Trollope Conference Part 2
On the final session of the Monday I again attended a different panel to Ellen; the title of the panel was 'Its a Boy Thing: Emerging Manhood'.
Stephen Amarnick : The Dukes Children
The first paper was given by Stephen Amarnick and was based on his detailed textual research into The Duke's Children - his basic thesis is that Trollope made large cuts to the novel which resulted in a weaker book. A comparison of the size of The Dukes Children to the Last Chronicle shows to what extent the novel was truncated. Stephen's argument was that at the core of the Duke's Children is the question of Plantagenet's and other characters resistance to change ; that this is a feature of the entire series. In the truncated version it is the maturation process of the children (the changes necessary upon adulthood) which are lost. Silverbridge's political development is made much clearer in the original MS. So why did Trollope make the changes if they make the book worse? In the first place he left the book for two years before cutting it and so was not so emotionally attached to it. Secondly he wanted to see if he could cut a book - it was a dare to himself. This was a fascinating paper and it is very much to be hoped that Stephen succeeds in his ambition of getting the full original text published.
Hyson Cooper : Ayala's Angel and the Hobbledehoy
Hyson argued that the hobbledehoy has a very restrictive code; he has not yet grown out of his masculinity and become a patriarchal, ungendered (controlling) man. In Ayala's Angel this is found in the character of Tom Tringle. One of the issues is literally visibility - Tom overdresses and this is an expression of the fact that he will not be disciplined, he is a dandy and he remains unmarried at the novel's close. Tom's violence offends against the code that he should 'suffer and be still'. But worst of all is his propensity to worship Ayala. Trollope makes clear that love-affairs can only be conducted successfully when men and women agree that man is superior. But Tom wants to worship and this is an offence against Trollope's definition of manliness. Hobbledehoy has to learn that he is superior to women.
If this account is confused it may be because I found the paper confusing and I have not read Ayala's Angel.
Mark King : Hobbledehoys
Mark argued that there is a change in the meaning of hobbledehoy from Three Clerks to The Prime Minister. The early paradigm was - fall in with low company, prove themselves by physical bravery, mature. In Three Clerks the hobbledehoy is Charlie Tudor who is redeemed by hard work, Johnny Eames by physical courage, Phineas by a change in his love-life - he doesn't need the country, a foreign woman offers salvation; he obtains status through work not despite work - the association of gentility and idleness was disappearing - here in the mid-era novels work does become almost Carlylean. But with John Caldigate everything changes, there is a new conservatism. Caldigate wanders off to Australia, works with his hands and co-habits with a lower-class woman - the hobbledehoy text is inverted (Australia as upside-down world). But Trollope attacks rampant greed even when endorsing work. In The Prime Minister, Lopez is the final nightmare hobbledehoy; all that seems to stop him is lack of money, which attacks the notion that gentility is innate. For Trollope work is not an unqualified good - there must be a moral focus. Smiles' argument that work civilises/gentilises has a slippery slope - if that is true for white men, then why not for women and black people? So Trollope is deeply suspicious of the self-made man.
This was another paper I found confusing and may have misrepresented. I certainly thought that Carlyle's thought was misrepresented and at times muddled up with Smiles.
However the basic problem with the last two papers which emerged strongly in the general discussion which followed was over the definition of a hobbledehoy - the discussion was very confused which may be partly ascribed to the fact that by now everyone was very hot and perhaps a little tired, but is also down to this central confusion. Stephen (I think) argued that Phineas is not a hobbledehoy(I agree), just as Silverbridge is not a hobbledehoy. Tom Tringle is very rich. I wanted to intervene and insist that in my view there is a strong class element to the hobbledehoy ; it is not just a term which can be elastically expanded to any of Trollope's young men. An element of being a hobbledehoy is certainly emotional immaturity, indeed general immaturity, but that is not enough. Charlie Tudor and Johnny Eames do follow a certain paradigm, but in my view Trollope worked this out with Eames and there was little left to say. This is clearer to me now I have (partially) read The Bertrams where none of the young men are, in my view, hobbledehoys. Yes there are elements in common - the maturation process - but Trollope's focus is very different ; it is on the questions of how they should live , their moral and career choices, ambition, how all those things inter-link. None of the characters is a hero, either to Trollope or to the reader (I prefer George Bertram to the hobbledehoys myself but then I loathe violence and I like radical authors!). An interesting final thought was raised about absent fathers as in the case of Johnny Eames (here there is a link to George Bertram) and it would have been interesting to pursue this, reflecting on the autobiographical elements. But everyone was very ready to break off and the discussion was a fragmented one due to the lack of any agreed definition.
