Written 1861 (February 3 - 12)
Serialized 1861 (14 & 16 December), Public Opinion
Published in a book 1863 (February), Tales of All Countries:
Second Series, Chapman and Hall
To Trollope-l
February 1, 1998
Re: Short Story: "Aaron Trowe:" A Powerful Piece
This is one of Trollope's great short stories. Reasons: the cinematic quality of the closing terrific scene among the rocks and crags over a fearful river; the earlier mood-like description; its concision (in a very few paragraphs at the opening we get Trowe's history embedded in a graphic retelling of a strike); its depiction of both men and women as fierce animals when confronted by death or aroused to a primal revenge (the struggle first between Anastasia Bergen and Aaron Trowe, and then to the death, between Caleb Morton and Aaron Trowe); and finally Trollope's ability to sympathize with Trowe, to see the action from his point of view at crucial moments in the action.
When I read this with my class I astounded students by suggesting that the terrible wound which Trowe inflicts on Anastasia Bergen with a knife which he says will make her an object "the world shall loathe to look upon" was that he cut off one of her breasts, and it was that that made the haunting shriek that reached the ears of another woman and appalled her. If it isn't that, then what it is. I'd still like to know what the following delicately euphemistic passage is describing if not this kind of cut:
"'Then I will do worse than murder you. I will make you such an object that all the world shall loathe to look upon you.' And so saying he took her by the arm and dragged her forth from the wall against which he had stood.Then there came from her a shriek that was heard far down the shore of that silent sea, and away across to the solitary houses of those living on the other side,--a shriek, very sad, sharp, and prolonged,--which told plainly to those who heard it of woman's woe when in her extremest peril" (Sutherland, p 307).
It is a specifically "women's woe;" she is in extreme "peril" from his knife. We are told her cry was "a wailing" "terrible to hear;" it was spoken of by those who heard it "as though it were not human." What did he do? What are we to imagine? My turning this euphemism into a clear image (the breast is near her heart) also explains the mad rage of Morton and the image that accompanies Trollope's most direct reference to the original source of Morton's bloodlust:
"His cry was for blood; for the blood of an untamed savage brute who had come upon his young doe in her solitude, and striven with such brutal violence to tear her heart from her bosom" (p 311).
An interesting aspect of the story's language which one might expect, given the perspective and Trollope's background, is a frequent use of animal imagery and imagery of the hunt. It comes together in several places, e.g.,
"The wretch who had thus treated the woman whom he loved should be hunted down like a wild beast, as long as he had arms and legs with which to carry on the hunt" (p 311).
What I didn't expect was for Trollope to turn round and pity this "fierce wolf:"
"My reader, when chance has taken you into the hunting-field, has it ever been your lot to sit by on horseback, and watch the digging out of a fox? The operation is not an uncommon one, and in some countries it is held to be in accordance with the rules of fair sport. For myself, I think that when the brute has so far saved himself, he should be entitled to the benefit of his cunning ... I can never, however, watch the doing of that work without thinking much of the agonising struggles of the poor beast whose last refuge is being torn from over his head. There he lies within a few yeards of his arch enemy, the huntsman. The thick breath of the hounds make hot the air within his hole. The sound of their voices is close upon his ears. His breast is nearly bursting with the violence of that effort which has at last brought him to his retreat. And then the pickaxe and mattock are plied above his head, and nearer and more near to him press his foes,--his double foes, human and canine, till at last a huge hand grasps him, and he is dragged forth among his enemies. Almost as soon as his eyes have seen the light the eager noses of a dozen hounds have moistened themselves in his entrails. Ah me! I know that he is vermin, the vermin after whom I have been risking my neck, with a bold ambition that I might ultimately witness his death-struggles; but, nevertheless, I would fain have saved him that last half hour of gradually diminished hope" (pp 313-4).
Ruth apRoberts argues it is Trollope's ingrained habit to "be an advocate for each one of his characters; he makes the best possible case for one, and then juxtaposes this with the demands of the other, defended with a similar passionate sympathy" (p 53). There is passionate sympathy for Trowe. In the first two pages of the story we are told of his "courage" when he murdered a constable during the riot, and that there was "no malice;" that he was a man destroyed because "his heart was sore to death with an idea of injury, and he lashed himself against the bars of his cage with a feeling that it would be well if he could so lash himself till he might perish in his fury" (p 298). In the final two pages he is "a miserable man" who will not be allowed to "die in a hole like a starved dog," he is "driven to despair, hopeless of life," "for him there was no longer any hope in this world." I don't think we are meant to forget the first lines about him:
"Had the world used him well, giving him when he was young ample wages and separating him from turbulent spirits, he also might have used the world well; and then women would have praised the brightness of his eye and manly vigor" (p 298).
Even when he rounds in on Anastasia, Trollope has a "poor wretch" and reference to a "starving wolf" to leave us with.
Of that terrific struggle my students were impressed by her strength. They had been fed on stereotypes of Victorian heroines--another one who didn't fit their preconceptions was Patience Woolsworthy.
None of this is to deny that Trollope insists this man must be hunted down and destroyed lest he destroy others. I also liked the similar austere realism and convention in the portrait of the narrow father who will not let his daughter marry lest it disturb his comfort, and yet when such emotions are roused that are real, the close with its statement that Morton and Anastasia returned to Canada not only because (when he came back to his "normal" self) Morton was "thoroughly ashamed" of the part he played, but also
"he could not endure to meet the ghost of Aaron Trowe, at that point of the road which passes near the cottage.' That the ghost of Aaron Trowe may be seen there and round the little rocky inlet of the sea, is part of the creed of every young woman in Bermuda" (p 320). Ellen Moody
From: "Robert Wright" Both of these stories for my money are among the very best of what we have
read so far.
