Category Archives: LITERATURE

fiction, LITERATURE

Willa Cather’s My Antonia: A Beautiful Ode to Prairie Life

I’ve been intending to read Willa Cather’s My Antonia for a few years, since my writer and historian friend, Bradley Birzer, raved about it. (You can read his brilliant take on Cather here.) It’s in the public domain, so I had no excuse and downloaded a free copy. And here I have to confess that I regret having waited so long to read it! From the opening sentence, I was captivated by Cather’s clear and succinct prose. 

The Antonia of the title is a young Czech woman whom the narrator, Jim Burden, sees on a train heading out to Nebraska in the late 1800s, probably around 1880. Jim is ten years old, both his parents have died, and he is leaving his home in Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm on the prairie. Antonia Shimerdas is fourteen, and she is traveling with her family – newly arrived to America – who hope to make a new life farming in the same vicinity as the Burden’s. Her family consists of her father, mother, older brother Ambrosch, and her little sister, Yulka. From the start, they are at a disadvantage, because they overpaid for a sod house and land that they hope to farm. Poor Mr. Shimerdas is out of his depth – he was a skilled weaver back in Eastern Europe, and he knows nothing about farming. Ambrosch is a haard worker, but mistrustful and a little devious. Mrs. Shimerdas is very proud and has an extremely difficult time adjusting to their new circumstances. For Antonia, however, life is a grand adventure. She and Jim immediately strike up a friendship, and she quickly picks up English. Her openness and sincere delight in everyone and everything around her are her best qualities. 

As I read My Antonia, I was really struck by how important community was to prairie dwellers. During the first winter, a severe snowstorm hits, and Jim’s grandmother, Jim, and their indefatigable hired hand, Otto, brave the elements to bring some food and supplies to the Shimerdas. It’s no exaggeration to say this act of neighborly kindness saves Antonia’s family from starvation.

The prairie itself is a major character in the book. I loved Cather’s vivid descriptions of it in all seasons. Here’s one set in autumn:

All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day. The blond cornfields were red and gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed.
(Location 488, Standard Ebooks Edition)

Each chapter is a self-contained vignette that adds up to a powerful and satisfying whole. Jim’s grandparents decide to rent their farm and move to the local town of Black Hawk, so Jim can attend school. Antonia doesn’t go to school, because Ambrosch insists she work on their farm, as well as hire herself out to other farms when they need an extra hand. She is very proud of her ability to do a man’s work, but she regrets not getting a good education.

Grandfather Burden gets Antonia a job keeping house for his neighbors in town, the Harlings, and Antonia thrives there. She helps with the children, the cooking, and the cleaning. She also falls in love with dancing under a big tent that is set up in the town square for that purpose. Jim also enjoys dancing with the girls and Antonia on the weekends. Their friendship deepens as they both grow older, but it never tips over into romance. It comes close, though! 

Another important aspect of prairie life was faith. Here’s how the Burden’s celebrate one Christmas:

On Christ­mas morn­ing, when I got down to the kitchen, the men were just com­ing in from their morn­ing chores—the hors­es and pigs al­ways had their break­fast be­fore we did. Jake and Ot­to shout­ed “Mer­ry Christ­mas!” to me, and winked at each oth­er when they saw the waf­fle-irons on the stove. Grand­fa­ther came down, wear­ing a white shirt and his Sun­day coat. Morn­ing prayers were longer than usu­al. He read the chap­ters from St. Matthew about the birth of Christ, and as we lis­tened, it all seemed like some­thing that had hap­pened late­ly, and near at hand. In his prayer he thanked the Lord for the first Christ­mas, and for all that it had meant to the world ev­er since. He gave thanks for our food and com­fort, and prayed for the poor and des­ti­tute in great cities, where the strug­gle for life was hard­er than it was here with us. Grand­fa­ther’s prayers were of­ten very in­ter­est­ing. He had the gift of sim­ple and mov­ing ex­pres­sion. Be­cause he talked so lit­tle, his words had a pe­cu­liar force; they were not worn dull from con­stant use. His prayers re­flect­ed what he was think­ing about at the time, and it was chiefly through them that we got to know his feel­ings and his views about things.
(Location 951, Standard Ebooks Edition)

Life was very hard, yet for most people young Jim came into contact with, there was much joy. People had few possessions, yet they had rich lives. As the quote above makes clear, those living on the prairie considered themselves better off than city dwellers. They were responsible for their own entertainment; for example, Mrs. Harling and her daughters were accomplished pianists who loved to play for people. When a traveling troupe comes to town one summer to offer dancing lessons, all the families flock to them and make it a festive event. I would say the defining feeling of the time was optimism – in a relatively young America everyone had boundless hope and a belief that they could succeed.

In the final section of the book, Jim – who has gotten a law degree and moved to New York City – returns to Nebraska to see if he can find Antonia. He does, and he gives us this tender portrait of her in her middle age:

She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one’s breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last.
(Location 3684, Standard Ebooks Edition)

My Antonia  is deservedly a classic of American literature. As Jim and his friends mature, so does the country, becoming less agricultural and more urban. The pace of life increases, and modernity begins to intrude. My Antonia is a paean to a bygone era of American life when life was fraught with peril, but also held out almost infinite promise. In our own day, it’s common for neighbors on the same street of a city to not know each other at all. In Antonia’s time, everyone knew everyone and felt some responsibility for each other’s welfare. At the close of the first quarter of the twenty-first century, we have so much in terms of material comfort, but we have lost much, as well.

Adventure, LITERATURE, Music

Vacationing with the Sublime

Sublime, noun or adj. 9. Of a feature of nature or art: that fills the mind with a sense of overwhelming grandeur or irresistible power; that inspires awe, great reverence, or other high emotion, by reason of its beauty, vastness, or grandeur.

– Oxford English Dictionary

Since 2019, my wife and I have made biennial efforts to route our long vacation toward one of the USA’s national parks. (She saw the Ken Burns film; I read Neil Peart’s travel books.) For this year’s trip, we ended up circling the Great Lakes, with a side quest to visit college friends in upstate New York. And while our trek had plenty of normal vacation fun — and even a few proggy moments — it struck me looking back how much time we spent in the presence of the sublime. (It cropped up on our 2024 vacation, too!)

