The Widow Barnaby

This grief-stricken widow in full mourning dress is not the Widow Barnaby. Our widow left town so that people in her new location would not know how long she had been a widow. She remodeled her black dresses for her penniless niece — let her do the mourning for both of them.

The Widow Barnaby (1839) was probably the most popular of Frances “Fanny” Trollope’s 35 novels. Trollope — also the mother of Anthony Trollope, among other accomplishments –is best remembered today for The Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832) which reported critically on her travels in the early United States.

I learned that she was a best-selling author in her day, but “nobody reads her now.” That hardly seems fair, so I tried The Widow Barnaby and was pleasantly surprised as Trollope kept me fully engaged in the adventures of the rambunctiously vulgar widow.

Martha Compton, the daughter of a well-born but improvident family, had failed to secure a more desirable suitor by her mid-thirties, so she settled for comfortable local apothecary Barnaby. When he died, she was his childless widow and inherited a comfortable income of over 400 pounds per year. Like her contemporary, Jane Austin, Trollope tells you exactly how much money people have and what it means to them. With this income, the Widow Barnaby was confident she could aspire to great things, that is, a more prestigious second husband. Romance is important, but has its limits.

Yet Mrs. Barnaby was not altogether so short-sighted as by-standers might suppose; and though she freely permitted herself the pleasure of being made love to, she determined to be very sure of the Major’s rent-roll before she bestowed herself and her fortune upon him; for, notwithstanding her flirting propensities, the tender passion had ever been secondary in her heart to a passion for wealth and finery; and not the best-behaved and most discreet dowager that ever lived, was more firmly determined to take care of herself, and make a good bargain, “if ever she married again,” than was our flighty, flirting Widow Barnaby.

Martha Barnaby decks herself out in laces and feathers, rouges her cheeks, and lies about her age and antecedents. Into the novel Trollope also weaves the story of a very different member of the family, Miss Betsy Compton. Aunt Betsy never married, but lives contentedly, preserving her share of the estate that the Widow Barnaby’s father let slip away.

This mystery, this profound secrecy, in the silent rolling up of her wealth, was perhaps the principal source of her enjoyment from it. It amused her infinitely to observe, that while the bad management and improvidence of her brother and his wife were the theme of eternal gossipings, her own thrift seemed permitted to go quietly on, without eliciting any observation at all.

The two women clash over the care of their penniless niece. As a good Victorian novelist, Trollope is careful not carry her mocking of romance too far. Aunt Betsey lives happily without it, the Widow Barnaby seeks it if accompanied by a good income, and niece Agnes suffers the conventional pangs of sincere love.

Agnes stood up, she received his offered hand, and raised her eyes to his face, but uttered no word either of surprise or joy. Her face was colourless, and traces of very recent tears were plainly visible; she trembled from head to foot, and Colonel Hubert, frightened, as a brave man always is when he sees a woman really sinking under her sex’s weakness, replaced her on the sofa almost as incapable of speaking as herself.

The novel is an entertaining mixture of the fainting Agnes, set off by two strong women who know their own minds. Financial troubles are real, not glossed over at all. The male characters are less well-drawn than the female ones, but Trollope clearly knows the neighborhoods and local customs she depicts. No wonder people bought her books — she is fun to read.

This book can be hard to find, but you can get a free copy in the Amazon Kindle Store.

Feminist Classics

Last year I enjoyed joining in the discussions at the Year of Feminist Classics blog. Among others we discussed John Stuart Mills’ The Subjection of Women, Mary Wollstonecrafts’ A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Charlotte Gilman Perkins’ Herland.

Now, a new year, and a new list.