Ellen has already said what I would have said about Aaron Trowe, in
particular the cinematic quality, the sympathy with the convict, and the
plight of the woman with her selfish father. In a sense I think we are
being led to conclude that the father is indirectly responsible for what
happened, in that he left the girl alone so often and prevented her having
the protection and comfort of the marriage with a strong protector whom she
desired.
I cannot bring myself to believe Ellen's theory about the woman's
mutilation. That to me would be too extreme but I can theorise she was cut
around the face in a way which totally destroyed her beauty, hence in most
men's eyes her fortune and prospects of marriage in the normal course of
events.
To Trollope-l
Bart Hansen suggested the violence was rape; he also condemned
Aaron Trowe in a way that suggested Trollope had no sympathy for
a "cop-killer" nor could anyone. I answered only the suggestion that
the violent act was rape.
February 3, 1998
Re: Short Story: "Aaron Trowe:" It cannot be rape
It cannot be a rape because the words clearly indicate
that after Trowe finishes with Anastasia she permanently
looks different when anyone looks at her:
They will immediately see her looks as a woman have been
ruined forever. Rape does not happen that swiftly,
and Anastasia fights him off like a tiger throughout.
He couldn't have gotten near her and actually
fucked her. His strength (so to speak) is
taken up elsewhere. Robert's suggestion of his cutting her
in some horrible way in the face will do if we can
think of a single cut. The lines do not suggest
cutting and recutting--which is what he does to her
arms in their struggles and which results in covering
them both with blood:
The lines identify a single terrifying scream of agony
and horror. Horror. Many cuts would get many
smaller screams of pain.
Perhaps our reluctance to believe Trowe cut off Anastasia's
breast comes from a sense this is rare. It is not. I
once saw a woman to whom this had been done,
and my experience of violence is not all that wide
or varied. When Mrs Bobbit cut Mr Bobbit so famously,
it was reported by the police that "cuts the other
way" (a man cutting a woman's breast) were in fact
"common."
That does not remove the horror. To say it is a breast-cutting
makes sense of the horror of the scream as well
as of Caleb Morton's animal rage.
I have been listening to David
Case's dramatic reading of Victoria Glendinning's biography,
and would like to say I had forgotten how good this
book is. Among other things, she brings home
how violent was the Victorian world in private. Anthony
Trollope was thrashed by his older brother with
a heavy stick on each and every day of his time
at school with him; on many days he and his brother
were hit as fiercely and continually by an older
boy; a master had the right to "scourge" them all.
My idea is Trollope had seen far more than many
of us.
However, I agree with Robert that if we can read
the lines as suggesting a cut that ruins her face
forever it fits. The trouble is it takes more than
one cut.
On the idea that we should read this story as a parable
that one should hang a man immediately (an argument
for capital punishment), this ignores
every detail of the story but a general outline.
From the moment Trowe appears before us--where
we are told he had in him the makings of a fine
man, and how it was rage over starvation wages
that drove him originally, and then understandable
fury--to the end when Trollope actually identifies
with Trowe, Trollope is sympathetic towards Trowe.
Ellen Moody
From: hopfnerj@cc.tacom.army.mil You know what it is, people? What it is, in my view, is a severe
failure of auctorial precision on the part of AT, in "Aaron
Trowe." (And only now do I notice that Anthony Trollope and Aaron
Trowe have the same initials. Probably coincidental, but...).
Robert summed up the problem yesterday, in his post:
Yes, just so. Not only did Trollope go all vague on us right at
the crucial moment, and not only did he switch from a
moment-by-moment description to one that's summary and leaves some
things unsaid, but he obscured matters further by writing what
appear to be contradictory pieces in the scene.
Ellen is right: an inventory of Trow's weaponry must include a
clasp knife (which came out of his pocket midway through his
struggle with Anastasia), a pistol (which he had at his hide-out in
the cave, but which doesn't seem to figure during his, uh, assault
on the Bergen house), and a short, thick poker that he appropriates
from the fireplace grate to emphasize his demand for food. Nothing
in this inventory lends itself to use in amputating body parts,
though certainly with a poker one person can inflict plenty of
damage on another person.
Okay, then. Here are the passages I find contradictory, from
Trollope's description of the scene.
First problem: exactly what are Trow's intentions, up to the point
where the assault begins? Trollope gives Trow quite a bellicose
series of speeches, showing a wild fellow who will stop at
nothing: (all page citations are from the World's Classics
edition, edited by Sutherland)
"A woman! What does the starved wolf care for that? A woman's
blood is as sweet to him as that of a man." (304)
"Give me food at once...I will knock out your brains if you do
not...You also would be like a tiger if you had fasted for two
days, as I have done." (304)
"I must cut your throat unless you give me money. Do you know
that?" (305)
"I will shake the teeth out of your head"..."Murder you, yes;
why not? I cannot be worse than I am..." (307)
Of course, page 307 also has the much gentler, rational speech
where he says "Give me ten sovereigns and I will go," which
somewhat breaks the mood. Still, upon the whole Trow is a
menacing presence from the darkness, offering violence and
capable of any depravity. But then Trollope gets inside Trow's
mind and throws doubt even on that:
I submit that the above citation casts doubt on what it was that
Trow did to cause Anastasia's scream. Did he cut her? These words
say not. Did her bludgeon her with the poker? These words say
not. Did he rape or attempt to rape her? These words at least
imply not, unless we presume that Trollope didn't think rape
involved bodily harm. It seems that one of two things must be
true, I think. Either (A) Trow looked so menacing when he grabbed
Anastasia and pulled her toward him, that she screamed from fear
rather than pain; or, otherwise, (B) there is a telescoping of time
implied, though not identified, between when Trow pulled Anastasia
away from the wall and when she shrieked.
