Speakers from the Trollope Society’s ‘Women in Trollope’ conference, held at Somerville College in September 2023, will be presenting their talks on Zoom throughout 2024.

Dr Nicholas Shrimpton

Dr Nicholas Shrimpton is an Emeritus Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He is the editor of Trollope’s The Prime Minister (2011) and The Warden (2014) for Oxford World’s Classics and the editor of Trollope’s An Autobiography published in 2014 by Oxford University Press.

Good Girl/Bad Girl: Female Roles in Late Trollope

Trollope was interested in the Women’s Rights, or Feminist, movement of his era. But he was also interested in women’s rights (and wrongs) in a different sense: the assessment of what constitutes good or bad female behaviour. This paper will consider his treatment of the matter in his later novels, with especial attention to the characterisation of Alice Vavasor and Glencora MacCluskie in Can You Forgive Her?, and Arabella Trefoil and Mary Masters in The American Senator.