Trollope's Heroes who are not Sexually and Socially Triumphant

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.]

Lesley A. Hall remarks: "To turn the gaze onto the male, when this is not a matter of staring at a clothed and triumphant hero, is a subversive project" (11). She covers the later nineteenthth century, too. A small selection of such arguments:

Fraser's study of Framley Parsonage and Mark Robarts as anticipating many of Trollope's weak, fallen and vacillating heroes).

Gilead's study of Mr Harding in The Warden, Mary, Lady Mason in Orley Farm, and Lily Dale in The Small House of Allington as characters who we are to admire for building for themselves "safe psychosocialspace" after they "survive" a "disorienting, identity-threatening experience or series of experiences which they interpret as cultural rejection").

Dabney's essay on Josiah Crawley, Plantagenet Palliser, and even Dr Grantley as characters we are to admire as successful who "have failed, have been beaten, or who relinquish power"). Lady Lufton's actions parallel Dr Grantley; both permit a beloved high-ranking adult son to marry a woman with no money and low rank in the gentry class (clergymen's daughters). They are in the conventional sense losers.

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Last modified 9 August 2006