He Knew He Was Right (Victorian Texts ; 2)

Rating:
Summary: An underrated masterpiece
Review: For many people, Trollope is a writer to stay away from. They assume he wrote terribly twee novels about vicars and tea cosies (which is half true). But anyone who has read "He Knew Was Right" will know just how progressive and real Trollope is. This incredibly insightful study of a marriage reveals a great deal not only about Victorian society but about the eternal struggles between men and women. It's a mystery to me why this book is not better known.

Rating:
Summary: An underrated masterpiece
Review: For many people, Trollope is a writer to stay away from. They assume he wrote terribly twee novels about vicars and tea cosies (which is half true). But anyone who has read "He Knew Was Right" will know just how progressive and real Trollope is. This incredibly insightful study of a marriage reveals a great deal not only about Victorian society but about the eternal struggles between men and women. It's a mystery to me why this book is not better known.

Rating:
Summary: Trollope thought it a failure, I disagree
Review: In his autobiography, Trollope zips past this story. I couldn't put it down, and read the last 40 moving and exhausting pages aloud to my wife. The Pallisers can get a bit wearying at times, though I love them all. But there is nothing tiresome in here; this book roars with its two intersecting plots and the relatively unique idea of making a sympathetic character, one whom you truly care for and about, a complete, irredeemable fool.

Several strong secondary characters, all just a little more complex than they seem, combine with a knock-out plot and vivid main characters, to make this my favorite Trollope novel. The man who will not accept the good around him but prefers to see the bad...? How's that for an eternal theme?

Rating:
Summary: Buy this edition for the introduction
Review: The Penguin Classic edition of He Knew He Was Right has a wonderful introduction. Frank Kermode provides a fascinating explanation of how the constraints of Victorian society limited the ways in which Trollope could write about "sexual jealousy," and how a relatively mild (by today's standards) incident (here, calling a woman by her "Christian" (first) name) could be the basis for suspicion of "infidelity." Kermode also provides an illuminating discussion comparing hero Louis Treveylan's obsession and jealousy with that of Othello. Finally, Kermode relates the novel to others of the period, both those by Trollope and those of his contemporaries.

While the focus of the novel is the main character's mental deterioration resulting from his unreasonable jealousy and increasing isolation, both from society and reality, Trollope also provides a cast of interesting women faced with possible marriage partners. At a time when a woman's only "career" opportunity was to make a successful marriage, the women in He Knew He Was Right each react differently to the male "opportunities" that come their way. Kermode notes that Trollope was not a supporter of the rights of women, yet he manages to describe the unreasonable limitations on, and expectations of, women in a sympathetic light.

The "main story," of Trevelyan and his wife, is actually one of the least compelling of the man-woman pairings in the novel. What I mean is that while their story IS compelling, the others are substantially more so. This is a wonderful book. And, personally I'd like to note that I laughed out loud while reading it. This was on a cross-country airplane flight, and I got some strange looks for laughing at what appeared to be a thick "serious" novel.

Rating:
Summary: Trollope at the top of his form
Review: This is the most dazzling of the ten Trollope novels I've read. The way the story unfolds is a marvel: a seemingly minor domestic disagreement mushrooms to envelope in-laws, family friends, policemen, lawyers, scrappy whist-playing old ladies in the country, Tuscan villagers, American bluestockings, kidnappers. And we watch a dozen Victorian women -- old, young, married, widowed, wooed and unwooed -- struggle for meaning and happiness in their lives under the impossible social and economic strictures governing their relations with men and each other. All of which is rendered with a light, confident touch free of cant or didacticism, and the interest and energy are sustained from first page to last. I especially loved the Stanbury group. Old Miss Stanbury, with her high principles and her foul mouth, is a wonderful creation.

I would say, though, that to call the story a "study of sexual jealousy" is a bit of a strain. It's about what the title says it's about. It's more a study of male domination gone haywire, and of women's limited, but not negligible, power to resist it. I tend to accept Trollope's own judgment -- that in the character of Louis Trevelyan he failed to accomplish what he set out to do. But he greatly underrated how masterful is what he accomplished instead.

Rating:
Summary: Trollope at the top of his form
Review: This is the most dazzling of the ten Trollope novels I've read. The way the story unfolds is a marvel: a seemingly minor domestic disagreement mushrooms to envelope in-laws, family friends, policemen, lawyers, scrappy whist-playing old ladies in the country, Tuscan villagers, American bluestockings, kidnappers. And we watch a dozen Victorian women -- old, young, married, widowed, wooed and unwooed -- struggle for meaning and happiness in their lives under the impossible social and economic strictures governing their relations with men and each other. All of which is rendered with a light, confident touch free of cant or didacticism, and the interest and energy are sustained from first page to last. I especially loved the Stanbury group. Old Miss Stanbury, with her high principles and her foul mouth, is a wonderful creation.

I would say, though, that to call the story a "study of sexual jealousy" is a bit of a strain. It's about what the title says it's about. It's more a study of male domination gone haywire, and of women's limited, but not negligible, power to resist it. I tend to accept Trollope's own judgment -- that in the character of Louis Trevelyan he failed to accomplish what he set out to do. But he greatly underrated how masterful is what he accomplished instead.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting approach to an issue of his own life?
Review: This story is widely depicted as a story of irrational jealousy and distrust -- that of a married man unreasonably jealous of the attentions of another gentleman's attentions to his wife, and the married man's distrust of his wife's protestations of innocence.

It is far more interesting a story if one knows that Trollope, himself, engaged in such a relationship while married, having fallen in love with a woman (considerably his junior)-- a Miss Kate Field, whom he met while visiting his mother. Apparently he visited her in America without his wife, wrote many letters to her, and eventually introduced her to his wife on a subsequent visit.

One may speculate, then, that the relationship with Miss Fields, while close, and often written about as one of unconsumated love, may have caused Trollope's own wife to exhibit what he considered to be irrational jealousy and distrust, especially since his marriage vows are said not to have been broken with Miss Fields.

It is left, therefore, to the reader, both of his autobiography and of his novels, to determine the more interesting question of whether "infidelity" can entail attachments of the spirit as well as those of the flesh, and whether this novel is not a reflection of the novelist's own marital difficulties, and, perhaps, of his attempt to rationalize his own behavior.

Rating:
Summary: I love this book
Review: When most people think of Anthony Trollope they usually think of Glencora and Plantangenant Palliser but Trollope had other stories and this is one of the best. He Knew He Was Right is partially Othello set in Victorian London. Louis is insanely jealous and drives his wife to misery. The lady is innocent but thanks to gossip and a Iago figure Louis can't see reason. That's the main story but since this is Trollope there a host of deligtful side characters all bursting with life and stories of their own. I loved this book.