Group read: The Belton Estate by Anthony Trollope

The Belton Estate by Anthony Trollope (1865)

    "You may laugh at him, but you'd like him if you knew him."
    "One never can be sure of that from a lady's account of a man. When a man talks to me about another man, I can generally tell whether I should like him or not---particularly if I know the man well who is giving the description; but it is quite different when a woman is the describer."
    "You mean that you won't take my word?"
    "We see with different eyes in such matters. I have no doubt your cousin is a worthy man---and as prosperous a gentleman as the Thane of Cawdor in his prosperous days;---but probably if he and I came together we shouldn't have a word to say to each other."
    Clara almost hated Captain Aylmer for speaking as he did, and yet she knew that it was true. Will Belton was not an educated man, and were they two to meet in her presence,---the captain and the farmer,---she felt that she might have to blush for her cousin. But yet he was the better man of the two. She knew that he was the better man of the two...

Welcome to the group read of Anthony Trollope's The Belton Estate!

In 1865, Trollope was one of the founders of a new magazine, The Fortnightly Review. It was decided that the magazine would include serialised novels, and Trollope was asked to produce the first such work. The Belton Estate, and the novel ran from the magazine's first issue of 15th May 1865 through to 1st January 1866.

The novel then appeared in book form---being technically published in December 1865, but, as was sometimes the case with British novels of this period, given a copyright of the following year.

(The rest of you are free to ignore this technicality, but it's one of those things that triggers my OCD!)

At its first appearance, The Belton Estate was very much overshadowed by the success of Can You Forgive Her?, and many people were disappointed in this relatively minor work. Critical response was mixed, varying from praise to dismissal. However, like many of Trollope's minor works, its reputation has since improved as people are able to assess it without the baggage.

It is true that the novel offers the very familiar Trollope scenario of a woman caught between two disparate suitors, and also true than in working out its plot it shares certain themes with Can You Forgive Her?: the different way in which it handles them is one of its main points of interest.

This novel also features a heroine who is allowed to speak more forthrightly of her circumstances, and of the position of women in her society, than was sometimes the case with Trollope.

The Belton Estate was originally published in three volumes (over Trollope's objections, he wanted only two), and is readily available through the usual sources: the Oxford 'World's Classics' series, Penguin, and as a free ebook through Project Gutenberg.

I am not aware than any of the reissues have kept the original volume format, but rather number the chapters straight through. But if you do have a variant edition, please let us know.

The Belton Estate is a short novel by Trollope's standards, only 32 chapters long. We can take our time with it---and you can all take your time starting if you need to, with the New Year / New Groups changeovers. I suggest we aim at two chapters per day, but if a more rapid pace suits better, that's no probem.

The usual guidelines apply:

1. Whenever commenting, always start by listing the chapter to which you are referring in bold.

2. Be mindful of others: use spoiler tags if you have read the book before, or get ahead of other readers.

3. If your edition has an introduction, or end- or footnotes, please don't read them before you read the book!

4. If you have a question, a comment or just a thought, please post it! The more contributions we get, the better and more rewarding this group read will be.

Cast of characters:

Mr Bernard Amedroz - owner in his lifetime of the Belton Estate
Charlie Amedroz - his son, dead through suicide
Clara Amerdroz - his daughter

William Belton - a Norfolk farmer, entailed heir to the Belton Estate
Mary Belton - his sister

Mrs Winterfield - an elderly lady, a connection by marriage to the Amedrozes

Captain Frederic Aylmer - nephew to Mrs Winterfield
Sir Anthony Aylmer - his father
Lady Aylmer - his mother; sister to Mrs Winterfield
Anthony Aylmer - his brother
Belinda Aylmer - his sister

Colonel Askerton - a tenant of Mr Amedroz, a retired soldier
Mrs Askerton - his wife

Mr Green - legal advisor to the Amedrozes; a friend of Will Belton

Mr Wright - the minister at Belton
Mr Possitt - the curate at Perivale

One point before we start (which I found an amusing follow-up to the pronunciation debate re: Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks:

As far as I am aware, the correct pronunciation of Amedroz is "Ahm-droz": does anyone know for sure?

As I say, there is no rush about making a start, though I will begin comments tomorrow; but please do check in and let us know if you will be participating or lurking.

I'm in! I will start tomorrow, and I'll be alternating between the LibriVox recording and the free Kindle ebook.

I'm planning to join in on this one. I ended up ordering a used paperback which won't get here until next weekend, so I'll start then.

I'm in. I read The Belton Estate in 2021, so not sure if I will re-read or not, but will certainly follow along. I read the Dover edition that is now falling apart, but have ordered an older OUP edition (I think like the one pictured in >1 lyzard:) on its way.

Trollope is the featured January Monthly Author here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/346555#
so you might want to post an announcement over there.

I'm lurking--I read this one in 2022 and don't plan to re-read, but I'll be following along with interest.

I have an ebook copy ready to go.

Sort of lurking, at least for this minute. I’m just finishing up Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country and mostly enjoying it. The (anti)heroine is reminiscent of some of a Trollope’s characters: totally grasping; can’t understand why she can’t have what she wants right now; lacking in any human warmth…but Wharton has a refreshingly scathing pen.

I’ll be starting TBE in a couple of days.

>&, >8 japaul22:, >9 kac522:, >10 NinieB:, >11 CDVicarage:, >12 Matke:

Welcome, Carrie, Jennifer, Kathy, Ninie, Kerry and Gail---thank you all for joining in. :)

>9 kac522:

Thank you so much for the heads-up, Kathy, I will do that.

I know too that we have one or two others still to sign in so I will hold off the starting comments just a bit longer.

Right---let's do this:

The Belton Estate opens in an unusually grim manner, with an account of the suicide of the heroine's brother.

The consequences for her are manifold: in edition to her personal loss, her father's effort's to pay off her brother's debts have left him unable to make any financial provision for her; while the lack of a male heir means that upon her father's death, his estate will pass to the entailed heir.

It is important that we understand the family's circumstances of this at the outset, and their relationship to some of the other characters:

Chapter 1:

That and the whole parish of Belton did once,---and that not long ago,---belong to the Amedroz family. They had inherited it from the Beltons of old, an Amedroz having married the heiress of the family. And as the parish is large, stretching away to Exmoor on one side, and almost to the sea on the other, containing the hamlet of Redicote, lying on the Taunton high road,---Redicote, where the post-office is placed, a town almost in itself, and one which is now much more prosperous than Belton,---as the property when it came to the first Amedroz had limits such as these, the family had been considerable in the county. But these limits had been straitened in the days of the grandfather and the father of Bernard Amedroz; and he, when he married a Miss Winterfield of Taunton, was thought to have done very well, in that mortgages were paid off the property with his wife's money to such an extent as to leave him in clear possession of an estate that gave him two thousand a year...

****

After him, unless he should leave a son behind him, there would be no Amedroz left among the Quantock hills; and by some arrangement in respect to that Winterfield money which came to him on his marriage,---the Winterfields having a long-dated connection with the Beltons of old,---the Amedroz property was, at Bernard's marriage, entailed back upon a distant Belton cousin, one Will Belton, whom no one had seen for many years, but who was by blood nearer to the squire, in default of children of his own, than any other of his relatives. And now Will Belton was the heir to Belton Castle; for Charles Amedroz, at the age of twenty-seven, had found the miseries of the world to be too many for him, and had put an end to them and to himself...

****

All the neighbours around understood the whole history of the entail, and knew that the property was to go to Will Belton. Now Will Belton was not a gentleman! So, at least, said the Belton folk, who had heard that the heir had been brought up as a farmer somewhere in Norfolk... And the people, in spite of his name, regarded him as an interloper. To them, with their short memories and scanty knowledge of the past, Amedroz was more honourable than Belton, and they looked upon the coming man as an intruder. Why should not Miss Clara have the property? Miss Clara had never done harm to any one!

So from this we understand that the estate traditionally belonged to the Beltons; that it passed to the Amedroz family upon the marriage of an only Belton daughter; has stayed with the Amedroz family as long as there was a male heir with Belton blood; but now, with the death of Charlie Amedroz, the estate will revert to Beltons after Mr Amedroz' death---leaving Clara both financially destitute and homeless.

Trollope, though Clara, is unusually critical of various aspects of women's lives in this novel, which is one of the most interesting things about it; but this is as much as we get of any criticism of the entail, though its impact upon dispossessed women is self-evident. (In fact putting this in the mouths of the locals rather does the opposite.)

Another important detail here (in a novel very much about the demands of "family") is that there is no blood relationship between Clara Amedroz and Mrs Winterfield, who we shall meet presently, though she passes at large as Clara's aunt:

Chapter 1:

She had not been at home when the fearful news had reached Belton, being at that time with a certain lady who lived on the further side of the county, at Perivale,---a certain Mrs Winterfield, born a Folliott, a widow, who stood to Miss Amedroz in the place of an aunt. Mrs Winterfield was, in truth, the sister of a gentleman who had married Clara's aunt,---there having been marriages and intermarriages between the Winterfields and the Folliotts, and the Belton-Amedroz families.

We won't hear any more of the Folliotts, but it is important that we grasp the connection between the Amedrozes, the Winterfields and the Aylmers:

Captain Frederic Folliott Aylmer was, in truth, the nephew of Mrs Winterfield, whereas Clara Amedroz was not, in truth, her niece. And Captain Aylmer was also Member of Parliament for the little borough of Perivale, returned altogether on the Low Church interest,---for a devotion to which, and for that alone, Perivale was noted among boroughs. These facts together added not a little to Mrs Winterfield's influence and professorial power in the place, and gave a dignity to the one-horse chaise which it might not otherwise have possessed. But Captain Aylmer was only the second son of his father, Sir Anthony Aylmer, who had married a Miss Folliott, sister of our Mrs Winterfield. On Frederic Aylmer his mother's estate was settled...

As the quotation goes, "To him who has will more be given": it is sadly inevitable that Mrs Winterfield - a woman, Trollope tells us later, who "takes the inferiority of her sex for granted" - has decided that her property must go to the already-provided-for Frederic Aylmer.

To be fair to Mrs Winterfield, she knows nothing of Clara's dire financial circumstances; and Clara being the kind of young woman she is, the very fact of it seals her mouth: to tell would be to ask; but Mrs Winterfield's decision cuts her off from the only other possible source of support for her future.

There is a side injustice here.

Mrs Winterfield is Low Church, which makes her, in Trollope's view, wrong; in this case, well-meaning but still wrong.

We see here (as we have seen also in the novels of Margaret Oliphant - we might remember in The Perpetual Curate Aunt Leonora's disinheritance of Frank Wentworth, hard-working a devout as he is, because he isn't Low Church - so perhaps we can take it as reality rather than authorial prejudice) that Mrs Winterfield's religious belief takes precedence over all else:

Chapter 1:

    It must be understood that Captain Aylmer was member for Perivale on the Low Church interest, and that, therefore, when at Perivale he was decidedly a Low Churchman. I am not aware that the peculiarity stuck to him very closely at Aylmer Castle, in Yorkshire, or among his friends in London... Had Captain Aylmer become Prime Minister, he would no doubt, have made Low Church bishops. It was the side to which he had taken himself in that matter,---not without good reasons. And he could say a sharp word or two in season about vestments; he was strong against candles, and fought for his side fairly well. No one had good right to complain of Captain Aylmer as being insincere; but had his aunt known the whole history of her nephew's life, I doubt whether she would have made him her heir,---thinking that in doing so she was doing the best for the good cause.
    The whole history of her niece's life she did know, and she knew that Clara was not with her, heart and soul. Had Clara left the old woman in doubt on this subject, she would have been a hypocrite. Captain Aylmer did not often spend a Sunday at Perivale, but when he did, he went to church three times, and submitted himself to the yoke. He was thinking of the borough votes quite as much as of his aunt's money, and was carrying on his business after the fashion of men.

****

Soon afterwards, the four-wheeled carriage, with the demure stable-boy, came to the door, and Clara was driven up and down through the streets of Perivale in a manner which was an injury to her. She knew that she was suffering an injustice, but it was one of which she could not make complaint. She submitted to her aunt, enduring the penances that were required of her; and, therefore, her aunt had opportunity enough to see her shortcomings. Mrs Winterfield did see them, and judged her accordingly. Captain Aylmer, being a man and a Member of Parliament, was called upon to bear no such penances, and, therefore, his shortcomings were not suspected.

This is the first of many allusions by Trollope to the treatment of women by "the world".

Clara's very honesty hurts her with Mrs Winterfield: she won't pretend to more than she believes; whereas Frederic Aylmer's willingness to play along reaps him great benefits.

Furthermore, though there is a shrugging note from Trollope in his description of Aylmer's conduct, the reader comes away with a sense that he is rather too "flexible" for comfort (or perhaps we should just say, he's a politician).

I'm keen to join in this group read. I ordered the book today and hope it arrives soon so that I'm not too far behind everyone.

>17 socialpages:

Welcome, Jennifer! It's great to have a newcomer to the group. :)

FYI, we are doing a series of group reads of Trollope's minor or lesser known works, after most of us have completed the majors including the Barchester and Palliser series. (So sometimes I'm guilty of assumed knowledge, and you should pull me up if you need to!)

Perhaps you could let us know where you're up to in your Trollope reading?

I thought I might append this map for the benefit of those who might not be totally familiar with English geography.

The three main character groups are quite scattered: we have the Amedrozes in Somerset, to the south-west, the Beltons in Norfolk, to the east; and the Aylmers in Yorkshire, to the north.

There's a lot of travelling from place to place in this book, but we need to keep in mind that everyone has to go via London. However, the willingness with which they undertake these journeys, and the fact that even Clara is able to get from place to place when she needs to, illustrates the rapid development of the rail system in the mid-19th century, and how entrenched it became as a normal part of life.

The other point that should be mentioned is that Taunton, which we hear of as the main junction town for the Amedrozes, is a real town situated towards the border of Somerset and Devon. This places the Belton Estate for us (Taunton is "twenty miles distant").

(Note that this novel is set in much the same area as Rachel Ray.)

There is an unusual amount of criticism of the situation of women in this novel: quiet for the most part, but definitely there. Trollope puts a surprising amount of this into Clara's mouth; and though on the whole she says more than she acts, she is also allowed a few strokes of self-judgement where she defies the general opinion of the world.

Her dire situation with regard to her future support is laid before us very baldly: Clara is, rather obtusely, accused by her father of "indelicacy" when it comes to money matters - meaning he doesn't think she's as "sensitive" as he is - but in fact her consideration for her father, along with her pride, has perhaps contributed to her own future difficulties:

Chapter 2:

She alone knew how utterly destitute she would be when he should die. He, in the first days of his agony, had sobbed forth his remorse as to her ruin; but, even when doing so, he had comforted himself with the remembrance of Mrs Winterfield's money, and Mrs Winterfield's affection for his daughter. And the aunt, when she had declared her purpose to Clara, had told herself that the provision made for Clara by her father was sufficient. To neither of them had Clara told her own position. She could not inform her aunt that her father had given up to the poor reprobate who had destroyed himself all that had been intended for her. Had she done so she would have been asking her aunt for charity. Nor would she bring herself to add to her father's misery, by destroying the hopes which still supported him. She never spoke of her own position in regard to money, but she knew that it had become her duty to live a wary, watchful life, taking much upon herself in their impoverished household...

Note these twinned observations:

Chapter 1:

The memory of her brother must always be upon her; and the memory also of the fact that her father was now an impoverished man, on whose behalf it was her duty to care that every shilling spent in the house did its full twelve pennies' worth of work. There was a mixture in this of deep tragedy and of little care, which seemed to destroy for her the poetry as well as the pleasure of life... But it was her lot to have to scrutinise the butcher's bill as she was thinking of her brother's fate; and to work daily among small household things while the spectre of her brother's corpse was ever before her eyes.

Chapter 2:

    "I do not think my cousin means badly."
    "You don't! I do, then. I think he means very badly. What business has he to write to me, talking of his position?"
    "I can't see anything amiss in his doing so, papa. I think he wishes to be friendly. The property will be his some day, and I don't see why that should not be mentioned, when there is occasion."
    "Upon my word, Clara, you surprise me. But women never understand delicacy in regard to money. They have so little to do with it, and think so little about it, that they have no occasion for such delicacy."
    Clara could not help the thought that to her mind the subject was present with sufficient frequency to make delicacy very desirable, if only it were practicable...

Victorian fiction is full of infuriating scenes in which women "submit" in situations which are clearly unjust, foolish and/or outright wrong, out of a misguided sense of duty. Clara Amedroz is allowed not only to use her own judgement, but to oppose her father on the basis of that judgement; and this is framed in a manner free of even implied authorial criticism:

Chapter 2:

She knew that she would be expected to abuse {the letter} violently, and to accuse the writer of vulgarity, insolence, and cruelty; but she had already learned that she must not allow herself to accede to all her father's fantasies. For his sake, and for his protection, it was necessary that she should differ from him, and even contradict him. Were she not to do so, he would fall into a state of wailing and complaining that would exaggerate itself almost to idiotcy. And it was imperative that she herself should exercise her own opinion on many points, almost without reference to him...

This is rather fascinating. There are so many misguided fathers in 19th century fiction, so many exasperatingly dutiful daughters playing along no matter the harm it causes them. Here, "almost" is as much as Trollope is prepared to concede: in its quiet way, this is approaching revolutionary.

