Framley Parsonage (Anthony Trollope, 1861)

Anthony Trollope. Framley Parsonage. Pub. 1861. Ed. Katherine Mullin and Francis O'Gorman. Oxford: World Classics, 2014.

General Notes

• I like the sense you get from Trollope of the connection of intimate, domestic relations a la Austen to wider political and cultural forces: political uncertainty after Crimean War, contested groups within the church and the relation of clergy to money
• 8 significant description of Mark as neither Angel nor devil; "such as his training made him, such as he was"
• 22 deforestation
• 32: As Bowen says in his intro to Barchester Towers, the great theme of desire and shame in AT:

It is no doubt very wrong to long after a naughty thing. Nevertheless we all do long. One may say that hankering after naughty things is the very essence of the evil into which we have been precipitated by Adam's fall. When we confess that we are all sinners, we confess that we all long after naughty things. And ambition is a great vice,--as Mark Antony told us a long time ago,--a great vice, no doubt, if the ambition of the man be with reference to his own advancement, and not the advancement of others. But then, how many of us are there who are not ambitious in this vicious manner? And there is nothing viler than the desire to know great people,--people of great rank, I should say; nothing worse than the hunting of titles and worshipping of wealth. We all know this, and say it every day of our lives. But presuming that a way into the society of Park Lane were open to us, and a way also into that of Bedford Row, how many of us are there who would prefer Bedford Row because it is so vile to worship wealth and title?

• 57ff Harold Smith's lecture arguing for understanding and "civilizing" Papua New Guinea
  • satirizing tension between church and civilization - might begin to compare to arnold
• 58 "The aristocratic front row felt itself too intimate with civilization to care much about it"
• 65, 67 Mark's guilt
• 80-1 Mark signs a bill of accommodation for £400 for Sowerby
  • according to note, this makes Mark legally liable for that amount, and what Sowerby does is to use these bills as commodities in themselves
• 96 "I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world."
• 127 Mark's moderate clerical project
• 131 topical discussion of the payment of clergy, "an arrangement endowed with feudal charms"
• 156-7 narrational technique: diegetic event -> general issue -> avuncular "I" narrative voice illustrating the point
• 192 typical trollopian move: contrasting heroes in books with "heroes got up for the world's common wear and tear," there being no extremes here
• 198 Crawley's little girl learning Greek from books without covers - reminiscent of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss (1860
• 206 the persistent, ironic figuring if political turmoil in Greek mythological terms - giants and titans in the Conservative party
• 207 Supplehouse the journalist understands that people's interest in politics is personal, not policy based
• 213 "proper that the historian should drop a veil over their sufferings" interesting - that which is below narration
• 279 almost defensively metafictive, envisioning a critic criticizing Lurton as an imperfecthero
• what does other mid Victorian political fiction look like?
• 304 Fanny as a "true woman" when Mark admits his debts

Theme tracking

Reading/writing

• 40 entertaining description of the circulation of Mark's letter to Fanny (letter itself also significant)
• 80-1 The bill of accommodation Mark signs for Sowerby
• 127 Mark not the type of parson to denounce novel-reading
• 198 Crawley's little girl learning Greek from books without covers - reminiscent of Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Materiality

• 96 "insignificant chatter" about linen
• 190ish the materiel of becoming a prebendary
• 202 Lucy playing shop with the Crawley children - exchange value in domestic space

Shakespeare references

• 31 "the labour we delight in physics pain" - Macbeth; bishop proudie about inviting the heiress miss dunstable to stay
• 32 "And ambition is a great vice,--as Mark Antony told us a long time ago,--a great vice, no doubt, if the ambition of the man be with reference to his own advancement, and not the advancement of others." -- Julius Caesar
• 75 Et tu, Brute? -- Caesar
• 90 "Would be Benedicts" who would be suitors to Mark's sisters - Much Ado
• 127 Cakes and ale -Twelfth Night
• 193 "she never told her love, nor did she allow concealment to 'feed on her damask cheek' - Twelfth Night
• 195 a hawk from a heron - paraphrasing hamlet
• 234 Twelfth Night again associated with Lucy - concealment feed on her damask cheek, sitting like Patience on a monument
• 272 Angels and ministers - Hamlet
• 302 "filed his mind" Macbeth