He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope (Oxford University Press, 1978)

 

He Knew He Was Right, first published in 1869, is a very long, many-charactered, and intricately-plotted novel about marriage.  During the course of its 900+ pages, we watch while one marriage tragically unravels, three marriages are happily consummated, several engagements are broken, and a number of proposals are refused.

The marriage at the center of the book is the one destroyed by jealousy on the part of the husband (Louis Trevalyn) and willfulness on the part of the wife (Emily Trevalyn).  He suspects her not of infidelity but of a perhaps compromising friendship with an older man, and when she refuses to cut all ties with this scoundrel, a gulf opens between them that cannot be bridged.

Meanwhile, Emily's sister, the independent and spirited Nora, rejects an offer of marriage from a charming Lord-to-be because she loves a man who has no money and works as a journalist for a penny newspaper, which is considered ungentlemanly.  And Dorothy, the sister of the journalist, who is living with her fiercely controlling maiden aunt, manages to avoid an arranged marriage with a foolish local cleric, instead happily marrying the heir to her aunt's considerable fortune.  A few subplots, also dealing with engagements and marriages complete the plot(s).

The book is set in England (Exeter and London) and Italy (Florence and Siena).  Perhaps because we have so many main characters and so many relationships to consider, our sympathies are attenuated and the strong and pleasurable connection a Trollope reader often feels for the book's hero and heroine is missing here.  The characters have less time on the page  to reveal themselves and charm us, so we must take many of these love relationships on faith.  This makes the book somewhat less satisfying than those Trollope novels that are more exclusively centered on one (or two) relationships -- a deprivation that is partially compensated for with the book's richness of plot and characters.

So: a good, but not great, Trollope novel.