Fanny Trollope
NOVELS
1.The Vicar of Wrexhill
2. The Widow Barnaby
3. The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong
4. The Three Cousins
THE VICAR OF WREXHILL
by Fanny Trollope
First published in 1837 This
edition published 1996 by Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd Pocket Classics
ISBN 0750 911566
The Vicar of Wrexhill was written in 1837 and was Fanny Trollope's ninth
book. The author was writing shortly after losing her husband and two of her
children. As a married woman one wonders if earlier she would have been brave
enough to have written so vehement an attack on the abuse of male power in the
patriarchal society of an England which was, at that time, heavily influenced by
the moral ethos of Evangelicalism.
The author writes with a biting satire which some might consider goes beyond
the point of belief. Yet, as in all her works, Fanny Trollope is astute in her
observations and her recording of incidents contain sufficient truth which could
be recognised by her readers.
Almost every page attacks the Evangelical movement which was at its strongest
at this period of the nineteenth century. (See essay on Religion in The Vicar
of Wrexhill) However, Fanny Trollope, one of the greatest story-tellers of
her time, succeeds in weaving the threads of intrigue and romance into her tale.
The scathing attack on Evangelicalism facilitates rather than hinders the
story-line. Although the reader knows that in the end the young heroines will
marry their heroes and that the cruelty and hypocrisy of the villain of the
piece will be exposed yet it is impossible not to become 'caught up' in the
substance of the plot.
As with many of the novels of this period the loose ends seem to be tied up
fairly quickly to provide a setting for the customary 'happy ending'. In this
case it might be considered that conversions, reconversions and deaths happen
rather too conveniently to be plausible but that is to impose our twenty-first
century expectations on a nineteenth century writing convention.
This book of 358 pages will be enjoyed by readers of the nineteenth century
novel. Through the lives of the leading families of the idyllic rural setting of
Wrexhill we catch a glimpse of a world very much like that portrayed in the
novels of Jane Austen. A world before the advent of the railways, a world in
which the horse-drawn carriage or coach plays a symbolic role in the movement of
plot and character. As a book of the period it is highly recommended.
This novel in the Pocket Classic series is very good value for money at
£6.99. A short introduction by Teresa Ransom gives us the important details of
Fanny Trollope's life always a help when wanting to set a novel in the context
of the author's life and times.
For an examination of religion in The Vicar of Wrexhill - link to Essay No. 2
THE WIDOW BARNABY
by Fanny Trollope
First published in 1839
Reviewed edition published by Alan Sutton
Publishing Ltd in 1995
ISBN 0-7509-0948-X
REVIEW
The Widow Barnaby first published in 1839 was one of the most
popular novels of its day and it is not difficult to see why. Fanny Trollope
created a comic character of immense vulgarity, a character for whom we cringe
with embarrassment every time she occupies centre stage. The twentieth century
Mrs. Bucket with her 'candlelit dinner-parties' shares many of the Widow's
characteristics. The female relative which most families have.
The plot is thin and the characters are caricatures, yet we are propelled
along by the movement through time and place. The Widow Barnaby's niece, Agnes,
is the real heroine of the piece and we find it difficult to put down the book
until we know what her future is to be, and of course there can be no doubt that
she will 'get her man' and live happily ever after.
The book offers us a glimpse into the social world of Clifton, Bristol,
Cheltenham and London. The social world of the respectable middle-class,
professional people and the aristocracy. A world where working life is
peripheral to the story line. A world where marriage-alliances underlie the
social world of 'taking the waters', attending balls, visiting, promenading, and
subscription libraries. A world where military rank and red uniforms impress the
ladies. This is the world of Jane Austen which shouldn't surprise us considering
that Fanny Trollope and Jane Austen were contemporaries sharing the same network
of contacts.
