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Posted November 11, 2002
Anthony Trollope's 1879 novel An Eye for an Eye is a well-written morality tale. The basic moral has not dated, though the need, today, to make that moral seems less than pressing. The moral? Caste and class distinctions are dehumanizing, and should never trump other moral concerns, such as the obligations a man takes up in wooing a young woman.
The novel is elegantly framed by a compelling glimpse of a madwoman in an asylum, muttering the words An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Is it not the law?
The climax of the novel, set at Ardkill by the sea on the Mohir cliffs in County Clare, Ireland, though predictable, is nonetheless quite effective. Though some readers of this book, like some viewers of Hamlet, may tire of the vacillations of the protagonist, all in all, the novel is fairly tight — especially by nineteenth century standards. Trollope did not ascend to the age's characteristic level of periphrasis.
One aspect of the novel dates it, however. We've been reading of the courtship of poor Miss Kate O'Hara by the rich Mr. Fred Neville, heir to the Scroope manor, fortune, and title. We've read some fine prose, ecstatic and homely dialogue, and followed Neville from Ireland to Scroope and back, and then of a sudden we learn from Kate's mother that the young woman is pregnant (though that word is not used). So, at what point did our couple copulate?
It would have been more dramatic if the seduction scene had been written in full, even beyond a removal of undergarments. It would have demonstrated to us the full extent of the young woman's commitment to the protagonist, and it would have given the reader a better understanding of the mind of suitor. But what we get is a putative seduction scene in dialogue, and passages like this:
The seal-skin which he had given her was very dear to her, and she was at no pains to hide her liking; but of the man as a lover she had never seemed to think.
Nor did she think of him as a lover. It is not by such thinking that love grows. Nor did she ever tell herself that while he was there, coming on one day and telling them that his boat would be again there on another, life was blessed to her, and that, therefore, when he should have left them, her life would be accursed to her. She knew nothing of all this. But yet she thought of him, and dreamed of him, and her young head was full of little plans with every one of which he was connected.
And it may almost be said that Fred Neville was as innocent in the matter as was the girl. It is true, indeed, that men are merciless as wolves to women, — that they become so, taught by circumstances and trained by years; but the young man who begins by meaning to be a wolf must be bad indeed. Fred Neville had no such meaning. On his behalf it must be acknowledged that he had no meaning whatever when he came again and again to Ardkill. Had he examined himself in the matter he would have declared that he liked the mother quite as well as the daughter.... Accident, and the spirit of adventure, had thrust these ladies in his path, and no doubt he liked them the better because they did no live as other people lived. Their solitiude, the close vicinity of the ocean, the feeling that in meeting them none of the ordinary conventional usages of society were needed, the wildness and the strangeness of the scene, all had charms which he admitted to himself. And he knew that the girl was very lovely. Of course he said so to himself and to others. OTo take delight in beauty is assumed to be the nature of a young man, and this young man was not one to wish to differ from others in that respect. But when he went back to spend his Christmas at Scroope, he had never told even himself that he intended to be her lover.
This is explicit as the book gets. I'd have to read it carefully a second time to figure out exactly where and when the couple couples.
But this was the 19th century, and such moments of life — which often seem the ones that matter most — had to be dealt with indirectly. 'Tis a pity.
A few years after An Eye for an Eye hit print, F. Marion Crawford's To Leeward came out, published simultaneously in Britain and America. Like An Eye for an Eye, To Leeward dealt with a scandalous affair, in this case husband-abandonment and adultery. On the sentence level it is unexceptionable, holding up very well. And it possesses three advantages over the Trollope classic:
Like usual in Crawford (and in Trollope, though not An Eye for an Eye), Crawford begins his novel in high spirits. Describing his soon-to-be-adulterous protagonist, he paints a portrait in bold, witty strokes:
Miss Leonora Carnethy was suffering from an acute attack of philosophical despair, which accounted for her not appearing with her mother on the Pincio.
The immediate cause of the fit was the young lady's inability to comprehend Hegel's statement thatNothing is the same as Being; and as it was not only necessary to understand it, but also, in Miss Carnethy's view, to reconcile it with some dozens of other philosophical propositions all diametrically opposed to it and to each other, the consequence of the attempt was the most chaotic and hopeless failure on record in the annals of thought. Under these circumstances, Miss Carnethy shut herself up in a dark room, went to bed, and agreed with Hegel that Nothing was precisely the same as Being. She thus scattered all the other philosophies to the angry arts of heaven at one fell swoop, and she felt sure that she was going to be a Hindoo.
This sounds a little vague, but nothing could be vaguer than Miss Carnethy's state of mind. Having agreed with Mr. Herbert Spencer that the grand mainspring of life is the pursuit of happiness, and that no other motive has any real influence in human affairs, it was a little hard to find that there was nothing in anything, after all. But then, since her own being was also nothing, why should she trouble herself? Evidently it was impossible for nothing to trouble itself, and so the only possible peace must lie in realising her own nothingness, which could be best accomplished by going to bed in a dark room. It was very dreary, of course, but she felt it was good logic, and must tell in the long run.
We are a long way from Trollope's simple folk, here! We are reading of someone who's utterly besot with high culture, but lacking understanding or independence of mind.
Leonora's embracing of Hegel's Nothing=Being contention is a key for conservative Crawford. Moral error often begins in philosophical error:
This kind of argument is irreproachable. It is like the old lady who said she was so glad that she did not like spinach, because if she did she would eat it, and, as she detested it, that would be very unpleasant. There is no answer possible to a properly grounded philosophical argument of this kind. On the whole, Miss Carnethy did the right thing when she tried to realise the physical being of nothing.
This Leonora was no ordinary girl. She belonged to a small class of young women who take a certain delight in being different fromthe rest— higher, of course.
But Crawford will bring her low!
In this, Crawford's darkest, most French
novel, the author casts himself (but not by name) as the seducer of poor, befuddled Leonora. The book, literary experts tell, is one of his most personal. And it was his only fiction that he revised. (The quotations are from the 1892 revision rather than the 1883 original, which is very hard to find.)
Though To Leeward has a few annoying elements to it, and is by no means as impressive as Crawford's best books, it stands up well against the Trollope. But still, for all its merits and economy, there's something in An Eye for an Eye that holds the attention and grabs the prize. It is that frame story, with the woman in the asylum madly proclaiming the truth.
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