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Lady Anna

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Anthony Trollope declared once that "Lady Anna" was "the best novel I ever wrote". Readers did not agree. Appearing between the masterpieces "Phineas Redux" and "The Way We Live Now", it sold poorly and has been neglected ever since. Trollope blamed this failure on his audience's objections to the heroine's choice of a husband, though similar complaints, much more vehemently expressed, had not sunk "The Small House at Allington". (There Lily Dale remains faithful to the memory of a cad, scorning the devoted attentions of a worthy suitor. Anna's wooers, by contrast, are both good men, though vastly different in rank and personality.)

"Lady Anna" is, in fact, a well-knit narrative with more suspense than is usual for Trollope. Will the courts declare Anna to be Lady Anna Lovel, heiress to 35,000 pounds a year, or merely Anna Murray, a pauper? Which of her suitors, the sometimes surly tailor Daniel Thwaite or her handsome, good-natured cousin Lord Lovel, will Anna prefer? Will Daniel's political principles lead to a breach with his childhood sweetheart? Will the impoverished Lord Lovel find honorable means to support his noble rank? The plot takes surprising, if not astonishing, turns; the characterization is as deft as ever; and there is a leavening of subtle humor, such as Daniel's cross-purposes consultation with a quondam radical poet (a thinly disguised Robert Southey) who has evolved into an intractable Tory.

The book's weakness is that the leading characters are, by and large, decent folk at the beginning and, except for one who falls into a state akin to madness, remain decent, if not unchanged, to the end. Conflicts end in rational compromises. Everybody eventually sees everybody else's point of view. Even the lawyers on opposite sides of Lady Anna's case get along amicably. (One solicitor does have the sense to grumble that such harmony is unprofessional.)

Trollope's liking for this novel may have arisen from the fact that it is light, sunny and fresh. There may be an evil earl in the first chapter and a mad countess in the last, but how pleasant for the writer to be free for a time from the political intrigues, financial manipulations and cynical worldliness of the Palliser saga and "The Way We Live Now"! Moreover, "Lady Anna" was, in its creator's mind, only a prologue. The last paragraph promises a (never written) sequel, where the characters doubtless were intended to meet sterner challenges. There are hints that the scene would have shifted to Australia and America and that the hero's and heroine's homegrown principles were to be put to the test in those lands. Thus the author had much in view that he never disclosed to his readers, perhaps accounting for part of the discrepancy between his opinion and theirs.

No one who has not read all of the Palliser and Barset novels, not to mention "The Way We Live Now", should pick up "Lady Anna". I recommend it immediately after the last-named. It will cleanse the palate and leave a lingering regret that the rest of Anna's and Daniel's and Lord Lovel's adventures will never be known.

Incidental note: The introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition, the one that I am reviewing, is an extraordinarily silly example of lit crit bafflegab. Don't read it before reading the novel. Read afterwards, its wrong-headed ideological interpretations may prove amusing.

This was an interesting, if imperfect, novel of marriage. The main thrust of the novel has to do with a legal battle a COuntess and her daughter, Lady Anna, engage in to assert their legal rights after having been abused by an evil Earl, who married and abandoned the Countess. To assert these rights, a demand is made by the mother to the daughter that she wed her cousin, although no one guesses that Anna is already engaged to the poor tailor who has been her one true friend in life.

I enjoyed many aspects of the novel, primarily how the mother-daughter relationship plays out. The subplot of the book is that we all must separate from Mother, and make our own way, our own decisions. This Mother is especially hard-hearted and single-minded and acts very melodramatically in one scene to the tailor (a really weird, overblown scene I could have lived without and which was incidentally, albeit unintentionally, funny).

Anna herself is a character with many virtues. She Almost gives in but does not do so because she is guided by an internal voice of loyalty. Her love on the other hand is drawn realistically if not in a flattering way. Daniel is almost an anti-hero. Not entirely sympathetic, you learn to like him because he seems real. The 'triangle' between those two and Lord Lovel is well-depicted, and no character comes off as 'the baddie.'

Another aspect I respected was the depiction of law, and how society restrains its denizens into conventional and superficial marriages. I disagree with the previous reviewer who said this was a light novel. I think there are very dark moments and a suspicion about the characters' motives at every turn. Yet, there is decency in many characters: Anna herself and the Solicitor-General being the obvious ones.

I liked this immensely, despite it being overlong and having some over-the-top moments that did not 'go' with the rest of the novel. Still, the novel has great style.

I've read a lot of Trollope's works, and I can't say this one falls anywhere near the top of my list. Despite it having a stronger plot line than many of his other works, it contains what I think are some of his weakest characters. I will admit that I'm a sentimental sucker for the gentle yet flawed characters which populate so much of Trollope's work; but the Countess in this novel is no such character. She's a dark, humorless [.......] from beginning to end, with no endearing qualities or redeeming quirks. Overall, I found it one of his more dreary novels.

A glacially moving, but readable tale brimming with Trollope's gentle wit. Anna is an unusual member of the aristocracy: she was raised in poverty, and her legitimacy is in legal limbo. When she determines to marry a humorless, hard-working, free-thinking tailor, a "tradesman," she disgraces her mother, and scandalizes the delicate sensibilities of all. A complex legal bustle ensues as her title is legally adjudicated, and opposition to her marriage plans stiffen. The varied machinations of the many lawyers drive the story, but the wheels of justice grind ever so slowly.

What we have from Trollope is a fictional shard depicting one woman's guileless nobility, a nobility that ironically, ultimately serves to weaken the class system and liberalize society. And, of course, no matter what happens, the lawyers will advise and collect their fees.

Lady Anna would make a very good Masterpiece Theatre.

The heroine is the child of a duke who becomes engaged to a tailor. Because she is immensely rich, her mother and everyone else around her, except the tailor, think she should marry her cousin, a lord with everything but money.

To those not familiar with Trollope, which I was not when I read this, it is surprising that Trollope thinks it is acceptable and even good for the lord to marry Anna for her money. That is the only reason he wants to marry her, although he does become fond of her and even wills himself into loving her, which is not hard, given Anna's qualities. But if not for her wealth, he would never have looked to marry her.

Part of the justification for this is that the lord is her cousin and he has the title that her father had. So he and his family feel and so does Anna that the lord has a right to the money, although her father did not leave it to him. He needs the money to support his position.

One of the characters makes a remark that the prettiest and brightest and well born girls, of whom Anna is one, should wed the highest status, that is, aristocratic, men. Trollope says in his authorial voice that he thinks that is a good idea.

The lord has every kind of good quality and so does the tailor who is an honorable, brave, intelligent, worthy fellow. But he is not refined like the lord. Trollope tells us that the lord is superior because he is a lord or at least that he should be treated as if he was superior. Trollope believed in aristocracy. Like Burke, he saw worth in it and did not feel that looking up to aristocrats was automatically demeaning. Instead it was honorable to both sides, although individual aristocrats might be bad or stupid people. But the class as a whole had value, Trollope believed, and upheld important traditions.

Trollope believed in equality and the opportunity to improve one's status. But he did not think all distinctions should be leveled.

The tailor is a radical by the standards of his day. One of the lawyers, who seems to speak for the author, tells the tailor that one day he will be more conservative.

Anna wavers, but in the end she realizes she cannot go back on her word to the tailor. Also, she loves him. But she also falls a bit in love with the lord.

In the end, Anna and her tailor go to America. It seems as if Trollope could not conceive that they could live in England, given the difference in stations.