I concur about the plight of women at the time and place of this story, at least as how Trollope portrays it. When you come right down to it marriage for Arabella, and to some extent also for Mary, is really little removed from prostitution.
I am also really enjoying the observations of Senator Gotobed about the class system that was present in England at the time [circa 1875] of the setting of this story. Of course the reality is at this time America was already entering the Gilded Age with wealth and income inequality every bit as severe as in England and with American 'robber barons' eager to marry their sons and daughters off to European nobility.
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Originally Posted by Bookpossum
But of course in the 19th century there were plenty of working women, and the work they and the men of the "working classes" had to do was pretty back-breaking and soul-destroying. But at least they were able to get on with their lives, such as they were, rather than finding themselves an eligible bachelor to keep them in the manner to which they would like to be accustomed.
The women are hunting for husbands while the men are hunting the foxes.
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Yes, in this book Trollope is giving us a picture of the opportunities available to and the expectations for women in the upper class and those slightly below this. The plight of the majority of the lower class was to have to work just to survive, and that includes women and children. That is one difference I find between the stories I have read by Trollope and those by Dickens in that Dickens portrays the entire economic class, even perhaps emphasizing the lower class. I believe that the comparison to Jane Austen is probably also well taken, I just have not read enough Jane Austen to comment.
I am certainly learning a lot about fox “hunting.” Probably more than I ever cared to know about it. What a peculiar activity that is.