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Persuasions #15, 1993 Pages 32-36
Pride and Prejudice
and Framley Parsonage: A Structural Resemblance BARBARA HORWITZ Department of English, C. W. Post Campus of
Long Island University, Greenvale, NY Jane Austen completed six full length novels during her lifetime;
Anthony Trollope completed more than forty novels, as well as shorter fiction
and non-fiction pieces. He never seemed
to have any difficulty finding ideas for novels, and only once did he admit to
using someone else’s idea for a plot.1 It seems to me, however, that Pride and Prejudice may well
have supplied Trollope with many of the essential ingredients of the plot of Framley
Parsonage. Both novels involve unequal marriages. Very rich young men insist on marrying
relatively poor young women despite the objections of close relatives on both
sides; particular objections are raised by the young man’s mother or
mother-figure. According to the
conventional wisdom as recorded in the conduct books, an unequal marriage would
eventually cause great unhappiness to the apparently fortunate young woman who,
not having been brought up to riches and social prominence, would be unable to
carry out the responsibilities they entailed, and would eventually be destroyed
by them (West 110-12). Jane Austen laughed at the notion that great riches
could be a hindrance to any right-minded, intelligent woman, as she laughed at
so many instances of the conventional wisdom.
In Pride and Prejudice, she makes clear that her definition of an
unequal marriage is one that involves inequality of intellect such as the
marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet.2
Their daughter, Elizabeth, has inherited the intellectual abilities of
her father. Her social status, too, is
that of a gentleman’s daughter, but her father has not provided for her
financially. She is not strikingly
attractive; her sister Jane is the beautiful member of the family. Despite these drawbacks, and that disastrous
first impression, Fitzwilliam Darcy, the master of Pemberley with an income of
£10,000 a year, falls in love with Elizabeth and proposes. He has been attracted to her he says by her
“fine eyes” (27), and has come to admire her for the “liveliness of her mind”
(380). Since Jane Austen dramatizes their encounters,
it is clear to the reader that Elizabeth’s intelligence and charm have won
Darcy. He does, however, hesitate to
propose to her, not because of her comparative poverty and lack of exalted
social position, but because her father is eccentric and her mother and sisters
are ill-bred. He does not propose to
her, in fact, until she is visiting Mr. and Mrs. Collins. When Darcy is out of the orbit of her family,
and within the orbit of his, since he is staying with his aunt, Lady Catherine
DeBourgh, who is quite as ill-mannered as Mrs. Bennet, he falls so much in love
with Elizabeth that he decides to overlook “her inferiority” and “its being a
degradation” (189) and propose. To his
amazement she turns him down. The
conduct books would have said she should turn him down because of the disparity
in their incomes and social position.
She, however, refuses him because of what she supposes is his
maltreatment of Wickham, who is dependent on him, because he has broken up the
love affair between his friend Bingley and her sister Jane, and because he has
disparaged her family. Finally, she
accuses him of un-gentlemanly conduct. He is stung and writes her a letter justifying
himself. She then learns he was correct
in his behavior toward Wickham. She has
always known her family did not conduct itself properly but this becomes even
more painfully evident when her sister Lydia runs off with Wickham. This occurs shortly after she meets Darcy at
Pemberley where she finds that he is not only universally beloved but also that
he has a magnificent estate.3
Because of Lydia’s misbehavior, however, she is sure she has lost Darcy. But when Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine DeBourgh,
Darcy’s closest older female relative, who is as impolite as Mrs. Bennet,
demands that Elizabeth refuse Darcy’s proposal because her social position is
lower than his, she refuses. As a
gentleman’s daughter, she is his equal, and she will not deny that she would
accept another proposal from him. This
gives Darcy, who has saved Lydia by financing her marriage to Wickham, the
impetus to propose again. Elizabeth
accepts and they live happily ever after, partly by managing not to spend much
time with those members of their families they dislike. Did Anthony Trollope remember Elizabeth as he
was writing Framley Parsonage?
