Framley Parsonage Read Free Page B

supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character. They who hold bythe other are charmed by the construction and gradual development of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake, – which mistake arises from the inabilityof the imperfect artist to be at the same time realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in the highest degree. 19
    There can be no doubt, however, that
Framley Parsonage
was not intended to rise to sensational heights, andit is noteworthy that Trollope cites his next novel,
Orley Farm
, as, he hopes, an example of the successful marriage of realism and sensationalism. Perhaps Wilkie Collins’s success influenced even him, as it certainly directly affected Dickens’s approach in
Great Expectations
in 1860–61. In any event, Trollope did exploit more overtly sensational plots in some of his later novels, notably
TheEustace Diamonds
, which he wrote in 1869–70.
    There are other reasons too for the particularly gentle nature of the excitement in
Framley Parsonage
. To begin with, Thackeray and Smith had explicitly asked for an English and even a clerical tale, and it was clear that the
Cornhill
was intended to defer to middle-class standards of respectability. In the second place, Trollope was already engagedin writing an Irish novel,
Castle Richmond
, which, in stark contrast to
Framley Parsonage
, contains some extremely bleak and unpleasant views of life, by taking an unflinching look at starvation and disease during the Irish famine of the forties.
Framley Parsonage
is one of his sunniest novels; the darker side of his vision of life went into the vivid scenes of distress in
Castle Richmond
.
    Tosay this is not to imply that the issues in
Framley Parsonage
are unimportant. The troubles that afflict the Robarts family are not trivial, and although there is an atmosphere of comic confidence about the novel which assures us that what we are reading will have a satisfactory outcome, nonetheless the danger Mark faces is shown to be a minor instance of a major peril which has brought many mento ruin and disgrace. If there was ever a novel about the slippery slope,
Framley Parsonage
is it. Graham Greene makes the point about this underlying seriousness clearly enough: ‘Even in one of the most materialistic of our great novelists – in Trollope – we are aware of another world against which the actions of the characters are thrown into relief.’ Eachcharacter exists, Greene goes on, notonly to the other characters, ‘but also in a God’s eye’. 20 The tone of Trollopian comedy is set in the first few chapters of
Framley Parsonage
which, while letting us know that Mark will not offend too far, manage to hint at real sin. Close attention to Trollope’s style shows the narrator simultaneously making light of Mark’s temptations and failings, and giving them deeper resonances. The firstparagraph of Chapter 4, which opens the second instalment, is a case in point: ‘It is no doubt wrong to long after a naughty thing. But nevertheless we all do so.’ At this point ‘naughty’ carries no more than its modern sense and makes Mark, who wants to visit Gatherum Castle against Lady Lufton’s wishes, a child who wants to act in defiance of its nursemaid. The next sentence starts in the samespirit but suddenly, by referring to the Fall, seems lightheartedly to be reviving an earlier sense of ‘naughty’ as ‘wicked’: ‘One may say that hankering after naughty things is the very essence of the evil into which we have been precipitated by Adam’s fall.’ Finally the paragraph ends by reinforcing this serious sense, as Trollope alludes to the General Confession and echoes a sentence from theHomily ‘Of the Misery of Man’, which runs, ‘We have sinned, we have been naughty’, to allow the word to ring below its modern childishness with some of its sixteenth-century severity: ‘When we confess that we are all sinners, we confess that we all long after naughty things.’