After being introduced to the family history, grounded in rural Devon at the
end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, we begin to see
the character of Martha, who later becomes the Widow Barnaby, develop as she
interacts with her social world. We learn that Martha is a young woman in 1813
and recognise that the author is writing of the England she knew as a younger
woman. Fanny Trollope was aged sixty when the book was published in 1839.
As for the Widow herself, the author was astute enough to recognise that this
character was rich in possibilities and in 1840 The Widow Married was
published, to be followed in 1843 by The Barnabys in America. We can only
hope that the current interest in republishing the works of Fanny Trollope
continues and that we may shortly be able to obtain these later books to follow
the Widow's adventures.
Fanny Trollope is first and foremost a story-teller who uses her everyday
powers of perception to reveal the superficiality of the social norms of her
day. For those who are interested in examining how her novels draw on her own
life experiences readers are directed to Pamela Neville-Sington's Fanny
Trollope - The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman also available from
Amazon
For an examination of the role of religion in Widow Barnaby - link to
Essay No. 3
The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy
by Fanny Trollope
With illustrations by:
A. Hervieu
R.W. Buss
T. Onwhyn, London, Colburn,
1840
It has been my privilege to have had
in my possession a first edition of the above book. After much searching the
local library managed to trace a copy held at Weston-Super-Mare which I was
allowed to retain for a couple of weeks. I find it difficult to believe that
this novel remains out of print when historically it gives us a deep, moral
satire and commentary of working conditions for children in the textile mills of
the north of England in the 1830s. It also highlights the battle-lines drawn
between those who followed a policy of laissez-faire (market forces) and those
who retained the belief that those in privileged positions should put in place
conditions which served best the welfare of society, a rather more paternalist
approach.
Lord Ashley who later became the Earl of Shaftesbury approached Fanny
Trollope asking her to write a book which would expose the appalling conditions
of child labour in the textile factories so in 1839 she took the train to
Lancashire and researched her material directly. The work first appeared in
February 1839 in 1/- monthly instalments so it could reach a wide audience.
In attacking the dominant ideology of laissez-faire, the book's central
message was one which promoted government intervention in cutting back the hours
which children were allowed to work. The interview between Mary Brotherton and
Mr. Bell, a local clergyman, explicitly sets out the argument of the book (Pages
200-210).
"Alas! alas! is it thus my wealth has been accumulated?" exclaimed Miss
Brotherton, shuddering. "Is there no power in England, sir, righteous and strong
enough to stay this plague?"
"Miss Brotherton!" returned the clergyman, "such power, and such
righteousness, MUST be found, or this plague, as you well call it, will poison
the very life blood of our political existence; and long ere any serious danger
is likely to be dreamed of by our heedless rulers, the bloated wealth with which
this pernicious system has enriched a few, willprove a source of utter
destruction to the many. Never, my dear young lady, did the avarice of
man conceive a system so horribly destructive of every touch of human feeling,
as that by which the low-priced agony of labourine infants is made to eke out
and supply all that is wanting to enable the giant engines of our factories to
out-spin all the world!" (P202)
The conditions within the factories are shown to us through the trials and
tribulations of the book's hero, Michael Armstrong, and how they touch the
sensitivites of Mary Brotherton. Unlike Mary Barton written by Elizabeth Gaskell
and published eight years later, whereby the story-line and narrative grows out
of the lives of the working classes, rather the readers were being asked to pass
judgement upon themselves as to what they should and shouldn't do in a political
and social situation which seems clearly immoral to us now but was far from
clear to everyone at that time. Fanny Trollope is quite clear that the
government must pass laws which are fair and just.
*"But tell me Mr. Bell," resumed his deeply interested auditor, "what is this
moderate enactment in mitigation of these wretched people's suffering, which you
say would content you?"
"All that we ask for," replied Mr. Bell, "all that the poor creatures ask for
themselves, is that by Act of Parliament it should be rendered illegal for men,
women and children to be kept to the wearying unhealthy labour of the mills for
more than ten hours out of every day, leaving their daily wages at the same rate
as now." (P.206)
The novel makes it quite clear that good works and charities cannot mitigate
the evils of the factory system.
