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Understanding Trollope's Writing
Elaina Kelly
[1] British woman Frances Trollope's renowned Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), which created a sensation in both England and America, is filled with vivid and extravagant details about her travels around and residence in America. Trollope's wild comments about Thomas Jefferson and the "facts" surrounding the Sally Hemings controversy, for instance, are representative of her content and style:
-- "I have heard [Jefferson's] name coupled with deeds which would make the sons of Europe shudder. The facts I allude to are spoken openly by all" (73).
-- "Mr. Jefferson is said to have been the father of children by almost all of his numerous gang of female slaves" (73).
-- "If I know any thing of right or wrong, if virtue and vice be indeed something more than words, then was this great American an unprincipled tyrant and most heartless libertine" (74).
-- "The great, the immortal Jefferson himself, he who when past the three scores of years and ten, still taught young females to obey his nod, and so became the father of unnumbered generations of groaning slaves" (254).
Such comments were part of the chorus of hostile aspersions by British travelers hurled at Jefferson after his death that kept the Callender controversy alive. Let's try to understand what it actually was that led Trollope to make such intense assertions about the man synonymous with America.
Trollope Comes to America
[2] Frances Trollope enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle in England and expected a rich inheritance from her husband's uncle to keep her family at ease when their personal finances were on the decline. However, once the single, childless uncle married a younger woman, the Trollope family began to see the severity of their financial situation. Trollope's motive in going to America, then, was personal economics, not to write a travel book, as many readers assume. After her family steadily lost their fortune and gained extensive debt, Trollope decided that America would be the ideal place to venture in order to "break up her extravagant English home without revealing to all the world the real reasons" (Heinman 647).
[3] This decision came at the same time that Scotswoman Frances Wright was establishing the Nashoba colony in Tennessee, a utopian community in which she hoped, in the short run, to make a profit off slave labor and then, in the long run, to colonize the slaves into a different country. Wright "hoped to recruit prominent and enlightened Europeans for her utopian experiment" (Heinman 645), and, with her family's reputation and lifestyle in jeopardy, Trollope was an ideal candidate to join her. Trollope, then, went to America to become a part of this colony that held "a tenuous ideal that she was willing to believe in, in order to relieve a worsening situation at home" (Worth 19). She also thought this move would provide a good economic opportunity for her troubled son. Trollope was set on pursuing a life in America when she set off across the sea; she had no notion of writing a travel book because she saw herself becoming a resident.
[4] However, upon her arrival in America, Trollope was immediately dissatisfied, in fact almost horrified. Her description of the Mississippi River reveals her disgust. She says, "for several miles above its mouth, the Mississippi presents no objects more interesting than mud banks, monstrous bulrushes, and now and then a huge crocodile luxuriating in the slime" (26). Trollope describes what she saw as "utterly desolate" (25), and, attesting to her feelings, her description of the terrible sight at Nashoba goes on for pages. Though "Mrs. Trollope's letters clearly indicate that she had left England with the intention of remaining at Nashoba for the duration of her American stay," writes Tim Worth (19), however, within days she acquired a loan so she could move elsewhere.
[5] It is hard not to blame Trollope for having bitter feelings towards America; she had high hopes for the country's prospects and was utterly, and instantly, discouraged. This first impression she gathered while entering upon the Mississippi most likely set the tone for her entire stay and definitely contributed to the bitterness in her book. With her original plan in shambles, Trollope clearly no longer viewed America with high esteem, and from there on out her experience in the New World was overshadowed by a cloud of disappointment. The negative slant that she embraces throughout the text must be partially seen as caused by her first reaction upon arrival. So, like everything else she cites critically in her book, Jefferson too cannot be praised because he is an esteemed figure in the country that failed her.
Trollope's Assertive Voice
[6] Trollope's negative tone certainly is a result of disappointment, but her voice as an author is not one of a helpless woman. Rather, she has a voice of authority, which can be attributed to her need to over-compensate and hide her failures in America. As she travels onward from Nashoba, Trollope tries to become successful in American society; however, she is unable to achieve the status and economic means for which she searched.
[7] After Nashoba is a failure, Trollope ventures to Memphis with loaned money. "The dismal forests of western Tennessee had driven Frances Trollope in search for civilization," says Helen Heineman, an environment with which she was more accustomed (652). Trollope continues on to Cincinnati, a rapidly growing city in which she hoped to make a living for her family. In Cincinnati Trollope decided to begin selling high-end European goods as a means of business. Her husband, who had stayed behind in England, would buy the items to be sold by his wife and ship them to America. This project, like her initial one, was a failure. Her business idea wasn't a bad one, but, "although many other western river cities had diversified their economies, Cincinnati remained essentially commercial" (Heinman 653).
[8] During her time in Cincinnati Trollope attended a lecture given by Frances Wright, the woman who drew Trollope to America, on "the nature of true knowledge" (72). It was when Wright quoted Jefferson's famous phrase "all men are born free and equal" that Trollope took the time to critique the President. She writes, "This false and futile axiom, which has done, is doing, and will do so much harm to this fine country, came from Jefferson; and truly his life was a glorious commentary upon it. I pretend not to criticise his written works, but common sense enables me to pronounce this, his favourite maxim, false" (73). Much of her "factual" writing about his affair with Sally Hemings follows in this section of her book.
[9] Trollope headed to Virginia after her defeat in Cincinnati, and this was the place where she most likely began to see the opportunity to write a book. Trollope probably would have left America if she could; however, lack of the proper funds to pay for her and her family's return to England most likely forced her to stay. She also was probably not keen on the idea of admitting her failure: "she could not face old friends and admit the defeat of all her hopes and plans" (Heinman 655). Trollope's reluctance or inability to leave America, then, led to her venture writing a travel narrative. The style of her book attests to this; "from Baltimore on, the notebooks are arranged under topical headings; Cincinnati events are added long after their correct place in the time sequence" (Heinman 657).