The core destination on our eastward journey was Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park. A unlooked-for haven of forests, rivers, byways and trails situated between Cleveland and Akron, entering the park cast us back to the era when mule-drawn shipping plied the Ohio & Erie Canal, passing settlements and small towns on the way to the Mississippi River. But our initial destination within Cuyahoga Valley, Blossom Music Center, casts a distinctly modern silhouette on this pastoral scene.

The Cleveland Orchestra has long been considered one of America’s top five symphony organizations, alongside New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. Since the late 1960s, they’ve played summer concerts on Blossom’s 800-acre grounds. On the Saturday night we attended, 4,000 folks filled the pavilion and dotted the expansive lawn as a remarkably youthful orchestra took to the faux-rustic stage for a challenging program.

With young Czech conductor Petr Popelka on the podium, German violin phenom Veronika Eberle tackled one of the monuments of her instrument’s repertoire, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Twice as long as any similar work of the period, the Concerto stands out for its focus on cooperation between soloist and orchestra instead of contention. Eberle proved more than equal to the broad, lyrical span of the work, graciously in tune with her colleagues through the Allegro’s subtle, sonorous build, the Larghetto’s placid thematic variations and the vivacious, folksy Rondo. A well-deserved standing ovation led to Eberle dashing off a Bartok duet with concertmaster Joel Link. Then Popelka proved himself a maestro to watch and hear with a sprightly, energetic reading of Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony. Music, audience and surroundings came together for a thoroughly delightful evening. The rain that had threatened throughout even held off until after the concert!

(Click here to hear Eberle’s recording of the Beethoven with the London Symphony Orchestra. Click here to hear Popelka conduct symphonic works by Czech composer Biedrich Smetana. Young musicians like these fill me with hope for the future of orchestras and their historic repertoire! A month remains in TCO’s Blossom season; full info is here.)

After an evening’s rest, the park called and we answered, hiking to and around the breathtaking Brandywine Falls (a hop, skip and jump from our B&B):

On our outbound journey the next day, we hiked The Ledges, a massive rock outcropping with its own ecosystem, actual bat caves, and a spectacular overlook of the Valley’s forests.

Following time with our friends, we tackled the sublimest of the Sublime for our wedding anniversary: the American side of Niagara Falls, experienced from multiple angles via New York’s expansive state park (the oldest in the country), a boat trip on the Maid of the Mist, and a river-level viewing platform where the now-obliterated Cave of the Winds once beckoned.

And it’ll surprise no one that, cutting back through Canada to head home, we stopped at the annual Stratford Festival for a taut, spellbinding production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. One of the Bard’s late tragicomic romances, this one’s got it all: just in the first half, there’s jealousy and skullduggery, messages from the gods, false accusations with fatal results, plus the most notorious stage direction in theatrical history, “Exit, pursued by a bear.” How Shakespeare fashions a happy ending from of these tangled threads (hint: a flash-forward of 16 years is involved) is a marvel in and of itself, but a company that can pull off such a drastic vibe shift is even greater cause for wonder. As usual, Stratford was up to the task, with veterans (Graham Abbey’s hapless Leontes, Sara Topham’s noble Hermione, Yonna McIntosh’s searing Paulina, Tom McCamus’ country clod facing off with Geraint Wyn Davies’ citified rogue Autolycus) and new recruits (an enthusiastic Marissa Orjalo and a passionate Austin Eckert as young lovers Perdita and Florizel, Christo Graham’s show-stealing Clown) giving it their all under Antoni Cimolino’s sure-footed direction. If there’s finer theater on this continent, I’d be hard-pressed to find it. (The Winter’s Tale runs through September 27 at Stratford; see it for yourself!)

— Rick Krueger

Faith, LITERATURE

The Betrothed: A 200 Year Old Tale of Suffering and Redemption

Alessandro Manzoni published his magnum opus, The Betrothed, in 1824. At the time, Italy was composed of many different states with different dialects. Through the popularity of his novel, Manzoni forged a uniform version of the modern Italian language. As such, The Betrothed is one of the most important literary works in Italian culture. It’s also a delightful and wonderful novel.

It is set in northern Italy in the early seventeenth century – 1628 to 1630, to be exact. Technically, the Spanish empire is in charge of the region, but the towns are ruled by local lords – some benevolent and fair, some cruel and despotic. In a small town in Lombardy near Lake Como, young and honest Lorenzo “Renzo” Tramaglino, and the pretty and pious peasant girl, Lucia Mondella, are planning to get married. Unfortunately, the local ruler, Don Rodrigo, has noticed the beauty of Lucia, and he has a bet with his decadent cousin, Count Attilio, that he will seduce Lucia. He sends two of his “bravi” (basically thugs) to threaten Don Abbondio, the priest who is supposed to perform the wedding. Don Abbondio is a self-centered coward who takes the bravi’s warnings to heart and tells Renzo that the wedding must be postponed.

On this basic event, a massive, sprawling chronicle unfolds that takes in a famine, a plague, and political upheaval. Renzo and Lucia, with the help of her mother, Agnese, first try to trick Don Abbondio into marrying them by a subterfuge, but he sees through them, and his frantic cries for help awaken the entire village. At the same time, Don Rodrigo’s head henchman, Griso, is leading a group of bravi to kidnap Lucia. Lucia, Agnese, and Renzo barely escape, after being warned by a good friar, Fra Cristoforo. He arranges for Lucia and Agnese to take shelter at a convent, while Renzo heads to Milan seeking work.

While in Milan, the innocent and naive Renzo gets caught up in some bread riots, because prices have risen due to flour shortages resulting from the famine. Manzoni has some fun here at the expense of clueless political leaders who try to curry popularity by defying the laws of economics:

Ferrer [the Grand Chancellor of Milan] saw – and who would not? – that a fair price for bread is a very desirable thing. He thought – and this was his mistake – that all it would require was an order from him. He set the bread meta (as they called the tariff of foodstuffs) at a price that would have been fair if the average price for grain had been thirty-three liras a bushel, when in reality it sold for as much as eighty. He acted like an aging woman who thinks she can be young again by simply altering her birth certificate.

As a result of Ferrer’s folly, the bread shortages worsen, and the chapters describing the horrors of a city in the throes of a deep famine are incredibly moving. Thousands of people die from starvation, and the scenes Manzoni describes are heartrending.

