Trollope Society Oxford Conference 2023

Linda C. McClain will speak at the Trollope Society Oxford Conference 2023, Women in Trollope, which runs from Friday, September 1 to Sunday September 3. She will present her paper, “All the Single Ladies: Women, Autonomy, and Alternate Households in the Novels of Anthony Trollope” with Allison Tait at 9:30am on Saturday, September 2.

In a recent report, “Love Matters,” the archbishops of Canterbury and York said that “single people must be valued at the heart of our society.” This statement, a modern call to value those living outside of marriage, represents a reminder that marital ordering is not the only social ordering. Speaking to this point, Trollope’s novels depict—along with their many marital households—a robust set of curiously female, nonmarital households that vary in form but include widows living on their own or with children, unmarried sisters, female companions coordinating their daily lives, and marriage-resisting “old maids.” This paper considers the presence and operation of these households and the kinds of social orderings Trollope imagined as available to women outside of marital ordering.