Aka Aya brings Brene Brown into Victorian Literature

I’ve been putting off writing about these chapters partially because it causes me real pain to watch George successfully seduce Alice and my motivation plummeted as a result and partially because I have a big paper about The Importance of Being Earnest due and it’s been a struggle not to turn this into a post about Can You Forgive Her? v. The Importance of Being Earnest. 

This posting will cover two chapters: The Balcony at Basle and The Bridge over the Rhine. Following these two chapters, we’ll pick up with Kate’s widowed Aunt, Mrs. Greenow, and her courtship struggles for a few chapters before returning to the Vavasor problem. 

This post is looooong. If you’re reading along because you’re like “Victorian novels are too long I want to read a condensed version” friends sorry to say this is probably not the substack you are looking for. 

Summary: 

“George Vavasor, the wild man” ends with Kate advising her brother to make his move and secure Alice’s hand. “The Balcony at Basle” picks up describing a scene at the end of the Vavasors’ trip where George and Alice have finally unfortunately been left alone together. There’s some suggestion Kate did this on purpose and that Alice has been trapped. Trollope signals this pretty bluntly: 

“Alice was seated quite at the end of the gallery, and Kate's chair was at her feet in the corner. When Alice and Kate had seated themselves, the waiter had brought a small table for the coffee-cups, and George had placed his chair on the other side of that. So that Alice was, as it were, a prisoner. She could not slip away without some special preparation for going, and Kate had so placed her chair in leaving, that she must actually have asked George to move it before she could escape.” (43) 

Alice’s position at the end of the gallery easily symbolizes her position the entire trip. She has been maneuvered by her two cousins into a position where she can’t leave or stand up to them without making a fuss. She can’t object to being with George or being left alone with him because to do so would imply the trip itself was unwise and she cannot bring herself to doubt her judgment. She’s been outmaneuvered by herself.

George turns their conversation to Alice’s marriage and says he cannot understand why she should marry Grey; he says he doesn’t think she’s capable of it. He compares it to giving up alcohol cold turkey and “drinking milk” instead. We’ll analyze his weird seduction techniques in detail but his point is made: she is more suited to him than she is to Grey and he implies--though he does not outright say it--that he still cares for her. Kate interrupts them and she and Alice go upstairs to pack but Kate breaks away with George first. Kate and George discuss Alice again while Alice waits for Kate to come pack with her. When Kate comes in she declares she won’t know her cousin after her wedding and begs her to marry George, not Mr. Grey. Alice refuses to abandon her engagement but she thinks to herself that she has not defended it as she should have. 

Why does everyone hate Alice?

In “The Birth of the Pallisers” John Halerpin quotes Henry James saying “Can we forgive her Miss Vavasor? Of course we can, and forget her, too,” (31). Halperin goes on to quote critics who say Alice is “tedious” (31) and “uninteresting and unintelligible” (31). I’ll admit to some disappointment that we have another 100 pages to go before we meet one of my favorite characters-- Glencora Palliser but reading through the books I’ve been able to pull from the library and the dismissive attitude they take towards the Vavasor and Greenow plotlines has reminded me how important it is to read Alice freshly and not just consider her a failed plot-line of the novel. What is it that makes the literary critics, then and now, dislike Alice so much? 

Is it because she resists her proper role as a married woman? I would love to compare Alice to another Trollope heroine, Lily Dale from The Small House at Allington. How does Lily Dale’s loyalty to Crosbie and refusal to marry anyone after he marries another woman differ from Alice’s fascination with George (who is compared literally to the devil) and does this influence the public perception of their characters? Of course Lily is charming and beautiful and young and Alice is older, and “handsome”, and a little financially independent. Lily shows a sort of charming faithfulness while Alice shows a sort of uncharming indecision.  Is Alice more threatening to the reader or should she be grateful for what she can get or both? Is it the frustration of seeing a character fall for George’s shenanigans, frustration without empathy? And why no empathy? Why do we dislike Alice Vavasor? 

Is Alice a “redundant woman” (more on this later) who should feel fortunate with a reasonable marriage while heroines like Lily who are young and lovely are owed more by both fiction and realism?

Is it, perhaps, misogyny? Does Alice feel too much and also the wrong things for a Victorian audience and even an audience of today? I’m not going to be able to answer this question immediately but I want to try to answer it as we move forward. 

George’s Courtship:

When George’s argument reaches its peak he says to Alice: 

“Knowing you as I thought I did, I could not understand your loving such a man as him [Mr. Grey]. It was as though one who had lived on brandy should take himself suddenly to a milk diet-- and enjoy the change! A milk diet is no doubt the best. But men who have lived on brandy can’t make those changes very suddenly. They perish in the attempt” (47) 

George compares their relationship, her whole life prior to Mr. Grey to alcoholism why doesn’t this send her running? And what exactly is this business of living on milk?

 I’ve searched for a good definition of a “milk diet” and the best explanation I can find is a reference to the Georgian diet of Dr. Cheyne sometimes called “the first fad diet” hilariously, milk diets are still fads and it makes searching for sources difficult! I think George lays out living on brandy versus living on milk to describe two lifestyles. The first is rich and abundant and I would say somewhat scandalous. The second is plain, respectable. Moreover, the second lifestyle, milk-diet, is prescribed to deal with the long-term side effects of a wild life on brandy. But the Alice we’ve met has hardly lived a life of indulgence and scandal we are even told she doesn’t go out much or host parties because her income doesn’t stretch to it so how can George chide her further saying, 

“I gave you credit for virtues which you have not acquired. Alice, that wholesome diet of which I spoke is not your diet. You would starve on it, and perish” (47)  And why does Alice later think, 

“Was she not telling herself daily,—hourly,—always,—in every thought of her life, that in accepting Mr. Grey she had assumed herself to be mistress of virtues which she did not possess? Had she not, in truth, rioted upon brandy, till the innocence of milk was unfitted for her? This man now came and rudely told her all this,—but did he not tell her the truth? She sat silent and convicted; only gazing into his face when his speech was done.” (48)

How on earth has she “rioted on brandy”?  The phrase “the innocence of milk” suggests that Alice thinks she is no longer innocent. One interpretation is that Alice having postponed her marriage and lived her life independently has “rioted on brandy” another possible interpretation is that she is thinking of her previous engagement with George and thinks it makes her ineligible for Mr. Grey’s love. 