As soon as there is some relief from the famine, the Thirty Years War intrudes in the form of German mercenaries who ravage and pillage the countryside. They also bring another wave of the bubonic plague, and when it strikes the densely populated city of Milan it practically wipes out everyone. Renzo manages to get out and head to the town of Bergamo, where a friend is able to employ him as a silk weaver. 

Meanwhile, Don Rodrigo has not given up his obsession with Lucia. He calls on the most powerful gangster in the area to kidnap her from the convent and bring her to him. This gangster is so feared, he is only referred to as “The Nameless One”. He pulls the strings of every prominent person in northern Italy, and he is incredibly powerful. He succeeds in kidnapping Lucia, and when he first confronts her, her helpless purity and piety somehow warm his cold heart and begins a long process of repentance.

I’ll stop there, because I don’t want to spoil the tale any more. Manzoni does a masterful job of portraying the horror and suffering of those struck by the plague. Nevertheless, this is, at heart, a comic novel, so there are some truly humorous characters and scenes. The aforementioned Don Abbondio is hilarious in his efforts to avoid responsibility and save his skin. He’s a scoundrel, but a lovable one. The Archbishop of Milan, Federigo Borromeo, is a heroic an inspiring man who does everything in his power to alleviate the suffering of those around him. The underlying message throughout the book is that the meek and powerless, through the mercy of God, can eventually triumph.

Many of Manzoni’s characters are based on actual historical figures, and he has a lot of fun making comments on their actions and behavior. The premise of the novel is that he has discovered a lost manuscript, and he is retelling the story related in it to a nineteenth century audience. There are many clever asides to the reader that make the book very enjoyable.

Finally, I must praise the translator of the latest version of The Betrothed, Michael F. Moore. He has made a 200-year-old novel sound as new and up to date as any contemporary writer without losing any of Manzoni’s power and morality. Even though it is 650 pages, I zipped through it in a few days. My all-time favorite author is Charles Dickens, and The Betrothed is on a par with Dickens’ best. It’s a wonderful and moving novel that should be as widely known as any well-loved and revered English language classic.

LITERATURE

Three Men In A Boat: Victorian Humor At Its Best

Jerome K. Jerome’s first book, Three Men in a Boat, was published in 1889, and it is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Apparently, it began as a serious travelogue, and there are stretches of relatively boring descriptions of picturesque towns and villages along the Thames river. However, most of the book concerns the trials and tribulations of the narrator, “J”, his two friends, George and Harris, and a dog, Montmorency, as they take a two-week holiday on a small boat up the river.

I love British humor (P. G. Wodehouse is one of my all-time favorite authors), and I can’t believe I am just now discovering Jerome K. Jerome. He has a deadpan style of narration that heightens the absurdity of the situations he and his friends get themselves into. Throughout the book, Jerome drops small jibes that had me constantly chuckling:

We arranged to start on the following Saturday from Kingston. Harris and I would go down in the morning, and take the boat up to Chertsey, and George, who would not be able to get away from the City till the afternoon (George goes to sleep at a bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they wake him up and put him outside at two), would meet us there.

Jerome’s tale also offers a fascinating glimpse into the habits of vacationing Britishers in the Victorian era. Apparently, it was a common practice to rent a large rowboat, load it up with all kinds of provisions, and head up the Thames for days at a time. To propel the boat, they either sculled (rowed), or used a towline that was pulled by one or two people of the party along a towpath on the bank of the river. in Jerome’s time, steam launches were just coming into use, and he talks about how there was often conflict between the boaters who sculled or towed themselves, and the newfangled motorized boats.

Jerome also uses his narrative to go off on all kinds of tangents, retelling several hilarious stories of his friends’ lives. For example, he talks about a time one of his friends asked him to take home to London a couple of very ripe cheeses. Jerome brought them with him onto the train, and they smelled so awful that no one could stay in the same compartment with him:

From Crewe I had the compartment to myself, though the train was crowded. As we drew up at the different stations, the people, seeing my empty carriage, would rush for it. “Here y’ are, Maria; come along, plenty of room.” “All right, Tom; we’ll get in here,” they would shout. And they would run along, carrying heavy bags, and fight round the door to get in first. And one would open the door and mount the steps, and stagger back into the arms of the man behind him; and they would all come and have a sniff, and then droop off and squeeze into other carriages, or pay the difference and go first.

From Euston, I took the cheeses down to my friend’s house. When his wife came into the room she smelt round for an instant. Then she said:

“What is it? Tell me the worst.”

I said: “It’s cheeses. Tom bought them in Liverpool, and asked me to bring them up with me.”

And I added that I hoped she understood that it had nothing to do with me; and she said that she was sure of that, but that she would speak to Tom about it when he came back.

And here is an excerpt describing how entertaining Harris is at a dinner party. It’s rather long, but it’s so funny I had to include it in its entirety:

I will just give you an idea of Harris’s comic singing, and then you can judge of it for yourself.

Harris (standing up in front of piano and addressing the expectant mob): “I’m afraid it’s a very old thing, you know. I expect you all know it, you know. But it’s the only thing I know. It’s the Judge’s song out of Pinafore — no, I don’t mean Pinafore — I mean — you know what I mean — the other thing, you know. You must all join in the chorus, you know.”

[Murmurs of delight and anxiety to join in the chorus. Brilliant performance of prelude to the Judge’s song in “Trial by Jury” by nervous Pianist. Moment arrives for Harris to join in. Harris takes no notice of it. Nervous pianist commences prelude over again, and Harris, commencing singing at the same time, dashes off the first two lines of the First Lord’s song out of “Pinafore.” Nervous pianist tries to push on with prelude, gives it up, and tries to follow Harris with accompaniment to Judge’s song out “Trial by Jury,” finds that doesn’t answer, and tries to recollect what he is doing, and where he is, feels his mind giving way, and stops short.]

Harris (with kindly encouragement): “It’s all right. You’re doing it very well, indeed — go on.”

Nervous Pianist: “I’m afraid there’s a mistake somewhere. What are you singing?”

Harris (promptly): “Why the Judge’s song out of Trial by Jury. Don’t you know it?”

Some Friend of Harris’s (from the back of the room): “No, you’re not, you chuckle-head, you’re singing the Admiral’s song from Pinafore.”