Mind you---he then, equally quietly, shows that Clara sometimes ignores her own better judgement; though again, he's observing rather than criticising:

Chapter 2:

Clara had not been quite ingenuous, as she acknowledged to herself. She was aware that her aunt would not permit herself to repeat rumours as to the truth of which she had no absolute knowledge. She understood that the weakness of her aunt's caution was due to the old lady's sense of charity and dislike of slander. But Clara had buckled on her armour for Mrs Askerton, and was glad, therefore, to achieve her little victory.

This is in respect to the rumours that have begun to swirl around the Askertons. Trollope makes another telling observation here, that female friendship at this time was more likely a matter of propinquity than mutual liking or shared interests. In fact as far as we know Clara has no other friend around her own age, and seems never to have had one. (We hear about how well-educated she is, so she must at some point have had a governess, at least; hardly the same thing.)

This should be kept in mind when dealing with the Askerto subplot and Clara's attitude to Mrs Askerton---although there was something in the lady's modes of speech, and something also in her modes of thinking, which did not quite satisfy the aspirations of Miss Amedroz as to a friend.

>19 lyzard: I'm up to Chapter 7 and I've finally sorted out the geography of the novel. There is a real place called Perivale in the west of London (I used to travel through Perivale on a daily basis on the Central Line), one of those places that has been overtaken by the early twentieth century westward sprawl of London. I initially assumed that the Perivale in the novel equated with the real Perivale although I was a bit surprised as Trollope seems to usually use fictitious place names. But then that hypothesis made no sense with how the journey was described at the beginning of Chapter 7 and later in Chapter 7 we learn that fictitious Perivale is a town between Salisbury and Taunton, so probably in Wiltshire, and not the place near London at all.

So then I started thinking why did Trollope use the name for a real place, and one quite near London at that, for this fictitious town. It seemed a little strange. So I looked up the history of Perivale itself, and it seems that unlike a lot of other areas of greater London it had not been a large village that had been overtaken by London's expansion. It was very, very rural indeed with a population of only 28 in 1801 and only 60 in 1901. So perhaps Trollope came across the name of the hamlet in real life and then decided to use it in The Belton Estate, safe in the knowledge that the real Perivale was so obscure that nobody would ever have heard of it!

Something else that I have been considering. Clara and Will Belton must be very distant cousins indeed, given that the Amedroz's have been in possession of Belton for several generations. Would it be normal in Victorian times for such a very distant degree of cousinship to still be recognised?

>22 SandDune:

Welcome, Rhian!

I looked that up too. :)

I don't think Redicote is a real place either: a town the size of Taunton seems to have been as far down the scale as he went, with the smaller villages (where the characters actually live) being fictional.

>23 SandDune:

I think there are two answers to that. The Victorians were very obsessive about their family trees and their "connections", so it is quite likely that even a fairly distant cousinship would be acknowledged. Terms like "cousin" and "aunt" were used very generally to cover even minor blood relationships, or sometimes none at all---as we see Clara doing with respect to Will and Mrs Winterfield.

On the other hand, in this case there might have been an impulse to deny a connection with someone who is "just" a farmer, but that would be negated by Will's position as the entailed heir.

(And as far as young men and women went, being able to say "cousin" allowed for a greater freedom of interaction than would usually be permitted, so it might have been a convention that was consciously maintained.)

Speaking of "just a farmer"--- :D

Chapter 3:

What was he to do for wine? The stock of wine in the cellars at Belton Castle was, no doubt, very low. The squire himself drank a glass or two of port daily, and had some remnant of his old treasures by him, which might perhaps last him his time; and occasionally there came small supplies of sherry from the grocer at Taunton; but Mr Amedroz pretended to think that Will Belton would want champagne and claret;---and he would continue to make these suggestions in spite of his own repeated complaints that the man was no better than an ordinary farmer. "I've no doubt he'll like beer," said Clara. "Beer!" said her father, and then stopped himself, as though he were lost in doubt whether it would best suit him to scorn his cousin for having so low a taste as that suggested on his behalf, or to ridicule his daughter's idea that the household difficulty admitted of so convenient a solution...

It's funny these days, too, seeing this word being used correctly:

The day of the arrival at last came, and Clara certainly was in a twitter, although she had steadfastly resolved that she would be in no twitter at all...

I think Trollope handles Will Belton's rather overpowering personality in an interesting way.

On the positive side he achieves a lot of good with his ability to cut through the crap, and certainly his forthrightness never leaves anyone in any doubt of his stance and his intentions. We can imagine how refreshing this would be for Clara, when she has spent so long dealing with her father's maundering and self-pity.

However his very single-mindedness, his impatience - his inability, as Trollope says, to take a hint - creates as well as resolves trouble: creates it for himself, in fact.

Though we see that when he isn't tunnel-visioned, he is capable of taking on board information, and even being tactful---though this comes in the immediate wake of Mr Amedrox complaining about his "indelicacy". (Of course, Mr Amedroz accuses Clara of "indelicacy" too, so we take that with a grain of salt.)

Chapter 3:

    On that afternoon Belton asked Clara to go out with him, and walk round the place. He had been again about the grounds, and had made plans, and counted up capabilities, and calculated his profit and losses. "If you don't dislike scrambling about," said he, "I'll show you everything that I intend to do."
    "But I can't have any changes made, Mr Belton," said Mr. Amedroz, with some affectation of dignity in his manner. "I won't have the fences moved, or anything of that kind."
    "Nothing shall be done, sir, that you don't approve. I'll just manage it all as if I was acting as your own---bailiff." "Son," he was going to say, but he remembered the fate of his cousin Charles just in time to prevent the use of the painful word.

But the touch I like best here as revealing Will's character is this:

    "I've counted it up, and it would just cost me a thousand pounds to stock this place. I should come and look at it twice a year or so, and I should see my money home again, if I didn't get any profit out of it."
    Mr Amedroz was astonished. The man had only been in his house one night, and was proposing to take all his troubles off his hands. He did not relish the proposition at all. He did not like to be accused of not doing as well for himself as others could do for him. He did not wish to make any change,---although he remembered at the moment his anger with Farmer Stovey respecting the haycarts. He did not desire that the heir should have any immediate interest in the place. But he was not strong enough to meet the proposition with a direct negative. "I couldn't get rid of Stovey in that way," he said, plaintively.
    "I've settled it all with Stovey already," said Belton. "He'll be glad enough to walk off with a twenty-pound note, which I'll give him. He can't make money out of the place. He hasn't got means to stock it, and then see the wages that hay-making runs away with! He'd lose by it even at what he's paying, and he knows it. There won't be any difficulty about Stovey."
    By twelve o'clock on that day Mr Stovey had been brought into the house, and had resigned the land. It had been let to Mr William Belton at an increased rental,---a rental increased by nearly forty pounds per annum,---and that gentleman had already made many of his arrangements for entering upon his tenancy...

Here we have all sides of Will: his bull-at-a-gate approach to life, and his ruthlessness when he wants something; his profound knowledge of his own business (as quoted in our thread-topper, here Clara sees his particular brand of "cleverness"); his genuine desire to help now that he has established (via an equally blunt conversation with Clara) that the Amedrozes are in great financial difficulty; and - the bit I like best - the fact that he pays exactly what the tenancy of the land is worth and not a penny more. It doesn't occur to him to "help" by inflating his payments; his mind doesn't work like that.

This is a remarkably complete little interlude, and one that comes so early in the introduction of Will that its full significance can be overlooked.

Chapter 3:

It was nearly six o'clock when they got back to the house, and Clara was surprised to find that she had been out three hours with her cousin. Certainly it had been very pleasant. The usual companion of her walks, when she had a companion, was Mrs Askerton; but Mrs Askerton did not like real walking. She would creep about the grounds for an hour or so, and even such companionship as that was better to Clara than absolute solitude; but now she had been carried about the place, getting over stiles and through gates, and wandering through the copses, till she was tired and hungry, and excited and happy...

This is something that crops up across Trollope's writing: a love of "real walking" as a positive character trait in a woman.

Though it's not just in Trollope: it seems to have been a very 19th century thing. We might cast our minds back to Elizabeth Bennet walking cross-country to see her sister after Jane falls ill at Netherfield.

"Real walking" seems to have been something that separated the right sort of young woman from that 19th century spectre, the "fine lady".

(Not that Mrs Askerton is anything like a fine lady, but we will deal with her situation later.)

This, on the other hand, is disingenuous at best:

Chapter 4:

Why that warranty against love-making should be a virtue in her eyes I cannot, perhaps, explain. But all young ladies are apt to talk to themselves in such phrases about gentlemen with whom they are thrown into chance intimacy;—as though love-making were in itself a thing injurious and antagonistic to happiness, instead of being, as it is, the very salt of life.

Possibly because, for nice girls, the beginning of love-making must be the end of real walking? And some of us them would rather have the walking. :)

Hi everyone! I'll be starting next week and hope to catch up with you soon.

>29 MissWatson:

Welcome, Birgit!

But no more real walking for Clara---

Chapter 4:

He sat himself down, and he walked about, and he leaned out of the window into the cool night air; and he made some comparisons in his mind, and certain calculations; and he thought of his present home, and of his sister, and of his future prospects as they were concerned with the old place at which he was now staying; and he portrayed to himself, in his mind, Clara's head and face and figure and feet;---and he resolved that she should be his wife. He had never seen a girl who seemed to suit him so well. Though he had only been with her for a day, he swore to himself that he knew he could love her. Nay;---he swore to himself that he did love her...

****

On the previous evening, as he was leaning out of the window endeavouring to settle in his own mind what would be the proper conduct of the romance of the thing, he had considered that he had better not make his proposal quite at once. He was to remain eight days at Belton, and as eight days was not a long period of acquaintance, he had reflected that it might be well for him to lay what foundation for love it might be in his power to construct during his present sojourn, and then return and complete the work before Christmas. But as he was shaving himself, the habitual impatience of his nature predominated, and he became disposed to think that delay would be useless, and might perhaps be dangerous. It might be possible that Clara would be unable to give him a decisive answer so quickly as to enable him to return home an accepted lover; but if such doubt were left, such doubt would give him an excuse for a speedy return to Belton...

How do you think we are supposed to take this instant passion of Will's?

I suspect Trollope takes it more seriously than I can: that it's supposed to be a reflection of how honest and straightforward he is; but I'm the world's worst cynic about love at first sight (or love during a three-hours' walk, if you prefer).

Trollope is on firmer ground with the fact that Will's impatience is self-defeating: he can't even leave the matter in the doubt he anticipates, but pushes Clara to such a firm 'no' that he makes his return to Belton a matter of great uncertainty:

Chapter 5:

    "Oh, Will, forget that you have said this. Do not go on until everything must be over between us."
    "Why should anything be over between us? Why should it be wrong in me to love you?"
    "What will papa say?"
    "Mr Amedroz knows all about it already, and has given me his consent. I asked him directly I had made up my own mind, and he told me that I might go to you."
    "You have asked papa? Oh dear, oh dear, what am I to do?"
    "Am I so odious to you then?" As he said this he got up from his seat and stood before her. He was a tall, well-built, handsome man, and he could assume a look and mien that were almost noble when he was moved as he was moved now.
    "Odious! Do you not know that I have loved you as my cousin---that I have already learned to trust you as though you were really my brother? But this breaks it all."
    "You cannot love me then as my wife?"
    "No." She pronounced the monosyllable alone, and then he walked away from her as though that one little word settled the question for him, now and for ever...

****

    "Your father, when I told him of this, bade me not to be hasty; but I am hasty, and I haven't known how to wait. Tell me that I may come at Christmas for my answer, and I will not say a word to trouble you till then. I will be your brother, at any rate till Christmas."
    "Be my brother always."
    A black cloud crossed his brow as this request reached his ears. She was looking anxiously into his face, watching every turn in the expression of his countenance. "Will you not let it wait till Christmas?" he asked.
    She thought it would be cruel to refuse this request, and yet she knew that no such waiting could be of service to him. He had been awkward in his love-making, and was aware of it. He should have contrived this period of waiting for himself; giving her no option but to wait and think of it. He should have made no proposal, but have left her certain that such proposal was coming. In such case she must have waited---and if good could have come to him from that, he might have received it. But, as the question was now presented to her, it was impossible that she should consent to wait. To have given such consent would have been tantamount to receiving him as her lover. She was therefore forced to be cruel.
    "It will be of no avail to postpone my answer when I know what it must be. Why should there be suspense?"

In the end, all Will succeeds in doing is to force Clara to answer the question she has posed to herself: why is her 'no' so definite?

Chapter 6:

Alas! there could in truth be no doubt on that subject in her own mind. When she sat down, resolved to give herself an answer, there was no doubt. She could not love her cousin, Will Belton, because her heart belonged to Captain Aylmer.

Though I don't find this alternative romance any more convincing than the first, I do find the way in which Trollope presents it interesting:

She made a comparison between the two men. Her cousin Will was, she thought, the more generous, the more energetic,---perhaps, by nature, the man of the higher gifts. In person he was undoubtedly the superior. He was full of noble qualities;---forgetful of self, industrious, full of resources, a very man of men, able to command, eager in doing work for others' good and his own,---a man altogether uncontaminated by the coldness and selfishness of the outer world. But he was rough, awkward, but indifferently educated, and with few of those tastes which to Clara Amedroz were delightful. He could not read poetry to her, he could not tell her of what the world of literature was doing now or of what it had done in times past. He knew nothing of the inner world of worlds which governs the world. She doubted whether he could have told her who composed the existing cabinet, or have given the name of a single bishop beyond the see in which his own parish was situated. But Captain Aylmer knew everybody, and had read everything, and understood, as though by instinct, all the movements of the world in which he lived.

Possible spoilers for Can You Forgive Her?:

This seems to me a gentler, more understanding version of the triangle that Trollope creates at the centre of Can You Forgive Her?, which we should recall was written not long before. Again we have a woman caught between the man who she knows is "the better man" and the man whose lifestyle appeals to her. And as always with Trollope, the fact of a man being an MP is in itself a major attraction---even though Clara is more clear-sighted here about Aylmer than Alice is about George Vavasor.

I think we need to remind ourselves that, as far as we know, Captain Aylmer is the first and only man her own age with whom Clara is really acquainted (unless we count Mr Possitt the curate!). Propinquity plays its part here, as it does in her friendship with Mrs Askerton; so too her craving for companionship---and perhaps most importantly the suggestion of shared literary tastes, which Trollope should have made more of: I wanted to see Clara and Aylmer reading together, or discussing books, because that touch makes their relationship more real to me than anything else.

>32 lyzard: Ach! George Vavasor! Just reading his name makes me shudder.

Back to >16 lyzard:: "Soon afterwards, the four-wheeled carriage, with the demure stable-boy, came to the door, and Clara was driven up and down through the streets of Perivale in a manner which was an injury to her."

I'm somehow being thick-headed here--why is Clara "suffering an injustice" here? Is it because she's with a man without a proper chaperone?

Just a general observation. Clara Amendroz and Will Belton's relationship puts me in mind of Mary and Matthew Crawley in Downton Abbey.

>34 kac522: I interpreted it to mean that Clara found the excess of charitable works, carried out by her aunt, not to her taste? And that she found the very public way in which she was conducted about the town to carry out these works as uncomfortable and embarrassing.

>36 SandDune: Oh thank you! I was getting Clara's two rides in Chapter I confused--at the end of the chapter Captain Aylmer gives her a ride, but that is after the ride with Mrs Winterfield, which is the one that Liz quoted.

>33 kac522:

Agreed! :D

>35 cbl_tn:

Conversely, can't comment on that.

>34 kac522:, >36 SandDune:, >37 kac522:

Yes, that comes in the wake of these two passages:

Chapter 1:

And Mrs Winterfield kept a low, four-wheeled, one-horsed little phaeton, in which she made her pilgrimages among the poor of Perivale, driven by the most solemn of stable-boys, dressed up in a white great coat, the most priggish of hats, and white cotton gloves. At the rate of five miles an hour was she driven about, and this driving was to her the amusement of life. But such an occupation to Clara Amedroz assisted to make life serious.

****

"No; you do not see things as he sees them. Things that are serious to him are, I fear, only light to you. Dear Clara, would I could see you more in earnest as to the only matter that is worth our earnestness." Miss Amedroz said nothing as to the Captain's earnestness, though, perhaps, her ideas as to his ideas about religion were more correct than those held by Mrs Winterfield. But it would not have suited her to raise any argument on that subject. "I pray for you, Clara," continued the old lady; "and will do so as long as the power of prayer is left to me. I hope,---I hope you do not cease to pray for yourself?"

The carriage-ride is an "injury" to Clara because, as she well understands, she is being punished for her perceived lack of seriousness, or earnestness.

But what we need to take away from this is the honesty gap between Clara and Captain Aylmer. She won't pretend to what she doesn't feel; he goes through all the motions that Mrs Winterfield wants---though as Clara herself remarks, he wriggles out of anything that is really dull or distasteful to him.

The real injustice is that Mrs Winterfield's false perception here contributes to her decision to leave her entire estate to her nephew.

Chapter 6:

Clara knew, or thought that she knew, that men and women differed in their appreciation of love. She, having once loved, could not change. Of that she was sure. Her love might be fortunate or unfortunate. It might be returned, or it might simply be her own, to destroy all hope of happiness for her on earth. But whether it were this or that, whether productive of good or evil, the love itself could not be changed. But with men she thought it might be different. Her cousin, doubtless, had been sincere in the full sincerity of his heart when he made his offer. And had she accepted it,---had she been able to accept it,---she believed that he would have loved her truly and constantly. Such was his nature. But she also believed that love with him, unrequited love, would have no enduring effect, and that he had already resolved, with equal courage and wisdom, to tread this short-lived passion out beneath his feet.