Possibility A is, I admit, rendered unlikely by the care Trollope
takes to describe the scream as absolutely blood-curdling. Also,
remember back to the moment when Trow first grabs Anastasia as she
sits in the darkened room, in a reverie:
The woman is enough controlled, or self-possessed, that she didn't
make a sound when seized where she'd thought herself alone. So to
find her screaming as though in "extremest peril" later on, argues
persuasively that something has happened to her, not simply that
she fears something is about to happen. So far I agree with
Robert and Ellen. The problem is, the scream occurs at the start
of the fight, and Trollope says later that when the fight started,
Trow intended no bodily harm. Well, if he intended no harm at the
outset of the fight, which was the point where Anastasia screamed,
then she must've been crying out in apprehension--not in reaction
to violence or to a wound received. Which in turn makes the
description of the scream into something perilously like
melodrama, and I'll admit the conclusion is not a tempting one to
reach.
This gets us to possibility B, which is that there's an
unidentified gap of time between when Trow "dragged her forth from
the wall" and the start of the next paragraph, which begins "Then
there came from her a shriek..." Trollope doesn't SAY there was a
gap, so the natural reading is to assume none existed. This is
what Ellen does, when she responds to Jill and me that, for
heaven's sake, there isn't time in the scene for Trow to rape
Anastasia. But if we use this reading, and assume no time lapse,
then what are we to make of that damnable exposition on p. 309?
If we assume there was a gap of time--he drags her from the wall,
she begins to struggle in earnest, he feels her struggling and
loses his temper--then the blood-chilling shriek she makes in the
next sentence does not conflict with what Trollope says later.
Otherwise, without a time gap, Trow grabs her and does her horrid
violence immediately--a conclusion our author says is not
warranted. So methinks there was a gap, or at least that Trollope
had an ellipsis in mind even if he didn't signal it in the
manuscript. I don't know whether the gap should be understood as
30 seconds, or three minutes, or five: I don't think it was 10
minutes, but neither does it appear to have been 10 seconds.
Ah, but still we're not out of the woods. Because here's my second
problem: if we assume, as Ellen and Robert both argue, that the
scream betokens some terrible wound that Trow inflicted on
Anastasia, once again we've got Trollope making a later comment
that casts doubt on the theory.
Ellen and Jill and Robert and I seem to agree that the clasp knife
(which first enters the storyline on p. 308) is not a good
candidate for the weapon that caused the scream. But Ellen and
Robert say that Trow also had a poker, and they're right. Ellen
commented in each of her "Trow" posts yesterday:
And, also:
Robert made a similar point in his post of 2/6, suggesting that
what caused the scream can't have been only pain, but must've been
something utterly traumatic that damaged her in some social
way--possibly by impairing her beauty, or her chances of marriage,
or her acceptability in society.
Very well. Let us say for the sake of argument that Trow did
something really vicious with the poker. (And let us, for the
sake of our digestions, not speculate any further about precisely
what he did, other than that it was bad, and caused a wound). It
also caused searing pain, was a vile, inhuman attack, and of
course Anastasia screamed in extremest peril--who wouldn't, after
all? This galvanizes both her will and her muscles, redoubling
her efforts to fight him off.
(Though note in particular that Trollope says that her struggle
"was necessary, a struggle for life, for honour, for the happiness
of [her fiance]." (308) Interesting phrase, isn't it--the
struggle was for life and honour? This isn't one I'd expect to
see used if Anastasia were struggling to keep from having her
features rearranged. The phrase makes sense if what she's
fighting is the loss of her virginity.)
In any event the fight progresses, and Trow finds himself getting
about as much abuse as he's dishing out. (The poker seems to
have dropped from sight, by this point, but if the man and woman
are locked in combat on the floor, wrestling desperately, I
suppose the poker wouldn't be a useful weapon even if Trow hadn't
contrived to lose it.)(Although, if he meant to bash or skewer
her with the poker, and this gave the wound that caused her
scream, why pull her toward him and away from the wall to begin
with? If she's too near him he won't have leverage with a weapon
that does damage by smashing or tearing, not by cutting. But let
it go.) Trow, I say, isn't doing very well, and in fact the
accursed woman is hurting him. So, enraged, he pulls out his
clasp knife and starts jabbing her with "short, ineffectual
blows...the knife wounded her...covering them both with blood."
(309)
Finally the two servant-girls return to the house. The sound of
their approach scares off Trow, who flies into the night.
Anastasia, quite reasonably, almost swoons as reaction sets in.
When Caleb Morton arrives, Anastasia faints for real. And at
that point Trollope introduces a narrative fact that I can't make
fit:
It seems to me that most of this description points to a sexual
assault, while not being apt for nonsexual battery. Be that as it
may, I have no problem with the premise that Anastasia was unaware
until later that she'd been wounded _in the arm, by Trow's knife_.
But if the inhuman shriek on p. 307 came because Trow'd attacked
her savagely with the poker, than how is it possible that three
pages later she'd not know she'd been wounded? We're back to an
ambiguity about the nature of how Trow made Anastasia scream. If
it was an attack that wounded her badly enough to draw blood (or
render her loathsome to look upon, bloodlessly--though I'm not
clear how one could achieve the latter effect using a poker), then
the description from p. 310 isn't coherent with what came before.