[Long argument between Harris and Harris’s friend as to what Harris is really singing. Friend finally suggests that it doesn’t matter what Harris is singing so long as Harris gets on and sings it, and Harris, with an evident sense of injustice rankling inside him, requests pianist to begin again. Pianist, thereupon, starts prelude to the Admiral’s song, and Harris, seizing what he considers to be a favourable opening in the music, begins.]

Harris: “ ‘When I was young and called to the Bar.’ ”

[General roar of laughter, taken by Harris as a compliment. Pianist, thinking of his wife and family, gives up the unequal contest and retires; his place being taken by a stronger-nerved man.]

The New Pianist (cheerily): “Now then, old man, you start off, and I’ll follow. We won’t bother about any prelude.”

Harris (upon whom the explanation of matters has slowly dawned — laughing): “By Jove! I beg your pardon. Of course — I’ve been mixing up the two songs. It was Jenkins confused me, you know. Now then.

[Singing; his voice appearing to come from the cellar, and suggesting the first low warnings of an approaching earthquake.]

“ ‘ When I was young I served a term As office-boy to an attorney’s firm.’

(Aside to pianist): “It is too low, old man; we’ll have that over again, if you don’t mind.”

[Sings first two lines over again, in a high falsetto this time. Great surprise on the part of the audience. Nervous old lady near the fire begins to cry, and has to be led out.]

Harris (continuing): “ ‘ I swept the windows and I swept the door, And I—’ No — no, I cleaned the windows of the big front door. And I polished up the floor — no, dash it — I beg your pardon — funny thing, I can’t think of that line. And I — and I — Oh, well, we’ll get on to the chorus, and chance it (sings):

“ ‘ And I diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-de, Till now I am the ruler of the Queen’s navee.’

Now then, chorus — it is the last two lines repeated, you know.

General Chorus: “And he diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-diddle-dee’d, Till now he is the ruler of the Queen’s navee.”

And Harris never sees what an ass he is making of himself, and how he is annoying a lot of people who never did him any harm. He honestly imagines that he has given them a treat, and says he will sing another comic song after supper.

I can glean a few interesting facts about entertaining guests in a Victorian home from this passage: first, it seems to be common practice for guests to volunteer to perform at dinner parties; second, there was no shortage of people who were proficient piano players and familiar with the music of Gilbert and Sullivan; and third, people provided their own entertainment. The popularity of recorded music, then radio, and finally television put an end to that practice, which is a shame.

Jerome, Harris, George, and Montmorency have a generally pleasant and leisurely trip up the Thames, all the way to Oxford. Along the way, Jerome makes humorous observations of local cemeteries, pubs, inns, and other boaters. Montmorency, a fox terrier, tangles with other dogs and the tea kettle. There’s no plot whatsoever, and the intrepid voyagers eventually make it back to London in one piece. If you’re looking for something that is very funny and enjoyable, you couldn’t do much better than Three Men in a Boat. You can download a free digital version here.

LITERATURE

Trollope’s Phineas Finn: Victorian Political Drama

Phineas Finn is the second Anthony Trollope novel I’ve read (you can read my review of Can You Forgive Her? here), and the second in his Palliser series. In this novel, our hero, Phineas Finn, is a good natured, very attractive, and upstanding young man who is the son of an Irish country doctor. His father has paid his expenses while he studies under Mr. Low, a London barrister (lawyer). While dining at his club, young Finn is approached by his friend, Barrington Erle, and convinced to run for a seat in parliament for the borough of Loughshane. It’s a dead certainty he will win it, since there will be no serious opposition. The only problem is that members of parliament (MPs) do not get paid, and Phineas is entirely dependent on his father for his expenses!

Despite his father’s and Mr. Low’s very good arguments against running, Phineas decides to do it, and before he knows it, he is seated in Parliament. His longsuffering father agrees to continue his allowance until he can somehow figure out a way to pay his own way. Soon, he is swimming in the high society of London, but he manages to keep his head and remain humble. He becomes friends with another Irish MP, Laurence Fitzgibbon, a glib and somewhat dissolute young man who wastes no time convinces Finn to guarantee a bill for 250 pounds, assuring him that he will have the money in a couple of weeks, and there is nothing to worry about.

He also is befriended by Lady Laura Standish, who takes Phineas under her wing, because she sees such promise in him. She is another character of Trollope’s who illustrates the frustrating position upper class women in Victorian England were in: she is smart and well educated, and she has good ideas about what legislation should be passed by Parliament, but there is no way she can bring them to fruition, given she has no vote, let alone no way to run for parliament. Phineas is convinced he’s in love with Lady Laura and proposes to her, but she turns him down, because he is penniless, and she has given all of her money to her brother, Lord Chiltern, so he can settle some enormous debts he’s acquired through questionable life choices.

Lord Chiltern is a bit of a wild man – he despises social conventions and proper manners, preferring to spend his time hunting and traveling around England and Europe. He is in love with the beautiful Violet Effingham, who stands to inherit a large fortune when she marries. He has proposed to her three times (not very tactfully, it must be said), and she has flatly refused him because of his poor reputation and erratic behavior. To make things worse, Chiltern’s father has had nothing to do with him since his sister squandered her share of the family fortune to settle his obligations.

Lady Laura convinces Phineas to befriend Chiltern, in the hopes that he will be a moderating influence on him. They become friends, until Phineas meets Violet and decides he wants to marry her! The good friends become deadly rivals.

As a backdrop to all of this drama, Trollope chronicles all of the political intrigue involved in the passage of the Reform Bill of 1866. The reader is shown in exhausting detail how parliament works, and, by and large, it’s not pretty. What is interesting is how Finn, as a tyro MP, gradually gains confidence. At first, he is too terrified to even stand up and make a speech. Eventually, he finds his legs, and he becomes a trusted member of the Liberal party, led by the Prime Minister William Mildmay. Finn’s greatest asset is his ability to keep his mouth shut when necessary and to make pleasant conversation with the right people. Very soon, he is elevated to a paying position in the cabinet. Regardless of his rapid rise in society, he remains a very likeable character, due to his total lack of vanity.

As the novel progresses, Trollope uses various characters to illustrate different issues that were present in Victorian England. Phineas is an ambitious, yet talented and altruistic, young man from whose presence parliament would benefit, yet it is nearly impossible from him to affect legislation, even when he is made a government minister. The crisis of the novel occurs when he has to decide whether he will support a bill that will help his fellow Irish but goes against the policy of the governing party, of which he is a member. If he votes according to his conscience, he will be required to submit his resignation and lose his salary.

