Anthony Trollope grew up in an unusual family in England. His parents were related to aristocrats and raised Anthony to expect to lead a gentleman's life. What happened was the inheritance they had expected never materialized. This gave him a unique point of view because he lived in both upper class and lower class milieus. For example, Trollope went to a famous public school as a day boy and was made to feel inferior to the wealthy young boys there; at home, he mingled with people who were more middle class. When he went to work in London, he got a job as a postal clerk so he descended even further, still the gentleman but with little money. Trollope thus became very unhappy living in London because he felt he enver could live up to the original expectations his parents had had for him. He was also ashamed tha his parents had not lived typical respectable lives. When his postal job transferred him to Ireland, he finally felt free of everyone's expectations and no one judged him. He enjoyed the less civilized country living and less rigid hierarchical system. These feelings inspired the freedom Free feels in Ireland in An Eye for an Eye. Trollope alos met a woman in Ireand, Rsoe Heseltine, who he married and honeymooned with near the Cliffs of Moher described in the novel.
The central theme of An Eye for an Eye is that there is a high human cost to maintaining social hierarchies. The cost is demonstrated by the tragic outcome of the book: Kate and Mrs O'Hara's lives are destroyed because of Fred's inability to follow his natural feelings which lead him to love and to want to marry Kate. This novel shows how lives can be destroyed as a result of too strong a need to marry for position and respectabilty. This theme of not looking down on another becuase of class or ethnicity is also universal. It applies to our world today where we too are often forced to twist and maim what would be our natural feelings and relationships with other people by the demands of a job or a need to be with people who are presentable. An Eye for an Eye also contains the theme that despite one's inability to cope with people or situations in life one cannot escape what one has done, as Fred tries to. We must face the consequences of our acts.
An Eye for an Eye is a tragic, gothic romance about the struggle of the upper class Protestant Englishman Fred Neville who inherits a high position unexpectedly. He falls in love with and wants to marry an Irish Catholic girl who is poor and has no status (she may be illegitimate). The Nevilles, Lord and Lady Scroope, his uncle and aunt, want him to marry someone presentable, someone Protestant, wealthy, who is comfortable among ladies and gentlemen; they want him to live on their estate as Lord Scroope of Scroope Manor. We see Fred both want and try to escape the responsibilites and pressures of this family relationship. He opts to stay in Ireland where he is an officer for one more year. There he meets Kate O'Hara and they have a love affair. He promises he will marry her, but he also continues to visit his uncle and aunt in England and promises them he will not marry her. When Kate becomes pregnant, he decides that he cannot make her Countess of Scroope. When he tells Kate's mother this, she loses control after years of misery and frustration, and in a sudden furty she pushes him over a cliff to his death.
Question #4 How does the natural setting influence or control the characters?
In An Eye For An Eye by Anthony Trollope the emotions of the characters, specifically those of Fred Neville, are strongly tied to the landscapes and settings. Fred's descriptions of the landscapes of Western Ireland directly reflect his personal feelings in his relationship with Kate O'Hara and change with them. At first Fred longs for freedom and an escape from English culture and finds this in Western Ireland. But, as he begins to struggle between his desire to escape and his duty to marry for position and presentability, his feelings towards the beauty of Ireland change dramatically.
The novel opens with long, very Gothic descriptions of Scroope Manor. Anthony Trollope describes how, "the atmosphere of the whole place was gloomy. There were none of those charms of modern creation which now make the mansions of the wealthy among us bright and joyous. The papers on the walls were dark and sombre. The mirrors were small and lusterless. The carpets were old and dingy" (p. 2-3). This bleak, gloomy description of wealthy English life makes it very understandable for a character like Fred to want to escape for a while before having to spend his life running the Manor.
Fred leaves Scroope Manor and returns to his army regiment in Ennis, a small town in Western Ireland. Trollope gives wonderful descriptions of the beautiful surrounding landscapes Fred is able to escape to, especially the Cliffs of Moher which, "run up some six hundred feet from the sea as nearly perpendicular as cliffs should be. They are beautifully coloured, streaked with yellow veins, and with great masses of dark red rock; and beneath them lies the broad and blue Atlantic" (p. 34).
Fred not only immediately falls in love with the amazing landscape but also with the way of life, adventure, freedom, and isolation of the setting. He describes the animals roaming free around the O'Hara's cottage. He also notices the difference of lifestyles of the people as a result of isolation. This is shown when, describing Mrs. O'Hara, he says, "How could she take pride in personal beauty, when she was never seen by any man younger than Father Marty or the old peasant who brought turf to her door" (p. 38).
The complete isolation of the setting from the rest of society plays a large role in his quickly falling in love with Kate O'Hara. Fred describes how, "their solitude, the close vicinity of the ocean, the feeling that in meeting them none of the ordinary conventional usages of society were needed, the wildness and strangeness of the scene, all had charms which he admitted to himself" (p. 48-49).