She might not know she'd been wounded in the arm, true. But since
we're saying that a terrible attack, and wound, were what made her
scream, don't we find ourselves forced to assume sudden amnesia? By
the time we're to p. 310, it sounds as though Trollope thinks
Anastasia is wounded in one area of her body: her arm. And that
these wounds came from the knife.
Yes? No?
I do think the fault here is Trollope's, not ours: in trying to be
delicate and implying what he can't come out and say, he winds up
presenting us a section of story that seems to show, at different
moments, that the characters consumed and saved the same cake at
the same time. Since this can't be true, each reader winds up
deciding whether the bulk of the evidence says that the cake is
gone or that the cake still is there. And on this question
reasonable people always can vary.
Still, since I find it unnatural to spend so much time disputing
Ellen's point of view, I want to close by agreeing wholeheartedly
with the conclusion to one of her posts from yesterday:
Yes indeed.
From: Oldbuks@aol.com Caution!
The following post contains graphic material not for the faint of heart or
stomach.
I never thought I would jump into a difference of opinion between John Hopfner
and Ellen Moody, both of whom I respect highly. In this instance, I must side
with John. Cutting off a breast is no simple matter. With the clasp knife
Aaron Trowe possessed, it could not have been done in an instant; maybe a
sword could have done it, but not the knife described in the story. As John
says, Aaron pulled it out of his pocket after the deed which caused the
unearthly scream was done. I think that Aaron Trowe raped her, and the scream
came at the moment of penetration. As most of us know, rape is not an act of
lust, but an assertion of power. When Aaron realized that there was no money
to aid with his escape, he exorcised to a small degree his own powerlessness
by exerting his power over Anastasia. Her scream was caused not only by the
pain of the tearing hymen, but also by the knowledge that, in the society she
lived in, Anastasia would be defiled, a soiled being no longer acceptable for
polite society, for marriage and family. The fact that Caleb Morton married
Anastasia, in spite of her status as damaged goods, especially since he was a
minister who could be expected to wish an unspotted wife, elevates him pretty
high, in my eyes.
Jill Spriggs
Jill then had another thought:
To enlarge upon my previous post:
Remember that underclothing was not usually worn in the nineteenth century,
and raping Anastasia would have been as simple as pulling up the skirt and
doing it. Not long at all. Aaron pinioned her arms on the floor in order to
complete his revenge. It all happened too fast for Anastasia to really begin
her battle until she had already been defiled.
I thought Caleb and Anastasia also went to Canada to escape the everpresent
reminders of her ordeal. If her face had been slashed, questions about the
scar would follow them where they went.
Jill Spriggs
RE: Short Story: "Aaron Trowe": There's a Third Weapon
This is written in response to John Hopfner who has led me
to go back and find another weapon. There is another besides
the knife and the pistol -- and of course the man's hands
and enraged desperate bodily strength.
First on the issue of sympathy, I have seen Trollope sympathetic
to the most dastardly and awful of characters. Mr Scarborough
of Mr Scarborough's Family torments both sons, betrays them,
lies to everyone, tells people his wife was not his wife, lies to
and manipulates his lawyer, is capable of the most brutal of
personal politics and yet he is magnificent; he has in him deeper
finer feelings, the understanding of what is integrity, and
a kind of truth that by the end of the story let us know he
is the hero. There is a paragraph at the end by the narrator
which insists on this--and on the many flaws and evil in
the man. Similarly Sowerby of Framley Parsonage behaves
just about as badly as one can imagine someone to behave
to everyone, and is himself one of the most lazy sleazes, and
yet in the final chapter in which he appears Trollope suddenly
turns round and sees the world from Sowerby's eyes and
there is a pathos in the man.
On what Trowe did to Anastasia that was worse than murder
I will not insist that he cut her breast off, but I will insist he
did not rape her. Look at the passage. There is no time for
this, and throughout the scene she fights him like a tigress.
He couldn't get in in such a short time; the only way he
could make her submit would be to have a weapon. There is
also no sense of sexual excitement. He has nothing against
her. Rape is a crime against a woman as such. What
Trowe wants is money; if she will give him, some he
is out of there. He makes that clear even pleadingly;
if she will not give him money, he is willing to murder
her. But he doesn't want to--and in fact doesn't.
Money. He wants it. He is savage for it. It's life to
him. This is a perennial theme with Trollope. Comically
put, without the stuff you are up the creek. In a
story of ultimate desperation it drives a man to an
insane savagery and then another man to another
instance savagery when he sees what was done
to his woman.
Now both Robert and I came to the conclusion the weapon he
had was a knife. I agree we overlooked his having first
taken out the "clasp knife" from his pocket after the scene
of the scream, and that it was after this that we
are told of streams of blood and how "the
knife wounded her," and "yet, when the knife was in his
hand, he had not driven it against her heart"--the last
sentence sounding that note of suggesting Trowe is
not as bad as he could be--he does not kill her when
he could have). As to her not noticing herself bleeding,
as someone who has bled a number of times profusely
I will say one can bleed withouth being aware of it.
A kind of unconsciousness comes with sudden
hemorrhage; maybe it's some sort of instinctic
survival element in the mind which prevents
immediate panic.
Now there is a second weapon. A pistol. We are
told he has been terrorizing some negroes to
bring him food. His presence alone could
not have terrorized them. He must have some weapon.
At the close of the story he suddenly has a pistol.
It may be the pistol was there in the cave all along;
he may have left it in the cave. We are told not.
But I think the latter improbable. He has it with him
stuck in the sailor's outfit. Of course he would. He had
no intention of returning to the cave. The reason he
wants money is then he can bribe his way off the
island and to freedom. The world is a big place,
and he could be hundreds of thousands of miles
away if he could get his hands on some money.
