I read several books over my break (well, this one I'm going to talk about here was a FINISHING rather than a complete read). I find that train travel - even in a more spacious compartment where you don't have a person next to you that you worry about poking with a needle, or a small child in the car with sticky hands who has to "see" what you are making - is more conducive to reading than knitting for me.

So I read. It's actually one of the few times when I have "enforced downtime" where I CAN'T be thinking about data analysis or tweaking the information for teaching or stuff like that (I don't travel with my laptop. I refuse to travel with my laptop. It's kind of like my refusal to keep my cell phone turned on at certain times; it's my forcibly saying to myself and the world at large that I need to disconnect. Besides, I hate lugging the laptop, comparatively small though it may be, with me. That room in my bag is better devoted to books, IMHO.)

So the first book I finished was "The American Senator" by Trollope. I've been reading on this off and on since 2005 I think - I'd stall out and then have to go back and re-read large chunks because I lost the thread of the story.

There will be some spoilers here, but I believe this book is obscure enough - and it's not like it's a mystery or suspense novel that you read solely for the outcome - that I don't think the spoilers will offend too many.

(But if you do plan to read it someday and don't want details of the last third or so of the book revealed, feel free to skip).

This is one of those hugacious Victorian-era novels, with about seven different plot threads and well over 30 characters. Like a lot of Trollope's books, the main themes seem to be the interaction between the different classes, behaving properly (or badly, in the case of a couple characters) in society, and, for women in particular, making a "good" marriage.

One thing I will say that makes me a bit sad about the whole Victorian period is that it seems a "good" marriage is not how we would define it (that is: a happy marriage where the two people are more or less equal partners who share their lives, their joys, and their sorrows; and by sharing them multiply the joys and divide the sorrows). Rather, a "good" marriage is one that is socially or financially advantageous.

Now, in a few cases (I will mention one later), there is the good fortune that it is a "love match," but particularly among the gentry, it seems the expectations were these:

Women: marry "well" - marry for wealth and "good" surname. Once married, produce children, or at least a male heir.

Men: Select a woman who is attractive but not dull, choose someone who will not do outrageous things and dishonor the family. If she has a fortune of her own you can combine with yours, all the better.

It is apparently OK for men to marry a bit below themselves but not for women.

At any rate - it seems a rather narrow and claustrophobic world.

(As I've said before - if I somehow got myself teleported to that world - well, at this point I'd be far too old to have "seasons" or to be considered marriageable - but were I teleported to that world AND restored to an age of 20 or so, I'd probably wind up throwing my lot in with the Bohemians or becoming a Beatrix Potter-esque figure, trying to wrest some independence in the world.)

Trollope himself doesn't seem too contented with the way things are. He describes Arabella Trefoil's life:

"...then she remembered her age*, her many seasons, the hard work of her toilet, those tedious, long and bitter quarrels with her mother, the ever-renewed trouble of her smiles, the hopelessness of her future should she smile in vain to the last, and the countless miseries of her endless visitings..."

(*It seems that she is about 26 or so when this passage took place.)

True, Arabella Trefoil is one of the more detestable characters in Trollope's novels (at least those I have read): she is a little minx; she drops one suitor for a long-shot at one with more money. She is unpleasant to her mother, manipulates her aunt, uncle, and cousin. And most of all - she lies outright about an offer of marriage that was allegedly made when no one was present to witness it, with the hopes of entrapping the wealthy man into marrying her to protect his reputation (fortunately he escapes).

In the end, the wealthy Lord manages to get out of the trap. However, Arabella (as Trollope says) no longer has any strings to her bow - the rejected suitor, the kindly and decent John Morton has died (apparently of some hereditary weakness).

So Arabella is left- after all those years of smiling and doing up her hair and doubtless spending time around people she hates. And because of her peculiar family situation (her parents are effectively separated - they hate each other, it seems - but of course divorce is far too scandalous), she and her mother are a sort of Flying Dutchman, traveling from friends' house to relatives' house, staying three weeks here, a month there, never having anywhere to truly feel at home.

