Barchester Towers

A friend of mine and long-time evangelizer of Anthony Trollope, recommended I read Barchester Towers earlier this year. I’d recently resigned from a rather taxing job and had given him an earful about the sub-optimal dynamics with which I’d contended. He suspected, quite rightly, that I’d find Trollope’s work cathartic.

Barchester Towers (‘‘BT’’) is the second of six novels in Trollope’s Barsetshire Novels series, though it can be read independently of the others. Published in 1857, BT is a moral comedy that chronicles the political maneuvering of clerical rivals in the Anglican Church competing to lead the diocese of Barchester. In his slick, self-interested pursuit of power, the Reverend Slope embodies a particular form of self-interested progress that, while steeped in the culture and context of Victorian England, may also feel familiar to those accustomed to the vicissitudes of contemporary corporate life. Likewise, when Slope’s foil, the unassuming Reverend Hardy, eschews the self-aggrandizement of his peers, he embodies a form of humility that is as deeply satisfying to modern readers, as it no doubt was to Trollope’s contemporaries.

I’ll spare any spoilers and instead zero in on the two things that uniquely touched me about BT: (1) the degree of empathy Trollope encourages in us as readers and (2) his willingness to focus on the world of work.

With respect to empathy, Trollope displays a deep generosity towards his characters and, in doing so, encourages us as readers to cultivate the same sort of generosity towards them and perhaps towards those in our own lives. I’ve found that in much contemporary fiction empathy for flawed characters goes hand-in-hand with a superficial moral relativism. In BT, Trollope manages to advocate quite firmly for specific principles and satirize the vices and follies of his time, while still reminding his readers that very few of us are the villains in our own stories. Even the most unctuous of characters may be deserving of our interpretive generosity not because their actions are justifiable, but because they — like us — are engaged in lives that require real moral work.

On the topic of work, BT is a story that manages a unique balance of focus on both work and love. While the latter is rightly a focus of many novels, I’d argue the former has been a tad neglected, given how much of our time it occupies. Many novels overlook the world of work completely. Others allude to work, but only insofar as the practical matters of money, marriage, or social standing are predicated upon it. BT focuses on both substantively and also explores the interplay between them.

It’s unfortunate that Trollope has fallen out of fashion because his writing is truly a delight. BT is an easy read and also a nourishing one. His fluid prose conveys his nuanced character development in an unusually accessible manner. When deciding whether to recommend a book to friends, I often reflect not only on what I got out of it, but also what I put into it. I got a lot from BT: it helped me develop a broader (and I think kinder) perspective on the world of professional striving. In return, it demanded little: the characters were entertaining, many scenes were quite humorous, and the world of the story unfolded in a reassuring way.

I’ve yet to watch the BBC miniseries, but look forward to doing so — Alan Rickman seems perfectly cast to play the Reverend Slope and as of this writing it sits at an 8.1 on IMDB. : )