According to his Autobiography, as a young man he had already
decided, “Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the English
language” (41). Certainly the
similarities between the two novels are too numerous to be coincidental. Trollope’s heroine, Lucy Robards, like
Elizabeth Bennet, is a gentleman’s daughter, only poorer and worse situated, an
orphan, totally dependent on her brother, and not conventionally
attractive. Despite this, Lord Lufton
falls in love with her. He is of age,
very rich, and totally his own master.
But when he proposes to Lucy, she refuses him. Not because he has insulted her family (Lord Lufton is very fond
of her brother, his closest friend), but because she has been told his mother
does not want him to marry her. Lady Lufton is not quite as rude as Lady
Catherine and the reader is told she is a good and charitable lady, but it is
her snobbishness and bad judgment that Trollope dramatizes. The reader sometimes sees her forced to
yield but is not shown her often-discussed kindness. She wishes her son to marry Griselda Grantley who is beautiful
but heartless and insipid. Appearances
easily deceive her. Lady Catherine had
wanted Darcy to marry her daughter who is also thoroughly insipid and announces
to Elizabeth that she and Darcy’s mother had engaged the two of them to each
other when they were babies. While
Elizabeth refuses to recognize such an engagement (357), Lucy, despite the fact
that she knows that Lord Lufton should not marry Griselda, accedes to Lady
Lufton’s request to leave the field to that young woman. Elizabeth refuses to utter falsehoods to Lady
Catherine about her feelings towards Darcy.
Lucy, on the other hand, does lie to Lord Lufton about her feelings
towards him, causing the two of them great suffering. Trollope mentions in his Autobiography that he wishes to
make “young men and women believe that truth in love will make them happy”
(225). Lucy has sinned against the
truth, but neither the narrator nor any other character, except Lord Lufton,
disapproves of her actions. Her slavish
adherence to social convention gives her little choice. The reader is again reminded of Jane Austen
when Lucy assesses her own behavior and realizes her underlying motivation has
been pride. Why
-oh! why had she told such a falsehood?
Could anything justify her in a lie – knowing as she did that she loved
him with all her loving heart: But,
then, his mother! and the sneers of the
world, which would have declared that she had set her trap, and caught the
foolish young lord! Her pride would not
have submitted to that. Strong as her
love was, yet her pride was perhaps stronger …
(198-99) Lucy’s pride is different from Elizabeth’s but
both women underestimate the men they love.
Even when Elizabeth learns that Darcy is truly an exemplary person, she
cannot believe he would consent to have Wickham for a brother-in-law. Lucy cannot believe Lord Lufton will remain
constant to her after she has refused him.
But when he does remain constant to her and proposes again, she refuses
him once more despite the pain they have endured. She will only consent to marry him if his mother asks her to do
so! Meanwhile, just as Lydia Bennet faced social
disgrace for her seduction by Wickham, Lucy’s brother, Mark Robards, faces
social disgrace for allowing himself to be seduced into bankruptcy by ambition
for worldly advancement. He has
co-signed notes of financial obligation for Mr. Sowerby. As Darcy blames himself for not warning the
Bennets about Wickham’s immorality, Lufton blames himself for not warning Mark
strongly enough against Sowerby’s dishonesty.