But a pistol would not produce that scream.
So I went back. And looking carefully, I found
a third weapon, "a short
thick poker" (p 304). This he takes up as he comes
into the house; it is lying by the grate. I find this
curious. In two stories Trollope tells of a man who
murders another man who has seduced his sister
and not married when he takes a trungeon or poker
and hits the other man with all his might with it.
In both cases the man dies, although the murderer
was not planning or plotting death. In the first in _The
Macdermots_ due to the political situation, our hero
(for he is a hero), Thady is condemned to die as
a scrapegoat and to make an example to others
("pour encourager les autres" in Voltaire's famous
phrase); in the second in Dr Thorne Roger Scatcherd
is adjudged guilty of homicide, is put in prison for
a year or so where he does hard labor, and is then
released. In a couple of other scenes in other novels
it comes back to me that people threaten other people
with pokers. I believe in the trial of Phineas Finn in
Phineas Redux, the weapon is a long hard instrument
which men carried about the streets to protect themselves
in London. Now in life Anthony's brother Thomas beat
him daily in school with thick hard stick--and so were
the other boys in this school beaten by older boys
with such sticks. .
The text is ambiguous. I won't reprint it once again.
It moves swiftly, very swiftly. As he lunges at her
with his poker, there comes from her that haunting
shriek that appalled a woman far away.
It seems to me to ignore the speed and probability
to pronounce it rape. I see this story as brutal and
savage, the most brutal Trollope ever wrote--whose
purpose is to show us what we can become. Aaron
Trowe is us--as is Anastasia and Morton. At the
same time (with Trollope there is always an "at
the same time"), if the man did in some way
hideously scar Anastastia's breast or
use the poker in some way forever to scar her face
hideously for life, he gets his retribution. Poetic
justice is given as he is madly in the water, desperately
holding onto to Morton, unable to swim, and another
man comes along, the takes a huge oar and lets
This is a terrible moment. Imagine it. Horrible
horrible oh most horrible to do this to another
human being. Yet says Trollope consider
the terrible frightful thing Trowe
did to Morton. It has better be terrible
or frightful or we are back with Le Fanu
titillations. It's a terrible frightful thing men will see
upon looking at her. One does not see rape. I think
here too we are fooled by Victorian public discourse.
I think they had as much sex as we do; it has been
shown again and again engagement meant sexual
intimacy. People lived together before and outside
marriage. The sex act was not treated with such
horror. Even in Richardson (who is traumatized
by sex as an individual) had to add that Clarissa
was drugged, held down, and then raped in front
of the other women to make us feel the horror.
And still his readers said she should forgive
and marry Lovelace.
And why shouldn't Morton be ashamed? Sometimes
I wonder about where are our hearts as we start to
reason and are not reasoning about ourselves. I was
listening to my students today talk of the Texas
woman who was executed. Yeah man. She pickaxed
someone. I wondered if they considered there but
for the grace of God go they. The idea in this story
is one we find again and again in Trollope and it is
given full imaginative depth: there but for the grace
of God go we as Aaron Trowe. Who knows what
you can be driven to? The ghost is the ghost of
ourselves, the knowledge and memory of what
we are that has been revealed to Morton--who is a
thoughtful sensitive type.
Anastasia too becomes a fierce beast. She too
is likened to a roused animal, half-crazed, fighting
for life. She drives her teeth down in that man's finger
and holds on. We are again told how she had
never been "trained in violence," had always
been "feminine." The sense is she didn't know
what was in her.
Is it that we think there are things we cannot be driven
to? Just as Trowe and Anastasia are parted when
they hear a noise our narrator says of him, "And yet
he had not purposed to murder her, or, even in the first
instance to inflict on her some bodily harm" (p 309).
Again as I think better of Trollope than to read the
story as an argument for swift capital punishment
for Trowe originally (even in the heigh of the conflict
he will stop and say "things had not gone well with
him. He had been separated from the wife he
had loved, and the children who had been raised
at his knee,--separated by his own violence"),
so I think better of him than to think he imagined
the insanity which leads to vengeance so that
at the end we can rest sated with Morton or
gratified--as for example some of my students
seem to be. Rather he returns the man to his
norm self, his tender loving humane self (which
sort of self Trowe had in him too, as clearly
Anastasia has) who is aghast at what he became.
Caleb Morton was a man of God. We are told
at length how he has been spending his
life preaching against violence. The reason
he has not the money to marry Anastasia is
he is bringing the Christian message to
this island. He too did not
know what he could be driven to. He has acted in
a way that goes against everything he has taught
to the people of this island and professed to believe
in for years. No wonder he can't face himself.
In order for the story to make sense the
wound had to be a real one. Not metaphoric.
She is made loathesome to look upon for
life. You can do some terrific damage with
a poker.
A story like this pust paid to the notion
that Trollope wrote only about complacent
clergyman sitting in sweet green gardens surrounded
by virgins fretting over who they are going to marry.
Ellen Moody
From Robert Wright:
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 23:32:39 -0000 I must pitch into this debate again, and say that whilst we will never know
what exactly occasioned the scream, because we are not told (because the
story could not have been published if more explicit) we can surely deduce
that something more than mere pain was involved.
By this I mean that the girl was damaged in a much more social way. Her
beauty must have been impaired. Or her chances of marriage. Or her
acceptability in society (and we must remember how important, how vital were
a girl's marriage prospects - they were literally her life). My original
guess about facial scarring may not have been enough. I think Ellen's idea
was possible, though probably not practically feasible given the weopans to
hand. I think such a would in those days would have mean almost certain
death too, in the way that wounds on board ship always involved amputation
and very likely eventual death through gangrene.
