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Anthony Trollope: Novelist of the “Democratic Revolution”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 December 2020
Abstract
Anthony Trollope uses the characters and drama of his “semi-political” Palliser novels to pursue the ends of Alexis de Tocqueville's political science in a lighthearted yet serious way. Describing himself as an “advanced conservative Liberal,” Trollope claims that his “political theory” is expressed most fully in the Palliser novels. Preoccupied with the phenomenon Tocqueville designates the “democratic revolution,” the novels emphasize the historical “tendency towards equality,” consider its social and political implications, and intimate how traditionally aristocratic England might respond to it. While he endorses the justice of the democratic revolution, Trollope shows that it is accompanied by such disadvantages as a decline in human excellence and greatness. Realistic depictions of character arouse sympathy for his view that by adopting a posture of prudent liberalism toward the advance of equality, the English could both reform their aristocratic institutions and rely on those institutions to mitigate the excesses of democracy.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame.
Footnotes
For their comments on various iterations of this article, I thank Ruth Abbey, David Chiles, Bryan-Paul Frost, Kimberly Hurd Hale, Jeremy Mhire, Jamie Orlando, James Pontuso, Nicholas Tampio, Natalie Taylor, and the anonymous reviewers for the Review of Politics. The University of Virginia's Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy supported the article's genesis.
References
1 Anthony Trollope, North America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1862), 1. Despite the title, Trollope states on the first page that his book is about the United States. He devotes a few chapters to Canada and mentions Mexico only a handful of times.
2 Ibid., 2. Trollope suggests that writing a heavy book about the American regime might be easier than writing a “light” book, but he thinks that writing a good book (of any sort) about the United States requires a special kind of author. Describing the person truly fit “to dilate on the nature and operation of [American] political arrangements,” he states, “It is a work which some man will do who has earned a right by education, study, and success to rank himself among the political sages of his age” (ibid., 1–2). As this description comes mere sentences before his reference to “A De Tocqueville,” one wonders whether Trollope thought of Tocqueville in these terms.
3 Thanks to Jamie Orlando for researching this question. I bear responsibility for any oversights.
4 Trollope did own a copy of Democracy in America, though we cannot confirm whether and, if so, how closely he read it. Trollope, Anthony, Catalogue of His Books (London: Virtue, 1874)Google Scholar, 79. Photocopies of this catalogue were obtained from the Forster Collection, National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, July 2, 2018.
5 Trollope, Anthony, An Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 317Google Scholar, henceforward abbreviated AB. I follow the scholarly consensus in considering Can You Forgive Her?, Phineas Finn, The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, and The Duke's Children to be the six “Palliser” novels. Trollope states that Phineas Finn was the first of his “semi-political tales” (AB, 317). However, Can You Forgive Her? is often classified as a Palliser novel because it provides the first extended introduction of Plantagenet Palliser and the very first introduction of Glencora (M'Cluskie) Palliser.
6 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, trans. ed., and C., Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 3, 6, 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Henceforward abbreviated DA.
7 Trollope typically capitalizes “Liberalism,” “Conservatism,” and “Radicalism” as well as related words. When discussing Trollope, I follow his usage.
8 For discussion of Trollope's views on democratic culture and mediocrity, see the section “Democracy's Shadows,” below.
9 Trollope's North America features chapters on “Education and Religion,” “Congress,” “The Constitution of the United States,” “The Government,” and “The Law Courts and Lawyers of the United States.”
10 For an overview of Tocqueville's views, see Zemach, Ada, “Alexis de Tocqueville on England,” Review of Politics 13, no. 3 (June 1951): 329–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 While he had hoped to appeal to as many readers as possible, Trollope understood that politically themed novels would appeal primarily to the politically interested portion of the middle and upper classes, i.e., those “who would have lived with” his characters (AB, 318; 317–18).
