Aka: Don’t let George date your cousin
"The worthy man and the wild man will have to fight it out."
Summary:
I’ve decided to add a Summary to posts that focus on debriefing plot, theme, and criticism of certain chapters of Can You Forgive Her? Our last post covered two chapters and this post covers another two: John Grey, the Worthy Man, and George Vavasor, the Wild Man.
John Grey’s chapter begins with Alice receiving a letter from him where he responds to her news that she is going to Switzerland with her cousins Kate and George. Alice was previously engaged to George and it had been previously suggested by Lady MacLeod in the last chapter that this trip with a former lover was inappropriate and Mr. Grey would object. Alice sort of challenges him in absentia to object saying she would part with him if he did. Alice is committed to the idea that there is nothing wrong with her trip with George because they are not going alone and because… well there’s sort of a mess of reasons. On one hand, she doesn’t consider George and herself truly previously engaged but on another hand, she admits later --to herself-- that she loved him deeply. If I were guessing Alice is committed to her own idealized view of their relationship and her motives in it: she’s said she’s moved on and she’s so true to her word she can’t admit there might be something lingering.
John Grey plays the whole thing off with a joke: George won’t be a good companion because he won’t serve as a servant to the two girls as John thinks a man should on such a trip. Instead Grey predicts the two women will spend most of the trip looking after George and making him comfortable (John is correct). John also mentions that the house in Cambridgeshire where he lives is being made ready for Alice and she bristles at this and considers at length the strength of their engagement, telling herself it’s not a betrothal like in older times and they are both free to part.
Alice reflects a great deal on this letter and we’ll probably return to this chapter next week.
Grey comes up to town for a few days and has dinner with Alice and her family and tries to get Alice to agree to a wedding date but she refuses to settle things.
The next chapter narrates a great deal of George’s history. He’s the grandson of a landed gentleman and due to inherit the estate (but the estate is not entailed1). He wants to go into politics and business and has something of a rough start, beating up a potential business partner. He ends up as a wine merchant and then later a stockbroker. He lives for periods of his life very committed to business but runs wild sometimes.
We also learn that George killed a man trying to break into his sister’s room to steal some jewelry. George was young when this happened and in the assault, his face was scarred. It’s also important that when trying to expand his business George asked his grandfather to raise money on the estate and his grandfather refused. Essentially they would have mortgaged the estate and used the capital to expand the wine business. His grandfather thinks this is an insane idea and that only ruined men mortgage their estate; ergo George must be ruined2. George gets so angry he refuses to come down to the estate ever again. He remains the heir but will not speak to his grandfather.
Kate and George walk home from the dinner with John Grey and Kate suggests her brother try to court Alice again: she’s handsome and still has her small fortune. George won’t share his plans.
Analysis:
In my last post, I focused on Alice and her dilemmas. I had some ideas about what to write next but, as I think will become a pattern, I’ve gotten distracted by two points in the chapter: George Vavasor the wild man. There are two things I’d forgotten about George Vavasor between this reading and my last. 1. he killed a man and 2. he has a dead fiance.
Taken alone this is enough for the plot of a novel but Trollope dispenses with it in about ten pages. This exemplifies the sort of hurry-up-and-wait realism with which Trollope writes his novels. Life happens quickly, suddenly even, and then moves onto a dull series of dinners and teas. Characters worry time away waiting for trains and mulling over heartbreak. The plot points of your life (weddings, births, first dates, breakups) boil down to just a few days and the rest is -- narratively! Not making any judgments here-- filler. A novel that was only births and deaths would run out of characters and in its failure to capture the quotidian would miss realistic representation. Of course, not all novels are realistic and a novel doesn’t have to be realistic to be good but I think Trollope’s handling of characters' backstories in the opening chapters is a demonstrative example of realism.
George’s murder/assault takes place off-screen when he “was hardly yet more than a boy” (38) and two thieves break into the house he shares with his father and sister. His father is absent at the time and Trollope says there are only women in the house with him. George confronts the older thief in the hallway (the second is a small child) and stabs him repeatedly with whatever tool he had used to enter into the house (Trollope suggests a chisel) eventually stabbing him through the throat and killing him. In the process, George’s face is torn open and he is left with a terrible scar:
“On some occasions, when he was angry or disappointed, it was very hideous; for he would so contort his face that the scar would, as it were, stretch itself out, revealing all its horrors, and his countenance would become all scar.” (37)
George’s action is in defense of his home and, as the only man in the house, he also acts to protect the women. So there’s something heroic about his actions? Yes? Yet he comes away from the struggle scarred for life and marked out -- Trollope suggests-- as evil.
