Feminism, fiction and contract theory: Trollope's 'He Knew He Was Right.'

Criticism, Summer, 1994 by Wendy Jones

What is Trollope's position vis a vis these feminist arguments? Given his focus on women's issues, it is not surprising that critics have often debated the extent and nature of Trollope's liberal views regarding women. In general, they conclude that despite the progressive tendencies in many of his novels (particularly those of the 1860s), he is fundamentally ambivalent about feminism.(20) But if He Knew He Was Right is not unambiguously valuable as feminist polemic, it is nevertheless valuable to feminist polemic. This is because it espouses an ideal of married love that, as we have seen, has already been articulated within the discourse of Lockean contract. Thus by wholeheartedly endorsing marriage for love, and by following through on the contractual implications for women of that endorsement, He Knew He Was Right exemplifies the connections between married love, the domestic ideal, progress, and liberty that Victorian feminists invoked. In this case, Trollope's "feminism" has less to do with his attitude toward women than with his attitude toward marriage.

Like nearly all of Trollope's novels, He Knew He Was Right shows that for those fortunate enough to find love in the world, marriage is a joy as well as a duty, while marrying without love is a sin. When Hugh Stanbury, the novel's hero, deliberates about whether or not to marry on his small income, "there came upon him some dim ideal of self-abnegation,--that ... the poetry of his life, was, in fact, the capacity of caring more for other human beings than for himself."(21) Nora Rowley (the woman he loves and Emily's sister) reaches a similar conclusion, rejecting a brilliant match with the future Lord Peter-borough because she does not love him. Characters who use marriage for economic or social advancement, such as the French sisters, come in for heavy punishment. It is better to lead the lonely and penurious life of a spinster, like Hugh's sister, Priscilla Stanbury, than to marry without love.

If marriage for love is a duty, it is also a right--a right that even justifies female rebellion, as the stories of Nora and Dorothy Stanbury show. Marriage for love, in other words, legitimates a woman's desires and choices, recognizing the very personhood and autonomy of which the law would deprive her after marriage. When Nora's parents forbid her to marry Hugh, she firmly insists both that she will marry the man she loves and that it is her right to do so: "There is a time when a girl must be supposed to know what is best for herself, --just as there is for a man" (658).

Dorothy also exercises her right to choose her husband freely. When her aunt and adoptive guardian, Miss Stanbury, informs her that plans have been readied for her marriage to a local clergyman, Mr. Gibson, Dorothy refuses. Miss Stanbury is shocked that Dorothy, with her meager fortune and poor prospects, would dare to reject such an offer, which includes her own generous gift of 2000 pounds: "An offer from an honest man, with her friends' approval, and a fortune at her back as though she had been born with a gold spoon in her mouth! And she tells me that she can't, and won't, and would't, and shouldn't, as though I were asking her to walk the streets" (342). But Miss Stanbury is indeed asking Dorothy to "walk the streets" insofar as she is asking her to prostitute herself--to negate her desires (she shudders when she thinks of embracing Mr. Gibson) and to commodify herself, exchanging her person and devotion for a good establishment. Not only does Dorothy assert her right to veto her aunt's choice of husband, but later she engages herself to the man she loves despite her aunt's disapproval.