The Eustace Diamonds (1872), Anthony Trollope

Characters

• Lizzie Greystock, Lady Eustace: courageous, grasping, clever minx who refuses to give back diamond necklace of late husband (ex-husband Sir Florian Eustace, son the younger Sir Florian)
• Lord Fawn: her weak-kneed Liberal betrothed (he gets out of it)
• Lady Fawn: his kind mother, with many daughters
• Frank Greystock: her charming lawyer and MP cousin, fiance of Lucy Morris; refuses to marry Lizzie
• Lucy Morris: sweet, perfect governess to the Fawns
• Miss Macnulty: Lizzie’s dowdy companion (formerly companion of Lady Linlithgow)
• Lady Linlithgow: cranky relative to the Greystocks; anti-Lizzie
• John Eustace: responsible brother of Lizzie’s late husband, representative of the family; wants diamonds back
• Mr. Camperdown: buttoned-up, dignified family lawyer for Eustaces
• Major Mackintosh: of Scotland Yard, with many other detectives, busy but unsuccessful
• Reverend Emilius, Lord George Carruthers: other suitors of Lizzie, both questionable (first one wins)
• Lady Glencora Palliser: wise, charming, powerful detached onlooker, wife of Plantagenet; tries to befriend Lizzie
• Duke of Omnion: Plantagenet’s uncle; dirty old gossiper, intrigued by Lizzie
• Plantagenet Palliser: hard-working author of the “five farthing penny” that will make British currency go decimal
• Mrs. Carbuncle: impecunious friend of Lizzie’s trying to get her cousin Lucinda married off
• Lucinda Roanoke: penniless and anti-social; almost marries a Sir; goes crazy and leaves him at altar

Themes

• Women are like diamond necklaces: too hot to get rid of
  • They must sell themselves but can’t be openly on the market
  • Women cannot be proactive or admit love, or they lose their value
• Rotten marriage
  • Mixing of economics and marriage ruin the institution
  • Makes women too dependent, thus manipulative
  • Makes men grasping
• Moral changes in UK: It’s all going to heck in a handbasket
  • Becky Sharpe-type heroine doesn’t get prosecuted, but is unhappy
• Police and Parliament are not very successful

Comps Questions

• On the Marriage Market: What kind of commodities are women?
  • Very specific: only a fraction of women seem marriageable
  • Optional (but husbands for women are necessary)
  • Seen in terms of net gain or loss
• On the Abstraction of Money: How does one decide value?
  • Public opinion, gossip
  • If it is exchangeable
  • Continuous flux

Quotes

• When women offer themselves in marriage: “the thing so offered becomes almost valueless by the offer…thus tendered so openly in the market” (523)
• “It it, upon the whole, well for the world, that property so fictitious as diamonds should be subject to the risk of annihilation.” (695)