(You know, she really is more to be pitied than censured, to quote an old, old song)

In the end, Arabella does survive. She manages to charm the young Mounser Green (the new Paragon of the Foreign Service, following John Morton's death). He actually proposes to her (I found myself doing a bit of the old horror-movie, "No! No! Don't open that door!" when he did). And she will apparently be bound for Patagonia as that is to be Green's station.

(Mounser Green is one of those fascinating minor characters. I doubt he shows up elsewhere in Trollope - The American Senator is one of those one-off novels, not part of the Palliser series or the ecclesiastical series set in Barsetshire)

There is another "despicable" character in the book - the titular character, the American Senator, Elias Gotobed (from the "western state of Mikewa"). Gotobed has no qualms about taking the hospitality of the gentry, but then proceeds to run down their lives, their pastimes, how their Church is run...in other words, he is that person you really don't want to be next to at the dinner table, because he has a great number of opinions and makes free with them, sometimes in rather boorish terms.

He does mellow a bit by the end of the book - in his "great lecture" (which he has been taking notes for, and commenting on, and making clear that "this incident will be duly remarked" all along - almost a bit like the t-shirt I saw, "Careful...you might end up in my novel") he does express some affection for Britain, and some support of its people - the gentry, even.

But it's hard to like him - he is such a prickly figure, and violates so many of what I consider the rules of being a good guest, that it is hard to feel he has redeemed himself much with his lecture.

And the last thread that needed to be tied up? Young Mary Masters, and her fate.

This was the girl - the only child of the attorney Masters and his first wife - who was being pressured to marry Larry Twentyman - a good man, but a man she did not love "in that way." She did, however, love Reginald Morton (the cousin of the unfortunate John Morton).

Reginald, though, has no thought towards marriage - he is nearly 40 and a long-time bachelor, and because of an old family quarrel (or rather because of a particular disagreeable old woman), he is not particularly welcome in the family home.

And yet, he loves Mary. He doesn't want to admit it to himself - just as she cannot admit to others that she loves him because she thinks it is futile, that she is too far below him, and that he will take some "grand lady" for his wife.

But then John Morton dies. And things change: Reginald is now the owner of all the land and property John Morton owned (as he is the closest living heir, and John really did not despise his cousin, despite the meddling grandmother). And now it is incumbent upon Reginald to take a wife, rather than to live solo among his books and thoughts. (That old "passing on the family name" bit - I suppose prior to John Morton's final illness it was assumed he would produce the heir).

And then one day Reginald and Mary are walking together. And it somehow comes out - that each loves the other, even though the other did not know! And "of course" they must be married. And the assumption is that they will be happy...seeing as it is an actual "love match" and not some calculated, coldly-planned, fusion of properties as so many marriages seemed to be.

The book was - especially in the middle third - not as sunny and entertaining as most Trollope novels. The Introduction (written by John Halperin) points out that this was a later work of Trollope's, when he had become somewhat dissatisfied and disenchanted. (Though I do think Halperin overstates Trollope's sympathy for the Senator and his supposed hatred of the gentry class; the Senator is too difficult to like for me to see that, and there are cases where the gentry come off as better than some of the working-class characters or the Senator himself). Still, it was interesting to read, both as a good story and as a way of contrasting Victorian mores with those of today. (And once again: thank goodness I do not live in those times. Thank goodness I live in a society where deciding not to marry is a viable option, even for an upper-middle-class woman. And thank goodness there is no such thing as "seasons" any more; I cannot imagine devoting so much of one's life from the age of 18 until whatever time when one is "safely" married to hair and clothing and smiling at the right places and dancing well and being able to make the sort of insipid conversation that was part of that whole thing.)

Incidentally, if you want to read the book (and you enjoy reading things off a computer screen) there is a free online version of it.