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A review by tome15
Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope
4.0
Trollope, Anthony. Phineas Finn: The Irish Member. Palliser No. 2. 1866-67, 1869.
Written during the debate that led up to the second reform act (1867), at a time when Trollope himself was considering a political career, Phineas Finn is his most political novel. It follows the career of a small-town young Irish lawyer as he tries his luck as a member of Parliament. It means abandoning the hometown girl he did not quite get engaged to and throwing himself into a social milieu well above his head. Everyone tells him that if he is to have a career that lasts longer than the next election, he will have to marry money. And he has several chances at it. He is a good-looking guy who makes friends easily and seems quite innocent in his ability to, as Stephen Stills would one-day put it, “love the one you’re with.” (This is a middle-class Victorian novel, so don’t expect any heavy breathing.) Politically, Phineas is faced the ethical dilemma of voting his liberal party line or his own more radical convictions—thereby bowing out of public life. It would be unfair to say that the characters in this novel have no inner lives. They do, but like the people on the beach in a Robert Frost poem, they look neither out far nor in deep. There is no subtle probing of motives or much long-range thinking about political issues. Most of the cast mostly try to do the right thing, and when they don’t manage it, they are quick to make amends. To get something much more profound, we will have to wait a few years. By the time James Joyce considers Irish politics in Dubliners (1914), the Anglo-Irish world will have been transformed.
Written during the debate that led up to the second reform act (1867), at a time when Trollope himself was considering a political career, Phineas Finn is his most political novel. It follows the career of a small-town young Irish lawyer as he tries his luck as a member of Parliament. It means abandoning the hometown girl he did not quite get engaged to and throwing himself into a social milieu well above his head. Everyone tells him that if he is to have a career that lasts longer than the next election, he will have to marry money. And he has several chances at it. He is a good-looking guy who makes friends easily and seems quite innocent in his ability to, as Stephen Stills would one-day put it, “love the one you’re with.” (This is a middle-class Victorian novel, so don’t expect any heavy breathing.) Politically, Phineas is faced the ethical dilemma of voting his liberal party line or his own more radical convictions—thereby bowing out of public life. It would be unfair to say that the characters in this novel have no inner lives. They do, but like the people on the beach in a Robert Frost poem, they look neither out far nor in deep. There is no subtle probing of motives or much long-range thinking about political issues. Most of the cast mostly try to do the right thing, and when they don’t manage it, they are quick to make amends. To get something much more profound, we will have to wait a few years. By the time James Joyce considers Irish politics in Dubliners (1914), the Anglo-Irish world will have been transformed.