Chapter 6 also sees the Askerton subplot begin to unfold, but I want to hold off discussing that until we are much further along in its revelations.

I actually find this one of the most interesting things about this novel, and we need to talk about its significance when we get the full picture.

I will note this, though, in Chapter 7: the beginning of Clara's championship of Mrs Askerton, in reaction to some nasty gossip from the local minister (!):

    "But, papa, it all amounts to this---that somebody has said that the Askertons are not Askertons at all, but ought to be called something else. Now we know that he served as Captain and Major Askerton for seven years in India---and in fact it all means nothing. If I know anything, I know that he is Colonel Askerton."
    "But do you know that she is his wife? That is what Mr Wright asks. I don't say anything. I think it's very indelicate talking about such things."
    "If I am asked whether I have seen her marriage certificate, certainly I have not; nor probably did you ever do so as to any lady that you ever knew. But I know that she is her husband's wife, as we all of us know things of that sort. I know she was in India with him. I've seen things of hers marked with her name that she has had at least for ten years."
    "I don't know anything about it, my dear," said Mr Amedroz, angrily.
    "But Mr Wright ought to know something about it before he says such things."

The other thing we see here is the way that Clara will stand up to her father if she feels she must---and not just for "his own good" as was intimated earlier, but in a much broader sense: we see how she can and will stand her ground. This is another face of her refusal to pretend to Mrs Winterfield, and an important aspect of her character.

From the perspective of 19th century literature, it is very interesting that Clara is neither criticised nor punished for this repeated refusal to submit to an authority she thinks is wrong: touches like this are why these "minor" works can be so valuable.

And likewise, we soon afterwards find Clara speaking out about the injustice of her situation, relative to Captain Aylmer's.

Various of Trollope's women do justly complain about their position and societal restrictions, but most of them don't get away with it like Clara Amedroz does---by which I mean they are either punished by their plot and taught their place, or at least mocked (gently or not gently) by their author.

But Clara isn't.

This is suggestive, coming on the back of Trollope's treatment of Alice Vavasor in Can You Forgive Her?, and some aspects of Miss Mackenzie (which I complained about at length back then, and promise I won't do again!).

Was he criticised for his unfair / unkind attitude towards his female characters? - for being dismissive of their genuine grievances? - for too much masculine smugness, perhaps?

At any rate, he seems more willing to admit here than in the earlier novels that his dissatisfied protagonist might have a point.

This is pretty remarkable, actually:

Chapter 7:

    "I observe that you never stay a Sunday at Perivale," she said.
    "Well;---not often. Why should I? Sunday is just the day that people like to be at home."
    "I should have thought it would not have made much difference to a bachelor in that way."
    "But Sunday is a day that one specially likes to pass after one's own fashion."
    "Exactly;---and therefore you don't stay with my aunt. I understand it all completely."
    "Now you mean to be ill-natured!"
    "I mean to say that I don't like Sundays at Perivale at all, and that I should do just as you do if I had the power. But women,---women, that is, of my age,---are such slaves! We are forced to give an obedience for which we can see no cause, and for which we can understand no necessity. I couldn't tell my aunt that I meant to go away on Saturday."
    "You have no business which makes imperative calls upon your time."
    "That means that I can't plead pretended excuses. But the true reason is that we are dependent."

I'm a bit behind, but here are my thoughts on your question >31 lyzard: "How do you think we are supposed to take this instant passion of Will's? I suspect Trollope takes it more seriously than I can"

I would follow up your excerpts from Chapter IV with the following:

Though he had only been with her for a day, he swore to himself that he knew he could love her. Nay;--he swore to himself that he did love her. Then--when he had quite made up his mind, he tumbled into his bed and was asleep in five minutes.

And this a little later on, when considering his approach to Clara's father:
After much consideration--very much consideration, a consideration which took him the whole time that he was brushing his hair and washing his teeth--he resolved that he would, in the first instance, speak to Mr Amedroz.

My impression is that Trollope is giving us a nudge and a wink here, and that he's not taking it all that seriously, except as it fits Will's personality.

>43 kac522:

I kind of agree with the point you're making, except for---well, the way things are handled from here. Since you are a bit behind, I'll leave it at that. :)

Following up >42 lyzard:, this is even more forthright and remarkable:

Chapter 7:

    "Dependence is a disagreeable word," he said; "and one never quite knows what it means."
    "If you were a woman you'd know. It means that I must stay at Perivale on Sundays, while you can go up to London or down to Yorkshire. That's what it means."
    "What you do mean, I think, is this;---that you owe a duty to your aunt, the performance of which is not altogether agreeable. Nevertheless it would be foolish in you to omit it."
    "It isn't that;---not that at all. It would not be foolish, not in your sense of the word, but it would be wrong. My aunt has been kind to me, and therefore I am bound to her for this service. But she is kind to you also, and yet you are not bound. That's why I complain. You sail away under false pretences, and yet you think you do your duty. You have to see your lawyer,---which means going to your club; or to attend to your tenants,---which means hunting and shooting."
    "I haven't got any tenants."
    "You know very well that you could remain over Sunday without doing any harm to anybody;---only you don't like going to church three times, and you don't like hearing my aunt read a sermon afterwards. Why shouldn't you stay, and I go to the club?"
    "With all my heart, if you can manage it."
    "But I can't; we ain't allowed to have clubs, or shooting, or to have our own way in anything, putting forward little pretences about lawyers."

This is about as outspoken a piece of pro-female propaganda as we will ever get from Trollope---at least (as I noted earlier) without the plot rising up to punish the speaker, or without the narrator smugly prescribing marriage and two children as cure for all her ills.

And if the subsequent plot doesn't quite support this protest (and we will consider how not), at least Clara is allowed to have her say without hinder.

Those of you present when I went off at Trollope re: Miss Mackenzie---this is why I sometimes get angry with him and call him "dishonest": because he does understand, he does know better, but for whatever reason he sometimes simply refuses to acknowledge this reality.

But to come back on point---we should take heed of Clara's phrase, under false pretences: the bottom line is that because she won't pretend but he will, Captain Aylmer is Mrs Winterfield's heir while Clara gets nothing.

And the chapter ends with this painful little passage:

Chapter 7:

    "It is very fortunate that you should come together," said Mrs Winterfield. "I didn't know when to expect you, Fred. Indeed, you never say at what hour you'll come."
    "I think it safer to allow myself a little margin, aunt, because one has so many things to do."
    "I suppose it is so with a gentleman," said Mrs Winterfield. After which Clara looked at Captain Aylmer, but did not betray any of her suspicions. "But I knew Clara would come by this train," continued the old lady; "so I sent Tom to meet her. Ladies always can be punctual; they can do that at any rate." Mrs Winterfield was one of those women who have always believed that their own sex is in every respect inferior to the other.

Chapter 8 gives us Captain Aylmer addressing his constituents:

At last he said some word about the marriage and divorce court, condemning the iniquity of the present law, to which Perivale had opposed itself violently by petition and general meetings; and upon hearing this Mrs Winterfield had thumped with her umbrella, and faintly cheered him with her weak old voice. But the surrounding Perivalians had heard the cheer, and it was repeated backwards and forwards through the room, till the member's aunt thought that it might be her nephew's mission to annul that godless Act of Parliament, and restore the matrimonial bonds of England to their old rigidity.

Various ugly and scandalous situations during the first half of the century had finally led to some consideration of reform of English divorce laws, and the passing of the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857. Until then, a divorce could only be obtained via a petition to Parliament, and was by definition a privilege only accorded wealthy men. This Act removed divorce to a separate court and theoretically opened it up to a greater section of the public---including women.

However, the reality behind the situation was that these changes made very little practical difference to anyone. Only one court was actually established, and that was in London, so it was of very little use to most of the population; and while a wife could now divorce her husband, adultery alone wasn't enough: she had to prove cruelty, or being forced to perform certain sexual acts (and be willing to testify in open court about it), in addition to adultery, in order to have grounds. Desertion was also grounds but then you had to prove the desertion was permanent, and how could you?

The other reality was that at this time the English voting public was all male, and a great many men did object to these very small and mostly useless changes---and the occasional woman, too: Mrs Winterfield's religious views lead to her objecting to anything that even looks like easier divorce.

These events are well before the passing of the Married Women's Property Act, which did address some of the surrounding issues (since a husband could desert his wife yet retain legal ownership of their joint property, leaving her destitute). At this time, if a woman left her husband she automatically lost any claim to any property and/or custody of her children, no matter what the grounds of her desertion.

I have caught up with you and haven't made up my mind yet about Clara's two suitors. But I find her remarkable, indeed. And saddened that here we have again a heroine with such a narrow, friendless life without someone of her own age. Not even a school friend to exchange letters with!

>48 MissWatson:

Well done, Birgit! :)

And as far as we know, has never been further from home (or for any other reason) than her visits to Mrs Winterfield.

This is why I get annoyed with Trollope when we get that 'Oh, well, that's just how things are' note in his writing. It's also why---

(---not really a spoiler, but a comment on Trollope's writing generally---)

I find it, to use the word again, dishonest when he conjures up a husband for his isolated heroine, springing a man she can love like a rabbit out of a hat, when the reality for women like Clara was an entire life spent alone, friendless and loveless. Here it is reasonably well justified that she would suddenly have two suitors but there are other novels that have a distinct touch of Prince Charming showing up out of nowhere (albeit not usually actually charming!).

To follow on (and also from >45 lyzard:)---

Chapter 8:

    "Well, my dear," continued Mrs Winterfield, when Clara made no response to this appeal for praise.
    "It is so hard for me to say anything about it, aunt. What can I say but that I don't want to be a burden to any one?"
    "That is a position which very few women can attain,---that is, very few single women."
    "I think it would be well if all single women were strangled by the time they are thirty," said Clara with a fierce energy which absolutely frightened her aunt.
    "Clara! how can you say anything so wicked,---so abominably wicked!"
    "Anything would be better than being twitted in this way. How can I help it that I am not a man and able to work for my bread?"

We've encountered in Trollope the reverse of this, that is, the humiliation of being courted for your money; but the humiliation of dependence is something he didn't touch very often. Again, this was of course reality for most women: even working-class women rarely just supported themselves, since their wages were generally inadequate. But for middle-class women and up, a life of being financially supported by one man or another was inescapable in most cases; and even when it wasn't, the life of a single woman could still be stiflingly narrow.

This is interesting in the wake of Miss Mackenzie, the heroine of which occupies a lower social sphere than Clara and is therefore faced with the reality of hard, poorly paid work (as opposed to Clara's vague fantasy of being a housemaid here, which is hardly intended for realism: but---well, of course my spoiler above will apply).

Noting these passages for future reference:

Chapter 8:

"I don't know what you call danger; but Frederic seemed to think that you are always sharp with him. You don't want to quarrel with him, I hope, because I love him better than any one in the world?"

****

And then her mind went away to that other portion of her aunt's discourse. Could it be possible that this man was in truth attached to her, and was repelled simply by her own manner? She was aware that she had fallen into a habit of fighting with him, of sparring against him with words about indifferent things, and calling his conduct in question in a manner half playful and half serious. Could it be the truth that she was thus robbing herself of that which would be to her,---as to herself she had frankly declared,---the one treasure which she would desire? Twice, as has been said before, words had seemed to tremble on his lips which might have settled the question for her for ever; and on both occasions, as she knew, she herself had helped to laugh off the precious word that had been coming. But had he been thoroughly in earnest,---in earnest as she would have him to be,---no laugh would have deterred him from his purpose.

Chapter 9:

But in her second she accused herself as much as she had before accused him. She had been cold to him, unfriendly, and harsh. As her aunt had told her, she spoke sharp words to him, and repulsed the kindness which he offered her. What right had she to expect from him a declaration of love when she was studious to stop him at every avenue by which he might approach it? A little management on her side would, she almost knew, make things right. But then the idea of any such management distressed her;---nay, more, disgusted her. The management, if any were necessary, must come from him. And it was manifest enough that if he had any strong wishes in this matter he was not a good manager.

The question of Clara's future maintenance then becomes imperative when Mrs Winterfield's health fails:

Chapter 9:

    At that moment, when she said she had lived long enough, she forgot her intention with reference to her will. But she remembered it before Clara had left the room. "Tell Frederic," she said, "to send at once for Mr Palmer." Now Clara knew that Mr Palmer was the attorney, and resolved that she would give no such message to Captain Aylmer. But Mrs Winterfield sent for her nephew, who had just left her, and herself gave her orders to him. In the course of the morning there came tidings from the attorney's office that Mr Palmer was away from Perivale, that he would be back on the morrow, and that he would of course wait on Mrs Winterfield immediately on his return.
    Captain Aylmer and Miss Amedroz discussed nothing but their aunt's state of health that morning over the breakfast-table. Of course, under such circumstances in the house, there was no further immediate reference made to that offer of dearest friendship. It was clear to them both that the doctor did not expect that Mrs Winterfield would again leave her bed; and it was clear to Clara also that her aunt was of the same opinion...

This is actively nasty on Trollope's part...I am happy to say:

Chapter 9:

    "I shall hardly be able to go home now," she said.
    "It will be kind of you if you can remain."
    "And you?"
    "I shall remain over the Sunday. If by that time she is at all better, I will run up to town and come down again before the end of the week. I know you don't believe it, but a man really has some things which he must do."
    "I don't disbelieve you, Captain Aylmer."
    "But you must write to me daily if I do go... Are you going to her now?" he asked, as Clara got up immediately after breakfast. "I shall be in the house all the morning, and if you want me you will of course send for me."
    "She may perhaps like to see you."
    "I will come up every now and again. I would remain there altogether, only I should be in the way." Then he got a newspaper and made himself comfortable over the fire, while she went up to her weary task in her aunt's room.

Early on in the novel as this is, passages such as this make it pretty clear what Trollope expects us to think of Clara's two suitors---even without the reinforcement of Clara's own involuntary reflections on how Will Belton would have done things differently.

We can hardly say that Clara has created a mess for herself. We can understand very well how her loneliness, what she experiences dealing with her self-pitying father, and the lack of appreciation she suffers at home have given Captain Aylmer's occasional kindnesses and mild attentions an inflated value in her eyes.

My question in all of this is, how far does Trollope expect us to find Will at fault? For all his tacit approval of Will's straightforwardness, it is the other face of that straightforwardness, his outright importunity and (I would call it) selfishness, that has driven Clara into this corner.

Chapter 9:

During those hours of sickness in the house they had been much thrown together, and no one could have been kinder or more gentle to her than he had been. He had come to call her Clara, as people will do when joined together in such duties, and had been very pleasant as well as affectionate in his manner with her. It had seemed to her that he also wished to take upon himself the cares and love of an adopted brother. But as an adopted brother she would have nothing to do with him. The two men whom she liked best in the world would assume each the wrong place; and between them both she felt that she would be left friendless.

And how long ago was that moment?

Chapter 10:

The will contained certain substantial legacies to servants---the amount to that old handmaid Martha being so great as to produce a fit of fainting, after which the old handmaid declared that if ever there was, by any chance, an angel of light upon the earth, it was her late mistress; and yet Martha had had her troubles with her mistress; and there was a legacy of two hundred pounds to the gentleman who was called upon to act as co-executor with Captain Aylmer. Other clause in the will there was none, except that one substantial clause which bequeathed to her well-beloved nephew, Frederic Folliott Aylmer, everything of which the testatrix died possessed. The will had been made at some moment in which Clara's spirit of independence had offended her aunt, and her name was not mentioned. That nothing should have been left to Clara was the one thing that surprised the relatives from Taunton who were present. The relatives from Taunton, to give them their due, expected nothing for themselves; but as there had been great doubt as to the proportions in which the property would be divided between the nephew and adopted niece, there was aroused a considerable excitement as to the omission of the name of Miss Amedroz...

Clearly this was done even before Mrs Winterfield decided that "duty" compelled her to leave everything to Captain Aylmer.

And yes, we know she doesn't know that Mr Amedroz has lost everything; but still, how can she allow a passing feeling of "offence" to supersede the years of her relationship with Clara?

And while it was probably just thoughtlessness, the fact is Mrs Winterfield didn't send for Mr Palmer when she found out that Mr Amedroz was left with nothing for Clara.

>53 lyzard: We can understand very well how her loneliness, what she experiences dealing with her self-pitying father, and the lack of appreciation she suffers at home have given Captain Aylmer's occasional kindnesses and mild attentions an inflated value in her eyes. I didn’t quite understand it, until you pointed it out! I was more of the ‘what on earth does she see in him’ point of view! But now that you mention it, of course that does make sense. Clara is so isolated that obviously she is drawn to anyone who is pleasant to her.

I feel like the book I ordered is never going to come! I'm glad to see a lively discussion, though, and will look forward to reading this thread whenever I get this book.

>55 SandDune:

The problem is that the time-frame of the narrative doesn't allow us to see any normal, unselfconscious interactions between Clara and Aylmer; all we get is that passage (quoted in >32 lyzard:) where Clara ruminates on their similar tastes. And really, I think that was necessary to give her relationship with Aylmer the necessary credibility.

But the narrative begins with Charlie's death, and then we have Mrs Winterfield's decision and how she hopes that will be "solved", and after that Clara is prickly and on-guard.

On the other hand we do see that three-hour walk taken by Clara and Will; and I think these rare interludes where a man and a woman are just able to be themselves together are terribly important.

Of course Will then immediately ruins things but still... :)

>56 japaul22:

How frustrating for you, I'm so sorry! Hang in there, and please do catch up when you can.