Lady Laura is the most tragic figure. Moments before Phineas proposes to her, she accepts Robert Kennedy’s offer of marriage. He is another MP, and one of the richest men in the UK. She feels that through him, she might be able to influence English politics. Unfortunately, Mr. Kennedy is an insufferable prig who insists Laura submit herself to the proper duties of a wife and have no independence at all. Their marriage degenerates to the point where they can barely communicate.

“Laura”, he said, “I am sorry that I contradicted you.”

“I am quite used to it, Robert.”

“No; – you are not used to it.” She smiled and lowered her head.
(ii, p. 109, Oxford Univ. Press Ed., 1991)

There is also a Madame Marie Goesler, a wealthy German widow, who moves in the highest circles of London society, but feels trapped by the fact that she can do nothing but attend parties and host them herself.

Phineas becomes very good friends with Joshua Monk, a “radical” MP who helps Phineas get his confidence during his first term in parliament. Mr. Monk, though, when he is offered and accepts a post in the government by the Liberals, loses his effectiveness as a debater, because he is forced to support the Liberals’ policies, even when he disagrees with them.

Trollope paints a fascinating and detailed picture of how politics worked in Victorian England. There was much frustration at the demands placed upon MPS to toe the party line, yet enforcing party discipline was the only way to get important legislation passed. Like today, opposing parties had to compromise, and everyone gave up something to get something in return. Near the end of the book, Monk’s and Finn’s bill to help Irish tenants fails on the second reading. Finn is dejected, but Monk makes this observation:

“Many who before regarded legislation on the subject as chimerical, will now fancy that it is only dangerous, or perhaps not more than difficult. And so in time it will come to be looked on as among the things possible, then among the things probable; – and so at last it will be ranged on the list of those few measures which the country requires as being absolutely needed. That is the way in which public opinion is made.”
(ii, p. 341)

Like almost all Victorian novels, Phineas Finn is long – 712 pages in the edition I read. However, it is an interesting complement to Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, another tale of a self-made young man. While Dickens was the master of chronicling the travails and triumphs of England’s lower and middle classes, Trollope gives us accurate portraits of what it was like to move in the highest social strata of Victorian society. He isn’t afraid to point out the contradictions and injustices of the governing class, yet all of his characters are real. Phineas Finn is amazingly successful at first, but he has his flaws. His fellow MPs all exhibit human foibles – they each have good qualities as well as lesser ones. However, it’s the female characters that are the most fleshed out by Trollope – he has sincere sympathy for the plight they are in. They have very limited choices: either marry or be an “old maid”, but in neither case can a woman be an active political force. And once a young woman marries, she has no rights to any property or personal agency. If a young woman is due to inherit wealth, there is no guarantee she will be allowed to use it to live independently. However, lest one think Phineas Finn is all angst and frustration, Trollope sprinkles a lot of humor to leaven the drama. At heart, he loves his country and its people.

There are lots of free digital versions of Phineas Finn (you can download a nicely formatted one here.), but I really appreciated my Oxford University Press edition, because it had lots of helpful notes that explained the political events that were occurring at the time the novel is set in, as well as the meanings of slang phrases, references to other literary works, etc. I’ve read two of the six Palliser novels, so I guess I’d better get ready to tackle Phineas Redux next!

LITERATURE, Republic of Letters

Futility and Meaning in Willa Cather’s “O Pioneers!”

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
– Ecclesiastes 1:1-3

Imagine being a woman on the threshold of adulthood – ready to set out and make a life for yourself. For a woman in late nineteenth century Nebraska, that likely means marrying and settling down on your own farm. But then your father’s dying wish is that you carry on his life’s fruitless endeavors. He unshackles the albatross from his neck and chains it to yours, since your brothers have no imagination and your mother wishes she had never left her home country. And you have a young brother you must now essentially raise as your own child. A burden far too much for a 20-year-old woman to bear.

Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! masterfully portrays the ruggedness of a harsh landscape as it was broken and transformed by the blood, sweat, tears, and lives of European immigrants who moved to America in search of something better than they had. Cather’s depiction of their lives suggests they didn’t find it, but maybe they made a better life for their grandchildren, although the emergence of the Dust Bowl a few decades after this book ends suggests they didn’t. In fact, their very efforts to remake the landscape likely caused the ecological disaster that ensued, which then spurred a new emigration, this time to California. In the end, their efforts to remake the land were futile. Their life’s work literally blown away on the wind.

O Pioneers! is generally thought of as an homage to the strength of the American prairie and the strength of the people who supposedly conquered it. At face value, that is true. At the time of publication (1913), the widespread drought to hit the American prairie region was still decades away. It is also often held up as a pillar of feminist triumph, with a strong female lead who is fiercely independent in her efforts to tame the land. That is a superficial and ultimately inaccurate reading, since Alexandra Bergson ultimately realizes her life’s meaning cannot be found in toiling over the land or crunching numbers in an account book.

Cather’s greatest strength in this novel is her ability to say so much with so few words. This brevity reflects the openness of her prairie home. She’ll often use brief phrases in the voices of her characters to make brief but deep statements, often in the mouth of Carl Linstrum, Alexandra love interest. Carl is the one who leaves the Divide as a teenager once his family decides to give up and return to St. Louis. Carl spends his life drifting, working as an engraver and dabbling in art. As an aside, that gave me a chuckle as my Swedish great-grandfather Oscar Engstrom worked as an engraver, and I grew up surrounded by his framed watercolors. Though he died before my grandparents even met, he has cast a long shadow over me, inspiring my own interest in watercolor.

Perhaps Cather is reflecting herself in Carl’s character as someone who left Nebraska yet found herself haunted by it, as evidenced in her work. One of Carl’s more poignant quotes is telling:

Freedom so often means that one isn’t needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and our delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by.

All we have ever managed to do is pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theaters. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.”

