Young Mikey Quinn, scavenging on the streets of Hull, is thrown into prison for stealing a rabbit from the butchers. His chief accuser, a well-to-do lawyer, has a daughter, Eleanor, whom he badly mistreats. When Mikey is released, he finds that his mother has died and his brothers taken into the workhouse - determined to find a better life for his family, he takes the long walk all the way to London to seek his fortune. There he finds the grim realities of city life are even worse than they were in Hull, and comes under the evil patronage of the sinister Tully, first encountered when he was in prison. But he also meets Eleanor again, and between them they face the dangers of London and gradually make a new life for themselves, eventually making the journey back to their home town - the long walk home.
Setting / LocationLondon & UK
Story Era1800s / Victorian
Protagonist / CoreThe Long Walk Home Lead Character
In her Introduction to an edition of "Agnes Grey," Barbara A. Suess writes "Bronte provides a portrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictional indictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting." Anne Bronte relies on her own personal involvement in her duties as a home teacher to bring Agnes Grey to life. Agnes, a rector's daughter, must take employment as a governess to help her family make financial ends meet. But her situations with the spoiled, self-obsessed Bloomfield children and later with the ruthless Murray family forces her into a lonely, humiliating experience that is a wearying one extraordinarily blossoming into a romantic relationship with the local vicar, Edward Weston. Agnes' concern for her family brings her to these unfortunate trials where she suffers stupid and egotistic proprietors and their over-indulged progeny. She was not able to foresee the hardships she would have to undergo along with the class snobbery to which she was also subjected. And yet a career as a governess was the only "respectable" job available to an unmarried woman in Victorian England. Bronte's simple and uncomplicated rendition of these sordid affairs made circumstances surrounding such brutish conditions authentic enough to necessitate investigation and improvement.
Sir Clement Carnell was the most domineering and strait-laced of fathers, and his death has left his children, Louisa and Valentine, with a sense of release and anticipation. While Valentine throws open the Devonshire estate of Pennacombe to their fashionable cousins from London, Louisa feels free at last to reject the man her father chose as her prospective husband - Pearce Lynley. Soon the temptations of Regency London beckon - including Lady Harriet Eversholt, beautiful and very married, with whom Valentine becomes dangerously involved. Meanwhile Louisa finds that freedom of choice is as daunting as it is exciting ...
This is one of Trollope's best novels, in the present writer's opinion. Among several intermingled plots, the story arc of Arabella Trefoil is the most rewarding. The husband-hunting Arabella is absolutely one of Trollope's best characters. She is grand-daughter to a great Duke, yet her social position is precarious, because her father was a wastrel younger son who married a woman of low birth (her father was "in trade!"). He engrossed her large fortune and squandered it, leaving his estranged wife and daughter nearly destitute, and yet with an expensive social position to maintain. Read this book for Trollope's masterly delineation of how these circumstances harrow the soul and deform the character of a young woman. With no fortune except a relentless will, Arabella must marry well to save herself from the abyss of middle-aged spinsterhood, poverty, and social death. Arabella has learned to regard the men in her life as stupid but powerful enemies against whom any cruel or dishonest treatment is thoroughly justified. Men are to be flattered, fooled and captured, or dealt with according to the laws of war. Trollope makes clear that Arabella is what her avaricious, hypocritical, patriarchal social class has made her into, and she is a sympathetic character despite her hardened heart. When she is introduced, she is nearly thirty and is nearing the end of the line as a marriageable girl. "I'll tell you what it is, mamma. I've been at it till I'm nearly broken down. I must settle somewhere;—or else die;—or else run away. I can't stand this any longer and I won't. Talk of work,—men's work! What man ever has to work as I do?"
The eponymous American Senator is Elias Gotobed, of the fictional American state of Mickewa, who visits England apparently in order to inflict his opinions on everyone he meets. Trollope's senator is a self-righteous, pontificating horse's ass who offends against hospitality by lecturing and berating his hosts and their other guests at the dinner table about their laws and customs, and by meddling in local quarrels which are none of his business. In the end, the honour of England is avenged against the obnoxious Solon of Mickewa and he beats a retreat to the States with a flea in his ear. One wonders who the model(s) for this character might have been.
A third storyline involves the romantic vicissitudes of Mary Masters, a country lawyer's daughter and a typical Trollopeian nice, well-principled young girl. All these stories are woven together expertly and seamlessly. This is a book to read and re-read. There are many hunting scenes, and the conversations of the horsey set are strikingly well-observed and most enjoyable, whether you approve of blood sports or not.
The Long Walk Home by Valerie Wood | Literally Just Books
