni, a one-legged Italian widow. Slope is a man with a living to make in the world and sincerely believes most of what he says, and there lie his points of humanity - he is complex enough to make loathing him more delightful.

Take this tiny nibble of slash subtext about Proudie's and Slope's pitched battle to control the bishopric:

If indeed he could have slept in his chaplain's bedroom instead of his wife's, there might have been something in it.

Eleanor Bold can be summed up by stating that she's one of Trollope's pure young women with not much but her purity to her, but she's given narrative space to show her thought processes and her inner life, so her parts of the story are interesting. Eleanor's relationship with Arabin involves intellectual engagement on both sides, with both caring to know the other's thoughts. In the novel, Eleanor is wrong - she doesn't see Slope's poor qualities and treats him well - but she is wrong for the right reasons, her personal idealism and kindness. The men in Eleanor's life, her father and fiance, are right where she is wrong; this book's not exactly a feminist revolutionary text, but its female characters are mostly interesting. Eleanor also gets one opportunity to play Xena: Warrior Princess of the Nineteenth Century (specifically: on Slope), which is rather fun.

La Signora Madeline is the daughter of Dr Stanhope, another clergyman; the Stanhopes are a strange and odd family, who stand together and do what is easy for each other, and don't care for the feelings of anyone else. They are heartless, the narrative says, but not selfish. Madeline--her leg permanently injured due to her abusive Italian husband--is alone in the world in a pitiful situation, but while she has lovely dresses and ornaments she'll amuse herself by manipulating as many men to fall in love with her as possible. And, in the end, Madeline entirely triumphs over Slope and chooses to show her victory in an altruistic act... Madeline is almost too interesting, in that an entire book could be sustained about her instead of a relatively minor part.

Monica Thorne, the mistress of Ullathorne, stands out as a quirky, interesting, and benevolent female character - a type of female character that's sadly too rare today. She is given much more narrative attention than her brother to develop her personality. Thorne is an older woman; a strong woman who administers her land and property reasonably well; and a woman with a quirky non-gender-specific obsession, history and ancient bloodlines. It'd be brilliant to see more female characters like Miss Thorne and Mrs Proudie in today's media: women who get to be older and weirdly quirky and unashamed of it and whose interestingness is all about personality. The ways Monica Thorne contributes to the plot are limited - one feels Trollope developed her and described her local festival in great detail for sheer joy of it more than anything else. Her historical obsession is somewhat congruent with the high church versus low church conflict, but I don't think Trollope manages to quite bind her into the major themes of the story. So I think that Monica Thorne of Ullathorne exists mostly for the purpose of being interesting.

The Thornes have a similar conflict between old and new as in THE WARDEN. As in that book, Trollope finds the beauty in the old; it has impracticalities but a compelling charm. The Thornes of Ullathorne are two of a very small few in England with blood as old as theirs. The narrative allows a sense of humour at their oddities - The dear good old creature was always glad to revert to anything, and had she been systematically indulged, would doubtless in time have reflected that fingers were made before forks and have reverted accordingly.

Slope, Proudie, and Monica Thorne are likely the three strongest characters of this novel. Gentle Harding and Archdeacon Grantly are present, but somewhat out of their depth against Proudie and Slope's energetic tackiness. High churchman Arabin arrives, as an interesting and intelligent middle-aged man who's just realised the flaws of being a persistent underachiever. In future he'll become a stalwart Trollope personality, consistently appearing in following books. And La Signora Madeline remains a mysteriously fascinating side note.

BARCHESTER TOWERS has an interesting meta discourse in it, sentiments to be traced in more than one Trollope book:

But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or Bertie Stanhope. And here perhaps it may be allowed to the novelist to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers by maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this, is too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are never to be realized? Are not promises all but made of delightful horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species of deceit in this to which the honesty of the present age should lend no countenance?

And what can be the worth of that solicitude which a peep into the third volume can utterly dissipate? What the value of those literary charms which are absolutely destroyed by their enjoyment? When we have once learnt what was that picture before which was hung Mrs. Ratcliffe's solemn curtain, we feel no further interest about either the frame or the veil. They are to us merely a receptacle for old bones, an inappropriate coffin, which we would wish to have decently buried out of our sight.

And then how grievous a thing it is to have the pleasure of your novel destroyed by the ill-considered triumph of a previous reader. "Oh, you needn't be alarmed for Augusta; of course she accepts Gustavus in the end." "How very ill-natured you are, Susan," says Kitty with tears in her eyes: "I don't care a bit about it now." Dear Kitty, if you will read my book, you may defy the ill-nature of your sister. There shall be no secret that she can tell you. Nay, take the third volume if you please—learn from the last pages all the results of our troubled story, and the story shall have lost none of its interest, if indeed there be any interest in it to lose.