– O Pioneers! – Part II, Chapter IV

Today we might leave behind a smartphone, a video game console, and a pantry full of mass-manufactured chemicals masquerading as food. Apart from that, little has changed. We live lives of brutal obscurity. At best we might wave at our neighbors while taking the dog out, but deep down we know we won’t be missed when we move from one apartment to another or one job to another. We are cogs in a machine. Rolling stones that gather no moss. Carl (and Cather) comment on the same obscurity and brutality of life that Steven Wilson brilliantly analyzed in his album Hand. Cannot. Erase. just over 100 years after Cather wrote O Pioneers! Nothing is new under the sun.

Cather had the opportunity to experience both the ruggedness of the open land and the suffocating closeness of the city. She writes as someone who knows the futility of city life firsthand. And yet she never moved back to Nebraska, despite multiple novels ostensibly romanticizing rugged prairie life.

Or is she really romanticizing it? She did leave, after all, something her main character wanted so strongly for her little brother, Emil. Having not grown up in the Great Plains, I can’t exactly relate to Cather’s nostalgia. (I grew up in northern Illinois, though, and I will likely always have a soft spot in my heart for the flat fields of corn speckled with farms and distant treelines.) Yet after reading O Pioneers! I am left with a torn sentiment of the landscape so masterfully described, conquered, and lived in. It seemed to keep its more thoughtful inhabitants enthralled. They both hated and loved it. Both Alexandra and her father seemed to love it passionately, yet it is clear Alexandra is yoked to it.

As the book rolls through Alexandra’s life, the reader begins to wonder what she has to show for it? Yes, she has tamed the land, and she has even shown herself to be shrewd with business. She saw the potential her father saw in the land that others missed and even abandoned in hard times, buying their plots on credit and paying off the debt once the land soared in value. But beyond the land and some employees, what does she have? Two brothers who can’t stand her and another brother who doesn’t fit with the landscape, much like her lost, found, lost, and found again lover, Carl. She has no family of her own, no meaningful life beyond the day-to-day existence. It’s as if she, like her deceased father lying in his grave, is being swallowed up by the land while still alive. What is the point of her life? To continue fighting the land and the stubborn people who inhabit it?

Same old song
Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see

Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind

– Kansas (Kerry Livgren) – “Dust in the Wind”

Every time Carl walks back into Alexandra’s life, a subtle sense of regret pops up, as if she knows life has more to it than what she has created. She wishes she could go with him wherever he might go, live how he lives, be with the only man who ever seemed to understand her. From the get-go in this story, he’s the only other character besides Emil who seems to have a strong sense of empathy (he rescues little Emil’s kitten from a telegraph pole on a blustery winter day). And yet his sensitivity is what makes those around Alexandra dislike him. Her brothers call her foolish for considering marriage at the age of forty.

Sadly it takes extreme tragedy for Alexandra to finally break free from the yoke her father placed on her and make her own choice. Or more accurately, it was an outside force that broke the yoke – the murder of Emil and Marie. Once this yoke is gone, then Carl is willing both to return and to stay, something he never seemed able to do before. While the story ends on the rosier implication that Alexandra has finally found peace with her lover returning to the Divide, she actually finds that peace a couple chapters earlier. The death of Emil rocks her world unlike anything else she has experienced. Her emotional breakdown culminates in her being caught out in an evening storm in the graveyard at the graves of her father and brother. Her friends find her and bring her home and put her to bed. As she nods off, she revisits a dream she has had repeatedly since her youth, yet this time the dream is fulfilled:

As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly than for many years, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and carried away by some one very strong. He was with her a long while this time, and carried her very far, and in his arms she felt free from pain. When he laid her down on her bed again, she opened her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, she saw him, saw him clearly, though the room was dark, and his face was covered. He was standing in the doorway of her room. His white cloak was thrown over his face, and his head was bent a little forward. His shoulders seemed as strong as the foundations of the world. His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark and gleaming, like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of the mightiest of all lovers. She knew at last for whom it was she had waited, and where he would carry her. That, she told herself, was very well. Then she went to sleep.

O Pioneers! – Part V, Chapter I

This passage is the most important in the book, yet it is very easy to miss or dismiss: a dream following an exhausting physical and emotional experience. Yet Cather writes that this has been a recurring dream for Alexandra, one that only now in the midst of tragedy is made clear. Alexandra finds her peace, meaning, and purpose in the true source of peace, meaning, and purpose – Jesus Christ.

Why, might you ask, do I conclude that Cather is referring to Jesus in this passage? Let’s look at the description of Jesus in His glory as seen in the book of Revelation:

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.

– Revelation 1:12-16 (ESV)

Cather’s description of this “mightiest of all lovers” mirrors the description of Christ from Revelation. The description of his skin as a bronze color is a direct reference, and I think that is the clear giveaway. Everyone else in this story is almost assuredly of extremely fair skin. The major characters are either Scandinavian or Bohemian, not races known for dark complexions. In Cather’s description, this individual is shown with a white cloak that “was thrown over his face.” The description of Jesus in Revelation explains why his face might need to be covered in this interaction with Alexandra: eyes like a flame of fire and a face shining like the sun in full strength. Not exactly something which someone experiencing traumatic emotions would want to be confronted.1

With this encounter with Jesus, Alexandra is changed. Following this she travels to the prison in Lincoln to visit her brother and friend’s killer and offer him forgiveness. The grip the land has over her is loosened, allowing her finally to open her heart to Carl Linstrum and embrace the beauty, meaning, and purpose God gives us with love and marriage. Her breakdown in the cemetery and encounter with God in a dream shows her that what really matters is far more than what we build and grow with our hands and sweat. The people we love and the connections we make is what matters. How we treat others, how we care for those who need it, how we treat the world around us: those are things that matter. No matter what we build, it won’t ultimately give us the satisfaction we seek, no matter where we live or what we do. Carl Linstrum was right: “there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years” (Part II, Chapter IV). Or as Solomon put it, “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

