Reconsidering Phineas
Finn and Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope
Parliament has been called
a Victorian novel in stone. This is a particularly apt metaphor in considering
two novels from Anthony Trollope’s Palliser series in which that Gothic Revival
complex along the Thames plays a large part. Trollope himself longed to enter
its portals, writing in Autobiography, “I have always thought that to sit in the British
Parliament should be the highest object of ambition to every educated
Englishman…that to serve one’s country without pay is the grandest work that a
man can do…and that of all lives, public political lives are capable of the
highest efforts.”
Over the course of his life,
Trollope grew less idealistic about politicians’ motivations and capacity to
improve life. His skepticism is at the heart of Phineas Finn (1869) and Phineas Redux (1874) in which the eponymous protagonist goes
from blazing political success to disillusionment in a few short years.
Phineas Grows Up
Broadly speaking, these
two novels form a Bildungsroman, chronicling Finn’s professional and personal
maturation. In his fast rise in
the political sphere, Phineas has, well, the luck of the Irish. By the end of
the first novel, Finn relinquishes his Parliamentary career to return to
Ireland to marry his childhood sweetheart and to serve in an obscure post. The
sequel opens with Finn back in London after a year’s absence, having lost both
his wife and child. He quickly re-establishes himself and re-enters Parliament
as member for the borough of Tankerville.
This time, however, Finn
sees politics much more clearly. (As did the author who in the years between
the two novels had staged an unsuccessful campaign for a seat in Parliament.)
The constituents of Tankerville have a choice of returning Mr. Browborough,
their long-time member, or Finn, the newcomer. Browborough is well known and
popular among the locals, not for his enlightened representation of their
interests, but because he buys them pints at the pub during election season.
Finn refuses to participate in this common practice, and the vote is close. He
brings up a petition, or recount, and is eventually returned.
Discountenanced by his
defeat, Browborough retires only to be brought up later on charges of bribery.
New election laws require an example to be made, and Browborough—“to whom a
seat in Parliament was the be-all and end-all of life” (PR 346)—must be
sacrificed.
His trial for bribery is
conducted with only the thinnest veneer of conviction by judge and counselors
and it predictably results in acquittal. Phineas reacts with disgust, unwilling
to accept the blatant cronyism. He insists that the verdict is really a
condemnation of his own election. Subsequently, Browborough becomes a favorite,
while Finn is despised as the man who used self-righteousness to take a seat
from an innocuous veteran. “There is no honesty in the life we lead,” Phineas
grouses (PR 355).
The Manly and Unmanned Phineas
The Browborough trial sets
up another trial, one in which Phineas himself is the center. Phineas’s trial
for murder could have been exploited as a mere plot device. However, Trollope
does more, finding in its inherent drama an insight into human character that
may surprise those who dismiss him as a tiresome purveyor of fusty Victorian
stereotypes. With Phineas, Trollope moves into new territory, expanding his
considerable strength at character delineation into an inquiry into the nature
of the public and the private man and the interaction of sex and power in
society.
Trollope starts with a
conventional trope: the handsome leading man. Phineas is above all pleasing of
aspect: “Nature had been very good to him, making him comely inside and out—and
with this comeliness, he crept into popularity” (PF 309). He is also socially
adept, in demand in all the best drawing rooms and country houses, popular with
the fox-hunting set, respected by his political peers, and loved by heiresses.
Having established his
hero’s affability and attractiveness, Trollope then interjects one of his
characteristic digressions, a meditation on manliness, at a critical point in
Phineas’s emotional maturity. Phineas, Trollope assures us, possesses none of
the affectation that precludes manliness. (Trollope has earlier provided a delightfully
satirical contrast with Mr Maule, Senior, an aging dandy desperately clinging
to the last vestiges of youth in order to snare a wealthy widow: “No one knew
better than Mr Maule that the continual bloom of lasting summer which he
affected [emphasis added] requires great accuracy in living” [PR 170].)
Following his trial and
imprisonment, Phineas lives almost in seclusion. He feels that events have
“unmanned” him and left him weak. He admits to his friend, the macho Lord
Chiltern, “I am womanly…I begin to feel it. But I can’t alter my nature” (PR
541). When he visits his former law mentor Mr. Low and his wife, Phineas cannot
hide his dejection. Mrs. Low, a woman stalwart and uncompromising, almost
mannish in her outlook, asserts twice that she had always thought Phineas more
manly.