• February – Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks (Amy)
• March – The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine De Pizan (Jean)
• April – Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano (Cass)
• May – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë read alongside Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Iris)
• June – Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (Emily)
• July – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Nancy)
• August – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Lauren)
• September – Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua (Melissa)
• October – The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (Jodie)
• November – Beyond the Veil by Fatema Mernissi (Ana)
• December – Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis (Emily Jane)
• January – Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Eva)

This time around, each book will have a discussion leader. In July I will lead the discussion of Louisa May Alcott’s well-known novel for girls, Little Women. Fellow feminist Jean Ping will be helping me with this.

There’s nothing to join, no entrance fees, and no commitment. Please stop by as often as you like to enjoy the discussions and bring your own point of view to the party.

Two Cities: The Movie

You see them here in a 1938 film of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: Lucie Manette and Sydney Carton . That is the young Ronald Coleman playing Carton and I don’t remember who is playing Lucie. It doesn’t matter because she is a stick anyway. She is very pretty if you like a blank face and 1930′s penciled eyebrows.

For strong female acting, take a look at Madame Defarge.

The two cities of Dickens’ tale are London and Paris. The Paris of this film is not airbrushed but strong, violent, overly dramatic. The London is quaint, with carolers in the street and gentility beyond belief. For that reason, the film comes alive, becomes “Hollywood,” only when the scene moves to Paris.

The mob storms the Bastille.

I decided to see this film (again) after recently reading A Tale of Two Cities (again) and being impressed by Dickens’ adroit handling of narrative in the manner of a tale. In the opening scenes I had to adjust to the rather stagey acting and mugging, a holdover from silent film days. It works rather well from the beginning for Carton’s dissolute character. In fact, as a drunk, I find him rather restrained. It turns up the heat wonderfully when the mob gets going in Paris. Here, in contrast to the dignified trial shown earlier in London, the jurors demand the deaths of innocent people.

Dickens hated injustice and the humiliations of poverty, whether in England or France, but he hated the mob and the terror more. The movie does too.

H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay

Who said this and when?

This irrational muddle of a community in which we live gave him that, paid him at that rate for sitting in a room and scheming and telling it lies. For he created nothing, he invested nothing, he economized nothing. I cannot claim that a single one of the great businesses we organized added any real value to human life at all.

That is H.G. Wells in his 1908 novel Tono-Bungay, describing the success of the patent-medicine business and all the financial structures erected upon that foundation. It could have been written in 2008.

I knew H. G. Wells only through his science fiction novels, The War of the Worlds and The Island of Dr. Moreau. I was aware of the strain of social criticism in them, as well as the selective but effective characterizations Wells brought to the genre. Tono-Bungay is a coming of age novel, in which George Ponderevo rises out of his social class (son of a housekeeper) and a time when technology did not fire the imagination.

Only thirty years ago it was, and I remember I learned of the electric light as an expensive, impracticable toy, the telephone as a curiosity, electric traction as a practical absurdity.

George’s first dream is on science — is Wells speaking of himself here? — but he is diverted by his entrepreneurial uncle whose accomplishments make a mockery of science.

“You don’t mean to say you think doing this stuff up in bottles and swearing it’s the quintessence of strength and making poor devils buy it as that, is straight?”

“Why not, George? How to we know it mayn’t be the quintessence of them so far as they’re concerned? …. There’s Faith. You put Faith in ‘em….”

And with Faith you make money, lots of it, with Uncle Edward to dream and write the advertizing and sober George to keep the business efficient. This same Faith allows them to buy and sell companies, create conglomerates, sell stock and promote, promote, promote. Until, of course, the inevitable crash.

This is not a “business” novel; this is a novel about trying and failing and growing up and seeking truth.

Scientific truth is the remotest of mistresses, she hides in strange places, she is attained by tortuous and laborious roads, but she is always there! Win to her and she will not fail you; she is yours and mankind’s for ever. She is reality, the one reality I have found in this strange order of existence.

That is not all. Tono-Bungay is also a love story, an account of a marriage gone sour, a meditation on social class, an appreciation of English tradition. Oh, and there is even an adventure on the high seas thrown in for good measure. This is Wells at his best, and that is very good indeed.