Anyway---the more we do see of Captain Aylmer, the more discouraging things become:

Chapter 10:

    Not for the first time, when he was sitting by the bedside of his dying aunt, had he thought of asking Clara to marry him. Though he had never hitherto resolved that he would do so---though he had never till then brought himself absolutely to determine that he would take so important a step---he had pondered over it often, and was aware that he was very fond of Clara. He was, in truth, as much in love with her as it was in his nature to be in love. He was not a man to break his heart for a girl;---nor even to make a strong fight for a wife, as Belton was prepared to do. If refused once, he might probably ask again,---having some idea that a first refusal was not always intended to mean much,---and he might possibly make a third attempt, prompted by some further calculation of the same nature. But it might be doubted whether, on the first, second, or third occasion, he would throw much passion into his words; and those who knew him well would hardly expect to see him die of a broken heart, should he ultimately be unsuccessful.
    When he had first thought of marrying Miss Amedroz he had imagined that she would have shared with him his aunt's property, and indeed such had been his belief up to the days of the last illness of Mrs Winterfield. The match therefore had recommended itself to him as being prudent as well as pleasant... In a money point of view he might no doubt now do better; but then money was not everything. He was very fond of Clara, and felt that if she would accept him he would be proud of his wife. She was well born and well educated, and it was the proper sort of thing for him to do. No doubt he had some idea, seeing how things had now arranged themselves, that he would be giving much more than he would get; and perhaps the manner of his offer might be affected by that consideration; but not on that account did he feel at all sure that he would be accepted. Clara Amedroz was a proud girl,---perhaps too proud. Indeed, it was her fault. If her pride now interfered with her future fortune in life, it should be her own fault, not his. He would do his duty to her and to his aunt;---he would do it perseveringly and kindly; and then, if she refused him, the fault would not be his...

In Trollopean terms, there are any number of damning phrases in these paragraphs spelling out Captain Aylmer's state of mind with regard to Clara. To pick only one, note the reiteration of "the fault would not be his" at the end: that, I think, tells us as much about Captain Aylmer as we need to know, in terms of his approach to life.

There's no doubt that Trollope entirely prefers Will's impetuosity to this sort of tepid calculation; probably so do we, in spite of the self-defeating nature of Will's premature proposal.

The worst is yet to come, however.

Another thing we know of Trollope is that he liked a young woman - once it was appropriate for her to do so - to be frank about her feelings for her man, not to be embarrassed or reluctant or to play games with her feelings or his.

Clara Amedroz follows this precept in her response to Aylmer's proposal:

Chapter 10:

    "Shall what be all one?" she asked.
    "Shall it be your house and my house? Can you tell me that you will love me and be my wife?" Again she looked at him, and he repeated his question. "Clara, can you love me well enough to take me for your husband?"
    "I can," she said. Why should she hesitate, and play the coy girl, and pretend to any doubts in her mind which did not exist there? She did love him, and had so told herself with much earnestness. To him, while his words had been doubtful,---while he had simply played at making love to her, she had given no hint of the state of her affections. She had so carried herself before him as to make him doubt whether success could be possible for him. But now,—why should she hesitate now? It was as she had hoped,---or as she had hardly dared to hope. He did love her. "I can," she said; and then, before he could speak again, she repeated her words with more emphasis. "Indeed I can; with all my heart."

If we didn't know what to think of Aylmer before, we do now:

The truth is very well, but he would have liked it better had the truth come to him by slower degrees. When his aunt had told him to marry Clara Amedroz, he had been at once reconciled to the order by a feeling on his own part that the conquest of Clara would not be too facile. She was a woman of value, not to be snapped up easily,---or by any one. So he had thought then; but he began to fancy now that he had been wrong in that opinion...

This is why I quoted those passages up in >51 lyzard: The two are at odds before they ever get to this point, unknowingly on both parts. Clara is aware that she has been cold and elusive with Aylmer and blames herself for doing or saying something to discourage him whenever he has shown a tendency to draw near.

But now we learn that Aylmer preferred it, continues to prefer it, when (as he views it) she plays hard to get. Her frankness with him - over-eagerness, in his view - immediately cools his interest in her.

Aylmer damns himself here and previously, with his generalisations about "a woman's first 'no' not meaning much", and the value he places in resistance. This is everything Trollope thinks a man should not do in his dealings with the woman he supposedly loves, a cheap and nasty view of the relations of the sexes.

And this, consequently, is a recipe for disaster:

Chapter 11:

She would go down to him full of joy, though not full of mirth, and would confess to him frankly, that in receiving the assurance of his love, she had received everything that had seemed to have any value for her in the world. Hitherto she had been independent;---she had specially been careful to show to him her resolve to be independent of him. Now she would put aside all that, and let him know that she recognised in him her lord and master as well as husband. To her father had been left no strength on which she could lean, and she had been forced therefore to trust to her own strength. Now she would be dependent on him who was to be her husband. As heretofore she had rejected his offers of assistance almost with disdain, so now would she accept them without scruple, looking to him to be her guide in all things, putting from her that carping spirit in which she had been wont to judge of his actions, and believing in him,---as a wife should believe in her husband.

Another cross-Trollope touch here:

(---possible spoilers for The Small House At Allington---)

Chapter 11:

The Aylmers were a considerable people, and he, though a younger brother, had much more than a younger brother's portion. His seat in Parliament was safe; his position in society was excellent and secure; he was exactly so placed that marriage with a fortune was the only thing wanting to put the finishing coping-stone to his edifice;---that, and perhaps also the useful glory of having some Lady Mary or Lady Emily at the top of his table. Lady Emily Aylmer? Yes;---it would have sounded better, and there was a certain Lady Emily who might have suited. Now, as some slight regrets stole upon him gently, he failed to remember that this Lady Emily had not a shilling in the world.

Again, this seems like a quieter reworking of another Trollope situation, Adolphus Crosbie throwing over Lily Dale for the perceived but wholly fallacious advantages of marriage to Lady Alexandrina and a connection with the de Courcy family.

Chapter 11:

They went up-stairs and again sat themselves in chairs over the fire; but for a while conversation did not seem to come to them freely. Clara felt that it was now Captain Aylmer's turn to begin, and Captain Aylmer felt---that he wished he could read the newspaper. He had nothing in particular that he desired to say to his lady-love. That morning, as he was shaving himself, he had something to say that was very particular,---as to which he was at that moment so nervous, that he had cut himself slightly through the trembling of his hand. But that had now been said, and he was nervous no longer. That had now been said, and the thing settled so easily, that he wondered at his own nervousness. He did not know that there was anything that required much further immediate speech. Clara had thought somewhat of the time which might be proposed for their marriage, making some little resolves, with which the reader is already acquainted; but no ideas of this kind presented themselves to Captain Aylmer. He had asked his cousin to be his wife, thereby making good his promise to his aunt. There could be no further necessity for pressing haste. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

Another cross-Trollope thought (sorry, but it's the nature of this novel!)---

(---possible spoilers for Rachel Ray---)

I'm interested in Trollope's emphasis upon the "coldness" of Aylmer's kisses. He's saying, as clearly as could be permitted in 1865, that there's no sexual attraction between him and Clara.

We might remember that Trollope got into trouble with some critics for his insistence upon the strong physical attraction between Luke and Rachel in Rachel Ray, which goes so far as implying a highly satisfactory sex life once they're married.

The lack of spark between Clara and Aylmer, conversely, is already prophesying doom for their intended marriage.

In Chapter 12, things go from bad to worse regarding the engagement:

    "What she asked you to do, Fred?"
    "What I had promised, I mean."
    "What you had promised? I did not hear that before." These last words were spoken in a very low voice, but they went direct to Captain Aylmer's ears.
    "But you have heard me declare," he said, "that as regards myself nothing could be more satisfactory."
    "Fred," she said, "listen to me for a moment. You and I engaged ourselves to each other yesterday as man and wife."
    "Of course we did."
    "Listen to me, dear Fred. In doing that there was nothing in my mind unbefitting the sadness of the day. Even in death we must think of life, and if it were well for you and me that we should be together, it would surely have been but a foolish ceremony between us to have abstained from telling each other that it would be so because my aunt had died last week. But it may be, and I think it is the case, that the feelings arising from her death have made us both too precipitate..."

Though she does not know it, Clara's determination that they should both be free again - at the very least, free to reconsider - has the opposite effect upon Captain Aylmer: we cannot say "the desired effect", as there is certainly no consciousness on Clara's part of the way her words are likely to act upon him.

As so often, we see Trollope at his best in analysing a character's mixed motives; but despite his effort to do him as much justice as possible, we hardly come away thinking the better or Captain Aylmer---but on the contrary, probably feel that Clara has had a narrow escape:

    Well;---might it not be best for him that it should be so? He had kept his promise to his aunt, and had done all that lay in his power to make Clara Amedroz his wife. If she chose to rebel against her own good fortune simply because he spoke to her a few words which seemed to him to be fitting, might it not be well for him to take her at her word?
    Such were his first thoughts; but as the day wore on with him, something more generous in his nature came to his aid, and something also that was akin to real love. Now that she was no longer his own, he again felt a desire to have her. Now that there would be again something to be done in winning her, he was again stirred by a man's desire to do that something. He ought not to have told her of the promise. He was aware that what he had said on that point had been dropped by him accidentally, and that Clara's resolution after that had not been unnatural. He would, therefore, give her another chance, and resolved before he went to bed that night that he would allow a fortnight to pass away, and would then write to her, renewing his offer with all the strongest declarations of affection which he would be enabled to make...

However strong that might be...

Trollope is less forthright when it comes to analysing Clara, probably because she either doesn't recognise her own motives, or can't admit to them.

I think, however, that we are invited here to question how Clara really felt and feels about the engagement---and its breaking. Her vehemence over Captain Aylmer's "promise", though understandable to an extent, seems rather like her covering up her own relief at having found a loophole: it isn't necessarily Captain Aylmer alone who "would be glad of a means of escape":

Chapter 12:

As regarded her position with Captain Aylmer, the more she thought of it the more sure she became that everything was over in that quarter. She had, indeed, told him that such need not necessarily be the case,---but this she had done in her desire at the moment to mitigate the apparent authoritativeness of her own decision, rather than with any idea of leaving the matter open for further consideration. She was sure that Captain Aylmer would be glad of a means of escape, and that he would not again place himself in the jeopardy which the promise exacted from him by his aunt had made so nearly fatal to him. And for herself, though she still loved the man,---so loved him that she lay back in the corner of her carriage weeping behind her veil as she thought of what she had lost,---still she would not take him, though he should again press his suit upon her with all the ardour at his command. No, indeed. No man should ever be made to regard her as a burden imposed upon him by an extorted promise! What;---let a man sacrifice himself to a sense of duty on her behalf! And then she repeated the odious words to herself, till she came to think that it had fallen from his lips and not from her own...

Meanwhile---

Shades and shades. Though it would not be correct to sat that Clara's refusal has had the same effect upon Will Belton that it does upon Captain Aylmer, that is, that it has enhanced her value to him, there is certainly an echo of it in that the very fact of Clara denying him has made Will much more passionately fixated upon her. He is a man not accustomed to being thwarted, or not getting what he wants, and the rejection has placed him in an unfamiliar situation:

Chapter 13:

After that he walked out by moonlight round the house, wandering about the garden and farmyard, and down through the avenue, having in his own mind some pretence of the watchfulness of ownership, but thinking little of his property and much of his love. Here was a thing that he desired with all his heart, but it seemed to be out of his reach,---absolutely out of his reach. He was sick and weary with a feeling of longing,---sick with that covetousness wherewith Ahab coveted the vineyard of Naboth. What was the world to him if he could not have this thing on which he had set his heart? He had told his sister that he would not break his heart; and so much, he did not doubt, would be true. A man or woman with a broken heart was in his estimation a man or woman who should die of love; and he did not look for such a fate as that. But he experienced the palpable misery of a craving emptiness within his breast, and did believe of himself that he never could again be in comfort unless he could succeed with Clara Amedroz. He stood leaning against one of the trees, striking his hands together, and angry with himself at the weakness which had reduced him to such a state. What could any man be worth who was so little master of himself as he had now become?

****

    "She is not heartless."
    "Then she must suppose that you are."
    "I dare say she doesn't think that I care much about it. When I told her, I did it all of a heap, you see; and I fancy she thought I was just mad at the time."
    "And did you speak about it again?"
    "No; not a word. I shouldn't wonder if she hadn't forgotten it before I went away."
    "That would be impossible."
    "You wouldn't say so if you knew how it was done. It was all over in half an hour; and she had given me such an answer that I thought I had no right to say anything more about it."

Yeah, that's going to happen. :D

This is interesting: shades and shades again.

Following up >66 lyzard:, it feels like, having introduced two men as different as Will Belton and Captain Aylmer, Trollope then proceeds to put them in similar positions to see how each of them reacts.

We've seen how, cautious as he is (to put it mildly), Captain Aylmer was understandably moved to make his promise to Mrs Winterfield; now we have Will finding out that Clara has been willed nothing, and being warned against "romantic promises" by the lawyer, Mr Green.

We know that Ayler is already mentally letting himself off the hook with "Oh well, I kept my promise"; Will has rather different views:

Chapter 14:

    "Will, take my advice, and don't make any romantic promises when you are down at Belton. You'll be sure to regret them if you do. And you should remember that in truth Miss Amedroz has no greater claim on you than any other lady in the land."
    "Isn't she my cousin?"
    "Well;---yes. She is your cousin, but a distant one only; and I'm not aware that cousinship gives any claim."
    "Who is she to have a claim on? I'm the nearest she has got. Besides, am not I going to take all the property which ought to be hers?"
    "That's just it. There's no such ought in the case. The property is as much your own as this poker is mine. That's exactly the mistake I want you to guard against. If you liked her, and chose to marry her, that would be all very well; presuming that you don't want to get money in marriage."
    "I hate the idea of marrying for money."
    "All right. Then marry Miss Amedroz if you please. But don't make any rash undertakings to be her father, or her brother, or her uncle, or her aunt. Such romance always leads a man into trouble."
    "But I've done it already."
    "What do you mean?"
    "I've told her that I would be her brother, and that as long as I had a shilling she should never want sixpence. And I mean it. And as for what you say about romance and repenting it, that simply comes from your being a lawyer."
    "Thank ye, Will."

Hmm.

This is an ominous passage in several ways; though with hindsight, the attitude of Captain Aylmer towards his mother is interesting:

Chapter 14:

Having given a full month to the consideration of his position as regarded Miss Amedroz, he made up his mind to two things. In the first place, he would at once pay over to her the money which was to be hers as her aunt's legacy, and then he would renew his offer. To that latter determination he was guided by mixed motives,---by motives which, when joined together, rarely fail to be operative. His conscience told him that he ought to do so,---and then the fact of her having, as it were, taken herself away from him, made him again wish to possess her. And there was another cause which, perhaps, operated in the same direction. He had consulted his mother, and she had strongly advised him to have nothing further to do with Miss Amedroz. Lady Aylmer abused her dead sister heartily for having interfered in the matter, and endeavoured to prove to her son that he was released from his promise by having in fact performed it. But on this point his conscience interfered,---backed by his wishes,---and he made his resolve as has been above stated...

As we've now learned to expect, Trollope juxtaposes this passage detailing Captain Aylmer's calm thought processes regarding his marriage against Will Belton's emotional reaction when Mr Green breaks the news to him---but also with the way he subsequently pulls himself together:

Chapter 14:

He had had time to recognise the fact that he had no ground of quarrel with his cousin because she had preferred another man to him. This had happened to him as he was recrossing the New Road about two o'clock, and was beginning to find that his legs were weary under him. And, indeed, he had recognised one or two things before he had gone to sleep with his tears dripping on to his pillow. In the first place, he had ill-treated Joe Green, and had made a fool of himself in his friend's presence. As Joe Green was a sensible, kind-hearted fellow, this did not much signify;---but not on that account did he omit to tell himself of his own fault. Then he discovered that it would ill become him to break his word to Mr Amedroz and to his daughter, and to do so without a word of excuse, because Clara had exercised a right which was indisputably her own. He had undertaken certain work at Belton which required his presence, and he would go down and do his work as though nothing had occurred to disturb him...

Noting this:

Chapter 15:

    "When a girl with nothing a year has managed to love a man with two or three thousand a year, and has managed to be loved by him in return,---instead of going through the same process with the curate or village doctor,---it is a success, and her friends will always think so. And when a girl marries a gentleman, and a member of Parliament, instead of---; well, I'm not going to say anything personal,---her friends will congratulate her upon his position. It may be very wicked, and mercenary, and all that; but it's the way of the world."
    "I hate hearing about the world."
    "Yes, my dear; all proper young ladies like you do hate it. But I observe that such girls as you never offend its prejudices. You can't but know that you would have done a wicked as well as a foolish thing to marry a man without an adequate income."

Poor Clara:

Chapter 16:

    Clara was in the hall when Belton arrived, and received him as he entered, enveloped in his damp great-coats. "It is so good of you to come in such weather," she said.
    "Nice seasonable weather, I call it," he said. It was the same comfortable, hearty, satisfactory voice which had done so much towards making his way for him on his first arrival at Belton Castle. The voices to which Clara was most accustomed were querulous,---as though the world had been found by the owners of them to be but a bad place.

****

    "I'm very poorly, Will;---very," said the squire, putting out his hand as though he were barely able to lift it above his knee. Now it certainly was the fact that half an hour before he had been walking across the passage.
    "We must see if we can't soon make you better among us," said Will.
    The squire shook his head with a slow, melancholy movement, not raising his eyes from the ground. "I don't think you'll ever see me much better, Will," he said. And yet half an hour since he had been talking of being down in the dining-room on the next day. "I shan't trouble you much longer," said the squire. "You'll soon have it all without paying rent for it."