12 By contrast, Brent E. Kinser argues that one should look to Trollope's nonfiction for an account of his “actual political outlook.” Additionally, Kinser appreciates the Tocquevillian themes in Trollope's nonfiction. Kinser, , The American Civil War in the Shaping of British Democracy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011)Google Scholar, 59 and chap. 2.
13 While he wrote in many genres, it is as a novelist that Trollope did his best work. No one thinks that his North America occupies the same plane as Democracy in America, but he is memorialized as a novelist in Westminster Abbey's Poets’ Corner (https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/anthony-trollope/).
14 A “common view” of Trollope's political novels is that the political elements are incidental to the author's fundamental aim of realistically portraying mid-nineteenth-century English society. David Craig, M., “Advanced Conservative Liberalism: Party and Principle in Trollope's Parliamentary Novels,” Victorian Literature and Culture 38 (Sept. 2010): 355CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a list of authors who hold the “common view,” see ibid., 355 and 355n1. See also McCormick, John, to, introduction The Prime Minister, by Anthony Trollope (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), viiGoogle Scholar.
15 Tocqueville's enumeration of “great events” serving to weaken the nobility and strengthen the common people includes “the Crusades and the wars with the English,” “the institution of townships,” “the discovery of firearms,” the invention of the printing press, the development of mail service, the advent of Protestantism, and the discovery of America (DA, 5–6).
16 Tocqueville, , “The Emancipation of Slaves,” in Writings on Empire and Slavery, ed. and trans. Pitts, Jennifer (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 207Google Scholar.
17 Tocqueville uses the word semblable to capture the notion of someone “like oneself.” Mansfield and Winthrop, introduction to DA, xliii.
18 Henary, Sara, “Tocqueville and the Challenge of Historicism,” Review of Politics 76, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 469–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Other Trollope novels feature political themes that are not inconsistent with those articulated in the Palliser novels. For example, The American Senator addresses the different paces at which England and America are advancing toward greater equality. Trollope, The American Senator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), chaps. 77–78. Nevertheless, this essay focuses on the Palliser novels because Trollope stresses their particular importance in relation to his own views.
20 See, e.g., Trollope, Phineas Redux (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 1:31–50, 69; Trollope, Phineas Finn, ed. Jacques Berthoud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1:245, 251, 2:79; and Trollope, Prime Minister, 1:183, 194–95, 358. With the exception of The Duke's Children, all editions of the Palliser novels cited here comprise two volumes under one cover; each volume features its own pagination.
21 E.g., Phineas Finn, 1:163; Prime Minister, 1:311, 2:257–69.
22 E.g., the Pallisers, Phineas Finn, and Mr. Monk, a tamed Radical (Phineas Finn, 1:118; Phineas Redux, 1:80).
23 See note 14 above.
24 John McCormick complains that “The Prime Minister has been judged ‘political’ despite the circumstance that four-fifths of the narrative is given over to complex relationships among the characters” and “to manners.” McCormick, introduction to Prime Minister, xi–xii.
25 This does not mean that the novels were political “for [his] own sake” alone, which would imply a lack of interest in persuasion. In all likelihood, Trollope is simply communicating the special pleasure he took in writing these portions of the novels.
26 See note 11 above.
27 See, e.g., DA, 292–302, 675–76.
28 For a helpful discussion of the idea of liberal democracy, see James W. Ceaser, Liberal Democracy and Political Science (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), chap. 1.
29 Examples of other institutions and practices Tocqueville discusses are religion (DA, 275–88, 417–24, 504–6, 517–21), the legal profession (251–58), civil juries (258–64), and newspapers and freedom of the press (489–92, 668).
30 Bloom, Allan, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 134Google Scholar.
31 Democracy does stress the importance of particular cases and local knowledge, but it inevitably does so in a general way (e.g., 12–15).
32 Cheryl Welch notices that Democracy features few particular people with proper names. Welch, De Tocqueville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 150.