That Mrs. Low should
attack Phineas when he is at his lowest point (with Trollope, this is probably
pun intended) makes the digression on manly qualities and affectation even more
significant. It’s tempting to dismiss this passage as an author’s heavy-handed
defense of his character’s moral superiority, but Trollope is a writer of too
much finesse for that. We are meant to see not only Phineas’s real quality of
character, but also to grasp the predicament of the disestablished man, a man
who has transgressed society’s norms. Further, we begin to have an idea of just
how transient and mutable these norms really are, especially in a
highly-stratified society such as that of the Victorians.
Phineas’s initial
transgressions are rendered essentially benign due to his physical appeal. He
comes to Parliament an outsider—an Irishman in London, a Roman Catholic in a
Protestant land, an political upstart without a law background, and the son of
a country doctor among aristocrats. Being taken up by the right crowd brings
him advantages and smoothes the way for him. However, when he is accused of the
murder of Mr. Bonteen, a fellow member of Parliament, he discovers the limits
of the establishment’s empathy. Suddenly, Phineas’s eccentricities become
liabilities. What we might call his sex appeal and his outsider status have
exceeded acceptable bounds and now pose a danger to the status quo. (In fact,
Trollope has already shown his hero’s propensity for unbridled sexual
impulsiveness by sending Phineas and Lord Chiltern to Belgium to fight a duel
over a woman.)
Trollope's Female Power-brokers
Trollope further explores
social and sexual transgression through gender ambiguity, especially with his
female power-brokers. We meet again in these novels one of Trollope’s most winning
female characters, Lady Glencora Palliser, a vivacious and headstrong lady who
dabbles in politics through her husband. Lady Glencora, who is elevated to
Duchess in Phineas Redux, is so
single-minded in the Phineas novels that at one point her domineering
tendencies are called “rough.” We also meet Finn’s first London love, the
independent Lady Laura Standish, “a woman who looked at the world almost as a
man looked at it—as an oyster to be opened with such a weapon as she could find
ready to her hand” (PF 108). Trollope also introduces the enigmatic Madame Max
Goesler, a wealthy widow who later takes on the role of private detective, one
she fills without apologies and with great efficiency.
As power-brokers, these
women are every bit as influential as their male counterparts. Lady Glencora,
Lady Laura, Madame Max, of course, have the advantage of wealth and station.
Lady Glencora and Madame Max use their power to good effect. Lady Laura, on the
other hand, begins in a position of sexual power, but makes a morally
reprehensible choice (she marries for money) and loses her social capital as
well as Phineas’s love.
Trollope also includes two
other female power-brokers, these from the lower ranks. Mrs. Bunce, Phineas’s
landlady, has few social advantages other than her compassionate nature. Mrs.
Bunce is infatuated with the handsome Irishman and immensely flattered that
someone of his standing would continue to live in her humble house. Her husband
Jacob, a radical law stationer, tends to embarrass Mrs. Bunce, and his
incarceration in Phineas Finn
serves as a foreshadowing of Phineas’s own imprisonment in the sequel. During
Phineas’s trial, it is Mrs. Bunce’s enthusiastic testimony, subtly extracted by
the Dickensian Mr. Chaffanbrass, that establishes Finn “[as] the least likely
to do such a bloody minded action. Mr. Chaffanbrass was, perhaps, right in
thinking that her evidence might be as serviceable as that of the lords and
countesses” (PR 501).
Mrs. Low, though hardly
compassionate, supports Phineas’s innocence because her own husband believes it
to be so. Trollope asserts that Mrs. Low is wrong to accuse Phineas of
weakness, but she is such a model of probity that Phineas is strengthened
merely by being in the same social compass as such a woman.