Okay---even though the Askerton subplot is now coming at us quite quickly, I still think I would prefer to deal with it in its entirety when we get towards the end.

I will say, though, I find this subplot one of the most interesting things about this novel, and all the more so for being buried in a self-evidently minor work---where it seems Trollope felt he had more freedom. He would eventually write an outright "fallen woman" novel, but with that plot foregrounded his approach there is more conventionally melodramatic. I much prefer the surprising pragmatism he exhibits here.

Just poking my head in to say I'm going to join you. I haven't participated in the Trollope reads since we finished the Pallisers, whenever that was, but this feels like a good idea. I'm on Chapter 4 but will catch up.

>73 AnneDC:

Great to have you here, Anne! :)

>72 lyzard: I am finding Colonel Askerton a very elusive character, there is absolutely no hint what attracted him to his wife.

I am done. Once again, I got to about the half-way point and suddenly went full-steam ahead! Now that I'm finished, I'm amazed at how much I'm thinking about the 3 main female characters: Clara, Mrs Askerton and Lady Aylmer.

>75 MissWatson:

We don't really get to know either of them on that level: their significance lies elsewhere.

>76 kac522:

Well done, Kathy! - please translate those thoughts into comments! :D

We agree, I think, that the two are chiefly friends of convenience, but I think Mrs Askerton's verbal attack on Will in Chapter 15 shows that she has a fair understanding of Clara's character: she criticises Will on the points she estimates will have the most effect on Clara---his lower birth, his lack of formal education, his rougher manners; and in light of Clara's attraction to Captain Aylmer, we can't really say she's wrong.

But Clara will learn to know better, and so indeed will Mrs Askerton.

She's getting in as many pre-emptive blows here as she can for the battle she thinks she sees looming; but of course when the attack does come, it's from another and entirely unexpected direction...

Mothers-in-law:

Chapter 16:

In neither of these letters was there much said about Sir Anthony, but they were all very full of Lady Aylmer. In the first he wrote with something of the personal enthusiasm of a lover, and therefore Clara hardly felt the little drawbacks to her happiness which were contained in certain innuendoes respecting Lady Aylmer's ideas, and Lady Aylmer's hopes, and Lady Aylmer's fears. Clara was not going to marry Lady Aylmer, and did not fear but that she could hold her own against any mother-in-law in the world when once they should be brought face to face. And as long as Captain Aylmer seemed to take her part rather than that of his mother it was all very well. The second letter was more trying to her temper, as it contained one or two small morsels of advice as to conduct which had evidently originated with her ladyship. Now there is nothing, I take it, so irritating to an engaged young lady as counsel from her intended husband's mamma...

:D

But this is no laughing matter:

Chapter 16:

You know, I think, that my aunt Winterfield and I had some conversation about your neighbours, the Askertons; and you will remember that my aunt, whose ideas on such matters were always correct, was a little afraid that your father had not made sufficient inquiry respecting them before he allowed them to settle near him as tenants. It now turns out that she is,---very far, indeed, from what she ought to be. My mother at first thought of writing to you about this; but she is a little fatigued, and at last resolved that under all the circumstances it might be as well that I should tell you. It seems that Mrs. Askerton was married before to a certain Captain Berdmore, and that she left her first husband during his lifetime under the protection of Colonel Askerton. I believe they, the Colonel and Mrs Askerton, have been since married. Captain Berdmore died about four years ago in India, and it is probable that such a marriage has taken place. But under these circumstances, as Lady Aylmer says, you will at once perceive that all acquaintance between you and the lady should be brought to an end. Indeed, your own sense of what is becoming to you, either as an unmarried girl or as my future wife, or indeed as a woman at all, will at once make you feel that this must be so...

So we get to the crux of it.

There are all sorts of odd touches in Trollope's handling of this subplot---not least that Will does exactly as he said he would (of course) and makes his inquiries...and then does nothing with the information.

In taking the matter up with Mr Green, Wills says (in Chapter 15):

"I hate the idea of deceit. The truth is, that any one living anywhere under a false name should be exposed,---or should be made to assume their right name."

As Will discovers, and as Clara will later argue, there is no deceit about the situation now: the Askertons are certainly married. The deceit comes rather in Mrs Askerton's assumption of a false maiden name, though as far as we know Clara is the only person to whom she claims to have been a Miss Oliphant---and there is the suggestion that she has said so not as a planned course of deceit, but on the spur of the moment, to head off any other questions.

Of course Lady Aylmer would call all this sophistry, and she's not necessarily wrong about that: Victorian morality would certainly have sided with her.

It's that no-one else does that's so interesting to me.

>81 lyzard: It's that no-one else does that's so interesting to me.

Besides her son, or at least he sides with his mother to Clara, even if he may have different thoughts inwardly.

Okay, maybe I will do this now---

The word subsequently applied by the Aylmers to Clara's friendship with Mrs Askerton is contamination.

This was a fundamental tenet of Victorian morality, that a "bad" person could, literally, contaminate a "good" person---though of course when terms like this were used, it was almost invariably in the context of woman to woman: a "bad" woman was like the bad apple in the barrel, any contact with her would "infect" a good woman and make her less good---corrupt her morals, drag her down from the pedestal that the "angel in the house" was supposed to spend her life on.

Of course there was a lot of false argumentation in this: it was an aspect of that peculiar Victorian view of womanhood. To be exposed to evil was to be familiarised with it---and from there it was only a step to being evil yourself. A woman could not be aware of evil and yet hold her moral ground.

(ETA: This from Lady Aylmer in Chapter 17: "I always hold that a woman is responsible for her female friends.")

In practical terms - and this is, in context, something we need to be very aware of - the results of this were cruel. A woman who had taken a wrong step for whatever reason, and in whatever circumstances, was an outcast forever: there was no way back for her in this supposedly Christian society, repent and reform as she might.

Also, this situation prevented a lot of "good" women from doing the social and charity work that was sorely needed, and that they were available and qualified to do: in many cases they would be forbidden from any such work by their menfolk specifically on the grounds of the risk of moral contamination.

And we see the cruelty very clearly in Mrs Askerton's situation. She is now married and has been for four years; but that doesn't matter.

Nor does the fact that she could not be living more quietly, more obscurely, or in in more lonely circumstances: she goes nowhere, and sees no-one---except Clara, and that's enough.

We need to be very clear that society, at large, would probably have been on Lady Aylmer's side in this---or would have felt the need to pose as such.

But that's not how Trollope approaches the situation. He makes no excuses for Mrs Askerton (though the circumstances of her first marriage were obviously awful), but the pragmatic way that his "good" characters react - that he makes their doing so a measure of their goodness, in fact - that the Aylmers, though technically correct, are exposed in all their nastiness via that very correctness - flies in the very teeth of the existing social standards.

Chapter 2:

Clara had not been quite ingenuous, as she acknowledged to herself. She was aware that her aunt would not permit herself to repeat rumours as to the truth of which she had no absolute knowledge. She understood that the weakness of her aunt's caution was due to the old lady's sense of charity and dislike of slander. But Clara had buckled on her armour for Mrs Askerton, and was glad, therefore, to achieve her little victory...

Chapter 16:

The communication, as to which Mrs Askerton had prophesied, had now been made;---but it had been made, not by Will Belton, whom Mrs Askerton had reviled, but by Captain Aylmer, whose praises Mrs Askerton had so loudly sung. As Clara thought of this, she could not analyse her own feelings, which were not devoid of a certain triumph. She had known that Belton would not put on his armour to attack a woman. Captain Aylmer had done so, and she was hardly surprised at his doing it...

Ouch:

Chapter 17:

The house was of stone, with a portico of Ionic columns which looked as though it hardly belonged of right to the edifice, and stretched itself out grandly, with two pretentious wings, which certainly gave it a just claim to be called a mansion. It required a great many servants to keep it in order, and the numerous servants required an experienced duenna, almost as grand in appearance as Lady Aylmer herself, to keep them in order. There was an open carriage and a close carriage, and a butler, and two footmen, and three gamekeepers, and four gardeners, and there was a coachman, and there were grooms, and sundry inferior men and boys about the place to do the work which the gardeners and gamekeepers and grooms did not choose to do themselves. And they all became fat, and lazy, and stupid, and respectable together; so that, as the reader will at once perceive, Aylmer Park was kept up in the proper English style...

****

The gardeners, grooms, and gamekeepers were maintained; ten domestic servants sat down to four heavy meals in the servants' hall every day, and Lady Aylmer contented herself with receiving little or no company, and with stingy breakfasts and bad dinners for herself and her husband and daughter. By all this it must be seen that she did her duty as the wife of an English country gentleman, and properly maintained his rank as a baronet.

OUCH:

Chapter 17:

He had been, and still was, a county magistrate; but he had never been very successful in the justice-room, and now seldom troubled the county with his judicial incompetence. He had been fond of good dinners and good wine, and still, on occasions, would make attempts at enjoyment in that line; but the gout and Lady Aylmer together were too many for him, and he had but small opportunity for filling up the blanks of his existence out of the kitchen or cellar. He was a big man, with a broad chest, and a red face, and a quantity of white hair,---and was much given to abusing his servants. He took some pleasure in standing, with two sticks on the top of the steps before his own front door, and railing at any one who came in his way. But he could not do this when Lady Aylmer was by; and his dependents, knowing his habits, had fallen into an ill-natured way of deserting the side of the house which he frequented.

Trollope was in a bit of a mood with this one, don't you think? :D

(Although the scary thing is that Sir Anthony still turns out to be the only member of the family capable of anything resembling kindness...or at least, his self-pity makes him capable of fellow-feeling.)

(Thought: self-pitying fathers a recurrent touch??)

If self-pitying fathers are a recurrent theme here, so too are cruelly isolated women:

Chapter 17:

She knew that it was her lot to be driven about slowly in a carriage with a livery servant before her and another behind her, and then eat a dinner which the cook-maid would despise. She was aware that it was her duty to be snubbed by her mother, and to encounter her father's ill-temper, and to submit to her brother's indifference, and to have, so to say, the slightest possible modicum of personal individuality. She knew that she had never attracted a man's love, and might hardly hope to make friends for the comfort of her coming age...

>82 kac522:

Chapter 17:

But she had quite succeeded in inspiring her son with a feeling of horror against the iniquity of the Askertons. He was prepared to be indignantly moral...

Yes, I was rather lumping him in with his mother. :D

Chapter 18:

Presuming this story to be true, to what did it amount? It certainly amounted to very much. If, in truth, this woman had left her own husband and gone away to live with another man, she had by doing so,---at any rate while she was doing so,---fallen in such a way as to make herself unfit for the society of an unmarried young woman who meant to keep her name unblemished before the world. Clara would not attempt any further unravelling of the case, even in her own mind;---but on that point she could not allow herself to have a doubt. Without condemning the unhappy victim, she understood well that she would owe it to all those who held her dear, if not to herself, to eschew any close intimacy with one in such a position. The rules of the world were too plainly written to allow her to guide herself by any special judgment of her own in such a matter. But if this friend of hers,---having been thus unfortunate,---had since redeemed, or in part redeemed, her position by a second marriage, would it be then imperative upon her to remember the past for ever, and to declare that the stain was indelible? Clara felt that with a previous knowledge of such a story she would probably have avoided any intimacy with Mrs Askerton. She would then have been justified in choosing whether such intimacy should or should not exist, and would so have chosen out of deference to the world's opinion. But now it was too late for that. Mrs. Askerton had for years been her friend; and Clara had to ask herself this question; was it now needful,---did her own feminine purity demand,---that she should throw her friend over because in past years her life had been tainted by misconduct...

Of course---having stated outright that "The rules of the world were too plainly written to allow her to guide herself by any special judgment of her own", Clara will go on to do precisely that.

What we need to do is get to the bottom of is her motives.

Liz, could you say a little bit about what a "front" is in the context of the Aylmer women in Chapter 17? Both Lady Aylmer and her daughter are described as having one. In the context, I would infer it's some sort of hair piece?

Also from Chapter 17, could you say a little bit about "Essays and Reviews" and Bishop Colenso?

>90 cbl_tn:

The business of Lady Aylmer's front made me think of the horrifying chignons in He Knew He Was Right! :D

Yes, a front was a false fringe, usually false curls at a time that demanded thick hair and an elaborate hairstyle.

I found these: they're American, and from later in the century, but they give you the idea:


  


False hair for women was surprisingly common throughout the 19th century (and as we see here, on both sides of the Atlantic).

>91 cbl_tn:

Essays and Reviews was a theological work, a collection of essays on religious subjects---but written from a broad-church perspective that made it very offensive to both high- and low-church people.

Were you with us for Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks? - I can't remember. We touched in that upon the concept of "broad church" in the character of Mr Beverley (I talked about it in this post).

Briefly, it was a form of Anglicanism that encouraged a more open-minded approach to religion and interpretation of the bible, including being accepting of science.

We see this in the topics in Essays and Reviews, which (for example) included historical evidence for Christianity and an attempt to interpret Genesis in terms of new astronomical theories.

John William Colenso was a very controversial religious figure for a number of reasons. He questioned a great many conventional religious tenets and, like the authors of Essays and Reviews, began to take an historical approach to certain aspects of the bible and argued against literal interpretation.

(Colenso was the first Bishop of Natal and courted a different kind of controversy by siding with the natives against the colonising British and Dutch.)

>92 lyzard: Thanks, Liz! That's what I had guessed it was. The images are great!

>93 lyzard: Yes, I remember Mr. Beverly. Trollope referred to Radicals just before bringing up Essays and Reviews and Bishop Colenso. Was this a term used for those who had broad church views?

>85 lyzard: I cracked up at the first description of Aylmer Park at the beginning of Chapter 17:

The park was large, including some three or four hundred acres, and was peopled, rather thinly, by aristocratic deer. It was surrounded by an aristocratic paling, and was entered, at three different points, by aristocratic lodges.

I love "aristocratic deer"!

Aylmer Park reminds me of Rosings Park, home of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

>94 cbl_tn:

The word could be mean anything that was for challenging the conservative church / state position but really I think "radical" was like "communism" or "socialism" today, certain people applied it to anything they disagreed with and never mind if they were using the term incorrectly. :D

>95 kac522:

Bit chicken and egg, though: are the Aylmers the way they are because of the Park, or is the Park the way it is because of the Aylmers??

To give the devil her due (if that *is* what I'm doing), I think with Lady Catherine "aristocratic" went all the way to the bone.

I am caught up! And I have two questions.

Going all the way back to Will's proposal to Clara, I am wondering about how common the idea of love marriage was at this time. I had thought that marriage was often a matter of economic necessity, and wonder how Clara can be so reckless as to turn down this proposal. It seems she is not very young, and we know she has no money and no prospect of any--Captain Aylmer seems like a long shot at best, so what would realistically become of Clara upon her father's death?

Chapter 14 or so. Mr. Amedroz complains that Captain Aylmer should have asked him first. Even though he sees fit to complain about everything, isn't he right about this? Wouldn't it have been customary and proper to seek the father's consent first?

>97 AnneDC:

This is something I consider to be a significant weakness, or blind spot, in Trollope's writing: he never really confronts head-on the reality of financial dependence for women---which is to say, he resolves too many of his plots by pulling a suitable husband out of his hat. He doesn't address what happens to a woman like Clara if an eligible man does not present himself, nor (at least not in his main plots) what happens if the man who does present himself is abhorrent to the woman.

Trollope rarely admits that marriage was very often purely an economic transaction, and never in his immediate narrative. The entire Palliser series is based upon a marriage that is forced upon its parties for social and economic reasons, but it's a fait accompli when the books start: we are not there to watch Glencora being compelled to give up the man she loves and pushed into a marriage she doesn't want.

And okay, it's fiction; but in a writer whose realistic depiction of his society is otherwise his major virtue, it's a very false note. In the world of Trollope, nice girls marry for love and nothing else, and conversely do not contemplate marriage with a man they didn't love even if the alternative is destitution...only it never comes to that.

If Clara had been left destitute, becoming a governess would have been her only (forgive the word again) realistic option.

Things were changing for women, but still at this time there was an insuperable barrier for someone like Clara which was that pretty much anything but governessing would mean that she was no longer a lady. Many women throughout the 19th century effectively died of slow starvation because they wouldn't do work that took them out of their social sphere (and once the step was taken, you couldn't go back).

Those of you who have read Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford will of remember how the characters confront Miss Matty's need to earn an income without altering her standing as a lady.

Thus in context Clara's threat of supporting herself by becoming a housemaid (in Chapter 8) is a hollow one. It's a moment of self-dramatisation and nothing that might come to pass.

(In an earlier minor novel, Miss Mackenzie, the heroine is likewise faced with destitution and supporting herself and contemplates training as a hospital nurse: she is of a lower social standing and can therefore think about real work. But of course this is Trollope so three guesses how things turn out?)

Clara is of age, so consent as such wasn't required; but yes, at this time the man was still technically supposed to ask the father's consent first though in practice it didn't always happen. The old idea of father-as-patriarch was fading; young women were spending more time away from home and opening up their circle of acquaintances, and just generally things were loosening up. Even Clara, who has hardly ever left home, manages to meet a man her father doesn't know.

Trollope in fact always seems a bit suspicious of asking consent first---as if it's a bit too calculated for his liking. There are several passages where he comments that men (proper men, his type of hero) don't plan to propose, it just happens spontaneously.