So, what else is likely? Pokers are nasty things, as Edward II found out
(even if Marlowe turned the truth into crushing under a table!). I suppose
a heterosexual version of the Edward II death is possible, even though the
poker might not have been red hot. Other means might have been used to
preculde any possibility of childbirth. Who knows?
The main truth is that, regardless of what might or might not have actually
been done, we are meant to believe the damage was utterly traumatic, enough
to cause the reverend gentleman to go almost mad and take obscene chances to
revenge his love. The very word revenge for a cleric heightens the effect
and what was the magnitude of his reaction, given his vocation.
Robert
Re: Short Story: "Aaron Trowe"
N ow I am answering Jill's two posts. I just don't see how
he could have raped Anastasia that fast. I have never
been raped, but I have known women who have. Both
(two) said there was a knife, and it took their submitting
to it. That is, they had to lay there, and they were
terrorized into it by a weapon.
Then from the text I see a wound, something which
made the woman loathesome to look at. Some sharp
hard wound--probably from that poker.
Finally, I think we are overemphasizing the response to
rape or sexual intercourse. In a number of Trollope
novels, good women have sex before marriage--and
they do marry, are not considered loathesome. I
think of Roger Scatcherd's sister. True she leaves
for Australia, but no-one is horrified. The shame
included a child, and the murder by her brother of
Dr Thorne's brother.
I suppose it's a detail we are arguing over. But to me
some frighteningly terrible act matches the smashing
of Trowe's face and explains how Caleb Morton
turned into a savage to match the savagery of Trowe.
And that leads to the "moral" or point of the story,
which is we can never know what we can descend
to if sufficiently driven to it. I see this story as
the "other side" to Malacchi's Cove. In that someone
does a equally physically appalling good deed, one
that was beyond her strength and out of character.
In both the characters are primally assaulted and
death is seconds away.
As the heroine of "Malachi's Cove," poor and abject
as she is, is us, so I see Aaron Trowe and Anastasia
and Caleb all as is, and the ghost as the knowledge
of what we can become (to Caleb what he became).
In some of Trollope's short stories, the moral has been,
"Lord what fools these mortals be" (e.g., "The Man Who
Kept His Money in a Box"); in "Aaron Trowe" and
"Malacchi's Cove" Ophelia's words come to mind: Lord
we know what we are, but we know not what
we may be.
Ellen Moody
Re: Sinfield and Trollope
I am working on a review of a book about the
influence of Italian literature on the English Renaissance
and find myself reading one of those books of
scholarship whose continual mark of the mandarin
may be found in its thicket of theoretical jargon.
It is the sort of book where I look for those places
in the text where the mask is dropped to see
what the author is up to; sometimes such places
come when the author actually gets in contact
with the text and has to admit what it says;
often they are found in bridging sentence between
paragraphs or bridging passages between whole
chapters (dead-giveaways these as the author
would really like us to read on and finds him
or herself constrained to sum up what went
before so as to lead us on); often there is
a sudden drop into an appeal to our reality
(the reader who is reading) and the author
talks to us in terms analogous to our
experience in the concluding sentences of a chapter.
The book is by one Alan Seinfield and is called
Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics
of Dissident Reading.
It should come as no surprize that one of the patron
saints of this book is Foucault. One of the passages
which begins with an invocation to him is in fact
useful as a way of articulating the way we read
today. Sinfield writes:
Readers misread. They take passages out of context
and make them validate what they yearn for. This
idea of course is the reverse of the idea the passage
opens with in which Sinfield avers it is clear texts
allow people to control the behavior of others. I think
he's got a lot of faith in the written word, but we must
grant him his religion.
The above passage is in fact a bridging one; it leads us
into the next paragraph which opens in an equally
genuinely explanatory vein:
In one of the concluding passages in another chapter we
come upon this sequence of sentences. It is a critique
of character criticism. Sinfield shows us how we go
through the story looking for our revelations of hidden
character and then talk about these as Truth:
He then stops to flog something he calls an essentialist
myth, but without explaining this sentence further (which
is just popped in as are so many of these in this
vein where what it yet to be agreed to is assumed),
he goes back to talking with reference to Othello:
We conclude with him saying how the confused thinking which
elevates the atavistic is of course the fault of "essentialist
humanism" not "cultural materialism" which does not have
the same "narrow view of human potential."
This is calling bad names. Why he thinks people who call
themselves humanists have a narrow view of human potential
he does not say. It is assumed. I have never thought
Othello realler than Archdeacon Grantly. There is also
another explanation for the preference for the barbaric,
bizarre, and savage in texts, movies, films, plays in
our time. The average person has always been
drawn to excitement, the more lurid the sex, the more
frightening the terror, the more piquant the sordidness the
better. On the other hand, he or she equally wants
to think he or she is an upstanding civilized person
who is bettering him or herself. That's what reading
good books are for. Good books are not supposed
to be about people hacking away at one another
with pokers--or sleazy ladies like Mrs General Talboys
teasing a man and enjoying her power over him
while she can ever so piously keep him at
arm's distance and present herself as maintaining
the high ground.
The connection between these texts is discomfort.
Neither flatters us. Rose said "Mrs General Talboys"
is an "ill-natured story." An interesting element in all
Trollope's short stories thus far has been that he's
not flattering us.
