Satire in the Victorian novelRussell, Frances Theresa
History
Satire in the Victorian novel
Russell, Frances Theresa
English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Satire, English -- History and criticism; Thesis (Ph. D.)
Outside of Eliot and Meredith, the best examples of the youthful
sentimental egoist are Thackeray’s George Osborne, and Trollope’s
Crosbie. The latter argues himself into a state of innocence over his
desertion of Lily Dale by soliloquizing that he did not deserve her,
could not make her happy, and was bound to tell the truth, which,
however painful, was always best.[395]
A word might be vouchsafed for this trait in low life, usually brushed
lightly by the novelist. Dale of Allington is a great man in the market
town, “laying down the law as to barley and oxen among men who usually
knew more about barley and oxen than he did.” Squire Cass, a person of
some importance, “had a tenant or two, who complained of the game to
him quite as if he had been a lord.” Craig looks to Mrs. Poyser “like
a cock as thinks the sun’s rose o’ purpose to hear him crow.”[396] And
Robert Armstrong says of Master Gammon,--“There’s nothing to do, which
is his busiest occupation, when he’s not interrupted at it.”
Then there are the unsentimental egoists, attached to the selfish and
domineering wing of egoism. They are less amenable to satire, being
less deceptive by nature, and more prone to tyranny and cruelty,
thereby deserving rebuke without humor. This class is represented by
Paul Dombey, Barnes Newcome, Tom Tulliver, and others from the author
of the last. This is another favorite type with Eliot, the self-willed
sharing honors with the self-indulgent. Grandcourt “meant to be master
of a woman who would have liked to master him, and who perhaps would
have been capable of mastering another man.” Tito Melema “felt that
Romola was a more unforgiving woman than he had imagined; her love was
not that sweet, clinging instinct, stronger than all judgments, which,
he began to see now, made the great charm of a wife.” Harold Transome,
who “had a padded yoke ready for the neck of every man, woman, and
child that depended on him,” makes the alarming discovery about Esther
that a lightning “shot out of her now and then, which seemed the
sign of a dangerous judgment; as if she inwardly saw something more
admirable than Harold Transome. Now, to be perfectly charming, a woman
should not see this.” Meredith portrays this irresponsible selfishness
in Roy Richmond, Lord Ormont, and Lord Fleetwood; and defines it in Sir
Austin’s _Pilgrim’s Scrip_, which says that sentimentalists “are they
who seek to enjoy without incurring the Immense Debtorship for a thing
done.”[397]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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