This doesn't apply to Will because the whole thing could hardly be more spontaneous on his part. And we needn't use Mr Amedroz as a measure of what was proper because he was absolutely going to complain however it was done. :D

While I've been criticising Trollope, in Chapter 18 we see him doing what he does best, that is, unpicking a character's tangled thoughts and motives.

As I have remarked before, Trollope gives Clara Amedroz a surprising amount of autonomy and reliance on her own judgement (a situation that in Victorian fiction was usually a recipe for disaster): several times she overtly dismisses any idea of consulting her father, and/or reflects that she only has herself to rely on.

This is all the more startling in this context because of the nature of the dilemma: what is Clara's moral responsibility here?---

    Clara felt that with a previous knowledge of such a story she would probably have avoided any intimacy with Mrs Askerton. She would then have been justified in choosing whether such intimacy should or should not exist, and would so have chosen out of deference to the world's opinion. But now it was too late for that. Mrs Askerton had for years been her friend; and Clara had to ask herself this question; was it now needful,---did her own feminine purity demand,---that she should throw her friend over because in past years her life had been tainted by misconduct.
    It was clear enough at any rate that this was expected from her,---nay, imperatively demanded by him who was to be her lord,---by him to whom her future obedience would be due. Whatever might be her immediate decision, he would have a right to call upon her to be guided by his judgment as soon as she would become his wife. And indeed, she felt that he had such right now,---unless she should decide that no such right should be his, now or ever. It was still within her power to say that she could not submit herself to such a rule as his,---but having received his commands she must do that or obey them. Then she declared to herself, not following the matter out logically, but urged to her decision by sudden impulse, that at any rate she would not obey Lady Aylmer...

Convention would hardly hesitate: she must abandon Mrs Askerton and obey her future husband---but she does neither.

Clara's loyalty to Mrs Askerton is all the more interesting because of the slightly specious nature of their friendship, a relationship, as we have said, more of propinquity and loneliness than compatibility. But it is real enough for Clara to feel herself committed and bound to stand by her.

At the same time---clearly Clara realises that the Askerton situation provides her with an escape from her engagement if she wants one.

We are left to ponder the relative weight of these two distinct motives in what Clara does next.

And this, in its way, is extremely daring:

Chapter 18:

"But no;---you do not know it all. No one can ever know it all. No one can ever know how I suffered before I was driven to escape, or how good to me has been he who---who---who---" Then she turned her back upon Clara, and, walking off to the window, stood there, hiding the tears which clouded her eyes, and concealing the sobs which choked her utterance.

As Birgit remarked in >75 MissWatson:, we don't really get to know Colonel Askerton; while the presentation of Mrs Askerton (via her own words, and conversely those of Mr Green) leaves us to draw our own conclusions somewhere in between.

Trollope stops short of justifying the situation here but only just. There wasn't supposed to be a justification for a woman to leave her husband---and we've seen before, in Phineas Finn, when it happens in Trollope the alternatives are nearly as bad as one another even when it is flat out leaving, not leaving to be with another man. So this is startling.

But what is striking to me here is the inference that these two people are, or could be, happy together in spite of everything. This was a direct challenge to the convention that sin could only lead to misery---and if the Askertons are ever miserable, it's not because of the sin, it's because their society insists upon the misery.

The other remarkable touch is Colonel Askerton marrying his mistress---and not because he feels obliged to, but because he loves her:

    "When you mentioned to me my old name, my real name, how could I be honest? I have been driven to do that which has made honesty to me impossible. My life has been a lie; and yet how could I help it? I must live somewhere,—and how could I live anywhere without deceit?"
    "And yet that is so sad."
    "Sad indeed! But what could I do? Of course I was wrong in the beginning. Though how am I to regret it, when it has given me such a husband as I have?"

All of this flies directly in the face of---well, absolutely fiction convention, which was always more conservative than reality, but to a large extent social convention too.

I finished today and look forward to your comments about what I have just read! I need you to supply context since I only have my 20th/21st century attitudes to go by.

Clara writes her letter, and it will eventually be the bombshell that she knows it must---but not immediately, as its contents are forestalled by other news:

Chapter 19:

    When his mother entered the library he was standing before the fire with a scrap of paper in his hand.
    "Since you have been at church there has come a telegraphic message," he said.
    "What is it, Frederic? Do not frighten me,---if you can avoid it!"
    "You need not be frightened, ma'am, for you did not know him. Mr Amedroz is dead."

>101 CDVicarage:

Well done, Kerry!

By all means let us know what your attitudes suggest to you. :)

>98 lyzard: I’ve just finished reading The Five: the Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper and it’s brought home to me how incredibly naïve Clara is in her determination to not accept money from anyone. And I’m wondering if this was a planned naïveté on Trollope’s part or just a desire not to go down a realistic route, as you mention above. Of course, Clara is of a different class to the woman mentioned in the Jack the Ripper book, and would have the opportunity of being a governess if nothing else, but I wonder how Mrs Askerton would have turned out if Mr Askerton hadn’t been there to support her. No safety net for her, I am suspecting.

>104 SandDune:

I think Trollope had this concept of a how the right sort of young woman should think and act and money calculations were not part of it---however impractical (to put it mildly) that might have been.

Of course the reality was that, as women were financially dependent upon men, a woman's thoughts about marriage were naturally going to involve, if not money per se, future security.

But there was a great reluctance on Trollope's part to admit that---and quite often you see the reverse, as here, and as in novels like The Bertrams, where he is critical of his characters for being too calculated about their income before marriage, too unwilling to take a leap of faith.

I don't get any sense that we are supposed to be critical of Clara for her instinctive rejection of the money.

Plot-wise, the waters are muddied by the supposition of everyone that she is to marry Captain Aylmer and therefore it isn't really important. This more or less explains the exasperatingly unhelpful sum chosen: it isn't maintenance; it's pin-money for a married woman.

The problem I have here is not Clara's rejection of the money but her refusal to think about her future in any meaningful way. Ever since her brother's death and her awareness of her future poverty (at least), how could she not be thinking of that all the time? How can she take Mrs Winterfield's revelation of her will so calmly? - internally calmly, even if she didn't want to show anything publicly? How can she watch her father's health fail without reflecting upon what his death will mean for her?

Because she's a nice girl---and nice girls, according to Trollope, don't think like that.

And of course because a suitable husband will always show up...

This is why I get angry with Trollope. He can be ruthlessly realistic in some respects but he WILL NOT face this head on. It's artificial. It's dishonest.

And you are quite right to bring up Mrs Askerton in this context. Had there been no Colonel Askerton, presumably she would have stuck it out with her drunken husband---but after he died, what then? No safety net there, as you say. Poverty and prostitution the most likely scenario...except even there, Trollope summons up a husband.

Clara's situation has put Captain Aylmer in quite a bind.

Chapter 19:

Clara Amedroz had now no home,---and, indeed, very little means of providing one. If he intended that she should be his wife, he must furnish her with a home at once. It seemed to him that three houses might possibly be open to her,---of which one, the only one which under such circumstances would be proper, was Aylmer Park. The other two were Plaistow Hall and Mrs Askerton's cottage at Belton. As to the latter,---should she ever take shelter there, everything must be over between him and her. On that point there could be no doubt. He could not bring himself to marry a wife out of Mrs Askerton's drawing-room, nor could he expect his mother to receive a young woman brought into the family under such circumstances. And Plaistow Hall was almost as bad. It was as bad to him, though it would, perhaps, be less objectionable in the eyes of Lady Aylmer. Should Clara go to Plaistow Hall there must be an end to everything. Of that also he taught himself to be quite certain.

To offset my previous criticisms of Trollope, in scenes like this we see him at his best: the tangle of motives, the different impulses pulling someone in different directions---what they know is right, and what they'd rather do.

The tension between the impulse to give Clara up, and a determination not to give her up to Will Belton, is very clear. In fact I think at this point it is Will, not Clara, who is determining Captain Aylmer's course of action.

Obviously Clara's confidence to him about Will's proposal is at the bottom of all this but it's hard to get a grip on what Captain Aylmer is really thinking. If it was just the feeling that another man had been before him, that perhaps Clara is "soiled" by having listened to another man speak of love to her, you'd think he's be glad of a means to get her off his hands.

Most men (according to Trollope) liked to think they had "defeated" another man, but here it seems to be more about defeating Will than winning Clara. You'd think he'd be relieved that there's an "out" for him, if not quite an honourable out; but it's the thought of Will picking up the pieces that is holding him back.

Why this level of hostility?

Following up >104 SandDune: and >105 lyzard: I think this is the only place Trollope says anything quite this bald about Clara's situation; I don't think we get anything this frank from her perspective:

Chapter 19:

Then he remembered that nothing had as yet been done towards putting his aunt's fifteen hundred pounds absolutely into Clara's hands; and he remembered also that she might at the present moment be in great want...

And then Trollope starts playing 'compare and contrast' again:

Chapter 19:

Captain Aylmer in his letter hardly said much more. He knew, as he wrote the words, that they were cold and comfortless, and that he ought on such an occasion to have written words that should have been warm at any rate, even though they might not have contained comfort. But, to have written with affection, he should have written at once, and he had postponed his letter from the Sunday till the Wednesday...

Chapter 20:

He loved her. He could not get over it. The passion was on him,---like a palsy, for the shaking off of which no sufficient physical energy was left to him. It clung to him in his goings out and comings in with a painful, wearing tenacity, against which he would now and again struggle, swearing that it should be so no longer,---but against which he always struggled in vain.

In light of >83 lyzard: this is interesting and important:

Chapter 20:

    "Yes," said he, "of course she is there now. Now! Why, remember what these telegraphic messages are. He died only on yesterday morning. Of course she is there, but I do not think it can be good that she should remain there. There is no one near her where she is but that Mrs Askerton. It can hardly be good for her to have no other female friend at such a time as this."
    "I do not think that Mrs. Askerton will hurt her."
    "Mrs Askerton will not hurt her at all,---and as long as Clara does not know the story, Mrs Askerton may serve as well as another..."

Will thinks that Mrs Askerton is not the friend that Clara should have with her - no-one does think she is - and yet, in full knowledge of Mrs Askerton's circumstances the only "hurt" he sees is to Clara---not in the sense that she will be hurt by the knowledge itself (as was widely thought in Victorian society: anything less than ignorance was damaging for a girl), but that having to interact with Mrs Askerton might be painful for her.

Of course the two of them have already got past that, but Will doesn't know it.

We've also been encouraged to consider Mary wiser than Will, a better judge---and she agrees, even though women were expected to hold a harder moral line.

Remarkable.

This does beg the question of what Will intended with his "inquiries". If he was ever going to intervene between Clara and Mrs Askerton, this was the moment---when, as he knows, the cottage is a likely refuge---but having satisfied himself about her identity, he does nothing with the knowledge, and thereafter behaves as if it isn't important. He's not thrilled about the situation, but clearly sees no threat of the "contamination" that so bothers the Aylmers.

>109 lyzard: My impression is that Will just wants to confirm that his recollection is correct, that he's not confusing her with someone else. As if it's a matter of being good at remembering faces.

>110 MissWatson:

There certainly seems to be a threat to Mrs Askerton in the way that his inquiries are phrased, plus the suggestion that they are intended to "protect" Clara:

Chapter 14:

    "The truth is, I think I know where she is, and that she is living under a false name."
    "Then you know more of her than I do."
    "I don't know anything. I'm only in doubt. But as the lady I mean lives near to friends of mine, I should like to know."
    "That you may expose her?"
    "No;---by no means. But I hate the idea of deceit. The truth is, that any one living anywhere under a false name should be exposed,---or should be made to assume their right name."

---but this turns out to be literally true, that once he knows that Mrs Askerton is in fact Mrs Askerton, he just lets it drop.

I just want to be clear here that conventional Victorian morality would absolutely have sided with the Aylmers in this, and that Will's lack of fear of "contamination" is extremely unusual.

Chapter 20:

...now he would be able to say what he wished to say, and hear what he wished to hear, and would travel down by the night-mail train. He was anxious that Clara should feel that he had hurried to her without a moment's delay. It would do no good. He knew that. Nothing that he could do would alter her, or be of any service to him. She had accepted this man, and had herself no power of making a change, even if she should wish it. But still there was to him something of gratification in the idea that she should be made to feel that he, Belton, was more instant in his affection, more urgent in his good offices, more anxious to befriend her in her difficulties, than the man whom she had consented to take for her husband. Aylmer would probably go down to Belton, but Will was very anxious to be the first on the ground,---very anxious,---though his doing so could be of no use.

Understandably, it doesn't occur to him that Aylmer has no intention of going there at all. :)

What we need to be clear about in this section of the novel is that Victorian engagements were taken very seriously---to the point of being considered a de facto marriage; hence the bolded phrase above. (This is why a novel like Can You Forgive Her? can exist in the first place.)

Will is wrong here, very wrong, at least in his underlying desire to outdo Captain Aylmer: if it was only about relieving Clara's immediate wants, that would be one thing, but it isn't and he doesn't pretend otherwise: he is doing it to demonstrate that he is the better man. In this he is, in his society's terms, interfering with another man's wife---which we need to keep in mind going forward:

He would, if possible, be at Belton before Captain Aylmer; and he would, if possible, make Clara feel that, though he was not a member of Parliament, though he was not much given to books, though he was only a farmer, yet he had at any rate as much heart and spirit as the fine gentleman whom she preferred to him...

(Fine gentleman is here a pejorative in the same way that fine lady became one.)

Will's desire to get rid of the Belton estate is hardly rational, but it does raise an interesting point: What happens if there is no heir to an entailed estate?

He's the last Belton that we know of; the distance of the cousinship suggests there is no-one else. If he doesn't have a son, who is his heir?

The indirect suggestion he makes in Chapter 20 is that - eventually, and leaving Frederic Aylmer out of the equation as much as possible - a younger son of Clara should take his, Will's name, and inherit Belton.

I have real idea about the legality of this, or whether Will's death would automatically break the entail---anyone?

Again we see Trollope at his best when he is doing justice to someone he disapproves of:

Chapter 21:

    Calamity had come upon her;—partly, indeed, by her own fault, though that might have been pardoned;—but the weight of her misfortunes had been too great for her strength, and she had become in some degree hardened by what she had endured; if not unfeminine, still she was feminine in an inferior degree, with womanly feelings of a lower order. And she had learned to intrigue, not being desirous of gaining aught by dishonest intriguing, but believing that she could only hold her own by carrying on her battle after that fashion... "Self-preservation is the first law of nature," she would have said; and would have failed to remember, as she did always fail to remember,---that nature does not require by any of its laws that self-preservation should be aided by falsehood.
    But though she was not high-minded, so also was she not ungenerous; and now, as she began to understand that Clara was sacrificing herself because of that promise which had been given when they two had stood together at the window in the cottage drawing-room, she was capable of feeling more for her friend than for herself. She was capable even of telling herself that it was cruel on her part even to wish for any continuance of Clara's acquaintance. "I have made my bed, and I must lie upon it," she said to herself; and then she resolved that, instead of going up to the house on the following day, she would write to Clara, and put an end to the intimacy which existed between them. "The world is hard, and harsh, and unjust," she said, still speaking to herself. "But that is not her fault; I will not injure her because I have been injured myself."

I'm interested in Trollope's relative attitudes towards Frederic Aylmer and Mrs Askerton: the former has done nothing wrong, the latter - by the measure of her society - has done everything wrong; yet he finds more to praise in Mrs Askerton, because she has what Aylmer lacks: generosity, and the ability to put someone else before herself. Generosity, indeed, is one of those qualities that Trollope regarded as essential. And it doesn't take her four days of careful consideration to see what is needed, as it does for Captain Aylmer to write his letter after Mr Amedroz's death.

I think he approves more of Colonel Askerton too, the other sinner:

    "You can do as you like, my dear," Colonel Askerton had said on the previous evening to his wife. He had listened to all she had been saying without taking his eyes from off his newspaper, though she had spoken with much eagerness.
    "But that is not enough. You should say more to me than that."
    "Now I think you are unreasonable. For myself, I do not care how this matter goes; nor do I care one straw what any tongues may say. They cannot reach me, excepting so far as they may reach me through you."
    "But you should advise me."
    "I always do,---copiously, when I think that I know better than you; but in this matter I feel so sure that you know better than I, that I don't wish to suggest anything." Then he went on with his newspaper, and she sat for a while looking at him, as though she expected that something more would be said. But nothing more was said, and she was left entirely to her own guidance...

Another woman left to her own guidance! - remarkable. :)

Seriously, though, while we don't see enough of it to really judge, the fact that two people who were living together unmarried - while she was married to another man - have made such a successful marriage (and one under the great pressure of isolation), is rare if not unprecedented in Victorian fiction.

And from memory, I believe this isn't the only time that Trollope creates such a situation in one of his novels. The morality and judgement surrounding this sort of incident seems to have been something that, as a depictor and an analyser of his society, was bothering him.

Chapter 22:

"I knew that he would come. I was sure of it. He is so true." As to Captain Aylmer's not coming she said nothing, even to herself; but she felt that she had been equally sure on that subject. Of course, Captain Aylmer would not come! He had sent her seventy-five pounds in lieu of coming, and in doing so was true to his character. Both men were doing exactly that which was to have been expected of them. So at least Clara Amedroz now assured herself. She did not ask herself how it was that she had come to love the thinner and the meaner of the two men, but she knew well that such had been her fate...

>114 lyzard: I have rushed ahead and finished the book yesterday. I'm keeping final comments for now, but I have to say that the Askerton marriage is by far the most unusual and the most interesting part of the novel.