Tuesday
Deborah Morse : Race and Trollope
The day opened with a keynote speech by Deborah Morse. Ellen has covered this in her report...
http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/ExeterConference.html
(I remind any readers again that this is a far fuller and obviously vastly better informed account than mine) and I will try to cover only areas she has not reported. Morse argued that Trollope re-imagined the questions of gender-race-power-empire in a racial way from the mid-1860's and that there was a very specific reason for this - the controversy following the massacre at Morant Bay in Jamaica, which was part of Governor Eyre's imposition of order following the uprising of October 1865. An enormous and passionate controversy followed this in the years 1866-68. The Jamaica Committee headed at first by Buxton and then Mill sought to indict Eyre. Carlyle (no surprise) and Ruskin defended him. Trollope was a friend of Buxton and wrote an admiring review of his book. HKHWR was written 1867-68 and Eyre acquitted in 1868. Trollope reverses the imperial narrative so it is the classic Englishman who goes mad not the colonised half-caste/dark-skinned. The three subplots work in another way with three young men all rejecting mastery as a way of relating to the world and women. I cannot really comment as I have not read HKHWR and would urge anyone interested to read Ellen's paper. I did find the account of the Morant Bay controversy fascinating.
The Conference then again split in two and once again I attended a different panel to Ellen. This one was entitled Imperial Gender Race and Ethnicity.
Anna Peak : Anti-Semitism
This paper was heavily concentrated on the character of Melmotte in The Wat We Live Now and argued that the Trollope is in fact deconstructing and examining anti-semitism in the novel. Once again I found this paper hard to follow due to a lack of knowledge of the one book around which it was tightly argued.
Mary Corbett : Gender and Ethnicity - Phineas Finn
The central contention of this paper was that class and ethnicity are not absent from Phineas Finn as a certain critical tradition has argued. Phineas after all resigns over an Irish issue. Trollope is also examining the distinction between manliness and gentlemanliness - a class issue. Manliness involves openness and independence - there is a powerful sense of the female other (dependant) - how do independence and manliness interact? There is a sense of the party hacks as feminine (dependant) - there was a specific quote about 'coyness' which unfortunately I failed to note. But if Phineas is dependant in some ways, politically he is a manly (independent) man - more independent than his country. His love-life is divided between his English (Laura, Violet) and Irish (Mary) loves - when in Ireland he loves Mary. Being a candidate/MP is a threat to manliness; political independence means financial dependence (or vice-versa). Ultimately of course Phineas rejects public life.
Lauren Goodlad : Trollope and India
In some ways this was rather a misleading title. This was a complicated paper and I may have failed to follow the argument correctly - but it was certainly fascinating. Lauren contrasted the discourses of Barsetshire (a rooted patriarchal society) and London (free market capitalism) within Trollope and argued that he rejected both liberal imperialism (Mill) and reactionary imperialism. The book on which the talk concentrated was the Eustace Diamonds and the central notion of heirlooms. The Eustace Diamonds had a connection to The Moonstone and hence to debate about Indian Empire. Are the diamonds an heirloom (Barsetshire) or a commodity (London) - land v money? Who is the real heirloom in ED? Lucy Morris ; but she is also self-acting and in self-possession. The Eustace Diamonds is an 'heirloom debunking novel', Bagehot was wholly cyncical about heirloom institutions, but Trollope at least in The Warden saw them as really specially, morally excellent : over time and through events his faith was shaken an this is reflected in The Eustace Diamonds. This paper was another which argued for Trollope's radical trajectory - that is that he became more radical as he grew older and this radicalistion can be traced through the treatment of specific subjects in the books. I suppose this was really the sub-text of the entire Conference. In this particular case I found the argument quite compelling, and the notion of 'heirloom' which I failed to properly note one about which it would be fascinating to read more.
I will save subsequent panels for another Part.
Dear Nick,
Dear Nick,