How to say no to a house party-- and still end up going
Alice overthinks some stuff and has to stop at her house for more dresses
I wanted to welcome the new readers this week! A few of you came over from my friend Elizabeth’s newsletter What to Read If. Currently Can You Stand Her? is focusing on a close reading of Anthony Trollope 1864 novel Can You Forgive Her? and you’ve come at an interesting time! We are about to introduce the last of the three braided romance plot lines that Trollope worked into this book.
Usually, if I’m doing a close reading I begin with a summary of what I’ve read and then move on to analysis. I’ll usually take most of my close reading directly from the text but we do work with some interesting sources from time to time (like Brene Brown or Sharon Marcus’s Between Women). Feel free to comment or reach out to me with questions, I hope you like it here!
Summary: Alice Vavasor’s Great Relations/ Tribute from Oileymeade/ Which Shall it Be?/Alice is Taught to Grow Upwards, Towards the Light
We met Burgo Fitzgerald who was part of the hunting scene in the last chapter. Burgo was born into great wealth and privilege but is now 30, unmarried, and deeply in debt. He almost succeeded in marrying a great heiress Glencora Palliser but her family convinced her to make a match with the Duke of Omnium’s heir, Plantagenet Palliser. Put a pin in all these characters for later.
Glencora is a cousin of Alice’s and during the days when she was still trying to run away with Burgo she wanted to meet him at Alice’s house to plan their marriage but Alice wouldn’t receive him. Glencora gets angry with Alice but quickly forgives her and wants her to be part of the wedding but Alice declines because there will be so many aristocratic people she doesn’t know.
While visiting Lady MacLeod Alice receives in the mail a letter from Lady Midlothian chiding her for jilting Mr. Grey. She also receives a letter from her cousin Glencora inviting her to stay at Glencora’s house/castle Matching Priory. Alice declines because she thinks she’ll meet Lady Midlothian at Matching: Glencora assures her she will not and they set a date for the visit.
Kate has stayed with Mrs. Greenow and is warming to her. Mrs. Greenow is still pretending? Scheming? Could be both. That Mr. Cheeseacre will court Kate when it’s very clearly Mrs. Greenow he’s interested in. Mrs. Greenow still sees Captain Bellfield but Mr. Cheeseacre doesn’t know this. Mr. Cheesacre brings turkey and dairy products from his farm and Mrs. Greenow protests that they’re too valuable. She says it isn’t proper for him to send such things to Kate and he insists they’re for her.
Mrs. Greenow gives a Sunday party for a friend and invites Captain Bellfield. The group is planning on going to church after dinner but Mrs. Greenow and the Captain manage to stay behind together. The Captain tells Mrs. Greenow he is in love with her. She doesn’t exactly refuse him but she does dismiss him. The following Tuesday Mr. Cheeseacre visits and he proposes and Mrs. Greenow insists she is just a sad widow.
Alice’s family (Lady MacLeod and her father and George) are all happy she is going to Matching Priory to visit with her aristocratic connections. George says she should be sure to make friends with Mr. Palliser as he will probably be a powerful political man someday. Alice protests that won’t do much for her George explains it will help his career if she’s friends with Mr. Palliser. Alice says she won’t be much help and George says women are more and more important to politics these days.
Analysis:
Well, we’ve met Glencora Palliser-- kind of. Glencora’s story will braid in with Alice’s and Mrs. Greenow’s to form the three narratives that make up the rest of the novel and I can’t say there isn’t some satisfaction to finally having my characters all lined up for analysis! We really don’t learn very much about Glencora in these chapters but there are definitely some details worth discussing. One of the reasons I’ve clustered these chapters together is because the first one starts with Alice refusing to be Lady Glencora’s bridesmaid but the last one ends with her traveling to visit her at her country house-- so what has changed between now and then? Why does Alice say no and then say yes? And isn’t that kind of the path of the novel too?
Why does Alice change her mind?
The narrator interferes here a little telling us:
“But at last Alice agreed to pay this visit, and it may be as well to explain here how she was brought to do so. She wrote to Lady Glencora, declining, and explaining frankly that she did decline, because she thought it probable that she might there meet Lady Midlothian. Lady Midlothian, she said, had interfered very unwarrantably in her affairs, and she did not wish to make her acquaintance. To this Lady Glencora replied, post haste, that she had intended no such horrid treachery as that for Alice; that neither would Lady Midlothian be there, nor any of that set; by which Alice knew that Lady Glencora referred specially to her aunt the Marchioness; that no one would be at Matching who could torment Alice, either with right or without it, "except so far as I myself may do so," Lady Glencora said; and then she named an early day in November, at which she would herself undertake to meet Alice at the Matching Station. On receipt of this letter, Alice, after two days' doubt, accepted the invitation.”