Ahem:

Chapter 22:

How was he to stand it? To take her to his bosom and hold her there for always; to wipe away her tears so that she should weep no more; to devote himself and all his energy and all that was his to comfort her,---this he could have done; but he knew not how to do anything short of this. Every word that she spoke to him was an encouragement to this, and yet he knew that it could not be so. To say a word of his love, or even to look it, would now be an unmanly insult...

****

Then he stopped in his walk and looked down upon her, as her hands still rested upon his shoulder. He gazed upon her for some few seconds, remaining quite motionless, and then, opening his arms, he surrounded her with his embrace, and pressing her with all his strength close to his bosom, kissed her forehead, and her cheeks, and her lips, and her eyes. His will was so masterful, his strength so great, and his motion so quick, that she was powerless to escape from him till he relaxed his hold. Indeed she hardly struggled, so much was she surprised and so soon released. But the moment that he left her he saw that her face was burning red, and that the tears were streaming from her eyes. She stood for a moment trembling, with her hands clenched, and with a look of scorn upon her lips and brow that he had never seen before...

This is really wrong, for the reasons spelled out in >112 lyzard:; and of course (as with Will's impulsive proposal) it pushes Clara in exactly the direction he doesn't want her to go.

But never mind:

I think we'll find that Lady Aylmer will do his work for him... :D

>114 lyzard: Seriously, though, while we don't see enough of it to really judge, the fact that two people who were living together unmarried - while she was married to another man - have made such a successful marriage (and one under the great pressure of isolation), is rare if not unprecedented in Victorian fiction.


The only novel that comes to mind is No Name. Do you think that Trollope would have introduced this subplot if Collins hadn't already done it in No Name? Collins did it for sensation, while Trollope brings more nuance to the topic.

>119 cbl_tn:

Fair point. You're quite right to bring up No Name though there is a distinction to be made between Collins' sensation-fiction approach, in which he was being deliberately provocative, and the fact that Trollope produced his subplot so matter-of-factly in a mainstream Victorian novel.

It's that he's not trying to be shocking that's so shocking. :)

>120 lyzard: Yes, that's why I'm kind of wondering if Trollope would have had the nerve to introduce this subplot if Collins hadn't already opened that can of worms with No Name. In a sense, it's the same kind of progression we've seen with television and other media, where some daring soul crosses into "forbidden" territory and then the line gradually shifts in that direction.

>121 cbl_tn:

The impression I get - here and in Orley Farm: were you with us for that? - is that Trollope was showing his disapproval of the sensation novel methods, while at the same time taking advantage of, as you say, the fact that the breach had been made.

That he comes down so unambiguously on the side of those who think that, under the circumstances, the sinning woman should be "forgiven her fault", is still pretty surprising. You would perhaps expect him, while being able to be more frank on the subject, still to be more critical and disapproving.

The stretch of writing that carries us through Clara's reluctant acceptance of Lady Aylmer's reluctant invitation and her stay at Aylmer Park may be categorised as uncomfortable-to-cringe. :D

The implications of this section of the novel is something that we probably need to discuss at the end, because it focuses what I consider its overriding flaw.

However---taken in their own right, many of these scenes are as funny as they are horrifying, and as sad as they are horrifying.

I was particularly struck that, after having introduced Sir Anthony in a way that made him (as it were) part of the problem, as quoted in >86 lyzard:, Trollope turns around and offers us a miserable old man who can't call his soul his own.

And the fact that he, out of all of them, is the only one actually to be nice to Clara (when he dares; when no-one's looking), is completely unexpected.

If on some level Clara felt that she needed to be punished for the relationship mistakes she's been making (and that is something I want to discuss), then she gets what she wanted in spades.

The pointy end of all this is that, overtly and covertly, Clara and Lady Aylmer want the same thing, except that Clara - and I do sympathise in this - can't bring herself to be defeated...even if there's victory in defeat.

Here's just a selection:

Chapter 24:

She went down-stairs and met Captain Aylmer in the sitting-room. He stepped up to her as soon as the door was closed, and she could at once see that he had determined to forget the unpleasantnesses of the previous evening. He stepped up to her, and gracefully taking her by one hand, and passing the other behind her waist, saluted her in a becoming and appropriate manner. She did not like it. She especially disliked it, believing in her heart of hearts that she would never become the wife of this man whom she had professed to love,---and whom she really had once loved. But she could only bear it. And, to say the truth, there was not much suffering of that kind to be borne...

Chapter 25:

Captain Aylmer said not a word as to the footing on which his future wife had come to his father's house. He did not ask his mother to receive her as another daughter, or his sister to take his Clara to her heart as a sister. There had been no word spoken of recognised intimacy. Clara knew that the Aylmers were cold people. She had learned as much as that from Captain Aylmer's words to herself, and from his own manner. But she had not expected to be so frozen by them as was the case with her now. In ten minutes she was sitting down with her bonnet still on, and Lady Aylmer was again at her stitches...

Chapter 26:

Most of us know how the events of the day drag themselves on tediously in such a country house as Aylmer Park,---a country house in which people neither read, nor flirt, nor gamble, nor smoke, nor have resort to the excitement of any special amusement. Lunch was on the table at half-past one, and the carriage was at the door at three. Eating and drinking and the putting on of bonnets occupied the hour and a half...

******

"I shall be very glad to have you as a daughter-in-law. And as for Lady Aylmer---between you and me, my dear, you shouldn't take every word she says so much to heart. She's the best woman in the world, and I'm sure I'm bound to say so. But she has her temper, you know; and I don't think you ought to give way to her altogether. There's the carriage. It won't do you any good if we're found together talking over it all; will it?" Then the baronet hobbled off, and Lady Aylmer, when she entered the room, found Clara sitting alone...

******

Lady Aylmer had, in truth, kept Mrs Askerton in reserve, as a battery to be used against Miss Amedroz if all other modes of attack should fail,---as a weapon which would be powerful when other weapons had been powerless. For awhile she had thought it possible that Clara might be the owner of the Belton estate, and then it had been worth the careful mother's while to be prepared to accept a daughter-in-law so dowered. We have seen how the question of such ownership had enabled her to put forward the plea of poverty which she had used on her son's behalf. But since that Frederic had declared his intention of marrying the young woman in spite of his poverty, and Clara seemed to be equally determined. "He has been fool enough to speak the word, and she is determined to keep him to it," said Lady Aylmer to her daughter. Therefore the Askerton battery was brought to bear...

Huzzah!---

Chapter 26:

"And there must be an end of what you call everything, Captain Aylmer," said she, smiling...

Clara's movements in Chapter 27 are the major reason I added that map of the English counties at the beginning: she travels from Yorkshire to London to Somerset, with a night at a hotel in between, on her own and without even a maid.

While the hindrances on young women tend to be foregrounded in novels, touches like this remind us how far things were changing.

Chapter 27:

    "And so you have quarrelled with her ladyship," said Mrs Askerton. "I knew you would."
    "I have not said anything about quarrelling with her."
    "But of course you have. Come, now; don't make yourself disagreeable. You have had a downright battle;---have you not?"
    "Something very like it, I'm afraid."
    "I am so glad," said Mrs Askerton, rubbing her hands.

Finished!

>127 cbl_tn:

Well done, Carrie!

I'm hoping to get my posts wrapped today or tomorrow---can I get people to check in and let me know where they're up to?

I'm finished!

>129 AnneDC:

Good work, Anne!

It is evident what is to happen as soon as Clara leaves Aylmer Park, but what is striking over the last few chapters is the hair-splitting that finally allows it to happen.

When Clara refuses the invitation to Plaistow, she says that there are "two reasons" for doing so and she's right, but neither one of them is exactly what she declares it to be.

Her loyalty to Mrs Askerton is a complication, but what it all boils down to is that Clara, having broken away from the Aylmers - though she is still technically engaged - won't do anything that looks like running after Will Belton.

Mrs Askerton, in her franker - or cruder - way, tells Clara that if she goes to Plaistow, "It will all work out", and of course she's right---and of course that's why she won't.

We do see her problem---though we might question how far real women, women outside novels by Anthony Trollope, tortured themselves like this:

Chapter 27:

She had at last become conscious that she could not now marry Captain Aylmer without sin,---without false vows, and fatal injury to herself and him. To the prospect of that marriage, as her future fate, an end must be put at any rate,---an end, if that which had already taken place was not to be regarded as end enough. But yet she had been engaged to Captain Aylmer,---was engaged to him even now. When last her cousin had mentioned to her Captain Aylmer's name she had declared that she loved him still. How then could she turn round now, and so soon accept the love of another man? How could she bring herself to let her cousin assume to himself the place of a lover, when it was but the other day that she had rebuked him for expressing the faintest hope in that direction?

I touched on this in >113 lyzard::

In Chapters 27 and 28, Will, after all his promises / threats that Clara will possess Belton in spite of everything, finally takes legal steps to break the entail.

My guess would be that he is able to do this because he has no male heir.

An entail meant that there was in fact no "owner" of a piece of property, only one person holding it in trust for another---usually a father for a son. For this reason the holder of the estate was severely restricted in what he could or could not do in terms of selling land or making alterations or doing anything to lessen the income from that property---which meant that he might be legally prohibited from making proper provision for younger sons or for the women of the family: to do that, he would need to have a secondary source of income. The entail was entirely about maintenance of the property.

An entail could be broken only with the agreement of the heir (something which comes up, from memory, in The Way We Live Now): if a son didn't choose to cooperate, there was nothing the father could do about changing the arrangements.

Here, as I say, there is no heir apparent: presumably this makes it legally possible for Will to rid himself of his obligation to inherit Belton.

Mr Green, being a lawyer, disapproves of the entire transaction, which suggests how infrequently such things did (or could) happen.

Meanwhile we have Frederic Aylmer vacillating between his mother's imperious commands to forget about Clara, his father's much more heartfelt advice to forget about marriage altogether, Clara's increased desirability now that she has taken herself off again---and, coming in a distant fourth, his twinges of conscience.

All of this takes a hit when he calls upon Mr Green in London:

Chapter 28:

Mr Green, who knew that Captain Aylmer was engaged to marry his client, and who knew nothing of any interruption to that agreement, felt no hesitation in explaining all this to Captain Aylmer. "I suppose you had heard of it before," said Mr Green. Captain Aylmer certainly had heard of it, and had been very much struck by the idea; but up to this moment he had not quite believed in it. Coming simply from William Belton to Clara Amedroz, such an offer might be no more than a strong argument used in love-making. "Take back the property, but take me with it, of course." That Captain Aylmer thought might have been the correct translation of Mr William Belton's romance. But he was forced to look at the matter differently when he found that it had been put into a lawyer's hands...

****

The moiety of the Belton estate might probably be worth twenty-five thousand pounds, and the addition of such a sum as that to his existing means would make all the difference in the world as to the expediency of his marriage. His father's arguments would all fall to the ground if twenty-five thousand pounds were to be obtained in this way; and he had but little doubt that such a change in affairs would go far to mitigate his mother's wrath. But he was by no means mercenary in his views;---so, at least, he assured himself. Clara should have her chance with or without the Belton estate,---or with or without the half of it. He was by no means mercenary. Had he not made his offer to her,---and repeated it almost with obstinacy, when she had no prospect of any fortune? He could always remember that of himself at least; and remembering that now, he could take a delight in these bright money prospects without having to accuse himself in the slightest degree of mercenary motives. This fortune was a godsend which he could take with clean hands;---if only he should ultimately be able to take the lady who possessed the fortune!

...all of which, of course, adds up to Clara being given "another chance".

>132 lyzard: I was confused about how the property was entailed to a Belton when it was currently occupied by an Amedroz. At some point it had to descend through a female line. Now that I've read the book and have a grasp on the characters and their interrelationships, it finally makes sense. The entail appears to have been a condition of Mr. Amedroz's marriage, when the Winterfield cash came to the rescue. The deal seems to have been "we'll give you the money now on the condition that Belton Castle is entailed to a male Belton." Am I interpreting that correctly?

>134 cbl_tn:

In >14 lyzard: I addressed this to the best of my understanding: that it was about Belton "blood" in the male line, and that it reverted to the actual Beltons, away from the Amedrozes, upon the death of Clara's brother. If Charlie had lived, the property would have stayed with him and his heirs.

I don't think the money would have come into it in that respect, not as if it was an actual business transaction.

It doesn't usually come up in stories dealing with the entail, but perhaps a reversion clause like this was common.

Clara's back-and-forthing is a point for discussion, but this is only fair to her, and perhaps something that the earlier stages of the novel don't lay out as squarely as, in justice to her, they should:

Chapter 28:

It was almost summer again, and as she felt this, she thought of all the events which had occurred since the last summer,---of their agony of grief at the catastrophe which had closed her brother's life, of her aunt's death first, and then of her father's following so close upon the other, and of the two offers of marriage made to her,---as to which she was now aware that she had accepted the wrong man and rejected the wrong man. She was steadily minded, now, at this moment...

More discussion points:

Chapter 28:

But there remained with her a feminine shame, which made it seem to her to be impossible that she should now reject Captain Aylmer, and as a consequence of that rejection, accept Will Belton's hand...

****

He had once written to her about Mrs Askerton, using very strong language, and threatening her with his mother's full displeasure. At that time Mrs Askerton had simply been her friend. There had been no question then of her taking refuge under that woman's roof. Now she had repelled Lady Aylmer's counsels with scorn, was living as a guest in Mrs Askerton's house; and yet he was willing to pass over the Askerton difficulty without a word. He was willing not only to condone past offences, but to wink at existing iniquity! But she,---she who was the sinner, would not permit of this. She herself dragged up Mrs Askerton's name, and seemed to glory in her own shame...

Chapter 29:

"But your manner to me makes my task easier than I could have hoped it to be. You asked me whether I ever loved you? I once thought that I did so; and so thinking, told you, without reserve, all my feeling. When I came to find that I had been mistaken, I conceived myself bound by my engagement to rectify my own error as best I could; and I resolved, wrongly,---as I now think, very wrongly,---that I could learn as your wife to love you. Then came circumstances which showed me that a release would be good for both of us, and which justified me in accepting it. No girl could be bound by any engagement to a man who looked on and saw her treated in his own home, by his own mother, as you saw me treated at Aylmer Park..."

As for this---once again, OUCH:

Chapter 29:

When he was alone he took a turn or two about the room, half thinking that Clara would return to him. She could hardly leave him alone in a strange house,---him, who, as he had twice told her, had come all the way from Yorkshire to see her. But she did not return, and gradually he came to understand that he must provide for his own retreat without assistance. He was hardly aware, even now, how greatly he had transcended his usual modes of speech and action, both in the energy of his supplication and in the violence of his rebuke. He had been lifted for awhile out of himself by the excitement of his position, and now that he was subsiding into quiescence, he was unconscious that he had almost mounted into passion,---that he had spoken of love very nearly with eloquence. But he did recognise this as a fact,---that Clara was not to be his wife, and that he had better get back from Belton to London as quickly as possible. It would be well for him to teach himself to look back on the result of his aunt's dying request as an episode in his life satisfactorily concluded. His mother had undoubtedly been right. Clara, he could now see, would have led him a devil of a life; and even had she come to him possessed of a moiety of the property,---a supposition as to which he had very strong doubts,---still she might have been dear at the money. "No real feeling," he said to himself, as he walked about the room...

:D

>138 lyzard: Captain Aylmer really isn't very self-aware, is he?

>139 cbl_tn:

:D

Of course, you can be self-aware and also self-defeating---

Chapter 29:

Mary thinks that I ought to allow a time to go by before I say all this again;---but what is the use of keeping it back?

He has, at least, the sense to stay away and let Clara get comfortable with Mary: no doubt Mary's own orders are operating there; long enough indeed to make Clara antsy---

Chapter 30:

    She had made up her mind that the sister did not intend to plead for her brother,---that the sister probably knew nothing of the brother's necessity for pleading,---that the brother probably had no further need for pleading! When she remembered his last passionate words, she could not but accuse herself of hypocrisy when she allowed place in her thoughts to this latter supposition. He had been so intently earnest! The nature of the man was so eager and true! But yet, in spite of all that had been said, of all the fire in his eyes, and life in his words, and energy in his actions, he had at last seen that his aspirations were foolish, and his desires vain. It could not otherwise be that she and Mary should pass these hours in such calm repose without an allusion to the disturbing subject! After this fashion, and with such meditations as these, had passed by the last weeks;---and then at last there came the change.
    "I have had a letter from William this morning," said Mary.
    "And so have not I," said Clara, "and yet I expect to hear from him."
    "He means to be here soon," said Mary.
    "Oh, indeed!"
    "He speaks of being here next week."
    For a moment or two Clara had yielded to the agitation caused by her cousin's tidings; but with a little gush she recovered her presence of mind, and was able to speak with all the hypothetical propriety of a female...

Following that reference to "hypothetical propriety", Trollope gives us another of the novel's interesting touches---because young women were very often told exactly this:

Chapter 30:

    "Perhaps you have never understood this; have never perceived that he is so much in earnest, that to him it is more than money, or land, or health,---more than life itself;---that he so loves that he would willingly give everything that he has for his love? Have you known this?"
    Clara would not answer these questions for a while. What if she had known it all, was she therefore bound to sacrifice herself? Could it be the duty of any woman to give herself to a man simply because a man wanted her?

****

"You tell me that he loves me;---but what if I do not love him? Love will not be constrained. Am I to say that I love him because I believe that he loves me?"

