The Widow and Wedlock Novels of Frances Trollope

Book excerpt: The writings of Frances Trollope have been subject to increasing academic interest in recent years, and are now widely studied. This four-volume set includes scholarly editions of her four novels, in which her comical, yet subversive, treatment of Victorian marriage is an interesting contrast to some of the more earnest but conventional fiction of the time. At the time of their reception all four novels were considered to be the most hilarious and beloved of Trollope’s works. In their satire of Victorian marriage, they challenged and complicated the normative practices of getting married, being married, and getting married again. Trollope’s creation of strong, independent, older women is an antidote to other Victorian novelists’ portrayal of widows and spinsters, and her novels challenge our understanding of the characteristics of the novels of the 1830s and 1840s, especially in their depiction of Victorian gender dynamics as well as their influence on succeeding novels.