"We think differently, my dear. Thank God, we have got somebody to tell us what we ought to do and what we ought not to do." Linda was not strong enough to argue the question, or to remind her aunt that this somebody, too, might possibly be wrong.
Linda's progressive downhill and melodramatic course makes for a rather grim story. Mercifully, it is a short one. The descriptions of Aunt Charlotte and of Peter Steinmarc leave little room for subtlety. However, Aunt Charlotte's breastplate of righteousness was not entirely without a few little chinks, as we see in her last encounter with Linda's wild lover. Trollope's description, I fear, will bring few feminists to his side:
He could get in and out of the roofs of houses, and could carry away with him a young maiden. These are deeds which always excite a certain degree of admiration in the female heart, and Madame Staubach, though she was a Baptist, was still a female. When, therefore, she found herself in the presence of Ludovic, she could not treat him with the indignant scorn with which she would have received him had he intruded upon her premises before her fears of him had been excited.
Like Nina Balatka, Linda Tressel was published as an anonymous work; only later did Trollope declare himself as the author. It has been stated that he wanted to prove that he could write a different kind of novel, set in Europe. Linda Tressel was clearly an effort to take his writing in a different direction. Though it was not a commercial success, it can hardly be dismissed. The story moves inexorably to a tragic ending for the heroine; the author stays on task with the progression of the story, but it is seasoned with bits of irony. The reader begins to suspect that there is heavy weather ahead as the storm clouds gather over the picturesque little red house in Nuremberg; perhaps it is the impact of the inevitable deluge that is so depressing.
THE DOWNSIDE OF CHIVALRY
HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT
Novels rarely have subtitles; Anthony Trollope certainly didn't bother with them. But He Knew He Was Right is a sitting duck for a frivolous little subtitle. How about But He Was Wrong? Or maybe But She Knew He Was Wrong? Or perhaps, But She Wouldn't Pretend That He Was Right? But of course any subtitle would have been redundant. The five-word title tells it all. Of course he wasn't right. But he was stubborn. And she was stubborn. And in this case, it was a case of terminal stubbornness.
The problem with He Knew He Was Right is that the man who knows he is right, Louis Trevelyan, fails to overcome his terminal stubbornness. Or perhaps we should refer to it as a paranoid personality disorder—or maybe as the prevailing diagnosis of the time: madness. Whatever we call it, it isn't pretty, and the story of his progressive delusion is not a pleasant one. Interesting, yes. So is Crime and Punishment. But both stories tell how someone happened to think and do the wrong thing, and these are unpleasant subjects. Both books dilute the dose with little subplots that add humor and diversion. But the main story line is still the main story line. Louis Trevelyan, a young husband, is annoyed by the daily visits to his wife by her godfather, Colonel Osborne, a bachelor with a reputation for pursuing beautiful young married women. He objects, she resents the objection, and both husband and wife shoot past the point of negotiation with their first discussion of the subject. Both are stubborn, things go downhill from there, and in the end Louis Trevelyan goes mad and suffers the consequences.
Trevelyan was set up by circumstances, and to understand some of these circumstances, we must take note of the laws of England at that time. English common law stated that in marriage, two became one, and that one was the husband in the eyes of the law. The husband was indeed the lord and master. In regard to children, John Stuart Mill wrote of the wife's subordination in marriage, "They are by law his children. … No one act can she do towards or in relation to them, except by delegation from him."