  1. I came to this conclusion before consulting any secondary readings on O Pioneers! Some literary scholars (but not all) disagree with what I believe is an obvious interpretation of this passage. Many critics identify the person Alexandra sees in her dream as Death, going so far as to say that she had a death wish. David Stouck says as much, using rather bizarre language to describe the transformation Alexandra undergoes after the dream: “The final possibility of a marriage between Carl and Alexandra is perhaps sheer wish-fulfillment on the author’s part (that desire to be united with the eternal mother), but it is always held in perspective by the repeated account of Alexandra’s dream wherein only the mightiest of all lovers can carry her off, that lover being identified towards the end of the novel as none less than Death” (Stouck, 30). This is a remarkably inaccurate reading of this passage, especially considering how Alexandra’s behavior changes in the aftermath. Maire Mullins points out that it is following this dream that Alexandra goes to visit Frank Shabata in prison to offer him forgiveness for killing Emil and Marie. Mullins rightly recognizes the Christlike imagery in this dream. Mullins interprets the earlier dreams as Alexandra wrestling with her suppressed erotic desires. She argues that Alexandra spends the majority “of her life sublimating the erotic power that lies within her,” focusing on her farm instead. When she had these dreams Alexandra would try and block them out by taking a vigorous bath, even literally pouring cold water over herself in an effort to scrub out any hint of sexuality. Mullins accurately acknowledges the presence of Christ in the ultimate satisfying dream that Alexandra has, but she oddly claims the dream merges Christianity with Native American myths, a theme she tries to draw from other parts of the text. I believe this is reading something into the passage that simply is not there. Further, she limits the transformative power of Christ in Alexandra’s life. Mullins concludes that this encounter in the dream allows her to forgive Shabata and finally connect with Carl Linstrum through “the conscious connection to the erotic and spiritual power within.” This is the problem with the overarching feminist theory Mullins applies to her reading from the beginning of her article. It discounts the power of Christ to truly transform a person’s desires, instead limiting it to some vague sense of self-realization where Alexandra accepts her sexuality. In actuality, she finds the peace and meaning she has been searching for all along, finding that it is not in the land or in the sexuality she seeks to repress. It is in Jesus. With that ultimate realization, she is finally able to let Carl into her life since his presence will not impact her value or worth, just like her impact on the land will not impact her value or worth. Those things are inherent through her relationship to God. ↩︎

Works Cited

Mullins, Maire. “Alexandra’s Dreams: ‘The Mightiest of All Lovers’ In Willa Cather’s ‘O Pioneers!'” Great Plains Quarterly 25, no. 3 (2005): 147–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23533606.

Stouck, David. “O Pioneers!: Willa Cather and the Epic Imagination.” Prairie Schooner 46, no. 1 (1972): 23–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40629091.

Art, Faith, LITERATURE

Andrew Klavan’s The Kingdom of Cain: Beauty from Darkness

Andrew Klavan is one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking cultural critics working today. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also an excellent mystery writer. His Cameron Winter series of novels has given me hours of great enjoyment, and he’s just getting started with it.

Besides mysteries, Klavan also writes nonfiction, including the bestselling The Truth and Beauty, where he discusses how nineteenth century romantic poetry reflects eternal Truths. His latest book, The Kingdom of Cain, is subtitled Finding God in the Literature of Darkness, and he isn’t kidding when he says Literature of Darkness! He focuses on three horrific and infamous crimes, and then he describes how each one led to extraordinarily beautiful and inspirational works of art. So how can the terrible crime of murder lead to great art? As he puts it in the Introduction,

The opposite of murder is creation – creation, which is the telos of love. And because art, true art, is an act of creation, it always transforms its subject into itself, even if the subject is murder. An act of darkness is not the same thing as a work of art about an act of darkness. The murders in Shakespeare’s Macbeth are horrific, but they are a beautiful part of the play. (p. 17)

To continue reading, click here.

Faith, LITERATURE, Philosophy

Ross Douthat’s Believe: Apologetics for a Skeptical Age

Ross Douthat is a New York Times columnist who opines regularly on issues of morality, faith, and culture. His latest book, Believe, is an interesting entry in the crowded catalog of Christian apologetics. 

Douthat chooses to devote most of his book to making the case for a higher reality than the one we can measure scientifically. As he puts it in the introduction,

Whatever mysteries and riddles inhere in our existence, ordinary reason plus a little curiosity should make us well aware of the likelihood that this life isn’t all there is, that mind and spirit are just an illusion woven by our cells and atoms, that some kind of supernatural power shaped and still influences out lives and universe. (p. 7)

Believe is not a long book – eight chapters, 206 pages – but it is packed with weighty argument and evidence for a “supernatural” reality. The chapter titles outline his thesis:

  1. The Fashioned Universe
  2. The Mind and the Cosmos
  3. The Myth of Disenchantment
  4. The Case for Commitment
  5. Big Faiths and Big Divisions
  6. Three Stumbling Blocks
  7. The End of Exploring
  8. A Case Study: Why I Am a Christian

What is welcoming about Douthat’s approach is his invitation to simply accept the evidence around you and acknowledge that some sort of creative intelligence is the likeliest explanation for our universe. He doesn’t even get into why he believes Christianity fits the bill until the final chapter. As a matter of fact, he posits that belief in any of the major religions – Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam – can lead a person to ultimate truth better than nonbelief:

Your choice might be the wrong one ultimately but the right one for you in that moment, or the wrong one but with enough that’s right in it to make an important difference in your life. And if, in the end, your initial conversion doesn’t convert you the the true faith, the religion you enter will have hopefully acquired enough truth and wisdom in its long development to make a ladder upward, from the mire of meaninglessness and the snares of indecision toward whatever the full plan of your life is meant to be. (p. 149)

In The Mind and the Cosmos chapter, Douthat points out that 

It isn’t merely that the universe appears improbably fine-tuned to enable our existence. It’s that our own consciousness seems improbably capable when it comes to discovering that fine-tuning, like a key fitted to a lock. (p. 61)

In other words, it’s a miracle that the universe is habitable for us and we are able to discern that habitability. 

From that basic argument, Douthat builds his case, eventually addressing three “stumbling blocks” that prevent people from believing in God: 

  1. Why Does God Allow So Many Wicked Things to Happen?
  2. Why Do Religious Institutions Do So Many Wicked Things?
  3. Why Are Traditional Religions So Hung Up on Sex?

His answers to these questions are thoughtful, comprehensive, and convincing. 

It isn’t until the last chapter that Douthat makes the case for Christianity as the best explanation for reality and how we should live. As he acknowledges, he’s a Christian because that was the dominant religion of the culture in which he was raised. At no point in the book does Douthat promote Christianity at the expense of the other major religions (although he is careful to warn the reader against getting involved in cults or Satanism!). This fair-minded approach is very effective, in my opinion, making his points hard to refute. 