I think we have a suggestion here of why some critics found Alice to be “unintelligible” because earlier she compared her love of George to a “ray from heaven, impossible except in a dream” (25)  and now she thinks of it as “rioting on brandy” hardly angelic right? But I think with some understanding of shame we can thread this needle. 

I cannot believe I am about to bring Brene Brown into my close reading of a Victorian Novel but really when you’re talking about shame you have to include Brene Brown. According to Brene Brown shame is an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” So it makes sense that Alice rejects herself not just from her relationship with John Grey but from the original relationship with George-- by both too good for her, one of heaven the other of “milky” virtue. If she’s experiencing shame around her feelings for George no wonder her actions and thoughts don’t make sense, she’s caught in a shame storm. 

Alice’s feelings of shame over her engagement to George are so intense so cannot even admit out loud that it was an engagement saying instead, “Three years ago I told him that under certain conditions I would become engaged to him. But my conditions did not suit him, nor his me, and no engagement was ever made.” (20)

Alice says her “certain conditions” did not “suit” George. Is this just another way, to Alice at least, of saying she did not suit George, or that she was in a way broken or not enough? 

Brene Brown says “I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive. In fact, I think shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure. I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous.” 

Is Can You Forgive Her a deep dive into female shame? I think so. Alice is ashamed she was unable to enact the engagement with George, a man she passionately loved, and rather than blaming him she ultimately blames herself. George reinforces her shame, he doesn’t say he made her unworthy for a relationship with Mr. Grey rather he says she herself is unworthy because she literally does not possess virtues. 

I’d have to do more research to back this up but I think it’s safe to generalize that possessing virtue was kind of a woman’s main job in Victorian England. Even a Victorian England with divorce laws was still ruled by the concept of man and woman’s separate spheres. Women kept the house and home and were idealized as “the angel of the house” while men dealt with public life and were idealized as gentlemen. Thus when Alice imagines she is no longer worthy of the innocence of a milk diet she is truly condemning herself and showing she believes she isn’t womanly or virtuous. Her image of herself has been completely shattered not just by her engagement to George but I think by his continued presence in her life. Because he continues to be accepted by her family and indeed by polite society I think Alice must feel she did something wrong because no one has drawn a firm boundary over the issue. 

Kate’s Courtship 

“The Balcony at Basle” chapter is followed, mirrored,  by the chapter “The Bridge over the Rhine” where Kate makes her own arguments against Alice’s marriage to Mr. Grey. I’m going to watch closely, and devote more attention, to Kate’s attention to Alice and George, and here is as good a place to start. 

It’s interesting to consider that everything Kate wants she appears to want for George, from Alice’s hand to Aunt Greenow’s money. She says if Alice marries John Grey their friendship must end but she also says that if Alice marries George 

“I should become nobody. I've nothing else in the world. You and he would be so all-sufficient for each other, that I should drop away from you like an old garment. But I'd give up all, everything, every hope I have, to see you become George's wife. I know myself not to be good. I know myself to be very bad, and yet I care nothing for myself.” (55) 

Either way, Kate and Alice, as close as Kate thinks they are, must lose their relationship because of a heterosexual union. Kate actually sets herself up to lose her cousin and potentially her brother all in one swoop. And Kate’s support of the Alice/George marriage isn’t as simple as it sounds because she says she would also back Alice with Grey if  

“if I thought that Mr. Grey was to you Hyperion,—if I thought that you could marry him with that sort of worshipping, idolatrous love which makes a girl proud as well as happy in her marriage, I wouldn't raise a little finger to prevent it." (56) 

Is Kate lying here? Is she telling the truth but self-deluded by her certainty and need to bring her brother and cousin together? 

Perhaps Kate is projecting her own desires, both for the kind of active political life that George and Alice both dream of and of the union with Alice, onto her cousin and brother? If everyone already has at least slight inclinations in that direction is it really projecting or is everyone in on the conspiracy?

Everything Kate says, even her claim she would support Alice’s marriage to Mr. Grey, is intended to get Alice to marry George. So I think we can safely say that while Kate might not be totally lying she is at least covering to promote her own self-interest. 

Somewhere under Kate’s actions and plans for her cousin and brother are her plans for herself but I couldn’t even begin to guess what those are. I’m going to admit that in previous readings of the novel I’ve only imagined Kate as a sort of villain, trying to seduce Alice for George. I’m reading her this time alongside Sharon Marcus’s chapter on Can You Forgive Her? In Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England and we’ll come to lean on Marcus pretty heavily later on. For now, it is enough to say that Marcus has opened my eyes to the queer-ed readings I can make of Kate. 

If this doesn’t feel like a real ending I think Trollope does this sort of on purpose. We get a few chapters of a totally different plotline before we bounce back to Alice and George and John Grey. I grew up like many in my generation waiting for fanfiction writers to post, for example, the next installment of The Shoebox Project and I imagine when serially releasing novels building up suspense worked that way. Readers, eager to know what happens next, have their appetites strained across multiple installments waiting for the character they’re curious about to reappear!