Dr. Thorne (Trollope)
In the chapters of his autobiography where he talks about this book (I've been dipping into it as I read the novels), Trollope expresses surprise that his publishers told him it was his bestselling novel. I'm not so surprised. If you're going to write a perfectly conventional romance plot, with a class/financial barrier to a love match and a happy ending entirely matched to the "goodness" of your characters, you had better make your principal characters endearing, and Trollope has done that.
In addition to his endearing young lovers - more about Frank and Mary in a bit - Trollope has written one of the characters he does best, a middle-aged man who cares about the people around him and does his best in perplexing circumstances. In this case, it's the title character, Dr. Thorne, who is unwillingly entangled in the financial affairs of his friend the Squire, and by extension, of the young man Mary wishes to marry, Frank. Thorne comes to realize that Mary will benefit hugely from the early death - entirely predictable, due to his severe alcoholism - of a neighbouring young man, Sir Louis Scatcherd, inheritor of an economic baronetcy as well as said alcoholism. Thorne is also the only holder of a secret about Scatcherd Sr.'s will, Mary being the unnamed but acknowledged first though illegitimate child of Scatcherd Sr's sister, and therefore Scatcherd Jr's heir. Got that? Doesn't really matter - what matters is that Thorne, as a doctor and a humane man, cannot possibly wish for Sir Louis' death, even though it will enable the marital happiness of the young woman - his niece, Mary - whose happiness means everything to him. The slow working out of this scenario towards its inevitable happy conclusion is the framework within which Trollope places his more humorous set pieces and meditations, most especially satires on the very corrupt electoral process, and on the equally corrupt business of "marrying money" to prop up fading aristocratic families.
Mary's an interesting character. I can't agree with other commenters who find her passive. She is, instead, almost too good at understanding and reckoning the costs of her actions to everyone around her. It's precisely this characteristic - her considerateness - which makes her so attractive, and draws us to concur with the assessment of just about everybody around her, even those who do her the most ill (*ahem*, Lady Arabella, Frank's mother), that she's a lovely person. It also makes it almost impossible for her to act aggressively in her own behalf, although her warm heart betrays her into accidentally showing her feelings at just the right moments.
Trollope is right when he tells the reader - and oh, he does love to talk directly to the reader! - that while they may take Frank as their hero if they must, the real hero of the book is the title character. It's not that Frank is underdeveloped, exactly; it's just that he acts in ways that are entirely conventional for a young man who's been brought up with a certain set of expectations around his own rank and position in life, but who is not intrinsically flawed in his character. I think the only episode that left me with a bad taste in my mouth was when he went to London and took a horse-whip to the nasty, mercenary man (Moffat) who had thrown over his sister, leaving her humiliated. Trollope writes the chapter as if he expects us to be fully on board with this bullying, nasty behaviour on the part of his juvenile protagonist. It was the more cringe-inducing because it was pretty clear that a large part of Moffat's fault was being nouveau riche in the first place. This just doesn't fly for a 21st-century reader.
That aside, however, I took almost unmitigated pleasure in this entry in the Barchester series.
It makes it even more interesting to me to know it was largely written while Trollope was on lengthy trips (one to Egypt, yet!) negotiating on behalf of the British Post Office as his day job. In the autobiography he chooses this part of his writing career as the place to talk about his habit of setting himself a daily/weekly task in a notebook for the amount of writing to be produced. (Sir Walter Scott had the same habits).
I look forward to moving further on into Trollope's gargantuan opus.