Believe is the latest in a long line of Christian apologetics (the first of which is probably Augustine’s Confessions, but I’m not sure), but it is somewhat unusual in its acceptance of other ways of reaching the truth. Douthat is primarily concerned with winning people over to a belief in a Creator God who cares about his creation. Once one has made the commitment to that belief, Douthat is confident that a sincere seeker will eventually be rewarded with a greater understanding of how we should order our lives, and, as a result, live much more fulfilling lives.

LITERATURE

John Wyndham’s The Kraken Wakes: Deep Sea Dystopia

The Kraken Wakes (1953) is John Wyndham’s sixth novel and the first to follow his masterpiece, The Day of the Triffids. Like its predecessor, The Kraken Wakes is the story of an apocalyptic event that threatens the survival of humanity. In this case, it isn’t mass blindness and carnivorous, mobile plants, but rather an unseen yet enormously powerful alien presence that makes its home in the deepest sections of our oceans.

Wyndham begins his tale with the two main characters, Mike and Phyllis Watson, watching icebergs in the English Channel slowly drift past them. Wait, what? Icebergs in the English Channel? Yes, and it isn’t until nearly the end of the book that we learn why that’s the case.

The story is told through the eyes of Mike Watson, a scriptwriter and journalist for the EBC (English Broadcasting Corporation). He divides his account into three large sections, Phase One, Phase Two, and Phase Three.

Continued here.

LITERATURE

Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? Another Victorian Classic

Ever since I read Charles Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers, I have been a fan of Victorian literature. Anthony Trollope was a contemporary of Dickens, and an incredibly prolific writer. Can You Forgive Her? is the first novel in his Palliser series. It begins with the dilemma facing Alice Vavasor: “What should a woman do with her life?” For an upper-class woman in Victorian England, the options were limited to marrying or living with relatives the rest of your life.

Alice is engaged to a man everyone (including her) acknowledges is a perfect catch. John Grey has a substantial estate in Cambridgeshire, he is definitely in love with her, he is intelligent, handsome, and doting. Yet, Alice looks upon a future with him with apprehension – she only sees herself trapped in a boring country estate with no intellectual or social stimulation. As she explains to her aunt McLeod,

People always do seem to think it so terrible that a girl should have her own way in anything. She mustn’t like any one at first; and then, when she does like some one, she must marry him directly she’s bidden. I haven’t much of my own way at present; but you see, when I’m married I shan’t have it at all.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE. Can You Forgive Her? (Kindle Locations 564-566). Delphi Classics. Kindle Edition.

It doesn’t help that she previously was in love with her cousin, George Vavasor, who cheated on her. He fancies himself a bohemian who is above such mundane institutions as marriage, and he and his sister, Kate, waste no time convincing Alice to break off her engagement with Grey.

Alice convinces herself she is unworthy of being John Grey’s wife, but to her consternation, he refuses to accept her rejection of him and insists she is still betrothed to him. He isn’t ugly or forceful in any way, he is simply confident that, given time, she will come to her senses and return to him.

Kate Vavasor is also unmarried, and she has an extended visit with her aunt, Arabella Greenow. Mrs. Greenow has recently lost her fabulously wealthy older husband, and Trollope’s account of how she flirts with two men – the boring but well-off farmer Mr. Cheesacre and the dashing but penniless Mr. Bellfield – while observing the proper mourning rituals is hilarious.

Yet another cousin of Alice, Lady Glencora Palliser, invites Alice up to her estate to spend a few weeks. Lady Glencora is very rich, very young, and recently married to Plantagenet Palliser, a very dull man who greatest ambition is to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. She once loved a dissolute young man, Burgo Fitzgerald, but her family intervened and made her marry the much more suitable Palliser. He doesn’t give her much attention, and she is fairly miserable.

Burgo is friends with George Vavasor, and he hopes to elope with Glencora to Italy. George doesn’t encourage him to do this, but he doesn’t discourage him, either. George is basically amoral, and he pursues whatever path will give him the most pleasure. He breaks up Alice and John Grey’s engagement, because he gets a kick out of it, not because he is in love with Alice. So the stage is set for all kinds of social intrigue and shenanigans; in other words, a perfect setting for a Victorian novel!

This is the first novel by Trollope I’ve read, and I’m impressed. He is very different from Dickens, though. Where it was always clear from his works that Dickens had a heart for the poor and downtrodden in Victorian England, Trollope obviously moved in a higher social setting. He chronicles the issues and conflicts facing the British governing class in the mid-nineteenth century.

Can You Forgive Her? is primarily concerned with the limited options available to upper class women of that time. Alice is principled (to a fault) and wants to make a difference in English society. Her only option, since she can’t vote – let alone run for Parliament – is to ally herself to someone who can run for office. That is a major reason why she breaks off her engagement to John Grey; he is quite happy to live a quiet and prosperous life in Cambridgeshire, taking no interest at all in politics.

Lady Glencora is forced into a marriage with the up and coming Plantagenet Palliser, and even though it is her fortune that makes possible his political career, she has no interest. She is the most interesting character in the novel. She yearns to be free of stuffy Victorian conventions, and she delights in tweaking her poor husband’s sensibilities. She’s never in danger of getting into any scandal, but she is very funny whenever she decides to do what she wants.

More serious is George Vavasor. Initially, he is a somewhat sympathetic character, in that he wants his former love, Alice, to renew their relationship. He is very clever in the ways he manipulates her and his sister, Kate, to get what he wants. As the novel progresses, he becomes more and more trapped in a downward spiral of greed, deceit, and fury. By the end of the book, he is truly evil.

Plantagenet undergoes character growth in a positive way, learning how to be a good husband to Lady Glencora restoring proper perspective to his life. He and Cora will return in later Palliser novels, and I look forward to seeing their marriage mature.

Aunt Greenow also develops into a worthy character. At first, she is comical in her flirtations with Mr. Cheesacre and Captain Bellfield, but when her niece Kate needs her, she is there with excellent advice and moral support.

The main negative of the novel is the indecision of Alice when it comes to accepting John Grey’s standing offer to resume their engagement. She drags her feet for increasingly poor reasons, and it gets tiresome to read of her inner struggles when there really isn’t much reason for them. However, as a portrait of upper class Victorian England, Can You Forgive Her? is a detailed and fascinating glimpse into a long gone era. I will definitely read the next novel in the series, Phineas Finn.