Money and Marriage in Anthony Trollope's THE WAY WE LIVE NOW (1875)

     I'm such a go-getter; I actually started reading-and-writing for my comprehensive exam this winter. Over Christmas break I read The Moonstone (1868), whose plot completely escaped me, I might as well have not read it, and The Way We Live Now (1875), which has made me quite the smitten-kitten for fellow "Anthony," Anthony Trollope. I even wrote some stuff! But first, here is a photo of Anthony Trollope. 

Look at that bushy daddy! Anyway, here are some of my first impressions of The Way We Live Now. 

          In The Way We Live  Now, Felix Cadbury – emphasis on “cad” – is a penniless, mooching narcissist set out on a half-hearted campaign to seduce Marie Melmotte, the daughter of Melmotte, the Gatsby-like richest-Capitalist-in-town. Although Felix isn’t at all disgusted by Marie, he has no real interest in her personally. He wants her for her money. And as a vain, spoiled gambling-addicted nobleman, Felix can’t help but feel entitled to Marie and/or her wealth. So, after some fitful, petulant ass dragging, when Felix finally approaches Big Poppa Melmotte to ask for his daughter’s money – I mean - hand in marriage, Felix is more or less knocked off his ass when Melmotte questions Felix’s finances, essentially asking if Felix would be able to support Marie in the extravagant manner to which she is accustomed. The only way Felix knows how to make money is through gambling with his other semi-useless aristo-friends most of whom play with I.O.Us instead of actual legal tender, so Felix doesn’t really have anything to show Melmotte. But Felix, of course, never quite able to find himself wanting, cannot abide Melmotte’s questioning him, instead thinking (via the narrator’s indirect discourse), “was it not sufficiently plain that any gentleman proposing to marry the daughter of such a man as Melmotte, must do so under the stress of pecuniary embarrassment? Would it not be an understood bargain that as he provided the rank and position she would provide the money?” (196) Felix’s aristocratic sense of entitlement is almost a mini-ideology in and of itself; it recasts his predating on Marie (she really has fallen for Felix because he is cute and knows what to say) as a kind of condescension at best or fair trade at worst, and projects Felix’s own mercenary and malign intent onto any person who holds him to any account. Getting read by Melmotte, Felix thinks of him as “the bloated swindler, the vile city ruffian . . . certainly taking a most ungenerous advantage of the young aspirant for wealth.” (196) Felix, like I said above, is a classic narcissistic personality, who sees everything he wants as somehow pre-ordained and legitimate and those who question or threaten those desires as necessarily villainous. Of course, this bizzaro-morality is supposed to reflect a larger ailing aristocratic sense of self-worth amidst the rise of global capitalism.

This tension between title and pedigree versus money and talent – especially in the marriage game – is what gives Trollope such a distinctly Pre-Wharton feel, leading me to wonder if perhaps Edith Wharton was a reader of Trollope. The similarity isn’t just thematic; there is a language quality too, I think I see in common. Melmotte finally puts Felix down with an aphoristic hammer that at once speaks to the localized marriage game Melmotte plays and the unifying law of the new world of global capital destined to obliterate the world view from which Felix derives his inflated sense of self:  “My daughter,” Melmotte says, “no doubt, will have money; but money expects money.” (196) BAM! 

I guess we more or less live in the world Melmotte and Thackery describe where "money expects money," especially in situations of gender equality i.e. homo-dating and upper middle class, still-kind-of-feminist hetero-society. Hypergamy happens, of course. Gold diggers are a reality. But I once  heard a friend describe the economic dimension of dating as a system of "averages." Like, if a 100k/year marries, say, a 50k/year, to one extent or another, the 100k person is resigning themselves to a 75k/yr life. The 100k person will have to pay for the 75k person to go the restaurants, take the vacations, and buy the homes to which a 100k person is entitled. But continually bridging that gap, the 100k person repeatedly bumping up the 50k person, will in fact, resign  the 100k person to less of that 100k lifestyle. The emotional fallout of this averaging is more or less intuitively apparent; the 100k might feel resentful, the 75k person might feel diminished etc. 

Of course, there are all sorts of gender, emotional, sexual, and psychic dimensions that mitigate this relationship law of averages. A 100k person who seeks a relationship in which he or she is the dominant or care-giving partner might enjoy the differential. And, yes, gold-diggers aren't going to feel guilt and shame continually living above their means. Also, if the 100k person is particularly economically conservative i.e. saves a lot, while the 75k is more of a spender, and the two can respect those differences, then the income difference might, again, not be such a big deal. Marie, for instance, having grown up rich but emotionally starved, is more than happy to take the money her father already has in her name and support Felix with it. Desire and emotional need skew the law of averages somewhat (though we can never know how much and for how long). But these mitigating factors being what they are, Melmotte still identifies a very contemporary economic logic to dating-and-mating that says that, generally speaking, one's financial situation will seek out another financial situation  that can match or exceed it, that one's "money expects money."