---and though there is wry reference here to Clara's own self-awareness, the note of protest is allowed to stand:

This was the argument, and Clara found herself driven to use it,---not so much from its special applicability to herself, as on account of its general fitness. Whether it did or did not apply to herself she had no time to ask herself at that moment; but she felt that no man could have a right to claim a woman's hand on the strength of his own love,---unless he had been able to win her love.

Yes:

Chapter 30:

    "He would wait. If you would only bid him wait, he would be so happy in waiting."
    "Yes---till to-morrow morning. I know him. Hold out your little finger to him, and he has your whole hand and arm in a moment."

Yes:

Chapter 31:

    As he had been told that she was to return there, he had no reason to be annoyed. But, nevertheless, he was annoyed, or rather discontented, and had not been a quarter of an hour about the place before he declared his intention to go and seek her.
    "Do no such thing, Will; pray do not," said his sister.
    "And why not?"
    "Because it will be better that you should wait. You will only injure yourself and her by being impetuous."
    "But it is absolutely necessary that she should know her own position. It would be cruelty to keep her in ignorance;---though for the matter of that I shall be ashamed to tell her. Yes;---I shall be ashamed to look her in the face. What will she think of it after I had assured her that she should have the whole?"
    "But she would not have taken it, Will. And had she done so, she would have been very wrong. Now she will be comfortable."
    "I wish I could be comfortable," said he.
    "If you will only wait---"
    "I hate waiting."

...all of which of course culminates in an immediate walk:

Chapter 31:

    But of a sudden they came to a place where two paths diverged, and he turned upon her and asked her quickly which path they should take. "Look, Clara," he said, "will you go up there with me?" It did not need that she should look, as she knew that the way indicated by him led up among the rocks.
    "I don't much care which way," she said, faintly.
    "Do you not? But I do. I care very much..."

...and we will leave it there. :)

Thanks, everyone! Please check in and let me know if you're done, and start thinking about your discussion points.

The Belton Estate is obviously one of Trollope's simpler novels, with the single plot-thread rather than the paralleling that we find in his more complex works.

Though its central situation is familiar enough, I think that Clara's flashes of rebellion against her circumstances and the handling of the Askerton subplot give this work a real value.

On the other hand, as we have already touched upon, there are certainly some issues with---not the character, but the characterisation, of Clara Amedroz, and I would like to discuss the question of where reality stops and Trollope's personal hang-ups begin.

But I would like to get reactions from you guys before I start going off. :)

>146 lyzard: that "special place" reminds me of Rachel Ray.

I think this was a bit meagre in terms of plot and character development. Not to mention suffocating, Clara's world is so very limited and she is virtually condemned to accept one of the only two men presented to her and to the audience. I also think she spent too much time hanging on to the engagement with Aylmer, I couldn't accept that she should have stuck with this when she is otherwise presented as impatient with the confing rules of society.

At some point in Chapter 20, Mary says: "One should not offend the prejudices of the world, even if one is quite sure that they are prejudices." I think that pretty much sums up Trollope's attitude here, doesn't it? And then he does something entirely opposite in allowing the Askertons to become accepted in their small way.

>150 MissWatson:

As we've touched upon on the way through, Trollope lets his concept of what constitutes a "nice girl" get in the way of credibility, and there isn't enough plot to disguise the fact.

Clara's indifference to where and how she is going to live in the event of her father's death just isn't believable---particularly not when Trollope wants us to accept that she keeps rejecting even the most meagre offers of assistance.

But of course she doesn't really have to worry because of course she's going to get married---and that, as I say, is Trollope's great blind spot as a novelist.

In that context perhaps the dreadful limitations of Clara's previous life aren't supposed to be perceived as such? - but it's hard not for readers today to take that away from this book. Her life is bad enough when she has a man to support her. She's not facing homelessness or starvation or the cruelties that come with poverty, granted, but the narrowness of her existence and what must be, realistically, the stifling boredom of her life, day in, day out, is something inescapable for the modern reader---but another thing that Trollope doesn't acknowledge.

In a way this book seems an inadvertent exposure of Trollope's weaknesses as a novelist.

Yet to me it does just enough in its other directions to rescue it and give it value.

Apologies for this: I won't try and use spoiler tags here, but a will give a general warning---

Spoilers for Can You Forgive Her?

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I find The Belton Estate intriguing coming in the wake of Can You Forgive Her?, wherein Trollope's treatment of Alice Vavasor stands in stark contrast to his treatment of Clara Amedroz, even though the two of them "sin" in more or less the same way.

We need to grasp that what Alice needs to be forgiven for isn't vacillating between two men, or even breaking her engagement(s), though that was serious enough in Victorian terms: her sin is demanding to be happy on her own terms, when the moral dogma was that it was a woman's duty to make a man happy; her own, personal happiness was secondary if not irrelevant. Alice breaks her engagement to John Grey not because she doesn't think she can make him happy if she marries him, but because she doesn't think *she* will be happy in the marriage (and consequently not make him happy: a sensible stance, though somehow unhappy wives were still supposed to create happy husbands).

Alice transgresses this social demand and Trollope is ruthless in punishing her for it---yet a couple of novels later, albeit in a much more low-key way, we find Clara Amedroz in a comparable situation and being allowed to extricate herself almost without criticism or consequences.

Was Trollope criticised for his handling of Alice? - perhaps criticised strongly enough for him to sit back and think about whether he was indeed being unjust or cruel in his smug smackdown of his protagonist?

Did he use this much more minor work to re-examine some of the issues he raised in the earlier work?

Possible spoilers for The Eustace Diamonds:

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I will say this for The Belton Estate: this is a rare 19th century novel by a male writer to have its heroine getting over one man and falling for another.

Female novelists were much more pragmatic in this area but for male novelists there was a tendency to insist that "nice girls" - that concept again - never really got over their first love, and shouldn't---no matter what happened, what discoveries were made, or how they were treated.

The seriousness of the broken-engagement scenario in fiction played into this.

(Not that a broken engagement wasn't serious in reality, but it wasn't uncommon. And what novels don't tend to acknowledge is that one reason it was so serious because as soon as a man and woman became engaged, the man was granted certain legal rights with respect to whatever property the woman was bringing into the marriage. A broken engagement could mean a legal mess.)

And in fact we find this attitude throughout Trollope's work. Consider the treatment of Lucy Morris by the man who is supposed to love her in The Eustace Diamonds: she's a Trollope heroine so she puts up with it and marries him anyway; whereas a real woman would certainly have told him to shove it. "Nice girls" hold onto that first love come hell or high water (and regardless of emotional abuse).

Chapter 29:

"You asked me whether I ever loved you? I once thought that I did so; and so thinking, told you, without reserve, all my feeling. When I came to find that I had been mistaken, I conceived myself bound by my engagement to rectify my own error as best I could; and I resolved, wrongly,---as I now think, very wrongly,---that I could learn as your wife to love you. Then came circumstances which showed me that a release would be good for both of us, and which justified me in accepting it."

This gives us both sides of the argument---when ordinarily there would only be one: Clara's sense that she is "bound" by her engagement regardless of her "error" is the dogma; even more so her resolution to "learn as your wife to love you".

That was one of the most pernicious touches of this time and previously: girls being compelled into marriage were always told they would "learn" to love their husbands, and that if they didn't it was a failure of duty on their part.

But here we find Clara (as opposed to Lucy Morris, who BTW came later in Trollope's oeuvre) seeing the Aylmers' treatment of her as grounds to break her engagement. She, unlike Lucy, won't be treated like that.

This may seem like making a mountain out of a molehill, but this was such a THING in Victorian literature that to find Trollope deviating from the norm - the norm of his own books - was very striking to me.

But despite these positively realistic touches, there are some worrying undertones---as if Trollope wasn't comfortable with his own conclusions.

What's exasperating about narratives like this is the suggestion that girls just weren't allowed to make a mistake.

It didn't matter how inexperienced they were, or how limited their knowledge of the world, they were somehow supposed to avoid misjudging a man, or misjudging their own feelings.

And if they didn't, it was a terrible sin that had to be punished. They certainly couldn't just correct their mistake and move on.

We see this absolutely in Clara:

Chapter 28:

It might be that she would be able to rid herself of the one lover with comparative ease; but she could not bring herself to entertain the idea of accepting the other. It was true that this man longed for her,---desired to call her his own, with a wearing, anxious, painful desire which made his heart grievously heavy,---heavy as though with lead hanging to its strings; and it was true that Clara knew that it was so. It was true also that his spirit had mastered her spirit, and that his persistence had conquered her resistance,---the resistance, that is, of her feelings. But there remained with her a feminine shame, which made it seem to her to be impossible that she should now reject Captain Aylmer, and as a consequence of that rejection, accept Will Belton's hand.

Chapter 30:

She was ashamed of herself because she did love the one man, when, but a few weeks since, she had confessed that she loved another. She had mistaken herself and her own feelings, not in reference to her cousin, but in supposing that she could really have sympathised with such a man as Captain Aylmer. It was necessary to her self-respect that she should be punished because of that mistake. She could not save herself from this condemnation,—she would not grant herself a respite---because, by doing so, she would make another person happy. Had Captain Aylmer never crossed her path, she would have given her whole heart to her cousin. Nay; she had so given it,---had done so, although Captain Aylmer had crossed her path and come in her way. But it was matter of shame to her to find that this had been possible, and she could not bring herself to confess her shame.

Again, this is common enough in Victorian literature---but also again, one of those situations where you have to stop and ask yourself if real women really tortured themselves like this.

One thing that really struck me was Captain Aylmer's decision not to go to Clara when her father died. I know Captain Aylmer is supposed to be a cold and somewhat unfeeling character, but it seems somewhat inconceivable to me that he allowed her to deal with that situation alone. I would have thought that, as her fiancé, there would be an expectation that he would provide support under those circumstances, even if it was not to his taste. Or am i looking at things with too much of a twenty-first century mindset?

>155 SandDune:

It is true that there would have been barriers to any visit to the house, since he was unacquainted with Mr Amedroz and not a blood relative. But he could have stayed at Redicote, of course, as Will does, to "be there for her".

The pragmatic answer is that at that time he is still waiting for Clara to submit over Mrs Askerton; going would be a tacit act of forgiveness, and one that would commit him to her. So he sends money instead.

And yes, I'm sure we are supposed to be disgusted by his cold-bloodedness---while at the same time recognising that Clara doesn't really want him there anyway. :D

The final point I would like to raise is about Mrs Askerton.

We've touched upon most of the headings of this situation on the way through, particularly that Trollope, via his "good" characters, was flying in the face of the social dogma by intimating that Mrs Askerton's past should be overlooked, if not forgiven. (Noting, of course, that the Askertons evidently have no intent of trying to re-enter society.)

Clara staying at the cottage is considered crossing the line by everyone, even Will and Mary, though they express discomfort rather than outrage; and they solve the situation by sending Mary for a visit.

However---what I really want to highlight is that here we have another facet of Trollope not allowing Clara to know what she does.

We've touched on Clara's indifference to money, and her inability to just admit she's made a mistake with respect to Captain Aylmer; I would suggest that we should also consider her refusal to recognise - at least consciously - how powerful a weapon she has in Mrs Askerton.

I don't doubt Clara's motives in sticking to Mrs Askerton; but at the same time she must understand that this is her escape route from the Aylmers, should she decide she finally needs one.

This is another thing that apparently conflicted with Trollope's concept of Clara as a "nice girl". It's allowed to lurk behind her pondering, but she is not permitted to think outright, "If I need to I can play the Askerton card."

And of course she never does: she bides her time until Lady Aylmer plays it, thus again retaining her nice-girl status. :)

Okay, then---

Thank you to all our participants, and extra thanks to those who have posted. Can we get final thoughts and reactions?

I enjoyed the novel and found it easy to read - not always the case for Victorian novels - but I would have missed much of the significance of some actions, speeches etc without Liz's comments and explanations. As a heroine, Clara seemed to have a bit of backbone (compared with some others) even if she used her strength of character in what seems (to 21st century eyes) an odd way.

I may have sounded unenthusiastic about Clara, but I liked the book. No hunting and no politics, which is a bonus.

ETA: Thank you Liz, for taking us through this.

>159 CDVicarage:

Thank you, Kerry! I agree on both counts, but find some encouragement in Trollope allowing that bit of backbone. :)

>160 MissWatson:

Ha! - you're right, of course, I should have highlighted the scene in Chapter 20 when Will gives up his hunting to go to Clara after Mr Amedroz dies: an unprecedented act in Trollope, I'm sure!

Please feel free to add any more comments.

In the meantime, looking forward---

For those of you who are reading Margaret Oliphant's Carlingford novels, the tentative plan was to wrap up that project with a group read of Phoebe Junior in April. Please indicate either here or on the thread for Miss Marjoribanks if this arrangement suits you, or what would work better if not.

(And what this would mean in the longer term is that we can finally circle back to the Virago Chronological Read Project, from which we diverted after hitting The Executor and The Rector.)

As far as Trollope is concerned, the next book up would be The Claverings, which on the current schedule would fall due around July; but we can discuss that later.

Thanks, everyone!

April suits me for Phoebe Junior.

I enjoyed the book, and thank you, Liz, for your detailed comments throughout.

It's been a while since I've read any Trollope--I read to the end of the Pallisers with this group and then haven't been along for the other novels, so it's been fun to come back to a group read.

I can see how Trollope is deviating from his own norms on several key points, and that makes the novel interesting and refreshing to read.

I am still quite hung up on Clara's failure to think practically about a future with no money, and the way she keeps her dismal prospects a secret from everyone, thereby making her situation objectively worse. I raised this earlier but I guess it remains a huge quibble.

I keep thinking about Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, who so starkly revealed for me the idea of marriage as a matter of economic practicality and even survival. Clara's father doesn't seem to think very practically about the future either--wouldn't it have been incumbent upon him to think about a suitable match for Clara? And yet when Will raises the subject, he seems taken aback rather than relieved.

I also don't understand Clara's adamant refusal to accept the tiny bequest from her aunt--I see that's it's awkward to have it come through Captain Aylmer, but it seems likely that the aunt would have made different arrangements earlier had she known about the entail, and it seems the amount would have been written into her will if she hadn't died before she could revise it. I found Clara's stubbornness surprising, especially since she had no other source of income at all. Would this refusal have been expected of her?

>164 AnneDC:

It was great to have you join us, Anne, and I hope you will do so again going forward.

You've raised an interesting contradiction. On the whole I would say that Mr Amedroz's behaviour is consistent with what we would expect under Victorian mores: he pays off Charlie's debts both because it is the honourable thing to do generally, and because it takes away a little of the dishonour of his suicide. That Clara is left destitute is almost beside the point:

Chapter 1:

During the two years before his death, his father paid for him, or undertook to pay, nearly ten thousand pounds, sacrificing the life assurances which were to have made provision for his daughter; sacrificing, to a great extent, his own life income,---sacrificing everything, so that the property might not be utterly ruined at his death.That Charles Amedroz should be a brighter, greater man than any other Amedroz, had still been the father's pride.

****

At the last visit which Charles had paid to Belton his father had called upon him to pledge himself solemnly that his sister should not be made to suffer by what had been done for him. Within a month of that time he had blown his brains out in his London lodgings... At that last pretended settlement with his father and his father's lawyer, he had kept back the mention of debts as heavy nearly as those to which he had owned; and there were debts of honour, too, of which he had not spoken...

Charlie is ultimately to blame, but the fact is that Mr Amedroz chooses to pay off the debts without keeping back anything for Clara's maintenance (and he can't really have believed Charlie's "solemn pledge")---

...he told himself that it must, if possible, be so kept that a few pounds annually might be put by for Clara... So much the squire could do; but as to the putting by of the few pounds, any dependence on such exertion as that on his part would, we may say, be very precarious...

---which brings us to Clara's own position and our general agreement, I think, that her refusal to discuss her position with anyone pr to deal with respect to money is more than a little unrealistic.

As I said above, this is Trollope's blind spot in operation.

I feel, though, that her reaction to the business of Mrs Winterfield's "legacy" is more understandable, more real. The issue there is muddied by the circumstances: that it isn't a legacy, it is Captain Aylmer's money.

Clara goes from one extreme to the other there, even as her relationship with Aylmer does: from "I will have all or nothing from him" (when she thinks it will be all) to "I will take nothing from him" when she wants nothing to do with him.

In that respect you can see where she is coming from; though what would have happened to her six months more down the track if there had not been a Will Belton in the offing is left to our imaginations.

But this is Trollope, so of course there is a Will Belton. :)

>165 lyzard: But this is Trollope, so of course there is a Will Belton. :)

Yes, it's interesting to speculate what would have happened to her if there hadn't been. I also wonder if six months would have given her time to recover from the shock of all those deaths and put her thinking back on a more realistic footing? To look her monetary situation squarely in the eye? But that's what it is, speculation.

April for Phoebe Junior suits me fine.

>166 MissWatson:

And you're right that she's been living through a series of awful personal shocks, perhaps we should read her reactions in that context?

>163 kac522:, >166 MissWatson:

Aprils noted, thank you.

>162 lyzard: Speaking of Carlingford, the other day I was at a suburban library that collects donated books, and then has a little corner with them for sale (at $1 per book) to benefit the library. There on the shelf was a complete set of the Virago Carlingford Chronicles! Even though I have all but the first one, I was tempted (for $6!) to buy them all.

In the end I only bought the one I don't have, The Rector and The Doctor's Family. I still felt a teeny bit guilty for "breaking" the set....but not really. ;)

>168 kac522:

Great score, Kathy! - though I think I would have cracked and bought the set anyway. :D

Hi, everyone:

I will be setting up the thread for the group read of The Claverings over next weekend, hope to see you all there!