What should distinguish a Victorian Man from a Victorian Woman?
One way in some which mid-Victorian thinkers conceived of “character” psychologically was in terms of division between “depth” and surface – a version, perhaps, of Wordsworth’s “two selves” from The Prelude.. Critics who thought like this advocated different ways of constructing male and female characters in a novel. Trollope was seen as defective in his characterisation because he neglected “depth of portraiture”, including the experience of religious faith. He was more successful with men than women, under this system of thought, because men were seen to present a recognisable “profile” to the world, whereas women should ideally be expressed by “a lyrical cry”, like the song of a bird or the scent of flower, since they were deemed to be defective in a characteristic position vis-à-vis the world. Although Trollope advocated separate spheres of influence for men and women in life and literature, when we look at how he deals with characterisation himself, we can distinguish what separat
