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.

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.

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.

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.

Laura Lippman, Charm City. Tess Monaghan continues to develop her skills as a private investigator in Baltimore — “charm city.” If you are following the series, this is the book in which Tess acquires Esskay, the rescue greyhound. She also has a boy friend but that relationship is not working out as well as the one with the dog.

Philip Roth, The Counterlife. The two Zuckerman brothers grow up together in New Jersey. Henry becomes a dentist; Nathan becomes a famous novelist. One lives, one dies. Two live, two die. Lives are exchanged, lives are fantasized. Characters are created, characters die, characters just up and leave.

Madeleine B. Stern, Louisa May Alcott. Another biography of the 19th century author, read as part of my continuing preparation for my ABC course: Alcott, Boston, Concord.

W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale. Wry 1930s novel about love and the literary life. No, not love exactly, but gentility and what it permits the class-bound characters to know of love.

Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge. I like Hardy and his stories of country people, people who are not so simple as they may first appear. Still, life goes hard for his characters. They may be the authors of their own doom, but does it need to be so bad?

Louisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins. One of Alcott’s books for young people, written several years after her very successful Little Women. One girl, Rose, plus seven Campbell boys make up the eight cousins. The sequel, Rose in Bloom, follows Rose into young womanhood.

Sinclair Lewis, Main Street. Life in Gopher Prairie is not easy for a young wife who does not know what she wants, but does know that she can’t find it in this dusty small town in the upper Midwest.

Sonia Shah, The Fever: How Malaria ha Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years. Some promoter must have written that subtitle. Nevertheless, this story of malaria convinces me that malaria has been important in human history and is not going to away any more than the mosquito is going to go away.

My local Ex Libris book group is taking on some very long ones during the coming year. My contributions to the challenge will be The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek and Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman. Both are new and unfamiliar authors for me — should be fun. Expect to find comments here as I read, with links to others in the challenge.

The book reprises many of the themes of Little Women – the love of a close family, the pleasures of innocent fun, the importance of learning self control – but the tone is more straight-laced. Rose is no Jo March, and does not rebel against Uncle Alec’s strictures of no coffee, no corsets, plenty of fresh air and exercise. Alcott takes a few swipes at education also.

“I’ve been at boarding school nearly a year, and I’m almost dead with lessons. The more I did, the more Miss Power gave me, and I was so miserable I ‘most cried my eyes out. Papa never gave me hard things to do, and he always taught me so pleasantly I loved to study.”

Good Uncle Alec takes over Rose’s education in all branches, and her lively boy cousins take over her social life. The strength of the book is in the children. The older generation are mostly stock characters: remote Uncle Mac, hypochondriacal Aunt Myra, benevolent Aunts Peace and Plenty. Still, it all moves along briskly enough and we enjoy seeing Rose gradually transformed from a timid and sad little girl into a lively teenager, unafraid of all those male cousins and more than ready to join in the fun.

The sequel, Rose in Bloom written the following year, is less successful. Rose, now twenty, has been taken off to Europe for travel and culture, and returns a young woman. The oldest of the cousins are potential marriage partners, so the plot of the book becomes rather standard Victorian romance. Who will marry whom? Since the course of true love never does run smooth, we can expect some difficulties. One of the difficulties is that Rose is rich.

The heiress was the attraction to most of the young men whom she met. Good fellows enough, but educated, as nearly all are nowadays, to believe that girls with beauty or money are brought to market to sell or buy as the case may be.

Most bothersome — for me at least — is Rose’s continued dependence of Uncle Alec to form her character. She constantly seeks his approval even as he claims to stand back and let her learn from her own experiences. Rose cannot buy the shimmering opal silk for a new gown because Uncle Alec has taught her that it would be better to be charitable with resources. As said, Rose is no Jo March.

The silk gown is as close as Rose comes to temptation, but one cousin at least is not so fortunate. Most of the characters in the story express the conventional hope that the love of a good woman will show him the right path — no wine at parties — and keep him there. Alcott is a strong enough writer to do a small twist on that expectation and get away with it.

