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A review by tome15
The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope
4.0
Trollope, Anthony. The Prime Minister. 1876. Palliser No. 5. Project Gutenberg.
The Prime Minister is a novel written twenty or thirty years before its time. It tells the story of two marriages--one with what Trollope considers a too-busy political wife, and one with a tyrannical, dishonest bullying husband. It is a novel that cries out for some intense drama about sexual feelings and behavior, which Trollope’s audience and marketers could never accept. It needs, in a word, someone like E. M. Forster, who would be born three years after this novel was published. The novel is also marred by Trollope’s blatant anti-Semitism. Once again, though, I appreciate the subtle way in which Trollope depicts the precarious position of middle-class and even upper-class women. Without plenty of inherited money, there is no social safety net, and even with money, any woman in the public eye is in danger of having her reputation ruined by even well-intentioned acts of kindness that go wrong. Independence is something Trollope women can talk about and wish for, but it is always constrained and dangerous to attempt.
The Prime Minister is a novel written twenty or thirty years before its time. It tells the story of two marriages--one with what Trollope considers a too-busy political wife, and one with a tyrannical, dishonest bullying husband. It is a novel that cries out for some intense drama about sexual feelings and behavior, which Trollope’s audience and marketers could never accept. It needs, in a word, someone like E. M. Forster, who would be born three years after this novel was published. The novel is also marred by Trollope’s blatant anti-Semitism. Once again, though, I appreciate the subtle way in which Trollope depicts the precarious position of middle-class and even upper-class women. Without plenty of inherited money, there is no social safety net, and even with money, any woman in the public eye is in danger of having her reputation ruined by even well-intentioned acts of kindness that go wrong. Independence is something Trollope women can talk about and wish for, but it is always constrained and dangerous to attempt.