I would have thought that there wasn't a novel by Anthony Trollope that I hadn't read, but browsing the library shelves, I found one that was unfamiliar to me. It's a short, late novel called An Eye for an Eye. It dates from 1878 (Trollope, born in 1815, died in 1882.
Trollope wrote forty-seven fluent novels and thoroughly mastered his craft. An Eye for an Eye reprises familiar motifs, most notably Trollope's favorite situation of the weak hero torn between private and public callings. Shall it be love, this time, or shall it be duty? In this particular case, the hero is young, uncommonly simple Fred Neville, who promises himself to the Irish beauty Kate O'Hara but also agrees that he will never dishonor the Scroope name (he's the heir to the Earl of Scroope) by marrying beneath his station. It's a typical Trollope situation but daring for its time, because Fred impregnates Kate (when? between chapters?Although I thought I was reading attentively, I missed the moment).
Trollope creates an awkward situation, but I'm sorry to say, gets himself and Fred off the hook by throwing one of the major characters under the metaphorical bus, so to speak. I don't like it when novelists sidestep the dilemmas that they create. Trollope clearly admires the aristocratic Scroopes, but either volitionally or unconsciously (it's hard to say which) manages to persuade his readers that they're better off giving the upper classes a wide berth.
Trollope was not a learned or innovative thinker, like his greater contemporary George Eliot, but in his later novels he pushed, a little, against Victorian prudery. His last novel, Dr. Wortle's School, which I've recently re-read, deals with the potentially shocking question of bigamy.
I often wonder why I'm such a Trollope fan. There's so much about him to dislike: his crude anti-feminism, his condescension to people of other colors and to non-English nations, his obsessions with class and cash, his disgust with Jews, his ridiculous worship of horses and hunting, etc. And yet, he tells a great story, he loves his characters, and his dialogue is always bright and witty.
Although he is not an author who transcends time and place, Trollope is still the best writer to investigate of you want to learn about both the strengths and the weaknesses of nineteenth-century England.
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