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671 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1865
Can you forgive her?
Can you forgive her?
Can you forgive her?
Can you forgive her?
I am not going to describe the Vavasors' Swiss tour. It would not be fair on my readers. "Six Weeks in the Bernese Oberland, by party of three," would have but very small chance of success in the literary world at present, and I should consider myself to be dishonest if I attempt to palm off such matter on the public in the pages of a novel. It is true that I have just returned from Switzerland, and should find such a course of writing very convenient. But I dismiss the temptation, strong as it is. Retro age, Satanas.
She knew now that she must follow his guidance. She had found her master, as we sometimes say, and laughed at herself with a little inward laughter as she confessed that it was so. […] She had assumed the command of the ship, and had thrown it upon the rocks, and she felt that she never ought to take the captain’s place again.The above passage is to be found on page 774 of the 830-page novel. Hardly a spoiler; all Victorian novels end with at least one marriage, and I am not naming any names. I quote it because of that word “master.” When a successful Victorian suitor says “Dearest, you are mine,” he means it not just romantically but literally; the wife is the husband’s property.
”I shall never cease to reproach myself. I have done that which no woman can do and honour herself afterwards. I have been — a jilt.”With that little pause, you would almost going to think she would say “cheat,” or even “whore.” It’s hardly surprising that the word “jilt” has passed out of our language as a noun, although we still keep it as a verb. So while I admire Trollope for opening out the woman’s point of view, I do regret that he should retreat at the end to the conventions of his time. I certainly came close to losing patience with what I saw as his artificial extension of a 500-page novel into an 800-page tome. And his failure to reconcile the claims of feminine independence and masculine property leads to one of the strangest love scenes that I can think of in a Victorian novel, one that sits very uncomfortably in this age of #MeToo:
She knew now that she must yield to him, — that his power over her was omnipotent. She was pressed by him as in some countries the prisoner is pressed by the judge, — so pressed that she acknowledged to herself silently that any further antagonism to him was impossible. Nevertheless, the word which she had to speak still remained unspoken, and he stood over her, waiting for her answer. Then slowly he sat down beside her, and gradually he put his arm round her waist. She shrank from him, back against the stonework of the embrasure, but she could not shrink away from his grasp. She put up her hand to impede his, but his hand, like his character and his words, was full of power. It would not be impeded. 'Alice,' he said, as he pressed her close with his arm, 'the battle is over now, and I have won it.'======