236
PARTISAN REVIEW
Arabella "rather liked being hated
by women and did not want any
man to be in love with her-except
as far as might be sufficient for the
purposes of marriage." Her ambi–
tion was to be "one who might be
sure to be asked everywhere even
by the people who hated her."
When she appears on the scene she
is engaged to John Morton, a
di–
plomat, squire of Bragton, and
Reginald's cousin. But catching
sight of the sporting Lord Rufford,
a more spectacular prize, she
changes course and rides into what
is eventually a horrible situation.
The lord, one of those stupid, suc–
cessful, and attractive persons all
societies find indispensable, almost
proposes to Arabella in a moment
of exuberance. Her effort to use
the rules of Victorian social form
to press the lord into accepting the
consequences of an actual proposal
lead her through a circle in Infer–
no called humiliation. The moral
justice of fiction deprives her of
the lord but rewards her for a mo–
mentary impulse of pity towards
John Morton-who eliminates
himself by dying-with an upright
and wellborn, if not rich, husband.
Thus Arabella's episode, corning
under the heading of satirical com–
edy, ends on an unexpectedly
cheerful note.
· The morality is of money. One
notices that sinners as well as
victims in Trollope's novels almost
always suffer from financial or so–
cial insecurity: they are either the
low-born rich or the blue-blooded
poor. Their limitations are imposed
by society rather than inherent in
their natures. And the moral of
most of Trollope's fiction is that
people should abide by their limi–
tations. (In drafting his novels,
Trollope would assign an income
in exact figures to most of his char–
acters, as part of their essential
definition-and also of the process
of making them come alive.)
The character who gets out of
hand is the American senator him–
self, the honorable Elias Gotobed
(the name is one of the worst Trol–
lopisms) from the state of "Micke–
wa," visiting England to study con–
ditions there. The part he plays is
peripheral to the two main narra–
tives, and paradoxically, his share
of space shrinks even as his abstract
importance grows. Yet his story,
which conducts us into the Para–
dise matching the Purgatory and
Hell of the other two plots, gives
the novel an ambiguity and depth
of irony rare in Victorian English
fiction. What begins as a standard
19th Century caricature of the
Yankee swells gradually to a figure
of Reason incarnate
1
stalking and
castigating the English land. The
senator's twang fades away, his
cigar dwindles and finally disap–
pears. At the last all we see is puri–
ty and all we hear is logic. The au–
thor's attitude to the senator is
highly ambiguous. He seems to
have been intended primarily as a
mouthpiece for Trollope's own
strictures on English society; secon–
darily as a caricature. But the two
aims are in contradiction. Criticism
is attributed to the senator with
which it is obvious that Trollope
does not agree, designed as it is to
characterize the senator rather than
the objects of his criticism. But it
is very difficult to draw the line
between this and the criticism with
which the author does agree. Thus
the criticism as well as the sena–
tor's personality attains an objec–
tivity beyond the author's control.
The senator may appear a bit sim–
ple-minded to those who acquiesce
in what seem the necessary ano–
malies of any social order, but his
simple-rnindedness is such as to
