Burrowing into Books - "He Knew He Was Right," Anthony Trollope

                                                                    Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

“He Knew He Was Right,” Anthony Trollope

July 24, 2021

 

“Trevelyan had now become so accustomed to being told by everyone

that he was wrong, and was at the same time so convinced he was right…”

                                                                                                                                Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)

                                                                                                                                He Knew He Was Right, 1869

 

Many of the longest books were written when people had fewer distractions. Today, readers approach a 900+ page novel tentatively, if at all. The last page seems so far from page one that we ask ourselves: Do I dare start? But a good story captures a reader, mesmerizing them into turning the pages. By story’s end, an affinity for the characters makes one reluctant to turn the last page.

 

Trollope is a writer of long stories. He is at his best when he writes of human interactions, especially about the love lives of upper-class men and women in Victorian England. Perhaps due to the influence of his mother, the novelist and social critic Frances Milton (Fanny) Trollope, Anthony Trollope’s women are more finely drawn than his men, and they are hewn into stronger characters than their male counterparts. In this, Emily Trevelyan, the heroine of the story, likes her own way: She is “so strong in her words, so eager, so passionate…She hardly ever yields to anything.” Of Emily’s sister Nora, Trollope writes: “…she had learned other things also, - to revere truth and love, and to be ambitious as regarded herself…” When she is to be married to Hugh Stanbury, she tells Lady Milborough: “I don’t mean to submit to him at all…I am going to marry for liberty.” A third young woman, Dorothy Stanbury, is described when young: She had “that extreme look of feminine dependence.” Two years later, as she is about to be married to Brooke Burgess, she has matured: “The flower that blows the quickest is never the sweetest. The fruit that ripens tardily has ever the finest flavor.”

 

Lady Milborough reflects on Victorian society: “Young ladies, according to her views on life, were fragile plants that wanted much nursing before they could be allowed to be planted out in the gardens of the world as married women.” In marriage, women were expected to be subservient to their husbands, to an extant uncomfortable to us in the 21^st Century. But human emotions do not change. What distinguishes exceptional literature from the ordinary is the author’s ability to write of universal truths, embedded in the emotions we all experience. In this story, Trollope tells of how stubbornness, born of jealousy, bores deeply into the human psyche. Louis Trevelyan and Emily Rowley are recently married, with a young son. Colonel Osborne, a bachelor friend of Emily’s father, calls on the young bride. He is narcissistic and insensitive, a man who “was clearly determined to make the most he could of what remained to him of the advantages of youth.” While Osborne’s visits were innocent, they upset her jealous husband and led to a marital rift that balloons out of control. While his wife never dishonored her wedding vows, Trevelyan expects repentance, something his wife is loath to give, as it would admit to a sin she had never committed. “Oh God, to what misery had a little folly brought two human beings, who had every blessing that the world could give within their reach!” While their love for one another is never in doubt, a vicious circle was created.

 

Reading Trollope is akin to studying a Chinese puzzle ball – those exquisite ivory carvings of balls within balls. In Trollope there are stories within stories, reflecting myriad connections in human relations. He Knew He Was Right is one of his best. Don’t let the book’s length deter you.