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A review by richardr
The American Senator by Anthony Trollope
I tend to think of Trollope as one of the most conservative of Victorian writers and a novel where fox hunting is central to the development of the narrative may be a particular case in point. Much of the plot concerns the unfavourable depictions of the titular American Senator's observations of English society, particular his criticism of how the English aristocracy are able to literally ride roughshod over the land of their neighbours when hunting: "The fact is, Mr. Morton, that the spirit of conservatism in this country is so strong that you cannot bear to part with a shred of the barbarism of the middle ages. .. You can do many things that your mother and grandmother couldn't do; but absolute freedom,—what you may call universal suffrage,—hasn't come yet, I fear."
In practice, Trollope goes to great lengths to suggest that the man the Senator is defending against a charge of fox poisoning is a rogue and that the Senator's view of English society is accordingly profoundly mistaken, with his criticism of the exclusion of much of the population from the franchise implied to be in the same vein. By the end of the novel, Trollope finds the Senator "when we last heard of him was thundering in the Senate against certain practices on the part of his own country which he thought to be unjust to other nations. Don Quixote was not more just than the Senator, or more philanthropic,—nor perhaps more apt to wage war against the windmills." It's a view that might have seemed eminently reasonably at a point when England had been stable and prosperous for generations while the United States had only narrowly survived a civil way a decade earlier.
The rest of the novel concerns two parallel plots. As is often the case in Trollope, they both tend in opposing directions. In one, Mary Masters is able to marry into the aristocracy through her unassuming and self-sacrificing nature. In another, Arabella Trefoil's schemes to marry a rich husband mark her as an adventuress and all her devices come to nothing. What is perhaps particularly interesting about this is that Arabella perhaps particularly resembles male characters in some of Trollope's other novels, with her pursuit of wealth being particularly wrong-footed because of her sex. One of the other characters describes her thus: "But it was the look of age, and the almost masculine strength of the lower face."
In practice, Trollope goes to great lengths to suggest that the man the Senator is defending against a charge of fox poisoning is a rogue and that the Senator's view of English society is accordingly profoundly mistaken, with his criticism of the exclusion of much of the population from the franchise implied to be in the same vein. By the end of the novel, Trollope finds the Senator "when we last heard of him was thundering in the Senate against certain practices on the part of his own country which he thought to be unjust to other nations. Don Quixote was not more just than the Senator, or more philanthropic,—nor perhaps more apt to wage war against the windmills." It's a view that might have seemed eminently reasonably at a point when England had been stable and prosperous for generations while the United States had only narrowly survived a civil way a decade earlier.
The rest of the novel concerns two parallel plots. As is often the case in Trollope, they both tend in opposing directions. In one, Mary Masters is able to marry into the aristocracy through her unassuming and self-sacrificing nature. In another, Arabella Trefoil's schemes to marry a rich husband mark her as an adventuress and all her devices come to nothing. What is perhaps particularly interesting about this is that Arabella perhaps particularly resembles male characters in some of Trollope's other novels, with her pursuit of wealth being particularly wrong-footed because of her sex. One of the other characters describes her thus: "But it was the look of age, and the almost masculine strength of the lower face."