Exquisite Masochism: Marriage, Sex, and the Novel Form by Claire Jarvis (review)

[...]in directing our attention to moments in Can You Forgive Her and The Way We Live Now when Glencora M'Cluskie and Winifred Hurtle exploit the art of "masochistic waiting," Jarvis identifies scenes where Trollope "offer[s] some space for feminine agency" (89), which she links to Sue Bridehead's power to create borders and barriers, managing almost "always [to] hold off physical contact" (102) with Jude, even as "her quivering body evidences her desire to retrench" (109).Matrimonial cruelty, bigamy, adultery-these are not a part of the exploration of "marriage, sex, and the novel form" promised by the subtitle-curious omissions given that one of the shaping arguments of this book is that "the domestic novel's materialism-by which I mean its emphasis on the financial and physical realities that most often motivate the romantic plot-is directly related to its form" (2).Especially valuable is her suggestion that "authors' [objectionable] politics" have perhaps too often provided "a good excuse for ignoring their forms" (156) and her astute observation that "the first thing we miss when we read primarily for politics is the formal invention that writers can and do produce when they are building a world from words" (157).