Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Editions and Dates
- 1 Introduction: Trollope's Late Modernity
- 2 ‘Getting and Spending’: The Aesthetic Economist
- 3 ‘A Bond of Discord’: Colonialism and Allegory
- 4 ‘Convivial in a Cadaverous Fashion’: Satires on Sovereignty
- 5 ‘Active Citizens of a Free State’: Hellenising the History of Rome
- 6 ‘The Tone of Today’: Pedagogical Paraphrases
- 7 ‘An Admirable Shrewdness’: Character and the Law
- 8 ‘A Poise So Perfect’: Tact as Love
- 9 ‘Affectionate Reserve’: Tact as Comedy
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - ‘An Admirable Shrewdness’: Character and the Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Editions and Dates
- 1 Introduction: Trollope's Late Modernity
- 2 ‘Getting and Spending’: The Aesthetic Economist
- 3 ‘A Bond of Discord’: Colonialism and Allegory
- 4 ‘Convivial in a Cadaverous Fashion’: Satires on Sovereignty
- 5 ‘Active Citizens of a Free State’: Hellenising the History of Rome
- 6 ‘The Tone of Today’: Pedagogical Paraphrases
- 7 ‘An Admirable Shrewdness’: Character and the Law
- 8 ‘A Poise So Perfect’: Tact as Love
- 9 ‘Affectionate Reserve’: Tact as Comedy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves. (Romans 2.14)
I was considerably impressed with [Trollope's novels] in the early eighties when I chanced upon a novel entitled Phineas Finn. I haven't seen them since, to tell you the truth, but I have preserved a strong impression of a notable gallery of portraits rendered with that same intimacy of technique (if technique is the word) in which I believe the secret of his fascination lies. (Conrad 2007: 304)
The ‘greatest of superficial novelists’ (James 1971: 481), Charles Dickens tends to see his characters’ appearance as a substitute for their character: ‘it is true that Dickens can appear to skimp on his characters’ personalities, and even what they look like from the neck up, when compared to the loving attention he lavishes on their outfits’ (Douglas-Fairhurst 2011: 59). Trollope, in contrast, is interested in what lies beneath the surface. His skill as a storyteller resides in his ability to probe the depths of his characters’ minds, often catching them as they are in the process of doubting. Trollope uses various stylistic means to this end, such as the description of his characters’ movements or the strategic placement of certain conjunctions:
[The] process of approximation and qualification which is inseparable from any attempt to balance up the conflicts and complexities of human character and motives … is closely linked with a recurring cadence which seems to be specially characteristic of Trollope. It is unobtrusive, indeed, yet in its own way powerful, and its power depends on nothing more than a very skilful use of the small word but, together with those meanings of and which the dictionaries call ‘adversative’, and occasionally such other conjunctions as though and unless. (Davies 1960: 76)
More important than setting or conjunctions, however, is the free indirect discourse in which these are enmeshed. Free indirect discourse presents the thinking process as a character experiences it while dressing it for communication to the reader.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Anthony Trollope's Late StyleVictorian Liberalism and Literary Form, pp. 100 - 111Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016