Welcome back to Can You Stand her?

In Which Much of the History of the Pallisers Is Told. & Lady Midlothian & some real housewives

Some Reflection & then a recap

I took some accidental time away from Can You Stand Her? To reapply and re-enroll at Bryn Mawr College, attend a writing workshop over the summer, and move to Philadelphia in the fall-- and to work on the manuscript of a non-fiction memoir. I did not realize until I sat down that it had been such a long break. I missed Alice so much!

This last year+ involved a lot of marathoning Real Housewives from my office, bed, and sofa as I tackled empty pages and revisions or exhaustion and writer’s block.  

New friends act surprised when they find out I watch Real Housewives. What can I say? Everything is trash; everything is high art and to quote RHSLC Lisa Barlow:

Also: there’s a lot of tonal symmetry between house parties and Trollope and Real Housewives Girls Trips. Maybe I knew this before but it crystalized for me as I watched Kim Richards in the back of the limo in season one shouting at her sister “you stole my goddamn house”

It’s 2024 so I thought of another gif at once 

Thank you Julian Fellowes (something I rarely say) it is like something out of a Trollope novel. The Richards sisters in particular read like a family saga out of Henry James or Trollope, though probably neither would have written about actresses. Trollope writes, often, about inheritance and estates. What happens without primogeniture he asks through characters like Glencora Palliser and Madam Max Goesler but also in novels like Cousin Henry.

What happens in families like the Richards where multiple sisters marry millionaires, there are acting residuals and spon-con to work on, and multiple houses to divide when someone dies? And it’s (mostly? all?) among women. 

So I’m back and stay tuned for more Trollope! But don’t be surprised if Real Housewives find their way in too. 

Summary: In Which Much of the History of the Pallisers Is Told. & Lady Midlothian.

Alice is doing well at the Priory making friends and hanging out with fancy duchesses. Glencora is still upset she has not provided Plantegenant with a child and talks about Jeffrey Palliser, a cousin, as though he will inherit the Dukedom. She also talks about killing herself. Alice chides her, 

"You are thinking of things which should never be in your thoughts," said Alice vehemently. "Have you no trust in God's providence? Cannot you accept what has been done for you?"

But Glencora hasn’t accepted what “providence” read: patriarchy society and her family have arranged for her any more than Alice has. Glencora complains again about Mr. Bott telling her husband when her guests are upset, about the expectations her husband has of her hostessing. Alice listens but 

“Alice had now become so intimate with Lady Glencora that she did not scruple to read her wise lectures”

Alice isn’t always on Glencora’s side! 

Mr. Bott tries to gossip with Alice about Glencora, or recruit her to his team of duchess-sitting but Alice shuts him down-- more on this later. 

Jeffrey is stuck in a position where he might be a duke in forty years but at any moment Glencora could have a child. Still: everyone seems very antsy that Glencora hasn’t had a child yet. It’s not just her. Her husband speaks to Jeffrey and outright tells him that he might have to consider him his heir 

You owe nothing to me," said Plantagenet, with some little touch of magniloquence in his tone. "No; don't speak of it. I have no brother, and between you and me it means nothing. You see, Jeffrey, it may be that I shall have to look to you as my—my—my heir, in short." Hereupon Jeffrey muttered something as to the small probability of such necessity, and as to the great remoteness of any result even if it were so.

"That's all true," said the elder heir of the Pallisers, "but still—. In short, I wish you would do something. Do you think about it; and then some day speak to me again."

At this point, I don’t think they have even been married two years! Maybe not even one? Obviously, this fertility hysteria is blown out of proportion by the expectations of the time and the Dukedom. 

Jeffrey does seem intent on flirting with Alice but when he asks her 

“What is a man like me to do who wants to do something?" he said to Alice.”

As they are out riding it reminds me of the paragraphs Trollope has spent on what a woman should do. A woman, Trollope is usually certain, should marry. (Which implies a man should as well to give the woman a person to marry… right?) Many male characters go into Parliament, Trollope himself went into/attempted a run in 1868 but was according to most of my reading disillusioned by it. Most of his characters run for Parliament to give him a chance to be satirical about it. 

Should we feel for Jeffrey’s situation the way we feel for Alice’s? Are they both hindered by society and their conditions? As I pointed out in the last post Jeffrey at least has the vote and could have much more. 

Glencora and Alice and girl talk but again Trollope reminds readers that Glencora and Alice are different people:

“ in truth, close as was their intimacy, they did not perfectly understand each other.”

Their girl talk revolves mostly around Glencora’s marriage and Alice’s engagement. We don’t get much insight into what Alice feels but Glencora shares about her marriage:

“"It is impossible. I have never said a word to him that could make him love me. I have never done a thing for him that can make him love me. The mother of his child he might have loved, because of that. Why should he love me? We were told to marry each other and did it. When could he have learned to love me? But, Alice, he requires no loving, either to take it or to give it. I wish it were so with me."

