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A review by tome15
The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope
4.0
Trollope, Anthony. The Eustace Diamonds. 1873. Palliser No. 3. Knopf, 1992.
Almost a quarter century after William Makepeace Thackeray published Vanity Fair, a comic anatomization of English society that gave us Becky Sharp, a clever, lovable, and thoroughly amoral heroine, Anthony Trollope decided to try his hand at it with Lizzie Eustace. He is careful, though, to tell us that his heroine is not someone he or we should love. And we don’t. Lizzie lacks Becky’s wit and humanity. She gets by on her looks and artful tears. And it is Trollope’s point that looks and tears are all she needs to move from a small house in the suburbs to a castle in Scotland, because the men are so quick to judge her by her looks and so ready to make a trophy of her. The only exception seems to be a policeman who is immunized by a wife and seven children. There are at least a half dozen women in the novel who we care about, and each has her own brand of power. One of my favorites is Lucinda, a pretty teenager with a social-climbing mother who wants her to marry one of the fox-hunting crowd. On her wedding day she discovers she still has the power to say no. In a milieu that treated women largely as adornments, such power should not be dismissed. Although I liked many aspects of The Eustace Diamonds, I was put off by its transparent and unnecessary antisemitism.
Almost a quarter century after William Makepeace Thackeray published Vanity Fair, a comic anatomization of English society that gave us Becky Sharp, a clever, lovable, and thoroughly amoral heroine, Anthony Trollope decided to try his hand at it with Lizzie Eustace. He is careful, though, to tell us that his heroine is not someone he or we should love. And we don’t. Lizzie lacks Becky’s wit and humanity. She gets by on her looks and artful tears. And it is Trollope’s point that looks and tears are all she needs to move from a small house in the suburbs to a castle in Scotland, because the men are so quick to judge her by her looks and so ready to make a trophy of her. The only exception seems to be a policeman who is immunized by a wife and seven children. There are at least a half dozen women in the novel who we care about, and each has her own brand of power. One of my favorites is Lucinda, a pretty teenager with a social-climbing mother who wants her to marry one of the fox-hunting crowd. On her wedding day she discovers she still has the power to say no. In a milieu that treated women largely as adornments, such power should not be dismissed. Although I liked many aspects of The Eustace Diamonds, I was put off by its transparent and unnecessary antisemitism.