In a way Alice traps herself by committing to a reason she’s refusing the invitation: she doesn’t want to run into Lady Midlothian. Once Glencora has promised that Lady Midlothian won’t be there is Alice socially trapped into accepting the invitation? I think at least a little because she doesn’t accept the invitation with “two days’ doubts”. Why doesn’t Alice want to go if it isn’t just that she might run into unpleasant family? I think Alice feels inferior to Glencora, who she calls “this fair child of the gold mines” when she thinks of her. Glencora’s wealth is immense and her social position as a future Duchess is also quite impressive. (Any Bridgerton watchers out there? It’s obvious in Season Two how important having a Duchess in the family can be even to another titled family like the Bridgertons. This would be true in Victorian times as well.) Remember Alice isn’t exactly wealthy and she isn’t socially powerful either-- she doesn’t even entertain. Her social life seems to mostly consist of an Aunt she doesn’t much care for and her cousins Kate and George. How she met Mr. Grey in London remains something of a mystery to me.
Anyway-- it matters that Alice traps herself into going to Matching with this little social gamble in her letter because Alice as we know, delays decisions and so often finds herself “trapped” when it comes to Mr. Grey and her cousin George. Earlier in the book she refused to say when she would wed as a way of getting out of marriage, now she declines an invitation for a specific reason and then can’t manufacture another one. The situations are not identical but her inability to commit to firm decisions is pretty parallel. In both instances, Alice uses an excuse: whether it’s that she can’t decide yet or that she doesn’t want to see her cousin, to cover up her real wishes: she’s scared of going and doesn’t want to get married. Because she won’t talk about these things directly (and really, how could she?) she ends up caught in little nets all the time. This is probably true for a lot of Victorian women in novels, who lack the agency and the power to be direct. What’s interesting about Alice is she plays at being direct: she tells Glencora she doesn’t want to see her Aunt but when Glencora is able to parry back with her own directness she finds herself powerless. Similarly, she is direct with John Grey about her wishes to postpone the wedding but since she refuses to talk to him about her motivations they are left at a standstill.
But back to the issue of a visit to Matching. I wonder if Alice doesn’t enjoy being trapped into a visit with Glencora, in a way. Alice will probably only marry when she is “forced” to marry and probably will only go to Matching when her hand is also forced-- but that doesn’t mean she’s completely opposed to either outcome.
Of course-- this is a little problematic right? Because Trollope is essentially carrying out the trope that women don’t know what they want and this is a dangerous trope. But what Trollope is also doing is reflecting the realistic lack of power and agency the times allowed women. Alice, as we’ve discussed, is kind of fixated on her own agency. Remember in her over-thinking her marriage to John Grey:
“With all her doubts Alice never doubted her love for Mr. Grey. Nor did she doubt his character, nor his temper, nor his means. But she had gone on thinking of the matter till her mind had become filled with some undefined idea of the importance to her of her own life. What should a woman do with her life?”
Trollope’s narrator dismisses Alice’s question: suggesting marriage and children are the best answer but it’s important that he voices it at all. If nothing else it gives us insight into Alice’s worries about marriage and herself. She wants to do the right thing-- whether it’s tea with Glencora or marriage with George she worries about the correctness of her choice. She sits in judgment for two days over visiting her cousin. The idea of worrying about something for two days is unbearable. I can’t stand two hours of suspense at the movies without reading Wikipedia on my phone. That said I’ve definitely been caught in drama that lasted two days, I think we all have, and the stomach-dropping feelings are not pleasant and are very relatable. In some lights Alice worries so much she’s basically a millennial adjacent Victorian.
All my analysis aside: Alice is going on this visit. She even stops over in London to get the right dresses for it. It’s probably worth it to stop and consider the Victorian House Party as an institution. I would love, with a little more research time, to just do an issue on that. You see the vestiges of it on shows like Downton Abbey and in movies like Gosford Park but it’s more than just backdrop. Setting influences plot! It’s a trope of romance novels-- it’s a trope of Trollope-- that men and women meet at these parties and fall in love. They make great settings for mysteries. Alice is embarking on a sort of classic heroine’s journey but, unlike the classic heroine, she already has two spurned lovers in the wings. So how else will she subvert her own classic storyline? Is Alice an anti-Trollope-heroine or is she the exception that proves the rule? (If anyone wants to talk about anti-heroines and Alice and Lily Dale hit me up.) All interesting questions for later.
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I realized after wrapping this up we hadn’t discussed Mrs. Greenow so shout-out to Mrs. Greenow for literally serving the turkey Mr. Cheesacre gave her at a dinner party where she had Captain Bellfield carve it. That woman is such a great scammer I love her.