Rachel Ray (novel)
Encyclopedia
Rachel Ray is an 1863 novel by Anthony Trollope
. It recounts the story of a young woman who is forced to give up her fiancé because of baseless suspicions directed toward him by the members of her community, including her sister and the pastors of the two churches attended by her sister and mother.
The novel was originally commissioned for Good Words
, a popular magazine directed at pious Protestant readers. However, the magazine's editor, upon reading the galley proofs, concluded that the negative portrayals of the Low Church
and Evangelical
characters would anger and alienate much of his readership. The novel was never published in serial form.
in Devon
.
Mrs. Ray is amiable but weak, unable to make decisions on her own and ruled by her older daughter. Mrs. Prime is a strict and gloomy Evangelical, persuaded that all worldly joys are impediments to salvation.
Rachel is courted by Luke Rowan, a young man from London who has inherited an interest in the profitable local brewery. Mrs. Prime suspects his morals and motives, and communicates these suspicions to her mother. Mrs. Ray consults her pastor, the Low Churchman Charles Comfort; and upon his vouching for Rowan, allows Rachel to accept his offer of marriage.
Soon after this, Rowan falls into a dispute with the senior proprietor of the brewery, and returns to London to seek legal advice. Rumours circulate about his conduct in Devon; Comfort believes the rumours, and advises Mrs. Ray to end the engagement between Rachel and Rowan. Rachel obeys her mother's instructions to write Rowan and release him from the engagement. When he fails to respond, she grows increasingly depressed.
Rowan returns to Devon, and the dispute over the brewery is settled to his satisfaction. This accomplished, he calls upon the Rays and assures Rachel that his love for her is still strong. She assents to his renewed proposals. Marital bliss ensues.
A subplot involves the abortive courtship of Mrs. Prime by her pastor, Samuel Prong. Prong is a zealous but intolerant Evangelical. His religious beliefs are in agreement with hers, but the two have incompatible notions of marriage: Prong insists on a husband's authority over his wife, and in particular over the income from her first husband's estate; Mrs. Prime wants to retain control of her money, and is otherwise unwilling to submit to a husband's rule.
described Rachel Ray as "Trollope's tirade against the West Country
evangelical clergy". Like his mother, Frances Trollope
, who had caricatured them in her Vicar of Wrexhill, Anthony Trollope had no fondness for Evangelicals
. In the novel, Samuel Prong, like Obadiah Slope of Barchester Towers
, has an ill-favored appearance, pursues marriage for money rather than love, and is "not a gentleman". Mrs. Prime is morose and motivated by a love of power; her Dorcas Society
lieutenant, Miss Pucker, is a sour gossip-mongering spinster with a disfiguring squint. Rachel's happiness is threatened by the machinations of the Evangelical characters, and the intervention of two of her non-Evangelical neighbors is critical in salvaging it.
pastor and chaplain to Queen Victoria, Macleod was a personal friend of Trollope's and a fellow member of the Garrick Club
. However, he wrote to Trollope in his capacity as the editor of the sixpenny monthly Good Words
.
Good Words, established in 1860 by Scottish publisher Alexander Strahan, was directed at Evangelicals and Nonconformists
, particularly of the lower middle class. The magazine included overtly religious material, but also fiction and nonfiction articles on general subjects, including science; the standard for content was that the devout must be able to read it on Sundays without sin. In 1863, it had a circulation of 70,000.
Strahan and Macleod sought a novel from Trollope for serialization in the magazine in 1863. According to Trollope's autobiography, he initially demurred, but yielded when Macleod persisted. A deal was struck: Trollope would write a novel for the magazine, for serial publication in the second half of 1863; Strahan would pay ₤1000 for the serial rights. For an additional ₤100, Trollope would write a Christmas story for publication in the January 1863 issue.
Trollope's "The Widow's Mite" duly appeared in the January issue. Strahan advertised the forthcoming serialization of the new novel, to be illustrated by John Everett Millais
, who had illustrated Framley Parsonage
for Cornhill Magazine
. Trollope wrote Rachel Ray between 3 March and 29 June 1863.
Evangelical Anglican weekly Record launched a six-article series attacking Macleod and Good Words. It accused Macleod of attempting to reconcile God and Mammon
, labelled Trollope "this year's chief sensation writer", and of his writing, declared, "In some of these trashy tales the most ungodly sentiments are uttered and left to work their evil effects upon the young mind".
Trollope was probably an incidental target of the Records attack, which was directed principally at Macleod. The Disruption of 1843
, in which nearly half of the clergy and laity of the Church of Scotland
had left that body to form the Free Church of Scotland, had created lasting enmity between the members of the two churches. Macleod was the object of particular derision among Free Churchmen, as one of the "Forty Thieves": a group of ministers who had sought a compromise between the seceding Evangelical faction and the remaining Moderates, and who had refused to join the secession, pleading the importance of maintaining the Established
church. This Free Church animosity was involved in the attack on Good Words: although the Record was staunchly Anglican, investigation by other journals revealed that the author of the anonymous articles was Thomas Alexander, a Presbyterian minister who had aligned himself with the Free Church during the Disruption.
