Welcome

A daily record of what I'm thinking about what I'm reading

To read about movies and TV shows I'm watching, visit my other blog: Elliot's Watching

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

What's right and wrong about the ending of Trollope's Dr Thorne

I guess I was just too "American" in my speculations about the ending of Trollope's Dr Thorne - in yesterday's post I sensed that Trollope was setting us up for a sad  ending - something would go wrong and prevent the marriage between Frank and Mary - but I should have realized that Trollope is English to the core and English novels tend overwhelmingly to be about conciliation, reconciliation, and absorption into the community - the opposite of the American trope of heading "out for the Territories." So, yes, unsurprisingly to most, Dr Thorne ends with the happy marriage of the now very wealthy Mary and the noble-blooded Frank Gresham, and Mary will use some of her/their new wealth to restore the Gresham fortunes, and of course now Frank's mother, sisters, and cousins all think Mary is so wonderful - Frank's mother has the gall to try to defend her past behavior toward Mary - tho some of the most "noble" of his relatives still see her as a commoner and an upstart. Happily ever after? Sure - but wouldn't have been just a bit more satisfying if she told some of the Greshams to go to hell? If she weren't so damn eager to be accepted by the clan? If she had maybe said to Frank: Let's go to Australia and buy a million-acre sheep ranch? No doubt Trollope writes with some irony, even some sarcasm, about their "happy" marriage, and he's also built up a real context in which we place Mary's conventional behavior - she has been excluded for her whole life and does not have the courage or the desire to turn away from the acceptance she must have always craved - but there's also a sense that Trollope, that great creator of vast and interwoven societies, values assimilation and convention about all other virtues, if in fact they are virtues.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.