Trollope as realist and moralist

Thinking about the distinct qualities in Trollope's writing - and what first comes to mind is his focus on the ordinary, that is, the daily struggles of life rather than on the comical and tragic extremes. Comparing w/ his contemporary Dickens for a second: both writers were appalled by the poverty in their culture and by the harsh treatment of families and children in need and adults in debt, but Dickens dramatizes these concerns through examples of highly dramatic impoverishment (DC, OT), suffering (Hard Times), injustice (Bleak House, Little Dorrit, perhaps 2 Cities) - the closest he comes to the ordinary hardships of his time would probably be Great Expectations, though it's not truly about poverty but about class. Trollope, however, gives us more of the sense of diurnal poverty - the struggle to get by and pay down debts and purchase the necessities, food and medicine, on a tight salary: In Framley Parsonage, for ex., one of the strongest passages is his account of the hardship endured by the parson's family on a meager annual salary - and his implicit and at times explicit advocacy for fair wages for the working and lower professional class: He has a long passage about the inequities in salaries in the church, with some of the hardest working country parsons paid a pittance and others paid much more in more posh parishes. (He also advocated for better wages for postal workers - as he had been one before retiring to write full time.) Though we know that Dickens endured terrible hardship as a young man, in his writing we sense that Dickens imagines great poverty while Trollope observes poverty - he's closer to journalism at times, or an advance look at the style of French realists such as Zola. But that only touches a part of Trollope's work; he's also a great moralist, and his easy, conversational narration pulls us into the heart of the matter. Reading through the Barchester novels, for ex., I find myself wanting to jump into the text and tell the smug and self-centered Lords and Ladies - esp Lady Lufton - to just mind their own business. Similarly, you want to get in there and tell some of the more sympathetic characters - Mark Robarts and his younger sister: Don't be such pushovers. Speak your mind. In Forster's words: Only connect.

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