When he is upset we know the scar takes over his whole face, but his grandfather describes it this way “‘He looked at me like the devil himself-- making the hole in his face gape at me’” (37). George has some agency over the scar which only takes over his face when he “contort[s]” his face so that the scar then “stretch[es]” itself out, revealing all its horrors” (37). It isn’t that the scar takes over when George is angry; instead George releases the scar in these moods, revealing a deeper part of himself, a “hole” that lives under the more socially presentable, even handsome, skin. The scar reveals George’s true face instead of covering it.
It isn’t a spoiler to say that George ends up living up to his scar with his behavior. Is there any suspense to a love triangle where one lover is the devil himself? There is because Alice is so committed to her own errors that it seems believable.
The other plot element I wanted to highlight is his (second) failed engagement. His fiance this time, we learn, was a rich young woman who died a few weeks before the wedding. Trollope presents this information before the story of the murder, building up George as a sort of romantic/political hero -- while undercutting him all the same.
“There was something captivating about his history and adventures, especially as just at the time of the election, he became engaged to an heiress, who died a month before the marriage should have taken place. She died without a will, and her money all went to some third cousins” (35)
This is the second time Trollope suggests that there’s something heroic/romantic about George only to undercut it. He presents George with the heroic backstory of having saved his sister and his house only to scar him and connect him with the devil. Here he suggests that there is something “captivating” about George’s life but it’s a failure-- his inability to actually marry the girl he’s engaged to. What Trollope suggests is captivating about George is his failure: moral and matrimonial. In Trollope novels, heroes usually strive to do the right thing and usually, this involves marrying their local sweetheart. George has failed to marry twice and bears the mark of a murderer on his face. “Captivating” is also not necessarily a positive term. George commands attention but is that a good thing?
It’s interesting to ask what about George’s first failed engagement, does that tell us anything about his character and status in the novel? If you remember, George and Alice have previously been engaged and broken off the match. Alice quibbles that they only discussed being engaged:
“If you mean to say that two years ago I was engaged to my cousin George you are mistaken. 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. Mr. Grey knows the history of the whole thing. As far as it was possible I have told him everything that took place."
"The fact was, Alice, that George Vavasor's mode of life was such that an engagement with him would have been absolute madness." (20)
Trollope says that George committed himself to a respectable way of life and “It was during these two years that he had had his love passages with his cousin; and it must be presumed that he had, at any rate, intended at one time to settle himself respectably as a married man. He had, however, behaved very badly to Alice, and the match had been broken off.” (34) ... while still saying he “behaved very badly to Alice” … so what is the reader to think? One one hand Vavasor “had really worked very hard, like a man, giving up all pleasure that took time from him,” (33) on the other he wounded Alice and “behaved very badly.” How do we reconcile these two statements?
Later we will learn that George once kept a mistress that might be what Trollope refers to here. The poor behavior is specifically related to Alice. Alice says her “conditions did not suit him, nor his me”, which suggests George, who has “given up all pleasure”, was unable to meet Alice halfway. I don’t think Trollope is excusing poor sexual behavior and saying George behaved well. I think here Trollope is showing that even when George behaves well he is still "wild" at heart. His concept of giving up all indecent pleasures is really only a half measure. Again, the interaction reveals his true character and it isn’t a pleasant one.
George himself, in a scene that may be read as a sort of flirtation, tells Alice he did not love his fiance saying: “I did not love her as a man should love his wife”(36) and “I don’t find that task of loving so very easy”. (36) Why is this seductive to Alice? On one hand, Alice wants a consuming type of love (25). On the other hand, she wants to have her own way and mourns the loss of her way that her marriage will cause (28). Loving George, because perhaps she doesn't love him in a consuming way-- perhaps because she can no longer love him that way because she knows his faults-- presents an interesting escape from the consuming love for Mr. Grey. It'll be interesting to see if Alice convinces herself she loves George when she jilts Grey or if she holds back.
Trollope uses this first abandoned engagement to reveal George's poor behavior and then, in his conversation with Alice, reveals more bad behavior. When George comes into romantic entanglement he can't help but reveal his bad qualities. This contrasts with John Grey who, in the chapter directly before this, comes off as accommodating and tender. I'm clearly a John Grey stan, I can't help it-- maybe we’ll read more about John Grey next week.
But: don’t let George date your cousins.
this is for all my Bennet fans out there; I think an unentailed estate is sort of like Chekov’s gun. When will it go off?
I don’t believe Trollope is trying to slyly suggest George is ruined here. I do think he is showing the changing nature of business and capital. He may also be suggesting that George is into a foolish get rich quick scheme but since he proves a successful enough stockbroker to fund his first parliamentary campaign by himself there’s no reason to think he couldn’t have successfully returned money through his wine business.