The Meaning of "Lout" in Ayala's Angel

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.]

The OED defines lout as "awkward fellow, bumpkin, rough-mannered or unpleasantly aggressive man. Will Belton also fits this definition. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, ed. Judy Pearsall (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999), 10th edition, 842. I suggest for the American reader the word has yet worse connections: it suggest a low person, a sleaze, someone as potentially immoral as he is distasteful. The British connotations are however nasty enough. A line applied to Tom Tringle is sometimes said to bring before us how strongly Trollope gave of himself to this character because it echoes what Trollope said of his attitude towards his career after the first 10 years of writing and getting nowhere: "The merit is to despair and yet to be constant" (61:594). But in context and from a woman's point of view in the story Tom's behavior resembles stalking; from a woman's point of view, here Ayala's, no man is entitled to persist when once she says no. Tom's persistence makes Ayala an outcast from the safety of the Tringle homes.

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Last modified 9 August 2006