You are quite right about Trollope’s specificity – thanks for pointing this out. I had to go back and read the passages about her again.
I’d been thinking “but don’t the other characters say all sorts of contradictory things about her?” and that is also true. Mrs. Proudie, for example, says “She has only one leg” – but that’s Mrs. Proudie, whose perceptions we are generally not invited to share.
So the signora’s injury becomes obscured as a social signifier among the characters, but – as he announces at the beginning – Trollope is going to deal fairly with the reader, and we already know the facts. It's not unlike the global assumption that Eleanor will marry Mr. Slope just because she refuses to be rude to him.
This diss. has just improved by great bounds. Thanks!
no subject
You are quite right about Trollope’s specificity – thanks for pointing this out. I had to go back and read the passages about her again.
I’d been thinking “but don’t the other characters say all sorts of contradictory things about her?” and that is also true. Mrs. Proudie, for example, says “She has only one leg” – but that’s Mrs. Proudie, whose perceptions we are generally not invited to share.
So the signora’s injury becomes obscured as a social signifier among the characters, but – as he announces at the beginning – Trollope is going to deal fairly with the reader, and we already know the facts. It's not unlike the global assumption that Eleanor will marry Mr. Slope just because she refuses to be rude to him.
This diss. has just improved by great bounds. Thanks!