Customer Reviews

The Prime Minister (Oxford World's Classics)

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The Prime Minister contains two interlacing stories: the career of Plantagenet Palliser, the hero in the series of which this novel is the crowning part, and the tribulations of the London heiress Emily Wharton in love and marriage. I thought the insider's view of parliamentary and cabinet politics would be the novel's attraction. Actually the struggles of Emily Wharton, who has made a love match to a dangerous adventurer, turned out to be more exciting. Trollope was a master storyteller, and that tale is full of interesting surprises as well as sharp, entertaining dialogue. The political story tends to form a lighter backdrop to it.

The Prime Minister is indeed half social comedy and half psychological. It is a cross, perhaps, between Evelyn Waugh and George Eliot. It tends, besides, to be interested in the emotional side of politics and in the effect of social mores on private life, not the other way around. It is also prejudiced (the villain is a swarthy Latin, and he is an arch-villain), though somehow that doesn't shock too much (so am I: a swarthy Latin, I mean, not an arch-villain). But most importantly, it is a compelling read.

Two more points. First, it is not necessary to have read the previous Palliser novels to enjoy this one. Second, in spite of its length, it is quickly read, even if the last hundred pages are superfluous (the work was serialised and expected to reach a certain length).

Trollope's novels - and he wrote many - are verbose and thus lengthy sagas, at times bordering on soap operas; capturing the social, gender and political issues of his day - Victorian England - and are full of large casts of well developed characters. And because of their length, Trollope's novels are not everyone's cup of tea.

The books are similar to Dickens' novels in time and place but there the similarity begins to blur. Trollope's books are not light hearted; often no one seems to say what they actually mean; class and gender distinctions are stark; and at the root of many if not all of the novels' conflicts is money - be it inherited or earned. Wealth provides opportunity for Trollope's characters and the lack of it hinders less fortunate characters' potential, usually in their pursuit of romance.

The Prime Minister is the author's fifth entry in his Palliser series - six loosely connected political novels. Each Palliser book is a stand-alone novel, but it helps immensely to read them in chronological order because of recurring characters and their stories - particularly with The Prime Minister. For instance the protagonist and his wife - Plantagenet and Glencora Palliser aka the Duke and Duchess of Omnium, who become Mr. and Mrs. Prime Minister in this book - are a frequent presence in the previous entries.

In this novel we are introduced to Ferdinand Lopez and Emily Wharton, who in many ways steal the show from our title character and his wife. The story of Lopez and Emily begins separately from the Pallisers' narrative, then intertwines with the Prime Minister and his wife - wreaking havoc - and then splits apart.

Lopez is a dark, mysterious and opportunistic character; constantly scheming and perpetually financially overextended - His desperation and conniving becoming more and more apparent as he woos the wealthy Miss Wharton away from her father's protective custody. On his crooked path to success Lopez soon runs into and then exploits his connection with the Pallisers.

Thus the usual Trollope stage is set. Where The Prime Minister differs from the author's other novels I have read is in the story's subtlety, or in this case, the lack thereof, concerning several of the main characters' actions and behaviors and particularly that of the women. There are vacuous politicians, the gentlemen's code of honor, the ladies' gossip and even Lopez's blind ambition, all usual fodder in Trollope's books. But Lady Glencora's self-centered ways and her grossly extravagant parties, all a very transparent attempt to woo the British upper crust, are over the top. And poor Emily, who is ensnared and victimized by Lopez, simply bursts into tears in any and all situations. Trollope's admirable attempt to highlight the plight of Victorian era women, even with almost 150 years of hindsight, comes across as heavy-handed, sledge-hammering the reader.

I'm not suggesting avoiding this book in the Palliser saga. Too much does happen here to ignore and Mr. Lopez is a great villain. But for this reader The Prime Minister wasn't as strong as the previous books in the "series".

This is one novel I know I will have the pleasure of never reading again!

I could say nice things about how Trollope created an intriguing character of Ferdinand Lopez, and how he made Lady Glencora, the wife of the Prime Minister, really lovable despite her vulgarities. But to have made Plantagenet Palliser, the main title hero of this very long novel, that little p-whipped introvert, was a very odd choice and very punishing on the reader who remained bored most of the time reading about his political skirmishes in Parlament which were as tiny in importance as the man himself who lasts only three years as a Prime Minister -- although his skirmishes with Lady Glencora were far more diverting because we see the male supremacist being threatened by a female dominatrix. That the reader finds Everett Wharton, the faineant wastrel of a gentleman's son, eventually becoming a married man and baron was a bit of a fairy tale stretch, and watching poor Arthur Fletcher, the most fetching and capitvating gentleman in this novel, have to wait and wait and wait before his fairy tale romance with Emily Wharton has even the slightest chance of coming true -- when the reader really wants the "fairy tale ending" to come true for him -- was unintentionally or indirectly cruel.

The moral of the tale seems to be that when a cad is up against a gentleman, the gentleman always loses, in one degree or another. Emily's father certainly lost a whole lot of money and a lot of his happiness because of Lopez; Emily goes south emotionally after marrying him; Sexty Parker and Mrs. Parker suffer tremendously as a result of being business partners with Lopez; and even the Lady Glencora and the Prime Minister lost some of their reputation and shine in the Queen's government as a result of their acquaintance with the infamous Lopez. And the best gentleman of all, the most virtuous and the most appealing character, Arthur Fletcher, after working tirelessly and nearly unrequitedly, gets his woman in the end but, for the reader, the thrill is gone by the time Emily is ready and she only accepts him out of a sense of duty because that's all anybody around her has got left to say to her in order to motivate her to marry the sweet guy! She has turned into a black wet blanket because of Lopez and her grief over him.

I was looking through Victoria Glendenning's bio of Anthony Trollope before writing this review and she wrote that Anthony Trollope had a weight problem and went on a famous diet of the time and wrote stuff praising this new diet -- and then he went off the diet and gained all his weight back! This novel is full of fat and could have been put on a diet as well. I think the main character really didn't have the necessary qualities to be a protagonist of this novel so Trollope padded it a good deal to make it "fuller" somehow.

Anthony Trollope does a good job of depicting Ferdinand Lopez, the interloper, as the psychopath that he is. This is the first Victorian psychopath I've encountered in Victorian literature that wasn't a murderer and the novel is very interesting because of the accuracy of Trollope's depiction of him, but after this treat, there is very little nutrition left - emotionally or morally, so to speak. There was a certain pointlessness about the whole -- especially because the cad Lopez leaves everyone else a little poorer, a little more diminished, a little more unhappy than before he entered the novel. Does it really pay to be an "inwardly superior human being?" This novel says the answer is no.