And that's why I brought this book up, as well as
to bring out my sense of why Trollope's larger
novels like The Vicar or TWWLN
can be made meat for the reactionary today
and complacent in his own time. I see them
both as aspiring to dissidence, the first through
the Vicar and Carrie and Mary Lowther too;
the second everywhere--and it too is not
a comforting book. Many of Trollope's lesser
known books are not. I admit this is an
argument for not doing Orley Farm next,
because it is more like The Vicar in bringing
in its serious themes and critiques in a subordinate
position (the trial, the story of the lady who
forges the document and almost gets off--it's
just that the bigoted will not accept her, the
jury says not guilty--what an irony is that).
It is an argument for Mr Scarborough's Family,
but perhaps like Lady Anna (and The
Claverings) which we read on the old list,
someone will call it repellent too. I like the repellent.
Ellen Moody
Re: "Aaron Trowe": A Key Paragraph
It has been apparent all along that a key paragraph
in the story is left ambiguous, and it
is now also clear that Trollope did not work to make all
parts of his story consistent. This would be in accord
with his use of calendars which, while not as cavalier
as Dickens's, is not dovetailed with precision in the
manner of Austen or Collins.
Of course I still tend to think there was
something Trowe did which forever
made Anastasia "loathesome to look upon," and
that rape was not looked in with quite the
sacramental horror that is suggested. I would
also further argue that when Trollope says Trowe had
not purposed to inflict bodily harm, he is saying
the man hadn't mean to wound her, but he had,
just as Thady hadn't meant to murder his sister's
lover with a stick, but found he had.
On the other hand, I agree that whenever any explicit sexual
gesture comes up, Victorian writers who wanted
to get into print and be read by middle class
readers suddenly turn euphemistic. We will
never know what Lily Dale did in her walks alone
in the garden at night with Adolphus Crosbie
while she was engaged to him. Or they leave
it to our imagination, though one of the most
interesting excisions from the original _Macdermots_
is a sentence which makes it explicit that
Thady's sister, Feemy, has a miscarriage
on the floor of the courthouse; one wonders
what readers in subsequent editions thought
the young woman suddenly died of.
Trollope shies away from telling us.
The moral of the story is as I outlined
it: we never know what we can become, what we
can do until we are in extremis, and the knowledge
of this is the (highly unusual) ghost of Trollope's
story. Ghosts in stories usually figure forth
guilt, remorse, inability to retrieve some act,
knowledge which in a way we would be better
off without.
Ellen Moody
To Trollope-l
February 11, 1998
RE: Short Stories: "Aaron Trowe
Bart Hansen wrote:
I remain puzzled by the words of sympathy at the end for Trow. If
sympathy was to be a factor in the story, why was Trow's crime made to
be killing a constable during a riot, rather than something much less
severe. Firstly, those two crimes surely are hanging offenses, and
secondly, who likes a cop-killer?
Bart To which I responded:
The idea that a man who commits a crime is forever an animal
and especially a cop-killer is not Trollope's view at all. The phrase
"cop-killer" is 20th century. Trollope seem to feel that people who
commit crimes do not therefore give up all
connections to the human race and are not any different from
those who us who are not so driven. That is the point of his
story.
Those who are for capital punishment never imagine
they could commit such a crime of course. Those who do are
"other" from them, subhuman, strange, forever exiled from
the human race. What a comforting thought is this. But
you see throughout the story Trollope is at pains to show
us that Trowe remained a man like other men, and in the
ending of the story to show us how a Christian man like
Morton could turn into a killer as savage as Trowe.
Who likes a cop-killer? Those people who have had relatives
killed by cops that's who. Who is on the side of strikers?--for
that is where Trowe's original crime began, in a strike by
workers whose families were starving and wanted a living
wage. I am.
Ellen Moody
I'll end this document with two postings I had written three years before
when I read the story with my students and placed on Ms Thompson's
list, at which time I got no response at all. Perhaps no one had read the story
on that list -- or had read it recently.
Re: Teaching "Aaron Trowe:
We are about to do "Aaron Trow" which I have
paired with "Returning Home." I have a theory
I am going to present to the class; it's kind of
startling so I want to know if anyone thinks this
is off the wall. Maybe someone will tell me it's
not. to wit: when Aaron Trow tells Anastasia
Bergen
Then there came from her a shriek that was
heard far down the store of that silent
sea, and away across to the solitary houses of those
living on the other side,--a shriek very sad, sharp, and
prolonged,--which told plainly to those who heard of it
of woman's woe when in her extremest peril... I think he has cut off one of her breasts.
My proofs:
1) The little dialogue imagined between a nearby
imaginary woman and her husband: "Did you hear
that?" [to the original shriek]... Hear it! Oh Heaven,
yes! Whence did it come?' The young wife could
not say from whence it came, but clung close to her
husband's breast, comforting herself with the
knowledge that that terrible sorrow was not hers."
2) The extraordinary rage of Morton and the language
used by the narrator repeatedly to describe this cut
as one of supreme cruelty and violation: Morton cannot
let someone else avenge this "wretch ... who
had thus treated the woman whom he loved...
His cry was for blood; for the blood of the untamed
savage brute who had come upon his young doe
in her solitude, and striven with such brutal violence
to tear her heart from her bosom." The last phrase
is particularly telling.
3) That she is just "covered with blood... her clothes
half torn from her body." In the fight Trow wounds
her arm but it is a continual hacking, a kind of series
of surface wounds, and we are told that when the
knife went in "he had not driven it against her
heart." Again a telling phrase.
4) She is unable to say "whence had come the blood"
to anyone, the women, Caleb, anyone; that is, she
can't say it. Of course, her hysteria.
Objections anyone?
