Anthony Trollope continued throughout his career to focus his novels on everyday life. As the trend of sensation fiction faded in the late 1860s, Trollope began a new trend of his own, adding the theme of politics to his writing. Intensely interested in politics, as evidenced by his own defeat as a parliamentary candidate in 1867, the novelist added as the second book in his second major series, the Palliser sequence, Phineas Finn: The Irish Member.
As the title indicates, it followed the fortunes of its protagonist, Phineas Finn, during his political career. It also contains Trollope’s trademark multiple overlapping subplots, all of which turn on romance, but of the sensible, rather than sensational, type. The first book in the series, Can You Forgive Her? (1864), focused on romance between Lady Glencora and her husband, Plantagenet Palliser, destined eventually to become prime minister in a later book. Some of the characters from that novel reappear in Phineas Finn, which emphasizes political machinations far more strongly than did the first.
Trollope developed his characters first in serial form in St. Paul’s Magazine, which he edited, between October 1867 and May 1869. Phineas Finn is an appealing character: son of a doctor, a Roman Catholic, charismatic and handsome, and an immediate attraction for females. While supposedly promised to his Irish sweetheart, Mary Jones, when Finn moves to London following his election for the borough of Loughshane, he attracts Lady Laura Standish. She starkly contrasts with the provincial Mary in her ambition to marry a politically connected man.
He boards with Mr. and Mrs. Bunce, emphasizing his lack of a home, a persistent theme throughout the novel noted by critic W. J. McCormack. The emphasis on homelessness and alienation represented a deviation for Trollope, whose novels had always emphasized the importance of home and family. He suggests Mary’s connection to home in both a symbolic and literal sense for Finn, who remains ever aware of her presence, even while living away and romancing other women. Finn will vacillate throughout the novel in matters romantic and political, but will remain grounded by his love for Mary and Ireland, as well as through the influence of his highly principled mentor, Joshua Monk.
Intelligent and persuasive, Lady Standish has knowledge of, and interest in, politics that lead her to support Finn, although she is forced by financial circumstances to marry the wealthy Scots laird Robert Kennedy, particularly following Finn’s rescue of Kennedy from a dangerous situation in the streets of London. Attacked by a gang who attempt to choke him, Kennedy escapes only due to Finn’s interference.
As Finn’s personal life is revealed, his political life takes shape with the new reform bill supported by Finn’s Liberal Party. Finn eventually succeeds to a junior minister post, then resigns when he chooses to support Irish tenant-rights, a factor in the Home Rule demanded by Ireland. He learns through that harsh lesson that he must sometimes support his party even when he did not agree with its policies. Again, Trollope asks readers to consider the meaning of home, in both a political and personal sense, as he asks them to consider Finn as both a public and private figure.
Unable to resist temptation, Finn begins to romance Violet Effingham, who lives with the judgmental Lady Baldock. Her situation as an orphan supports the continued emphasis on homelessness in the novel. Threatened by Finn, Violet’s suitor Lord Chiltern, brother to Lady Laura, challenges him to a duel while the two are away from England. During that conflict, they regain a respect for one another that leads Finn to break the love triangle, and Lord Chiltern wins Violet as his bride.
Trollope interestingly makes Lord Chiltern, the male, experience the higher passion. When he proposes to Violet and she does not answer him, “he rushed at her, and, seizing her in his arms, kissed her all over,—her forehead, her lips, her cheeks, then both her hands, and then her lips again. ‘By G—, she is my own!’ he said.” She reacts by quietly taking a seat on a sofa and deciding she would accept and at least “be gracious to him.”
Finn’s romances continue as he next begins a relationship with a rich widow, Madame Max Goesler, who has been the companion of the elder Duke of Omnium and whom he meets at the dining table of the Pallisers. Although Madame Goesler proposes to Finn, offering to become his wife and make him wealthy, he has become discouraged with politics as well as foreign romance.
At the novel’s conclusion, he returns to Ireland to marry Mary, even though “she had not the spirit of Lady Laura, or the bright wit of Violet Effingham, or the beauty of Madame Goesler,” but she loved him with a most “satisfying devotion.” He does fear he may not find employment, believing that “men were afraid of him, thinking that he was unsteady, arrogant, and prone to failure.” After two months in Dublin, he receives his reprieve from his former political friends—an appointment as Inspector of Poor Houses in the County of Cork.
While the novel is political, it continually emphasizes domestic issues, both in the small arena of individual homes and in the broader geographic sense. The issue of violence exists not only in the street for Kennedy, but also in his home, as Trollope strongly intimates that he abuses Lady Laura. She will later exit the home to go into a self-appointed exile, living apart from her husband who will actually attempt to kill Finn in the sequel to the novel, Phineas Redux (1873).
Chiltern’s horse, Bonebreaker, suffers a violent death after breaking his own bones. As McCormack notes, an early zoo scene suggests that potential violence causes the necessity for cages separating the animals. The appearance at the zoo of another character, Aspasia Fitzgibbon, known for the “violence of her jokes,” further emphasizes the potential for violence that finds parallel in human interaction. When Miss Fitzgibbon invites comparison of Kennedy to a monkey, she touches on another topic of great concern to Trollope’s era—that of evolution.
While Trollope felt unqualified even to edit papers concerning the theories of Charles Darwin during his stint at Saint Paul’s Magazine, he includes oblique references to the theories throughout the novel.
Many critics have searched for real-life figures that might have inspired Phineas Finn, and politicians have been suggested. Some suggest that Trollope may be the incarnation of Finn. Finn’s insecurity regarding his family’s poverty, his public shyness, and lack of social success represent characteristics shared by Trollope. The author had served Ireland through his post office job, quitting at about the same time Finn would have assumed his political post.
As for women, Trollope developed a lifelong relationship with the American feminist Kate Field, whom he enjoyed teasing. Mirroring Finn’s loyalty to Mary, however reluctant, Trollope would likely never have considered committing the slightest impropriety outside his marriage.
Like all works of fiction, however, Phineas Finn does not claim to be a historical or factual account regarding either individuals or politics. As proof, Trollope fictionalizes the results of a crucial reform movement in Parliament, in which England’s Liberal government of 1866 suffered defeat due to a revolt by radicals who wanted secrecy in balloting as part of parliamentary reform. Their move ushered in a new Conservative government, led partially by Benjamin Disraeli, which would introduce reform that included secret balloting.
In the novel, the reform fails, and the Liberals return to power, introducing a movement of their own. This countered claims by Trollope’s critics that he based Mr. Turnbull, a character supporting the secret ballot, tenant rights, defense cuts, and the disestablishment of the Church of England, on the real politician and Radical leader John Bright.
As noted by Trollope’s biographer, Victoria Glendinning, to claim any Trollope character literally is a true figure “is to misunderstand the high art of Trollope’s castle-building fantasies, and the low cunning with which he judged how close to draw his parallels—which by definition can never meet.” The novel, while never rated among Trollope’s best work, continues to be widely read and enjoyed.
Bibliography
Glendinning, Victoria. Anthony Trollope. New York: Knopf, 1993.
McCormack, W. J. Introduction to Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope. London: J. M. Dent, 1997, xvii–xxxv.
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