Another Young Trollope

[ellenkushner]

When you write historical/ historical fantasy novels, you need to be able to imagine looking at the world through very different eyes.   One of the best ways to do this is by reading source material:  text from an earlier period, in which cultural suppositions are clearly stated - and usually unexamined by the writer . . . Unless, that is, he is the great Anthony Trollope!  

This passage from  his  Phineas Finn (1867-9)  caught my attention, as it describes a young woman, an aristocrat from a powerful political family*, who is not universally admired - in part because what we now call her "body language" confuses people:

She was...about five feet seven in height, and she carried her height well.
There was something of nobility in her gait, and she seemed thus to be taller than her inches.
Her hair was in truth red -- of a deep thorough redness..... But in these days we have got to like red hair,
and Lady Laura's was not supposed to stand in the way of her being considered a beauty.
Her face was very fair, though it lacked that softness which we all love in women....
Her complexion was very bright, but in spite of its brightness she never blushed.
The shades of her complexion were set and steady.
Those who knew her said that her heart was so fully under command that
nothing could stir her blood to any sudden motion. As to that
accusation of straggling which had been made against her, it had
sprung from ill-natured observation of her modes of sitting. She never
straggled when she stood or walked; but she would lean forward when
sitting, as a man does, and would use her arms in talking, and would
put her hand over her face, and pass her fingers through her hair,-
after the fashion of men rather than of women;-and she seemed to
despise that soft quiescence of her sex in which are generally found
so many charms. Her hands and feet were large,-as was her whole frame.
Such was Lady Laura Standish,,,,

Shades of Jo March!*


*Daughter of the Earl of Brentford and sister of Lord Chiltern. Greatly interested in politics, she maintained a distinguished salon in London" -- anthonytrollope.com 

** Little Women published 1868-69 as well!

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Lady Laura Standish is one of my favorite characters in T.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yes, and oh is she going to pay for her lack of maidenly reserve.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

It makes me yearn for the days of the omniscient narrative voice, when you could get away so much more easily with that kind of description.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Yes!!! But it seems to me that In Genre is one of the last bastions of narrative flexibility - no?

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Also, I've noticed that "complexion" as a facet of description seems to have fallen by the wayside. I mean, I'm not even sure what a "bright" complexion is. Pale, I presume, but what else? Ruddy and dark and sallow and bright complexions are all over the place in older literature, but I hardly see it used nowadays.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

When you have a country where pretty much everyone has what we think of as being the same colour skin, people who live there tend to see huge differences in the shading of their own skin tones, and everyone else (from elsewhere, seen rarely) with different skin colours as identical. At least, I've noticed this with British writers in the past, and also with Chinese writers. I think Trollope probably was capable of distinguishing these things and did it naturally. I know what he means by them, though I wouldn't use them. (Bright means clear white skin, not especially pale, pink cheeks, not too flushed.) But he couldn't distinguish between an African and an Indian.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

<light bulb goes on>

Thank you for making that click into place in my head. It makes perfect sense now.

[paulshandy.livejournal.com]

My Chinese students see shades between each other, but think people from India are black. I've also had plenty of Chinese students refer to themselves as yellow, so I usually tell them to use the word "tan" if they go to America to study.

[paulshandy.livejournal.com]

Genre and narrative flexibility reminds me of when I read up on polymer science to court a graduate student in that department. It's basically the science of arranging atoms/compounds of material to be flexible in one direction and rigid in another, agile in one direction and tough in another. Each genre is a different literary polymer. Hell, each writer might be a different polymer, but similar enough to get lumped together by the marketers.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I'm just enjoying the sight of an author who knows how to use British noble titles correctly. So few these days do.