Synopses & Reviews
The central theme of the novel is the sexual jealousy of Louis Trevelyan who unjustly accuses his wife Emily of a liaison with a friend of her father's. As his suspicion deepens into madness, Trollope gives us a profound psychological study in which Louis' obsessive delirium is comparable to the tormented figure of Othello, tragically flawed by self-deception. Against the disintegration of the Trevelyans' marriage, a lively cast of characters explore the ideas of female emancipation and how to distinguish between obedience and subjection. Although himself no supporter of women's rights, in this novel some of Trollope's most spirited characters are single women.
Published in 1869, the same year as John Stuart Mills' The Subjection of Women and while the Divorce Act was a relative novelty, He Knew He Was Right was a timely novel, drawing a fine line between the obedience of women within marriage and their total possession by men.
Synopsis
Anthony Trollope's story of one man's obsessive self-deception pitted against against the enduring power of his wife's love, He Knew He Was Right is edited with an introduction by Frank Kermode in Penguin Classics.
On a visit to the Mandarin Islands, Louis Trevelyan falls in love with Emily, the daughter of the governor, and they are swiftly married and return to live in London. But when a friend of Emily's father - the meddlesome libertine Colonel Osborne - starts paying rather too much attention to the young woman, Louis is consumed by jealousy and refuses to listen to his wife's pleas of innocence. And as his suspicions become increasingly obsessive and the marriage collapses, Louis finds himself driven to desperate actions. In He Knew He Was Right, Trollope created a highly sympathetic portrait of a deeply troubled marriage, and a compelling psychological story of sexual obsession in his portrait of a nineteenth-century Othello.
In his introduction, Frank Kermode discusses Victorian attitudes to courtship and marriage, compares the novel to Othello and places it in the context of Trollope's other works. This edition also includes a new chronology, a bibliography and notes.
Anthony Trollope (1815-82) had an unhappy childhood characterised by a stark contrast between his family's high social standing and their comparative poverty. He wrote his earliest novels while working as a Post Office inspector, but did not meet with success until the publication of the first of his 'Barsetshire novels', The Warden (1855). As well as writing over forty novels, including such popular works as Can You Forgive Her? (1865), Phineas Finn (1869), He Knew He Was Right (1869) and The Way We Live Now (1875) Trollope is credited with introducing the postbox to England.
If you enjoyed He Knew He Was Right, you might enjoy Trollope's The Way We Live Now, also available in Penguin Classics.
About the Author
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was born in London to a bankrupt barrister father and a mother who, as a well-known writer, supported the family. Trollope enjoyed considerable acclaim both as a novelist and as a senior civil servant in the Post Office. He published more than forty novels and many short stories that are regarded by some as among the greatest of nineteenth-century fiction.
Frank Kermode is among our greatest contemporary critics. He has written and edited many works, among them The Sense of Ending and Shakespeares Language.