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Jan. 15th, 2006 03:19 pmI've just finished Mary Renault's The Charioteer and Anthony Trollope's The Claverings in quick succession. The Charioteer proceeds on far subtler shifts of emotion than The Claverings; this creates the impression that England in 1940 is far more foreign a country than England in the 1860s. (Would one allow a man who had just finished five or ten strong drinks composed mostly of whiskey to drive one home, or share a cigarette with a small child in hospital, in the nineteenth century?)
The two books have the same plot, in broad outline: classic love triangles, in which a man must choose between his first love, who has gained more experience of the world than is entirely wholesome, who is strong and proud and essentially lonely, and a younger person, more innocent, but braver in moral conviction. Both heroes find themselves in the awkward position of having declared genuine love to two people at once. Harry Clavering has an easier choice: one of his loves is socially acceptable and one is not, and though he does not personally have much sense his mother does, so he can let her make up his mind for him, and then live happily ever after. Laurie has to choose for himself. Unlike Harry, he has the insight to do so on his own; but then Laurie needs it, since he has neither a wise mother nor a societal rule to fall back on.
I was disappointed in Tooth and Claw, which bills itself as Trollope-with-dragons, because I thought that in substituting real violence for social violence it ruined the suspense. There's a genuine guilt and uncertainty in defying your selfish uncle, say, which disappears when that uncle has definite plans to eat you for dinner. (Tooth and Claw also breaks the rules of Victorian novels by giving a happy ending to a woman who would in the normal course of things have had nothing for it but to die gracefully, which increased my sense that all the strictures were arbitrary, and inevitable consequence lacking.) I wonder now, though, if the real problem is that I don't admire Trollope. I enjoy him, certainly-- he has flashes of very clear-headed observation, as in the remark that people must work, and those who attempt to lead lives of pleasure will end by turning their hobbies into work as well, and my copy of The Claverings included the original illustrations, which was an amusement all its own (men with moustaches! bridesmaids in veils!)-- but overall Trollope seems to take the easy way out.
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I feel as if I ought to post about Morelia, but I have become distracted by drinking limonada and arguing about Stephenson and watching the fountain; so later, perhaps?
The two books have the same plot, in broad outline: classic love triangles, in which a man must choose between his first love, who has gained more experience of the world than is entirely wholesome, who is strong and proud and essentially lonely, and a younger person, more innocent, but braver in moral conviction. Both heroes find themselves in the awkward position of having declared genuine love to two people at once. Harry Clavering has an easier choice: one of his loves is socially acceptable and one is not, and though he does not personally have much sense his mother does, so he can let her make up his mind for him, and then live happily ever after. Laurie has to choose for himself. Unlike Harry, he has the insight to do so on his own; but then Laurie needs it, since he has neither a wise mother nor a societal rule to fall back on.
I was disappointed in Tooth and Claw, which bills itself as Trollope-with-dragons, because I thought that in substituting real violence for social violence it ruined the suspense. There's a genuine guilt and uncertainty in defying your selfish uncle, say, which disappears when that uncle has definite plans to eat you for dinner. (Tooth and Claw also breaks the rules of Victorian novels by giving a happy ending to a woman who would in the normal course of things have had nothing for it but to die gracefully, which increased my sense that all the strictures were arbitrary, and inevitable consequence lacking.) I wonder now, though, if the real problem is that I don't admire Trollope. I enjoy him, certainly-- he has flashes of very clear-headed observation, as in the remark that people must work, and those who attempt to lead lives of pleasure will end by turning their hobbies into work as well, and my copy of The Claverings included the original illustrations, which was an amusement all its own (men with moustaches! bridesmaids in veils!)-- but overall Trollope seems to take the easy way out.
***
I feel as if I ought to post about Morelia, but I have become distracted by drinking limonada and arguing about Stephenson and watching the fountain; so later, perhaps?