[10] It is while she is traveling America that she writes a chapter on American "Literature, Extracts, Fine Arts, Education" in which Jefferson is again examined. Trollope spends a good portion of this chapter discussing the "cause[s] of inferiority in the national literature." It is in this section that Jefferson's works, along with his character, are defamed (250). Trollope writes, "Jefferson's posthumous works were very generally circulated while I was in America. They are a mighty mass of mischief" (253). She continues to call his writings "hollow and unsound" (253). Trollope is sure to make remarks regarding the integrity of American presidents: "It cannot, I think, be denied that the great men of America attain to power and to fame, by eternally uttering what they know to be untrue. American citizens are not equal" (253). Her chapter's subject is on the arts in America; however, she takes the time to criticize American presidents personally. Using Jefferson's written works as her lead in, Trollope again is able to address the Hemings affair and what she presumes was a larger ordeal. After criticizing Washington and Franklin, she returns to Jefferson saying, "the great, the immortal Jefferson himself, he who when past the three scores of years and ten, still taught young females to obey his nod, and so became the father of unnumbered generations of groaning slaves" (254).
[11] Trollope's embarrassment and her unwillingness to admit that America had been a failure must be a factor in her assertive voice. Writing a book about the horrors of America is much more appealing than writing a book about one's unexpected failure in America. Trollope did indeed have substantial experience in the country and was therefore an ideal person to narrate a travel book, but her account cannot be read without knowing about her tribulations: "Fanny Trollope may not be a fit witness against America, and her opinions may be the result of a narrow bias" (Worth 25). Domestic Manners is tainted by her quest for authority as a means of compensating and hiding her defeat in America: "She must shore against her failure--her failed idealism in a land of ideals, her failed speculation in a land of speculations; a failure of hopes and dreams" (Worth 24). Trollope, a woman coming from an elite social standing in England, tried to maintain her position as someone superior to the defeat she faced. Therefore, Trollope wrote a book in which she declared details, such as the one's about Jefferson, as "facts, because it was "necessary for her to sound authoritative, necessary for her to be strong" (Worth 24).
[12] Trollope's comments pertaining to Jefferson are written in a factual sense; for example, she states, "I have heard [Jefferson's] name coupled with deeds which would make the sons of Europe shudder. The facts I allude to are spoken openly by all" (73). These "facts" she alludes to also include her assertion that Jefferson is "the father of children by almost all of his numerous gang of female slaves" (73). Readers must be wary while reading her account, then, because often Trollope, blinded by the quest for success and authority, trusts that her own opinion is a factual detail.
Trollope compares America to England
[13] Trollope's misfortune blinded her to openly viewing the principles of American society: "When Equality stepped on her foot, soiled her gloves, or spit and hung its legs in rude attitudes over the backs of chairs, its value as an abstract principle was forgotten" (Heineman 557). This led her to the next point of interest -- her need, like many other of the British travelers of this period, to compare America with her homeland.
[14] Trollope's experiences in America are constantly compared with the life she left behind in England. Trollope idealizes the life she lived in England, a life she remembers as elegant and luxurious. When reminiscing on the past, people often only remember the good and dismiss the bad. Trollope left just before she would be forced to give up her lavish lifestyle, so to her England still was a place of rich comforts. When she arrived in America hoping to quickly regain her wealth, she most likely viewed all her experiences in relation to her past in England: "For the impoverished Fanny Trollope, it was a bitter experience to discover that the dollar builds its own hierarchy and creates its own aristocracy" (Worth 26). Trollope's feeling of superiority is sensed throughout her writing because she still sees herself as an elite aristocrat from England. One example of this superiority occurs when she is comparing the literature produced by Americans to that of Europeans; she says, "The immense exhalation of periodical trash, which penetrates into every cot and corner of the country, and which is greedily sucked in by all ranks, is unquestionably one great cause of its inferiority" (249).
[15] The differences between the newly formed America and the historic England were vast, and Trollope made a huge lifestyle change, not only in a new environment but also in a new social class. As a result "she looks on New World culture from a certain Old World perspective and finds America wanting in comparison" (Worth 26). She may still be dealing with the poverty that took away her elite status in England, and therefore when failing to become rich in America, a land that is known for dreams coming true, she, possibly unknowingly, compares two countries that are hardly comparable. While staying at her "dwelling" in Cincinnati she remarks, "we speedily found that it was devoid of nearly all the accommodation that Europeans conceive necessary to decency and comfort" and continues to compare the amenities with those that she recalls from London. Unable to accept that it was in England that she became poor, Trollope blames America for not meeting the societal standards she was once accustomed to as a member of the elite in England.
[16] Trollope was not like other British travel authors, however, in that she had significant experience in America that few others could claim. However, despite her experience living in America, people must read her account with caution. Knowing Frances Trollope's background, her struggles and disappointments in America, enables readers to see how such claims and descriptions came about. It must also be remembered that Trollope was writing to entertain; she was writing to please readers in order to make a profit. Her detailed descriptions, extreme generalizations, and strong opinions all add to the enjoyment of the reader. As an author, Trollope should be credited with great narrations, but as a voice of authority on the American subject matter -- on Jefferson's sexual relations, for instance -- Trollope's account needs to be seen in its true form -- as an angry, biased, and extravagant piece of writing. But, nonetheless, her work was no doubt a powerful force in keeping the lurid story of Jefferson's intimate relations across the color line alive in the early 19th century.
