Thematic Alternation in Trollope

Extract

While chatting with Anthony Trollope one day, George Eliot lamented the occasional failure of her inspiration: “There are days together when I cannot write a line.” Trollope, in a rare moment of humility, replied: “Oh, well, with imaginative work like yours that is quite natural; but with my mechanical stuff it's a sheer matter of industry.” Perhaps it is unfair to accept Trollope's testimony against himself, but we do his workmanlike talents no disservice if we recognize that the same charge has often been brought against him by his critics, who allege a variety of “mechanical” practices. For example, A. O. J. Cockshut, discussing Trollope's handling of courtship, says, “His stock plot, much too often repeated, of the woman hesitating between two men, is perfunctory.” However, one “mechanical” technique which he repeatedly employed has never been noticed. If we trace the appearance of the two principal sources of conflict in his fiction, we discover not only that two themes are very common but also that they appear with almost predictable regularity. The symmetry of this pattern is, I feel, significant and illuminating in understanding Trollope's literary fecundity, in classifying his novels, and in appreciating the exact nature of his artistic maturity, a matter of special concern in recent Trollope criticism. Paradoxically, this same pattern also suggests that those novels which are most popular at the moment were “mechanically” produced.