The Captive Reader

This review is a definite case of better late than never: I read Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope at the end of April 2012.  I loved it but, busy with my reviews for A Century of Books, this one fell through the cracks.  Now, almost a year after finishing it, here is that long-awaited review.  Thank goodness I still keep up my reading journals – without the notes I made while reading this would certainly not have been possible!

In Doctor Thorne, we move to a new corner of Barsetshire, away from the cathedral town that hosted the action of The Warden and Barchester Towers to the more rural setting of Greshamsbury, a village presided over by the popular squire, Mr Francis Gresham.  As the novel begins, the family and all its friends are celebrating the coming of age of the squire’s only son, Frank.  Frank is handsome and cheerful, honest and steadfast – a man any father (or author) can be proud of.  He also fancies himself in love with Mary Thorne, the charming, beloved niece of the local doctor, who has grown up alongside Frank and his sisters.  Though Dr Thorne is the novel’s real hero, Trollope generously allows – in one of his very charming authorial asides – that some readers might prefer Frank:

He would have been the hero of our tale had not that place been pre-occupied by the village doctor.  As it is, those who please may regard him.  It is he who is to be our favourite young man, to do the love scenes, to have his trails and his difficulties, and to win through them or not, as the case may be.  I am too old now to be a hard-hearted author, and so it is probable that he may not die of a broken heart.  Those who don’t approve of a middle-aged bachelor country doctor as a hero, may take the heir to Greshamsbury in his stead, and call the book, if it so please them, ‘The Loves and Adventures of Francis Newbold Gresham the Younger.’

When Frank declares himself, Mary Thorne rebuffs his advances.  Though she loves him (far more, in fact, than he loves her at this point) she has just discovered that she is illegitimate.  It is not so much that she worries about his family’s disapproval but that she, very nobly and naïvely, does not want to lower her lover, who is so proud of his family’s pedigree.

When Lady Arabella Gresham discovers her son’s interest in Mary Thorne, she is horrified.  The present squire, good fellow though he is, has not managed the estate well.  Land has been sold off and the rest mortgaged.  While snobbishness may demand young Frank choose a wife of good stock, practicality demands he choose an heiress.  Mary is neither and so Frank is, after being firmly reminded that “there is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony”, sent off in pursuit of the marvellous Miss Dunstable, who is possession of a very large fortune and an excellent sense of humour.  Miss Dunstable is some years older than Frank and, after easily discouraging his half-hearted attempts at lovemaking, becomes his staunch supporter in his pursuit of Mary Thorne.

The book chronicles more than two years in the lives of its characters, seeing Frank and Mary through from the age of twenty-one to twenty-three; a period which sees them both mature – considerably in Frank’s case.  One of the greatest delights of Trollope’s writing is how weak his male characters can be, in the best possible way.  Framley Parsonage, the next book in the Barsetshire Chronicles, is an even better example of this but both Doctor Throne and Frank struggle in the most credible manner with the difficult choices lain before them.  In the doctor’s case, the ethical crisis he faces would test most men.  For Frank, much of his struggle has to do with his youth.  If he had not come under the excellent influence of Miss Dunstable, he might have allowed himself to be persuaded into changing his mind about Mary before he was mature enough to understand the full consequences of his actions and the worth of the woman he was rejecting.  However, with time on his side, he ages into himself and is able to take full control of actions as the book progresses:

Frank had become legally of age, legally a man, when he was twenty-one.  Nature, it seems, had postponed the ceremony till he was twenty-two.  Nature often does postpone the ceremony even to a much later age; – sometimes, altogether forgets to accomplish it.

I love everything about this book.  I’ve read the first four Barsetshire books now and there is no question that this is my favourite.  Doctor Thorne is as worthy a hero as anyone could hope for but, really, all of the characters are wonderful.  I particularly enjoyed every scene involving the female members of the Gresham family.  Lady Arabella is no friend of Doctor Thorne’s (and therefore she is no friend of the reader’s) but, despite her best efforts, she can never seem to get the best of him: “it was not easy to be condescending to the doctor: she had been trying all her life, and had never succeeded.”  Her frustrated conversations with her willful children were also perfection, especially the back-chat she received from the daughter who was closest to Mary.  Anyone who thinks Victorian novels or even just Victorians themselves are stuffy should read Trollope to be reminded of how very little people change.