However, it is Lady
Glencora and Madame Max who push the limits of feminine behavior to act
decisively on Phineas’s behalf. Lady Glencora is not only a formidable social
force, she is also a not-so-silent partner to her husband Plantagenet. She
never hesitates to take charge, first, in monitoring Madame Max’s evolving
relationship with the old and susceptible Duke of Omnium and, later, as an
advocate for Phineas. She has the clout to invade the sanctity of Parliament,
and she mobilizes a host of notables to defend Phineas. She even understands
the power of the press—“Can’t we get it in the papers that [Phineas] must be
innocent—so that everybody should be made to think so? And if we could get hold
of the lawyers, and make them not want to—to destroy him! There’s nothing I
wouldn’t do” (PR 401).
Trollope acknowledges the
early stirrings of female suffrage here and there in his works, but with
Glencora he uses the language of enfranchisement to indicate a general will to
action or a desire for involvement. Glencora first learns of Phineas’s arrest
from her husband. Plantagenet is close-lipped about what he believes, but
Glencora is sure of Phineas’s innocence and writes immediately to Madame Max:
“…I will never believe it—nor will you, I’m sure. I vote [emphasis added] we stick to him to the last…. I’m
going out now to try and find out something” (PR 380). She sounds like an
ardent campaigner, certain of her confederates, and eager to get out among men
who can give her real information.
Sex and the “Strong Programme”
Madame Max, too, is a
powerful female, but unlike Glencora, she is eccentric to a degree, an outsider
whose wealth, beauty, and decorum allow her to act in ways that would not be
tolerated by other female even of her rank (as Lady Laura learns to her
sadness). Madame Max announces her affinity for politics in her first
conversation with Phineas: “The one great drawback to the life of women is that
they cannot act in politics” (PF 313). She goes on to propose what Phineas
calls a “strong programme” of reform that covers male and female suffrage,
tenant rights, universal education, and unlimited right of striking. Phineas is
impressed with her beauty, but he is too immature at this point to see her as
anything more than decorative.
The themes of sex, power,
and eccentricity sustain the climactic trial sequence. Though Trollope could
have played out the murder and trial in Wilkie Collins fashion, he opts to
clear Phineas almost immediately and then disposes of the formidable
circumstantial evidence arrayed against him in a series of well-executed
forensic vignettes. Along the way, Trollope also delivers up two characters
that have no doubt inspired the wrath of many a postmodern academic.
The Perpetrator Revealed
The Reverend Mr. Joseph
Emilius, a clergyman from Prague, is introduced somewhat awkwardly just before
the fateful quarrel between Finn and Bonteen. Emilius will be exposed as a
fraud and a bigamist and eventually as the perpetrator of the murder. Before
these revelations, however, we learn something even more damning: Emilius is
not a Protestant clergyman, but a Jew named Yosef Mealyus, a man of low cunning
and grasping manipulation.
Along with the clandestine
Jew Mealyus, Trollope posits the possibly Jewish Madame Max Goesler. Trollope
lavishes a lengthy description of her oriental appearance and unique sense of
style. She also speaks with a slight accent and is thought to be Jewish either
by heritage or marriage. She is never a threat except when Glencora fears that
she may seduce the old Duke of Omnium into marriage and produce a son that would
squeeze out Glencora’s own son and heir. Even the most open-minded reader can’t
help but cringe at passages such as “Heavens what a blow it would be should
some little wizen-cheeked half-monkey baby, with black brows, and yellow skin,
be brought forward and shown to [Glencora] someday as the heir! (PF 433)
Trollope would explore
much more objectionable Jewish stereotypes in the extraordinary novel The
Way We Live Now (1874–1875), but
his conception of Emilius and Madame Max should be considered in the context of
their roles in Phineas’s fortunes. All three are outsiders, but Emilius
imperils Phineas, while Madame Max saves him. Without sounding glib, perhaps
Trollope uses these characters’ ethnicity (real and imagined) as another form
of eccentricity, one dangerous and one safe. At what point, Trollope seems to
ask does eccentricity become transgression or deviancy?
