http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1305941...

I had gone off the Barchester Chronicles a bit after not really enjoying the second's retreading of the first's territory, so it was good to find new ground being broken here. In fact it reminded me a lot of both Middlemarch and P.G. Wodehouse, though less serious than the former, less funny than the latter and frankly not quite as good as either.

It is pretty obvious from the word go that Frank and Mary are destined for each other, not least because Trollope interrupts and delays the narrative to tell us so (which I find a bit precious). It also becomes obvious at a very early stage how Frank's mother's snobbish objections to Mary's (relative) poverty will be overcome, to the point that I found myself wondering how on earth Trollope was going to keep to book going for another x hundred pages (answer: by introducing more characters, or by blatant digression).

Although the characters are not especially three-dimensional, they kept my attention (more than Dave Eggers or seventeenth-century England). The happy ending is a bit of a cop-out, in that the social pretensions of Frank's mother triumph rather than being seriously challenged (Mary is still illegitimate at the end of the book, but now she is rich so everything is all right). It's a pleasant little tale as it is; I would have cheered a little harder if Frank and Mary had got on with their marriage on a modest income and without Lady Arabella's blessing.

(In real life, when I have encountered people behaving badly about their children's prospective weddings, they are usually repeating patterns of bad behaviour learnt from their own parents, often indeed about their own weddings; Trollope doesn't really indicate that as being a factor here.)

Anyway, I enjoyed it, especially the election chapters (always a winner for me). ( )

The third volume in Trollope's Barchester Chronicles, is, for the most part, a typical tale of young lovers separated by the rigid class distinctions of Victorian England. Frank Gresham, whose father has mismanaged the family fortune and is on the verge of losing his beloved estate, is expected to marry for money, but he has long loved Mary Thorne, the titleless, penniless niece of the local doctor. It all turns out well for them in the end, of course, as in such novels it usually does; but it's the many sidetracks and delightful characterizations and the way these are all intertwined that make so enjoyable. The perpetually intoxicated Sir Roger Scatchard, for example, a murderer who did his time, made a fortune in the railroads, and was granted a baronetcy, and his lovable, unaffected wife, Lady Scatchard, who enjoyed life much more as a wet nurse. Lady Gresham, who would willingly marry her children to nobodies--as long as they came with enough cash to save the estate. The down-to-earth Miss Dunstable, heir to the Oil of Lebanon fortune, who knows a golddigger when she sees one and encourages Frank to go with his heart. Uber-snob Amelia DeCourcey, who persuades her cousin Augusta Gresham that it is her duty to rejct the proposal of the lawyer, Mr. Gazeby--and then promptly marries him herself. Doctor Thorne himself takes the part of the voice of reason throughout. While not quite as enjoyable as or , partly because of its predictable plot, is still an enjoyable read. ( )

Third volume of the Barchester Chronicles series, and first one to have a Dickensian plot twist – the “orphan” heroine is really the niece of the rich railway builder who conveniently leaves his fortune to her. But, in contrast to Dickens, the plot twist is known all along, and unfolds according to plan. The plot is just a vehicle that allows the characters to be developed and enjoyed. The lower class railway building magnate is a failure as a character – very one dimensional and unbelievable. Trollope is best with the minor gentry and clergy that make up the rest of the cast. Mary Thorne is a treat, and interestingly, much of her character development is expressed in her dialogue rather than descriptive text.

Includes some language that I thought was more modern: people getting “sore” at each other; something being declared as “no go”; and the phrase “more power to you” which was overused in the Philippines in the 1990s.
Read February 2008 ( )

Trollope is always entertaining, but this book is a bit less interesting than some of the others. The central theme, "blue blood vs. new money", is one that has been worked over by so many 19th and 20th century novelists that there can't be much of interest left to say about it. Trollope plays around with the narrative conventions of the marriage-and-inheritance plot a bit, not least in his characteristic trick of "killing suspense" by warning us early on what is going to happen, then leaving us to wonder how he is going to get there. Thorne, Mary and Frank are good almost to the point of tedium, but they do get into a few good dialogues, mostly with Frank's mother and his aunt, the closest things we have to real villains in this book. Sir Roger Scratcherd should be a more interesting character than he is: obviously the character suffered from the necessity Trollope found of killing him off early, but there also seems to be a strong element of snobbery in the caricature. Real "rags to riches" railway contractors like Sir Samuel Morton Peto (who started out as a brickie) seem to have fitted into the upper classes of Victorian society much more easily than the fictional Scratcherd, with his brandy bottle under the pillow.

Two things that really irritated me in the story: firstly Thorne's insistence on keeping Mary (an adult) in the dark about her origins, even when he has told Frank and his father the full story. Even in the big revelation scene at the end, Thorne doesn't tell Mary anything about her new situation until he has discussed it with the Greshams and tried to get Frank to be the one to break the news to Mary. If I were Mary, I'd be a bit miffed about this patronising behaviour. Secondly the total lack of interest anyone shows in the situation of Mary's mother. Is she still alive? does Mary have half-brothers and sisters in America? Not even Mary (once she's finally been told that she has a mother) seems to care. ( )

Read all the Jane Austen books??? ( )