Has anyone read Trollope's Palliser novels?

[MaMaLa321]

I've decided that they can be my project in lockdown. But does anyone find some of his women characters truly awful (even worse than Dickens')? I thought Lily Dale in A Small House at Allington was bad enough, but Alice Vavasour in Can You Forgive Her? !
It brings into sharp relief how proscribed the lives of Middle Class women were - instead of dithering about who to marry, Alice would get a job today.

I found them rather dull and turgid. I loved a lot of his other books, especially the Barchester ones, but I never really got into the Pallisers. Mind you, it’s over 20 years since I tried to plough through them. Maybe I should dust off my Trollope shelf and start again?!

I don't agree actually. They are no worse than some of the male characters some of whom are good people and some weak and fallible.

Alice is a bit of a pain, but I think that on the whole Trollope's female characters are pretty feisty. Lizzie Eustace is one of my favourites - a most excellent minx, and Madame Max is fantastic.

You have to judge them against the time he wrote the books, not compare them with modern women. There are plenty of Alices around these days anyway, last time I looked!

I'm not saying that they are bad. Just that the mores of the 19th Century drove many women, and, to a lesser extent, men, into ridiculous moral dilemmas. Even some contemporary readers found Alice ridiculous.

Yes, I absolutely agree, you can't take characters out of their context.
Perhaps Lily Dale and Alica Vavasour are unusual, even within Trollope. You're right that he has plenty of other interesting heroines.

I suppose the thing is, I'm reading a whole book centred on Alice. And I have no idea of how Trollope views her. With any other Victorian novelist, you'd know. Does he see her as ridiculous (as she seems to me)?

On a different note. I've just found that the TV series, from decades ago, is on Youtube. I remember it being really popular, and it's pretty dated dated now, but still worth checking out.