Murder and Mayhem...and Progressive Change
These two novels also
include plenty of another form of social transgression and power: violence. We
are far from the rustic intrigues of the Barsetshire books. Overall, the
Palliser novels, especially the two in question here, bristle with murder and
mayhem. In addition to the bludgeoning death of Bonteen, there is a gunshot
wound (sustained by Phineas in his duel with Lord Chiltern), a near-fatal
horse-riding accident (Phineas saves Lord Chiltern), a nighttime garroting
attempt against Lady Laura’s husband Robert Kennedy (foiled by Phineas), and
Kennedy’s attempted murder of Phineas (the bullet merely grazes his manly
whiskers). Trollope is seldom accused of being a modernist, but he did write
during a period of sustained urbanization. These forces along with a main
character undergoing a crisis of consciousness and being involved in so many
acts of misdirected passion and senseless violence undoubtedly shares quite a
bit with literature of the early twentieth century.
Much of his treatment of
Phineas is an attempt to pursue what Trollope called the theory of “the state
of progressive change” (Auto XVII), a theme developed at length in the Palliser
novels. As Trollope scholar Juliet McMaster has pointed out, the duration and
depth of the Palliser series allowed the author to explore an almost
psychoanalytic evolution of self, one in which individuals move from energetic
and blissful unselfconsciousness to a “crisis of self-consciousness” that, in
Phineas’s case, completely alters his view of the entire world around him.
Phineas himself states this theory with a phrase from Juvenal: “no one at an
instance—of a sudden—becomes most base” (PR 441).
A Reason to Believe
Trollope subtly explores
this idea by revealing character to be a mix of public and private, as a
construct of one’s inner moral compass as well as exterior influences. He does
this with a technique so subtle that it is almost overlooked: the repeated use
of the word “believe.”
Though it is a common word
in the English language, from Chapter 47 of Phineas Redux, when the murder is discovered to the end of the
book, “believe” or “belief” appears frequently. The facts of Bonteen’s
murder—weapon, motive, eyewitness testimony—all point to Phineas, but some
believe he did it, others refuse to believe it, and some don’t know what to
believe. Trollope asserts almost immediately after the news has broken that
“The reader need hardly be told that, as regards this great offence, that
Phineas Finn was as white as snow” (PR 390). In spite of an ironclad assurance
from the author, gossip, hearsay, the prejudices of the media, all conspire to
challenge the reader’s belief of Phineas’s innocence. Is it any wonder that the
characters in the book (without the benefit of our omniscient viewpoint) are so
easily swayed?
It is only when Phineas
has passed through his crisis of consciousness that he can divest himself of
certain perceptions and prejudices. When the arrogance of youth has faded, he
matures and acknowledges the real instrument of his salvation: Madame Max. Her
connections to Eastern Europe, seen as obscure and menacing earlier in the
novels, become essential when she finds proof that Emilius, not Phineas, is Bonteen’s
murderer. Her telegrams to London stop the trial and lead to Phineas’s quick
acquittal. Not even the indefatigable Glencora has the ability to stop the
wheels of justice and free an innocent man from prison.
Modern readers are often
put off by Trollope’s inclination to sermonize, but these digressions are
really more like signposts. Trollope knows he has a captive audience, but he is
generally motivated by the exigencies of plot or character. The forces at work
in the Trollopian universe include honor, class, rationality, and, to a certain
extent, predictability. But it is not such a bad thing for an author to make
clear where he stands.
With these two novels,
however, Trollope arrives at a new footing that is surprisingly prescient and
keeps him relevant to modern audiences. Phineas has a decidedly dark side, one
that Juliet McMaster sees with good reason as Hardy-esque: “There is no match,
[Phineas Redux] suggests,
between deserts and rewards, guilt and punishment. The whole system of values
is vitiated, and priorities are reversed or falsified.” This discontinuity is
pervasive throughout all strate of society and in individuals such as Phineas.
Where Hardy, however, would give us despair, we know with Trollope that we can
count on the happy ending. For Phineas, though, the cost of this good fortune
is high.
© 2009 Leann Davis Alspaugh. All rights reserved.
Photograph: Anthony Trollope in the 1860s, carte de visite, National Portrait Gallery, London; illustrations: “You must come” [Duke of Omnium and Madame Max], John Everett Millais reproduced from the first edition published by Virtue and Company in 1869, www.anthonytrollope.com; “I do not choose that there should be a riot here” [Lord Chiltern and Phineas], John Everett Millais reproduced from the first edition published by Virtue and Company in 1869, www.anthonytrollope.com
Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office.