Shah spells this out in perhaps more detail than some readers want, but she makes her point. Her description of the various forms the malaria parasite takes during his life cycle convinced me I do not have the patience to pursue that kind of essential research.

The best chapter in the book is “The Karma of Malaria.” Step aside and look at the big picture: the perceptions of the people on the ground who cannot completely avoid mosquitoes and malaria.

 In their lived experience they know that the overwhelming majority of the parasite’s incusions are trivial. Most of the time, carrying the parasite means next to nothing: no fever, no chills, no readily discernible symptons, especially against a gray backdrop of other, more pressing ailments.

This attitude has consequences for the results of campaigns to eradicate malaria.

Most of the ways we’ve devised to destroy malaria rely upon the committed participation of malaria’s victims. It is they who must drain the standing water, swat the mosquitoes, wear the repellant, sleep under the bed nets, go to the clinics, and take the drugs.

Anti-malaria campaigns which fail or are abruptly discontinued because of budget problems may make the victims’ experience worse, by causing them to lose the temporary immunity given by previous mild infections. Shah also writes knowledgeably of past and present drugs, as well as the politics of malaria. Welcome to the fight. My money is on the mosquito.

Any book which can hold reader interest for almost 150 years must speak to universal values and concerns. One of the sessions of my course will be devoted to the story of this book. I have summarized my Little Women discoveries in a slide show which you can access here.

I’ll be adding more Louisa May Alcott material to the Pages section of this blog.

The most shining characteristic of Alroy Kear was his sincerity. No one can be a humbug for five-and-twenty years. Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job…. Though I have finished few of his novels, I have begun a good many, and to my mind his sincerity is stamped on every one of their multitudinous pages.

Maugham’s story evolves into something much more interesting, as hinted by the otherwise inappropriate cover shown here. 1930 was, after all, the era of trains and motor cars, so why the coach and horses? They suggest that the narrator and his literary friends are stuck in concepts of gentility from an earlier day. Ashenden, the narrator, recalls his childhood in the Blackstable vicarage:

No one thought her [my aunt] a snob. It was accepted as perfectly reasonable. The banker had a little boy of my own age, and, I forget how, I became acquainted with him. I still remember the discussion that ensued when I asked if I might bring him to the vicarage; permission was reluctantly given me, but I was not allowed to go in return to his house. My aunt said I’d be wanting to go to the coal merchant’s next….

Blackstable does indeed have a local coal merchant who is called, in jest, Lord George because he is so grand in his dress and manners. Blackstable also has a local writer, not respected because his father was a Miss Wolfe’s bailiff and he has married a bar maid. Ah, the bar maid — there’s a character to set your class teeth on edge — and she is perfectly charming.

Driffield, the writer who married the bar maid, later becomes subject to gentrification by his second wife. His biographer now needs to purge Driffield’s earlier life of unsuitable tendencies.

“Do you remember what he sang?”

“Perfectly, ‘All Through Stickin’ to a Soljer’ and ‘Come Where the Booze is Cheaper’ were his favourites.”

“Oh!”

I could see that Roy was disappointed.

“Did you expect him to sing Schumann?” I asked.

“I don’t know why not. It would have been rather a good point. But I think I should have expected him to sing sea chanties or old English country airs, you know, the sort of thing they used to sing at fairings–blind fiddlers and the village swains dancing with the girls on the threshing floor and all that sort of thing. I might have made something rather beautiful out of that, but I can’t see Edward Driffield singing music-hall songs. After all, when you’re drawing a man’s portrait you must get the values right….”

The story is perfectly ironic. The fashionable biographer places his subject in an English-village style of life known only through literature. The writer, who really lived that life and tried to tell it true, can no longer be seen as what he was. Cakes and Ale is a morality story of how our class limitations control our understandings of both life and literature.