Allegory In Trollope’s The Warden

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Essays in Criticism Vol. 54 No. 2 © Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved Allegory in Trollope’s The Warden K. M. NEWTON ONE OF THE MOST intriguing passages in Trollope’s fiction is a description of the archdeacon’s breakfast parlour in chapter 8 of The Warden beginning ‘And now let us observe the well-furnished breakfast-parlour at Plumstead Episcopi, and the comfortable air of all the belongings of the rectory’.1 It goes on to itemise these belongings, culminating in the following: The tea consumed was the very best, the coffee the very blackest, the cream the very thickest; there was dry toast and buttered toast, muffins and crumpets; hot bread and cold bread, white bread and brown bread; home-made bread and bakers’ bread, wheaten bread and oaten bread, and if there be other breads than these, they were there; there were eggs in napkins, and crispy bits of bacon under silver covers; and there were little fishes in a little box, and devilled kidneys frizzling on a hot-water dish; which, by the by, were placed closely contiguous to the plate of the worthy archdeacon himself. Over and above this, on a snow-white napkin, spread upon the sideboard, was a huge ham and a huge sirloin; the latter having laden the dinner table on the previous evening. Such was the ordinary fare at Plumstead Episcopi. (pp. 67-8) There is surely a Shandean subtext to this description of the archdeacon’s parlour, for it is implied that realistic description is endless. If the novel took description seriously and attempted to represent the world accurately it would find it difficult to get beyond a single room since every item could be described at length, categorised, sub-categorised and so on. This passage from The Warden does enough to raise that spectre in the reader’s mind before continuing with the story. 128 ALLEGORY IN THE WARDEN 129 It follows that for a

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