Manliness in Trollope's Female Characters

Ellen Moody

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[This document is a note to the author's Trollope's Comfort Romances for Men: Heterosexual Male Heroism in his Work — GPL.]

Although Ruth apRoberts argues that Priscilla Stanbury is not a lesbian, I find in her essay much proof that she is (along with Lizzie Eustace and a Mrs Leslie whom Lizzie ends up living with); see Ruth apRoberts, "Emily and Nora and Dorothy and Priscilla and Jemima and Carry," The Victorian Experience: The Novelists, ed. R. A. Levine (Akron, Ohio: Ohio UP, 1976):102-4, note 14. See my own argument and quotation from He Knew He Was Right ("I have a distaste for men . . ."), in my Trollope on the Net, 77-78. Miss Todd appears in both Miss Mackenzie and The Bertrams; Aunt Sarah Germaine appears in Is He Popenjoy? Trollope's presents and often undercuts stereotypical attractiveness as having height or stature, bigness of frame, blondeness, large breasts. Trollope's women characters of this type are often cold (e.g. the frigid Griselda Grantly in the Barsetshire cycle, and the manipulative Arabella Trefoil in The American Senator).

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Last modified 9 August 2006