Posted: November 7, 2024

Great Stories are Forever

by Ruth Julian

As writers, you always want to be pushing the boundaries of your reading. With that in mind, I've turned this month's article over to my business partner, personal editor, fellow writer, and wife. Ruth can't go very long without going back to her very favorite genre, nineteenth-century British novels, and her expertise far exceeds mine. Enjoy.

When I'm altogether tired of modern novels with their political correctness, literary preciousness, and occasional whiffs of meaninglessness -- when I am, in short, weary of the modern world -- I go back to my best reading joy: British novels of the mid-nineteenth century.

It was such a prodigious age for stories that the variety of novels written is enough to suit every reader-writer. One of my favorites is Thackery, where we meet the deplorable Becky Sharp, who lands herself in Brussels just in time for the battle of Waterloo. Thackery's description of that world-changing carnage is the best account of the battle that I have ever seen in any source in literature or history. For those who would like to discover what womanhood is all about, what kind of depressed and diminished history we have triumphantly overcome, there are many nineteenth century sources. Think of the helplessness of a woman in a terrible marriage in The Mill on the Floss, or the misery of the sweet, young governess, Jane Eyre, betrayed by her arrogant and lordly employer.

But when I settle into a novel by my favorite author, Anthony Trollope, I am at home in a world where the characters are as modern and familiar as those around me in my own life. And his female characters are always as real as I am myself.

Lately, I've been revisiting The Chronicles of Barset, his most famous works (with possible competition from The Pallisers). One of my favorites is Dr. Thorne, the account of a country doctor with no pretentions as to his profession. He is looked down on by those who cater only to the health of the upper class because he charges the same modest fee to everyone, rich or poor. He takes responsibility for his brother's great sin in sexually forcing a dependent servant girl. After the death of the rapist, the servant falls in love with a man of her class who wants to emigrate to America but does not want to raise another man's child. Dr. Thorne takes responsibility for the infant Mary, has her looked after with friends at a distance through infancy, and gives her a fine education, and brings her as a young adult to Barsetshire and introduces her to the world as his niece.

Of course, she and the heir to the nearest stately home fall madly in love, though she is a penniless, illegitimate child, and his father has encumbered the vast acreage of his property with countless debts, so he must marry money. The novel follows the story of how these two unlikely lovers find their happy ending against fearsome odds.

In the not-yet-formed structure of nineteenth-century novels, the author can do whatever he or she pleases and often does. So don't be put off by, say, the interruption in Mary's story for a corrupt election. Trollope's father running for Parliament in a corrupt election nearly bankrupted the family, so Trollope has much he wants to share and nothing to stop him. If you find these excursions into the author's concerns tedious, speed read through them or skip them altogether.

But other places where the standards of a novel were rough and unformed show in splendid detail in how the writer wrote. Watch how Trollope creates Mary's appearance out of thin air.

Of her personal appearance it certainly is my business as an author to say something. She is my heroine, and, as such, must necessarily be very beautiful; but, in truth, her mind and inner qualities are more clearly distinct to my brain than her outward form and features. I know that she was far from being tall, and far from being showy; that her feet and hands were small and delicate; that her eyes were bright when looked at, but not brilliant so as to make their brilliancy palpably visible to all around her; her hair was dark brown, and worn very plainly brushed from her forehead; her lips were thin, and her mouth, perhaps, in general inexpressive, but when she was eager in conversation it would show itself to be animated with curves of wonderous energy; and, quiet as she was in manner, sober and demure as was her usual settled appearance, she could talk, when the fit came on her, with an energy which in truth surprised those who did not know her; aye, and sometimes those who did. Energy! Nay, it was occasionally a concentration of passion, which left her for the moment perfectly unconscious of all other cares but solicitude for that subject which she might then be advocating.

So find your way into your own favorite nineteenth century novel, learn the basics when novelists were just learning them themselves, and bring it back to modern writing. There are great novels waiting to be written all around us.