The controversy did no harm to the circulation of Good Words, which continued to increase. However, it prompted Macleod, who up to that time had left most of the editorial duties to Strahan, to call for the galley proofs of Rachel Ray, which he had not read. Upon reading them, he concluded that the novel was unsuitable for the magazine. He emphasized to Trollope that he had found nothing morally objectionable in the story; however, he felt that the negative portrayal of all of the Evangelical characters would seriously offend his readership. Publishing Rachel Ray, he wrote, would "keep Good Words and its Editor in boiling water until either were boiled to death".
The affair did not affect the personal friendship of Trollope and Macleod. The novelist continued to write for Good Words: seven more stories and two novels, The Golden Lion of Granpère and Kept in the Dark
, were published in the magazine.
The rejection of the novel by Good Words ended the plan to have it illustrated by Millais. The artist had produced one watercolour for the novel; this was subsequently used as the frontispiece for Chapman & Hall's one-volume "seventh edition", issued in 1864.
Beside the Chapman & Hall editions, the novel was published in 1863 by Harper
in New York, and by Tauchnitz
in Leipzig. A Russian translation was published in St. Petersburg in 1864, and a French translation by Hachette of Paris in 1869; both of these translations bore the title Rachel Ray. More recently, editions of the novel have been released by Dover Publications
in 1980; by Arno in 1981; by the Trollope Society in 1990; and by Oxford University Press
in 2008.
was favorably impressed by Rachel Ray; to Trollope, she wrote, "[Y]ou have organized thoroughly natural everyday incidents into a strictly related well proportioned whole". Contemporary critics echoed this; an article in the Athenaeum
compared the novel favorably with more sensational contemporary works, saying that the "simple story of doings in a picturesque nook of Devonshire is as delightful as it is healthy". Reviewers at the time of publication also praised Trollope's portrayals of the inner lives of women and their conversations among themselves.
Contemporary reviewers were less pleased with the descent from the clerical gentry of the Barsetshire novels
to the lower middle classes. A Saturday Review notice acerbically described the heroine as "a young woman whose unhappiness is caused by her lover not setting up a brewery fast enough".
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire...
. It recounts the story of a young woman who is forced to give up her fiancé because of baseless suspicions directed toward him by the members of her community, including her sister and the pastors of the two churches attended by her sister and mother.
The novel was originally commissioned for Good Words
Good Words
Good Words was a 19th-century monthly periodical in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1860 by Scottish publisher Alexander Strahan. Its first editor was Norman Macleod; after his death in 1872, it was edited by his brother, Donald Macleod....
, a popular magazine directed at pious Protestant readers. However, the magazine's editor, upon reading the galley proofs, concluded that the negative portrayals of the Low Church
Low church
Low church is a term of distinction in the Church of England or other Anglican churches initially designed to be pejorative. During the series of doctrinal and ecclesiastic challenges to the established church in the 16th and 17th centuries, commentators and others began to refer to those groups...
and Evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
characters would anger and alienate much of his readership. The novel was never published in serial form.
Plot summary
Rachel Ray is the younger daughter of a lawyer's widow. She lives with her mother and her widowed sister, Dorothea Prime, in a cottage near ExeterExeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
in Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
.
Mrs. Ray is amiable but weak, unable to make decisions on her own and ruled by her older daughter. Mrs. Prime is a strict and gloomy Evangelical, persuaded that all worldly joys are impediments to salvation.
Rachel is courted by Luke Rowan, a young man from London who has inherited an interest in the profitable local brewery. Mrs. Prime suspects his morals and motives, and communicates these suspicions to her mother. Mrs. Ray consults her pastor, the Low Churchman Charles Comfort; and upon his vouching for Rowan, allows Rachel to accept his offer of marriage.
Soon after this, Rowan falls into a dispute with the senior proprietor of the brewery, and returns to London to seek legal advice. Rumours circulate about his conduct in Devon; Comfort believes the rumours, and advises Mrs. Ray to end the engagement between Rachel and Rowan. Rachel obeys her mother's instructions to write Rowan and release him from the engagement. When he fails to respond, she grows increasingly depressed.
Rowan returns to Devon, and the dispute over the brewery is settled to his satisfaction. This accomplished, he calls upon the Rays and assures Rachel that his love for her is still strong. She assents to his renewed proposals. Marital bliss ensues.
A subplot involves the abortive courtship of Mrs. Prime by her pastor, Samuel Prong. Prong is a zealous but intolerant Evangelical. His religious beliefs are in agreement with hers, but the two have incompatible notions of marriage: Prong insists on a husband's authority over his wife, and in particular over the income from her first husband's estate; Mrs. Prime wants to retain control of her money, and is otherwise unwilling to submit to a husband's rule.
Major themes
James Pope-HennessyJames Pope-Hennessy
James Pope Hennessy CVO was a British biographer and travel writer.-Life:