September 30th,1995
Re: "Returning Home" & "Aaron Trow"
We had an excellent talk on the first; the idea
is the student choses an "approach," invents a
proposition out of this trajectory, and then tries
to demonstrate the truth of said proposition
through examples, quotation, and argument.
After his or her talk, we respond, and then said
student goes home and writes up a short essay.
So for "Returning Home" situational irony
was chosen, and the young woman did very
well on Trollope's use of foreshadowing throughout
the long arduous journey of Fanny Arkwright
through the mud-laden jungle, on the irony of
how she was not so frail and had lasted, and
then after all, had died merely because of a
moment's "turn of the hand that had been
too strong." The obvious irony was Fanny
had chosen the wrong way; but she also
pointed out how the strong
German had gone down with the frail woman.
She also said there was irony in the title
"Returning Home" as home would now be
for Fanny a grave, and for her husband his
place at work near that grave.
Ellen
To: "TrollopeReadingList"
Subject: Short Stories: "Aaron Trowe" and "The House of Heine Brothers in Munich"
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 1998 12:32:02 -0000
"'Then I will do worse than murder
you. I will make you such an object that all
the world shall loathe to look upon you.' And
so saying he took her by the arm and dragged
her forth from the wall against which he had stood."
"the knife wounded her. It wounded her in
several places about the arm, covering them both with
blood."
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 15:45:29 -0500
Subject: Short Stories: Continually Aaron
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
"we will never know what exactly occasioned the scream, because we are
not told (because the story could not have been published if more
explicit)"
"And yet he had not purposed to murder her, or even, in the
first instance, to inflict on her any bodily harm. But he had
been determined to get money.....That there must be money in the
house, he had still thought when first he laid hands on the poor
woman; and then, *when the struggle had once begun*, when he had
felt her muscles contending with his, the passion of the beast
was roused within him, and he strove against her as he would
have striven against a dog." (309, emphasis supplied)
"...for it was especially within her power to control herself,
and to make no utterance except with forethought." (303)
"I think in order for the story to make sense the wound had to be
I think in order for the story to make sense the wound had to be
a real one. Not metaphoric. She is made loathsome to look upon
for life. You can do some terrific damage with a poker."
...from the text I see a wound, something which made the woman
loathsome to look at. Some sharp hard wound--probably from that
poker."
"...she could hardly call to mind the nature of the struggle she
had undergone. His hot breath close to her own cheek she did
remember, and his glaring eyes, and even the roughness of his
beard as he pressed his face against her own; but she could not
say whence had come the blood, nor till her arm became stiff and
motionless did she know that she had been wounded." (310)
"I also think a story like this put paid to the notion that Trollope
wrote only about complacent clergyman sitting in sweet green gardens
surrounded by virgins fretting over whom they are going to marry."
To: trollope-l@teleport.com
Subject: Short Stories: "Aaron Trowe"
"it fall with all its force on the upturned
face of the wretched convict. It was a terrible
frightful thing to do,--thus striking one who was so stricken,
but who shall say that the blow was not good and just?"
(p 319).
"it seems clear that nineteenth-century
legal, medical, and sexological discourses on
homosexuality made possible new forms of control;
but, at the same time, they also made possible
what Foucault calls a 'reverse discourse,' whereby
'homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf,
to demand that its legitimacy or 'naturality' be
acknowledged, often in the same vocaulary, using
the same categories by which it was medically
disqualified.' Deviancy returns from abjection by deploying
just those terms that relegated it there in the first place.
A dominant discourse cannot prevent 'abuse' of its
resources. Even a test that aspires to contain a subordinate
perspective must first bring it into visibility; even to
misrepresent, one must present. And one that has happened,
there can be no guarantee that the subordinate will stay
safely in its prescribed place."
"Conversely, a text that aspires to dissidence cannot
control meaning either. It is bound to slide into disabling
nuances that it fails to anticipate, and it cannot prevent
the drawing of reactionary inferences by readers who
want to do that'" (p 48).
"Typically, the illusion is said to yield, slowly
but surely, to the reality that was always-already there;
the individual, in learning from experience to reconcile
hismelf to herself to the world, becomes fully the
person he or she always was. The ultimate profundity
is alleged to appear in trageyd, where the truth about
Man is aid to emerge from the depths of the individual.
And this usually, in modern times, is the truth of our
atavistic nature--the savage Othello underlines the noble
(or may be savage and noble at once, but still the savagery
seems more fundamental).
Of course people behave in extreme
ways in extreme conditions, but this does not demonstrate
an underlying Man. Rather people react diversely in
diverse circumstances in diverse cultures; these are all
ways people behave. The person who betrays his or her
comrades under torture, who eats htem to survive an aeroplane
disaster, who kills them under intolerable stress, is no more
'real' than the caring and cooperative person we see in more
congenial circumstances."
"My first argument for an attempted rape, was in our own
introduction, where Sutherland talks of 'a graphically described rape
scene.' I also mentioned the language on p.310, and suggested that
would have been differently worded had her breast been sliced off. To
me, words are there to suggest attempted rape - '...the fate that had
threatened her...the evil that had been so imminent.' Finally, I
repeated my earlier claim that for Trow to rape Anastasia would very
well qualify as something to make society 'loathe to look upon' her.
I will admit that several other possibilities also come to mind that
similarly qualify; the slicing off of a breast or the carving up of
her face.
hansenb@frb.gov"I will make you such an obejct that all the
world shall loathe to look on you.' And so saying he took
her by the arm and dragged her forth from the wall
against which he had stood.
Ellen Moody.
Pagemaster: Jim
Moody.
Page Last Updated 11 January 2003