33 Phineas Finn, 1:245.
34 Phineas Redux, 1:69.
35 Prime Minister, 1:183, 358.
36 Phineas Redux, 1:31–50.
37 Phineas Finn, 1:251, 2:79; Prime Minister, 1:194–95.
38 See, e.g., Phineas Finn, 1:163.
39 Phineas Redux, 1:70.
40 Ibid.
41 See, e.g., ibid., 1:46; Prime Minister, 1:311. See also AB, 293.
42 Prime Minister, 2:269.
43 I follow Trollope's usage in always capitalizing “Prime Minister” and in capitalizing “Duke” when referring to a specific duke.
44 In the Autobiography, Trollope says that characters’ speeches should be short “unless the writer can justify to himself a longer flood of speech by the speciality of the occasion” (240).
45 See Craig, “Advanced Conservative Liberalism,” 358–59, though he claims that the difference between Conservatives and Liberals centers on their different attitudes toward inequality. I would add that the Whig and Radical positions should be understood in relation to the more fundamental distinction between Liberals and Conservatives.
46 E.g., Mr. Monk states, “Equality is an ugly word and shouldn't be used” (Phineas Finn, 1:128).
47 For Trollope's profession of “love” for Plantagenet Palliser, see AB, 360n1.
48 Phineas Finn, 1:126, 128.
49 Ibid., 1:86, 128–29.
50 Phineas Redux, 1:126.
51 E.g., Trollope, Anthony, The Duke's Children, ed. Birch, Dinah (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 356; Phineas Finn, 1:335–37Google Scholar.
52 Craig, “Advanced Conservative Liberalism,” 359.
53 Duke's Children, 356; see also Phineas Finn, 1:333–34.
54 Prime Minister, 1:311.
55 Phineas Redux, 1:113.
56 Prime Minister, 1:181–82.
57 Phineas Redux, 1:46.
58 Prime Minister, 2:267.
59 Phineas Finn, 1:126.
60 Ibid., 2:28.
61 Prime Minister, 1:105, 249–51; 2:258, 266.
62 See AB, 183–85, where Trollope discusses his attempt to depict the stability of character over time as well as the “changes which time always produces” (183).
63 For Trollope's criticism of Dickens, see AB, 247–49.
64 Pace Henry James, Trollope obviously did have “views” about “the subject of novel-writing,” though his ideas were incompatible with having “a system, a doctrine, a form.” James, “Anthony Trollope,” in Partial Portraits, ed. Leon Edel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970), 100.
65 Trollope believed that “human nature” was the novelist's special subject (AB, 144–45, 229–40, 243–49).
66 Phineas Finn, 1:126; Prime Minister, 2:267.
67 Duke's Children, 46.
68 Birch, editor's note in Duke's Children, 46n1.
69 In Trollope, for example, one does not find the tone of lamentation that one discovers in Tocqueville, who grieves for what is lost while at the same time attempting to see equality from God's point of view (DA, 674–75).
70 In portraying the nation's “highest classes,” Trollope attempted to make “the strength and virtues predominant over the faults and vices” (AB, 181).
71 Prime Minister, 2:211, 258.
72 Phineas Redux, 2:23.
73 Phineas Finn, chaps. 11, 19; 1:292–93.
74 Ibid., 1:36.
75 Ibid., 2:94, 196.
76 Berthoud, introduction to Phineas Finn, xxiv.
77 Phineas Finn, 1:1–22.
78 “The action or practice of persistently pursuing government office, esp. for reasons of self-interest.” Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v.
79 See, e.g., Phineas Finn, 1:131, 138, 285–96; 2:163–64, 179, 230, 269.
80 E.g., ibid., 2:193; Phineas Redux, 1:14.
81 Phineas Finn, 2:309.
82 Ibid., 1:330; 2:107, 161.
83 Ibid., 2:17.
84 Berthoud, introduction to Phineas Finn, xxiv.
85 See note 9 above.
86 His father was an impecunious lawyer, and his mother became a well-known, if not always well-respected, author. Trollope himself was a longtime employee of the British Postal Service. See AB, esp. chaps. 1–3, 15.
87 Duke's Children, chap. 78.