| | Trollope doesn't do a very good job of showing why the two main couples in The Bertrams fall in love, but that doesn't seem to have been the focus of his attention: he wants to show, rather, the obstacles to love caused by money, or the lack of it.
In doing so, he takes us through a tour of upper-middle-class Victorian proprieties. Like much of his work, The Bertrams has a strong comedy-of-manners element, particularly among the older generation, who mostly come off looking baffled and silly.
After getting most of the way through, I started to despair of Trollope making any real deep impression here (the youngsters sort of sluff off moodily and the old clowns occupy the stage for rather too long), but he does in fact pull it off in the end, and the very finale of the book is one of the most subtly original and touching that I've read.
The device of two couples, one major and one somewhat less so, confused me for a while--why not just focus on the main one?--but he uses it to good effect in showing contrasts, and in sparking introspection when certain unusual combinations of the couples meet. Still, it must be said that Arthur Wilkinson, the second hero, is a boring mama's boy.
A bit too much time, too, is spent as a travel novel, in picturesque descriptions of Jerusalem and Cairo. The exotic locales distract the author's attention from the main characters, and he indulged himself a bit too far in casting a romantic light on the surroundings. Curious, too, for a man who earlier in the work announces that the mystery writing of Ann Radcliffe (see entry 37) belongs to an era dead and gone.
Trollope's polished language, however, kept me fascinated even through the duller stretches. He shouldn't engage in his little parodies of names quite so much, 'tis true--Mr. Stickatit springs to mind--but I only wish I could wield a semicolon half so well as he does. |
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