Economic Meltdown, 1875-Style (7/21/09)

OK, readers. I have a problem. A nineteenth-century British lit problem. I'm kind of an addict. You can have all of your modern writers and your oh-so-now novels. It's Anthony Trollope for me, my lovelies.

Case in point:

The year: 1875.
The scene: London. Trollope had been out of the country, and he was shocked—shocked!—by the sordid state of affairs he found when he returned. And so a novel was born.
The modern hook: The story revolves around one Augustus Melmotte, a dodgy financier who threatens the city's economic stability. (Yes, Wall Street? You rang?)
The book: The Way We Live Now.


My gal Filmi Girl had been bugging me to read some Anthony Trollope, but I wasn’t sold till I realized the BBC had made a miniseries of The Way We Live Now, 'cause the BBC has faboo taste in period dramas, the old dears. It's been a year or so since I read it, but Melmotte and company are much more relevant now that our American moneylenders have been ravaging the world than it was back in the golden days of 2008, when the land was rife with milk and honey and people had jobs and houses.

And so it goes. I’m not sure where to begin praising this particular 825-page tome (825! For reals!), but I love love love it. Yes, Trollope paints his high-society characters as anti-Semites (welcome to the 1800s, kidz). Yes, those same characters believe that Brits are intrinsically superior to Americans—and other foreigners, as well. Yes, I gasped when prim Miss Carbury refers to the “nasty American woman.” (Who are you calling nasty, bitch? Unlike you, Mrs. Hurtle, TWWLN's token American, does not at any point consider going in for some COUSINCEST. Jaysus.)

But Trollope is so delightful! TWWLN is like an 825-page edition of Us Weekly (Barack Obama: He's just like Us!), but without the guilt—because it’s literature, y’all, not celeb gossip. And yet it most definitely is gossip—stickin' it to the Victorians for corruption, snobbery, and general rakishness. All of his characters are fully developed, and he's unnervingly attuned to behavioral characteristics—I should no more like to be judged by Mr. Trollope than I would by Miss Austen, that’s for effing certain.

And, by the bye, the above-mentioned Mrs. Hurtle is all kinds of badass. Trollope implies that we should disapprove of her “manly” actions and states that she herself would prefer to be more “feminine.” But his mild censure of her rockin’ independent behavior does not stop us from disagreeing with him—much like Shakespeare’s disapproval of Cleopatra does not stop us from understanding that she is one awesome bitch, and that Antony’s downfall is his own damn fault. Holla.


But consider yourself warned: The miniseries captures the overall insidious spirit of the book, but our pal Andrew Davies (writer of Pride & Prejudice '95, among other period gems) goes overboard this time, very definitely altering the content of character personalities and handling Mrs. Hurtle's story most infamously. I think "a good healthy boinkfest" would probably sort him out, but that's another post entirely, isn't it? At any rate, don't let that sway your opinion of the book. Which is awesome.