Nursing the sick: A trope of 19th-century fiction, and its role in Trollope

Lucy Robarts emerges late in the novel (Framley Parsonage) as a strong and maybe too saintly and self-effacing a character, in particular in the great scene in which she tells the insufferable snob, Lady Lufton, that her son (Lord Ludovic Lufton) has proposed to her, that she first turned him down, and that she ultimately agreed to marry him only if she ( i.e., Lady Lufton) will bless the marriage. LL is so taken w/ Lucy's forthrightness and intelligence that she almost changes her mind, but still tells Lucy, no, she's a wonderful woman but not a suitable match for her precious son - and then has the temerity to invite Lucy and her family over for a nice dinner. Lucy is appalled. So she has failed to win over Lady Lufton, but she wins us over. Then, on her return to the parsonage, she sets off to help a nearby, deeply impoverished family: another parson, Mr. Crawley, with four children and a wife now sick w/ typhoid. Lucy has made an arrangement for the children to be brought back to Framely where they can live comfortably in quarantine, as she stays on at the Crawley's to nurse Mrs. C to health, if possible. The nursing of the sick is a trope throughout 18th- and 19th-century British fiction - and of course we 21st-century readers recognize that these nursing-to-health (hopefully) scenes were part of daily life (and death) in England at the time. Obviously these scenes are always a test, a trial by fire even, of a lead character's morality, and in this case to the extreme: Lucy barely knows the stricken family and, to make matters worse, Parson Crawley is mortified and insulted that someone is providing his family w/ charity and aid; he's a morally upright prig himself and a bitter man, angry about the failures of his life (a promising youth and now living in poverty in an obscure parish) and resentful of others who are more successful. Still, Lucy persists and gets the children away to safety and battens down the hatches for a long stay w/ the seriously ill Mrs. C. So she's proven her gumption and her commitment - more than any other character - to Christian values, but at what risk? We sense that there's a near suicidal recklessness in her behavior, and wonder how her death - or near death? - could affect the others in her life, including the cruel and morally oblivious Lady Lufton.



To order a copy of "25 Posts from Elliot's Reading: Selections from the first 2,500 blog entries," click here.