Our doctrine is that the author and the reader should move along together in full confidence with each other. Let the personages of the drama undergo ever so complete a comedy of errors among themselves, but let the spectator never mistake the Syracusan for the Ephesian; otherwise he is one of the dupes, and the part of a dupe is never dignified.

Trollope breaks this writing rule of his in JOHN CALDIGATE. But, since that narrative is clumsy for the very reason that it conceals in an obvious manner from the reader whether Caldigate is a bigamist or not, I suppose the example actually counts as supporting Trollope's idea here. If a book is worth reading, it should be worth reading for reasons other than the surprise and the suspense, and therefore worth re-reading. But, then again, murder mysteries and other twist endings can be parts of an excellent story; I'd have felt much less interest in THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS if I went into it assured of Lizzie Eustace's eventual fate. Murder mysteries and detective stories were still in their infancy in Trollope's time, and though he enjoyed the works of Wilkie Collins his writing does not display much interest in the genre.

This is a thoroughly good novel, taking the background from THE WARDEN and creating a much lengthier book. Pacing and characterisation both do Trollope proud. He "took great delight" in writing this novel, he says in his autobiography, and it's lived for much longer than the quarter of the century he modestly predicted. Great delight is involved in the reading of it. Mrs Proudie lives forever! (in a literary sense)

There were books I liked when I was young (late primary school / early high school) that I think now win the award of, "Yes, These Really Are As Bad As Twilight...And I Turned Out Okay."

Janette Oke. Inspirational clean historical Christian American romance. I'm guessing that today I'd see the Christian propaganda for what it is and despise it, and the writing was not good writing. Active religious propaganda, as against ambiguous arguments for Meyer! And about the same level of toxic, restrictive sexism.

There was this one Oke book that I'd still love to write femslash fanfiction for, where the story was centred around a close, beautiful, lifelong friendship between two women and one of them was a Nice Christian Housewife and the other a Brilliant Atheist Scientist who eventually converted. (It was this one, cowritten with T. Davis Bunn.) But other than that... My memories are vague and coloured by nostalgia, but I'm pretty sure the books were terrible.

Relatedly, Francine Rivers was probably as bad in her own way, with her drippy melodramatic pure as purest snow Christian virgins and the bronzed warrior men who worship them. At least she was one of the first writers I read who openly wrote about lesbianism? (Francine Rivers: corruptor of my tender youth. Seriously, thanks for that aspect, Ms Rivers; it really inspired me in ways you probably didn't intend.) Also, the writing was pretty bad.

If I have to say one thing in praise for Oke as against Meyer, it's that Oke was extremely prolific. One admires a writer who's so dedicated--it's the same quality I admire in Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Anthony Trollope and Agatha Christie. It's not that 'To Kill A Mockingbird' is less great because it's the only published novel by that author, or that 'Kublai Khan' is a horrible poem because it's incomplete, but producing that amount of publishable work is pretty amazing.

I've tended to forget about Janette Oke, because the world is big and wide and because my tastes developed and I moved on. It's much easier to remember the good childhood books, like Margaret Mahy and LM Montgomery and Madeline L'Engle. But reading a little that is bad can give anyone a taste for reading a lot more that is good, later on.

I think it may be laid down as a golden rule in literature that there should be no intercourse at all between an author and his critic. The critic, as critic, should not know his author, nor the author, as author, his critic. As censure should beget no anger, so should praise beget no gratitude. The young author should feel that criticisms fall upon him as dew or hail from heaven,—which, as coming from heaven, man accepts as fate. Praise let the author try to obtain by wholesome effort; censure let him avoid, if possible, by care and industry. But when they come, let him take them as coming from some source which he cannot influence, and with which he should not meddle.

I know no more disagreeable trouble into which an author may plunge himself than of a quarrel with his critics, or any more useless labour than that of answering them. It is wise to presume, at any rate, that the reviewer has simply done his duty, and has spoken of the book according to the dictates of his conscience. Nothing can be gained by combating the reviewer's opinion. If the book which he has disparaged be good, his judgment will be condemned by the praise of others; if bad, his judgment will be confirmed by others. Or if, unfortunately, the criticism of the day be in so evil a condition generally that such ultimate truth cannot be expected, the author may be sure that his efforts made on behalf of his own book will not set matters right. If injustice be done him, let him bear it. To do so is consonant with the dignity of the position which he ought to assume. To shriek, and scream, and sputter, to threaten actions, and to swear about the town that he has been belied and defamed in that he has been accused of bad grammar or a false metaphor, of a dull chapter, or even of a borrowed heroine, will leave on the minds of the public nothing but a sense of irritated impotence.

- An Autobiography, by Anthony Trollope