Frank Houston, the gentleman drone of 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.]

Sir Thomas, ever our bellwether for conventionality, sums Houston's great advantage in social life up when upon seeing him, he remarks Frank is "a manly-looking fellow" (47:468). Frank Houston is a male type who appears in many of Trollope's novels (e.g., Harry Clavering and Frank Tregear in The Claverings and The Duke's Children respectively), and here as elsewhere both hero and narrator apologize for the male lack of heroism (28:261). But in this novel, we are invited to read crass letters by Frank, and these are juxtaposed to the noble and tenderly loving candor of the letters by the woman who loves him, Imogen Docimer; he is presented as "cruel," "deceitful" and callous (even in the context of the comically desperate ones of the woman who wants to buy him as a husband, Gertrude Tringle (14:130, 132-34; 17:167-68; 29:275-76; 38:364; 42:406). He is prepared to marry her although he can say "I hate her . . . with every fibre of my heart" (42:395). She (and her sister-in- law) are for most of the book as sarcastic to Frank as Sir Thomas is to Septimus Traffick and Captain Batsby (another drone candidate for Gertrude's money). It seems to be Frank's shamelessness and request for sympathy that arouse their scorn most. Imogen tells him twice that she "will not condescend to any tenderness," is "sorry" he "should be inconvenienced; " Her brother, Mr Docimer that "A man with a grain of feeling would have stayed away" (28:259-68). "Meanness" also comes early in An Autobiography: "Who could endure to own the doing of a mean thing?" (p. 1). Frank Houston can.

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Last modified 9 August 2006