Glencora feels useless to her husband without a child and his lack of expressiveness, as we discussed last time, makes her feel unloved. I hadn’t really noticed till now how love is important to Glencora in a marriage in a way it might not have been to her parents' generation. The evolution of companionate marriage gives Glencora the expectation of happiness and there’s also I think the expectation that a woman learn to love her husband. She feels like a failure on so many fronts! As a not-yet-mother, a hostess, a lover. Really it’s tragic. 

Alice is upset to learn that a friend of her mother’s, Lady Midlothian, who has been trying to get in contact with her-- essentially to chide her for not marrying Mr. Grey-- will be stopping by Matching. When Glencora originally invited Alice to Matching remember she turned down the invitation because she assumed it was a trap. Glencora insisted it wasn’t and so she came but now Lady Midlothian is descending on them anyway. Alice and Glencora have come too far in their friendship to be upset about this though. Alice says she’ll just leave early to avoid her but she’s convinced to stay and deal with it. 

When Lady Midlothian arrives she does try to convince Alice to marry Mr. Grey but Alice will not even discuss it with her and leaves the room. I feel as though this interlude manages to keep all of Alice’s irons in the fire. The reader sees her being courted by Jeffrey Palliser and a different level of society and is then reminded of what is essentially on hold-- her cousin and Mr. Grey. Trollope reminds us of her flaws through the vehicle of Lady Midlothian who exclaims to Glencora, 

“Understand her! I should think not; nobody can understand her. A young woman to become engaged to a gentleman in that way,—before all the world, as one may say;—to go to his house, as I am told, and talk to the servants, and give orders about the furniture and then turn round and simply say that she has changed her mind! She hasn't given the slightest reason to my knowledge."

It occurs to me that Trollope and Alice’s question, what should a woman do when she can’t have a vocation or a vote, is answered here by example. She can be like the Palliser sisters Iphegnia and Euphemia. who write lots of letters. She can be like Lady Midlothian and be respectable to people like Mr. Palliser but unwelcome to young fun women like Lady Glencora. She can be, like Lady Glencora, respectable but wild. It’s important that Jeffrey Palliser finds her attractive: charming, wellbred and financially compelling-- it reminds us that Alice is a catch! She’s not just some sad woman wringing her hands over a few men. She’s a commodity. She’s pursued. 

But I think the real question is what would happen if Alice became the gender-swap of Mr. Bott. What if she became his fiance or ally? It would involve sinking herself to tell stories about her cousin but it would also involve sinking to his level. Yet Mr. Bott, for all his common vulgarity, has a vote in the house and is deemed useful to the party. It is not enough to have a vote and be useful to the Whigs, Trollope suggests, one must have inner spark, dignity and high moral character as well. 

Mr Bott and Alice 

The conversation at breakfast between Mr. Bott and Alice is really worth looking at in depth. Alice is caught alone in the breakfast room with Mr. Bott who she has been avoiding speaking to because he wants to gossip about Glencora. 

Bott says he is an extreme radical and Palliser and Bungee aren’t but he can compromise with them and intends to influence Mr. Palliser on his rise in office. (He specifically says he wants to make him a “Manchester School” minister which means repealing the corn laws and look I will go down a lot of rabbit holes for this blog but I’m not going to get started on the corn laws) 

And I, as an extreme Radical, do not think I can serve my party better than by keeping in the same boat with him, as long as it will hold the two. 'He'll make a Government hack of you,' a friend of mine said to me the other day. 'And I'll make a Manchester school Prime Minister of him,' I replied. I rather think I know what I'm about, Miss Vavasor."

"No doubt," said Alice.

"And so does he;—and so does he. Mr. Palliser is not the man to be led by the nose by any one. But it's a fair system of give and take. You can't get on in politics without it. What a charming woman is your relative, Lady Glencowrer! I remember well what you said to me the other evening."

Bott’s transition here, from his influence over Palliser to Palliser’s knowledge and acceptance of it to Alice’s connection with Glencora greases along the unspoken-- but I think he is trying to speak it only Alice won’t let him-- hope that Alice will become the equivalent to Mr. Bott in Glencora’s “cabinet”. She’ll take the social influence and give her own “political” (behavioral) influence, reporting on Glencora to Mr. Bott so she can be managed. 

There’s a lot going on in this! Unspoken is the knowledge that Glencora is sort of a loose cannon and the fear that she might socially restrict Mr. Palliser’s ambitions if she offends the wives of ministers (like the Duchess of St. Bungay). 

Bott sort of lowers Alice to his level. And what is her level? It’s relevant now that Trollope opens the novel debating whether or not Alice “did or did not belong to the Upper Ten Thousand” (a contemporary term for British High Society). Is Alice high-society like Glencora and Palliser or is she--like Bott- grubby? To further confuse this Alice’s own behavior is thrown in the spotlight by Lady Midlothian’s arrival in the next chapter. If Alice is high-society she’s not behaving well. So why do Bottt and Palliser want her to influence Glencora: wouldn’t she be a bad influence? 

But Alice has made a good impression at this house party and Palliser, and the others, seem inclined to forgive her. They don’t know Mr. Grey. Will Alice grow so “towards the light” that she leaves him behind? 

Ultimately these two chapters leave us with a lot of ambiguity. I’m excited to see how these questions resurface.