"But while you are still waiting and hoping for this aid from our lawgivers,"
said Mary, "is there nothing that can be done in the interval to help all this
misery, Mr. Bell?"
"Nothing effectual my dear young lady," he replied mournfully. "I may, with
no dishonest boasting say, that my life is spent in doing all I can to save
these unhappy people from utter degradation and despair. But the oppression
under which they groan is too overwhelming to be removed, or even lightened, by
any agency less powerful than that of the law." P.207)
This first edition copy with illustrations of the day takes the reader
directly back into the story and back in time. The villain of the piece, Sir
Matthew Dowling, dies a suitably horrid death with the mangled bodies and
skeletons of all those children who had died whilst in his employment, filling
his senses. The caption accompanying the appropriate illustration describes the
hallucinating Sir Matthew making his troubled journey from this life to the
next. "There's a dead body walking about the room! One? No! It is not one, it is
five hundred!" (P.365)
The novel in exposing the appalling conditions of factory life and then
putting forward the actions required to ameliorate the situation would have
alerted the reading public to a problem which was social, economic, political
and religious. Fanny Trollope was a very popular writer at that time and it is
difficult to believe that Elizabeth Gaskell was not aware of the novel when she
sat down to write Mary Barton. It is for this reason that in the essay which
deals with the religious questions both books will be considered together in
order to give a broader perspective of the various opinions held at that time as
to how questions of morality in the economic sphere should be dealt. Both women
writers felt strongly about the shortcomings of the factory system but the two
books could not be more different.
THE THREE COUSINS
by Fanny Trollope
First published in 1847
This edition published by Sutton Publishing
Ltd 1997
in the Pocket Classics series
REVIEW
The Three Cousins written in
1847 when Fanny Trollope was 68 is a story of three very different women. The
heroine of the piece is Laura Lexington who we first meet as a child being
brought up by her grandmother following the death of her mother and the
abandonment by her father who moves in aristocratic circles and is the heir to
the Lexington fortune. We meet Mrs Cobhurst as a 34-year-old widow who is in
search of a husband of means and uses her role as cousin to gain an invitation
to the home of the elderly Sir Joseph Lexington. Mrs Morrison is the 52 year-old
wife of the Bishop of Solway and with a lively mind is keen to explore the
current advances in science and medicine and anything else which might appeal to
a woman of intelligence.
Reflected in the personality of Mrs Morrison we might well catch a glimpse of
the enthusiasms and interests of the author herself: 'Her mind, which was active
to excess and ever eager for fresh materials to work upon, became, to all
intents and purposes, a spiritual knight-errant, roaming through the
intellectual world in search of adventures'. (P18) We are given a glimpse of the
many developments which were rapidly changing the world of the nineteenth
century world. The book was published only four years before the Great
Exhibition of 1851 which was to be a celebration of engineering
achievements. Mrs Morrison like the author had experienced 'a paroxym of
rapture' (P.18) on taking her first journey on a railroad.
We feel throughout the book that Mrs Morrison is in fact 'engineering' those
around her but not unkindly so. The righteous are justly rewarded and the
unrighteous receive their just deserts for living lives of hypocrisy, unkindness
and grasping. Everyone but the heroes and heroines manipulate to a high degree
the difference being that Mrs Morrison does it with good intentions whereas the
rest scheme for their own personal benefit.
As with other novels by Fanny Trollope the story-line carries us along
without making any intellectual demands on the reader. However, we are given a
very real sense of the cultural context of the time it was written as well as
seeing the characters display human traits that have existed throughout time.
Fanny Trollope is supreme in her observations of human character and her books
are full of real people which makes this book as good a read today in the
twenty-first century as it was in the nineteenth.
For an examination of the role of religion in The Three Cousins - link
to Essay
No.4