As Darcy rescues
Lydia, Lufton rescues Mark.4 Eventually, Lord Lufton does prevail upon his
mother to propose to Lucy. Lady Lufton
has been impressed by Lucy’s selflessness.5 She also realizes her son’s happiness
depends on his marrying Lucy. Lucy’s
pride remains an issue, but by the end of the novel her pride has become more
reasonable. The reader is told, “her
pride was of that sort which is in no way disgraceful to either man or woman”
(579). With Lady Lufton’s approval, they marry and Lucy
enters the great world without any harm to herself or the Lufton family. Unlike Elizabeth and Darcy who flee the
relations they do not love, however, the newly married Luftons live with Lady
Lufton, and apparently allow her to regulate their lives. As the narrator assures us, “it is well
known to every one at Framley that old Lady Lufton still reigns paramount
…” (581). The similarities in the situation of Austen’s
young lovers and Trollope’s are too many to be accidental. Just as Lucy is staying with her brother, a
clergyman, and his wife, Elizabeth is staying with a clergyman who is related
to her and a friend who is as close to her as a sister. Mr. Collins is more obviously a foolish man
than Mark Robards, but Mr. Robards, although he says fewer foolish things than
Mr. Collins does, certainly acts much more foolishly in endorsing Sowerby’s
notes. To summarize: the similarities include the
lovers’ unequal social and economic situations, their initial disdain for each
other, an overbearing and interfering older female relative, a sibling in need
of rescue, the initial proposal and refusal, the heroine’s surprise at the
moral worth and constancy of the hero, a second, more favorably received
proposal, suspicion that the heroine’s motives are mercenary, and the eventual
marriage and settling down happily on the family property. Structural elements of the plots of the two
novels are very similar but the two heroines are quite different. It is not difficult to account for these
differences. Jane Austen was 21 when
she began First Impressions, the early version of Pride and Prejudice. Although she never scorned propriety and has
generally been supposed to identify with the religiously and politically
conservative land-owning gentry, recent studies such as those of Claudia
Johnson, Mary Poovey and others have shown,6 that she certainly
rejected many of the principles of patriarchy, and a careful reading of her
novels demonstrates that she always sides with sensible young women against
their unprincipled or foolish elders. Trollope, on the other hand, was a 46-year-old
man when he wrote Framley Parsonage.
He identified with what he would have considered the norm: a patriarchal
society controlled by the land-owning and professional classes. It is hardly surprising that he would create
a more submissive heroine. Incidentally, Trollope’s “borrowing” elements
of the plot of Pride and Prejudice to use in Framley Parsonage is
not an isolated case. In his The
Small House at Allington (1864), a young romantic heroine, living with her
widowed mother and less emotional sister, in a small house provided by a
relative, falls in love with a cad, who deserts her for what he thinks will be
a more socially and financially advantageous match. He suffers for his misdeed, but she is affected much more
terribly, sickens and nearly dies.
Eventually, however, she recovers her health and good spirits. Clearly, Trollope also read Sense and
Sensibility.7 NOTES 1 His brother suggested the plot of Dr. Thorne (1858). Although the novel was a great success,
Trollope regretted using his brother’s idea (Autobiography 115). 2 Mr. Collins’ marriage to Charlotte Lucas also involves an inequality of
intellect, but it seems to be more successful, possibly because the woman is
the more intelligent spouse. 3 The age considered the beauty of an estate to be an indication of its
owner’s moral excellence (Litz 103,190). 4 It should be noted that Trollope particularly mentions Lydia Bennet as
a “dishonored woman” in his Autobiography (223). 5 She has not only done everything in her power to discourage Lord
Lufton’s attentions, despite the fact that she loves him, she has also risked
her life to care for Mrs. Cawley, who is suffering from typhus. 6 Christine Marshall in ‘ “Dull Elves” and Feminists,’ Persuasions
1992, provides an extensive bibliography of current feminist thought regarding
Jane Austen (45). 7 Lily Dale does not recover enough to marry Johnny Eames, her true
lover, in The Small House at Allington.
In The Last Chronicle of Barset, the narrator announces she will
never marry (825). WORKS CITED Chapman, R. W., ed. Pride and Prejudice.
The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, Vol. 2, 3rd. ed., Oxford, 1966. —. Sense
and Sensibility. The Oxford illustrated
Jane Austen, Vol. 2, 3rd. ed., Oxford, 1966. Johnson, Claudia. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1988. Litz, Walton.
Jane Austen: A Study of her Artistic Development. Oxford, 1965. Marshall, Christine. ‘ “Dull Elves” and Feminists: A Summary of Feminist Criticism of Jane Austen.’ Persuasions 1992, 39-45. Poovey, Mary.
The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works
of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1972. Trollope, Anthony. An Autobiography.
(1883). Oxford, 1950. —. Framley
Parsonage (1861). Oxford, 1980. —. The
Small House at Allington (1864).
Oxford, 1980. —. The
Last Chronicle of Barset (1867). Oxford, 1980. West, Jane.
Letters to a Young Lady in which the Duties and Character of Women
are Considered. 3 vols., 1806;
rpt. New York: Garland, 1974. |
