With this as the law of the land, one can begin to see that a young husband, new to the demands of marriage, might feel that his very manhood required that he exercise his authority. (There is a downside to chivalry.) And on the other side of the equation, we are told that Emily has been brought up away from England, in the Mandarin Islands, where she has developed an independent spirit. Friends of both parties urged them to soften their positions, but both felt that their honor was insulted, and that they could not retreat or compromise. Today's reader observes pretty quickly in this disaster that such an impasse is less likely to occur these days because women have more rights. And though Trollope never officially endorsed the rights of women, he allowed Emily, and other women in other novels, to be compelling in their arguments. Emily voices these early in our story: "It is a very poor thing to be a woman," she said to her sister. "It is perhaps better than being a dog," said Nora; "but, of course, we can't compare ourselves to men." "It would be better to be a dog. One wouldn't be made to suffer so much. When a puppy is taken away from its mother, she is bad enough for a few days, but she gets over it in a week . . . . It is very hard for a woman to know what to do," continued Emily, "but if she is to marry, I think she had better marry a fool. After all, a fool generally knows that he is a fool, and will trust someone, though he may not trust his wife." "Humankind cannot bear very much reality," and we are mercifully diverted by the subplots, which occupy approximately fifty-four of the ninety-nine chapters of the 823-page book (one of Trollope's longest). Miss Jemima Stanbury occupies a position of similar prominence among the subplots as she enjoyed in the city of Exeter. This is stated in a single sentence (of some length): "It is to be hoped that no readers of these pages will be so un-English as to be unable to appreciate the difference between county society and town society--the society, that is, of a provincial town, or so ignorant as not to know also that there may be persons so privileged, that although they live distinctly within a provincial town, there is accorded to them, as though by brevet rank, all the merit of living in the county." And Miss Stanbury was universally regarded as "county" rather than "town." "There was not a tradesman in Exeter who was not aware of it, and who did not touch his hat to her accordingly." Miss Stanbury was rich. She had been engaged to a young banker, Mr. Brooke Burgess, who had jilted her, subsequently died, and left to her "every shilling that he possessed." And she, in her own romantic way, was determined that her inheritance should be hers only for life and that at her death it should revert to the Burgess family and not stay in her own family.