Kate O'Hara's complete isolation and the setting of her cottage also greatly influence her love of Fred. This is shown when Kate considers, "would it not be better to have a few weeks of happy dreaming than a whole life that should be passionless? What could she do with her own heart there, living in solitude, with none but the sea gulls to look at her? Was it not infinitely better that she should give it away to such a young man as this than let it feed upon itself miserably?" (p. 55). Thus Kate's isolation from all other men plays a large role in her feelings and behavior towards Fred because without him she knows there is nothing else for her in life.
Fred Neville is greatly affected by Ireland and acknowledges this by saying, "ideas occurred to him which his friends in England would have called wild, democratic, revolutionary and damnable, but which, owing perhaps to the Irish air and the Irish whiskey and the spirit of adventure fostered by the vicinity of rocks and ocean, appeared to him at the moment to be not only charming but reasonable also" (p. 62). The adventures he has killing birds and seals and his love of Kate all continue to convince him that, "there was much more real life to be found on the cliffs of Moher than in the gloomy chambers of Scroope Manor" (p. 75).
After Kate has completely given herself to Fred, his feelings concerning her and all of Ireland begin to change. After Fred has been with Kate, he values her less because he sees that she is more vulnerable and needs him. Fred begins to ignore all of the natural impulses he had been following because he does not believe Kate has the position to be presentable as Countess of Scroope. With the dread and worries of facing Kate, Mrs. O'Hara and the priest with the decision that he will not marry her, he also begins to dread seeing the landscape as well. The effect of his change, completely altering his views on Ireland as a whole, is first clearly shown when he says, "he was beginning to hate the coast of Ireland, and to think that the gloom of Scroope Manor was preferable to it" (p. 121).
When Kate and Mrs. O'Hara's letters begin to demand his return, he dreads going back and this is reflected in his feelings about the landscape. Fred says, "All the charm of the adventure was gone. He was sick of the canoe and of Barney Morony. He did not care a straw for the seals or wild gulls. The moaning of the ocean beneath the cliff was no longer pleasurable to him- and as to the moaning at the summit, to tell the truth, he was afraid of it" (p. 124). This shows how he transfers his feelings of fear of returning, from the people who are really the cause of his fear, to nature. He repeatedly transfers his feelings away from Kate, because she has done nothing wrong and he still loves her, and instead of admitting he is sick of dealing with her, he states, "he was sick indeed, of everything Irish, and thought that the whole island was a mistake" (p. 131).
When Fred returns back to Scroope Manor he is not any happier being there despite his hatred of Ireland. He finds himself with nothing to do and would rather give the Manor away to his brother. Fred says, "I shall never see Scroope again. It seems as though I were certainly leaving for ever a place that has always been distasteful to me" (p. 168). However, Jack continues to convince him that he cannot leave and must stay as the Earl of Scroope.
Fred decides that he must overcome his fear and return to Ireland to face Kate and Mrs. O'Hara. When he goes back he still gets none of the pleasure from the beauty of the landscape that he experienced in the past. He describes, "Even the ocean itself and the very rocks had lost their charm for him. It was all one blaze of blue light, the sky above and the water below, in which there was neither beauty nor variety" (p. 190).
After he has told Mrs. O'Hara that he will not marry Kate he has faced his fear and no longer fears the cliffs and describes, "The peril of his position on the top of the cliff had not occurred to him- nor did it occur to him now" (p. 193). Unfortunately, the idea of taking revenge by pushing him over the cliff came into Mrs. O'Hara's mind and Fred was murdered.
This demonstrates how in An Eye For An Eye the descriptions of the landscapes and settings are strongly influenced by the changing emotions of Fred. I have also shown how these are interwoven with the story of how Fred is unable to deal with the responsibilities and pressures that are put on him throughout the novel. He loved the landscape and cliffs of Ireland for themselves too; he loved Kate for her apparent lack of awareness of status and money. And he wanted to escape from having to deal with his family. However, once Kate becomes pregnant and her Irish family and friends began to demand he live up to responsibilities now his in Ireland and marry Kate and live with her as her husband and the father to their child, Ireland becomes to him another place to escape from. This desire to escape is shown in Fred's dreaming of sailing away to a foreign country as he moves back and forth between England and Ireland, one side and the other, making promises to everyone but dealing with no one directly, truthfully. Fred is thus increasing unable to deal with anyone and he transfers his anxiety and depression into a hatred of the very landscapes he had loved so. He has in a sense caused his own death among the cliffs. There does seem to have been no where he could have found brightness and joy.
*This paper represents a revision Jill did after talking with me. It also reflects classroom discussions we had during the term about the gothic and Anthony Trollope's work.