Husbands, wives, and lawyers: Gender roles and professional representation in Trollope and the Adelaide Bartlett case

College Literature, Winter 1998 by Reiter, Paula Jean

Turning now to a historical court case, we can see a defense built on similar assumptions about what it means to be a "wife" and what responsibilities a "husband" incurs when he takes command of a woman's fortune and conduct. By juxtaposing Trollope's fiction with one of the most notorious and widely reported criminal trials of the century, I hope to highlight their shared assumptions and projects. The Bartlett case, like Orley Farm, grapples with problems of legal representation, particularly the representation of a woman who has lacked male representation most of her life.

The trial of Adelaide Bartlett for the murder of her husband raises questions similar to those about character and representation that Trollope explores in his fiction. The strategy Bartlett's barrister employs to defend her in the face of overwhelming evidence of her guilt mirrors the strategy used by Mr. Furnival. Adelaide must agree to be silent and abandon self-direction to secure the aid of counsel and to play convincingly the role that her defense demands of her-the same sacrifices Mason found so difficult to make in her first marriage. Finally, as in the case of Lady Mason, the marital exchange(s) involving Adelaide Bartlett brings to the fore the question of a woman's selfpossession-of who owned Adelaide and who was responsible for her, and the costs and benefits of claiming the right to represent her. By placing a parallel discussion of this 1886 historical trial after my discussion of Trollope's 1861 novel, I am not proposing that the Bartlett case consciously borrowed from Trollope's work. Instead, I argue that both proceed from a shared cultural context and a similar professional-client dynamic.

THE PIMLICO MYSTERY

In the spring of 1886, Londoners were intrigued by an extraordinary tale of marriage, sex, poison, and murder that the papers came to dub "The Pimlico Mystery." The inquest provided great copy, and the trial itself turned into public entertainment, complete with fashionable ladies, smelling salts, and temporary hustings to provide additional seating.7 Londoners crowded the courtroom and eagerly snatched up evening papers to see and read about Adelaide Bartlett, accused of poisoning her husband on New Year's Eve. While critics often note the extraordinarily "real" quality to Trollope's fiction, this "real life" crime and subsequent trial took on the qualities of fiction-commanding a large audience, serializing information, and exposing extraordinary events. But most striking, a reading of the Bartlett trial breaks down the distinctions between "life" and "fiction" by revealing the extent to which legal representation, and by extension all representation, is constructed, motivated, narrated, and interlocked with broader cultural assumptions.

The Bartlett drama opened on April 9, 1875, with the marriage of Adelaide Blanche de la Tremoille and Thomas Edwin Bartlett. Adelaide's father arranged the marriage of his illegitimate daughter to Bartlett, ten years her senior, after only one meeting.8 Historians surmise that although likely from distinguished circles himself, Adelaide's father arranged this middle-class marriage as the best compromise he could make: trading a sum of money (which Bartlett invested in his business) for a legitimizing family name for his daughter.9 Bartlett was to take responsibility for Adelaide-give her a name and a social place, and manage her money and conduct. How well Mr. Bartlett fulfilled this role as the man responsible for Adelaide's social, legal, and economic representation became an issue after his death. During the trial, Mr. Bartlett compares unfavorably with the able representation of Mrs. Bartlett's barrister.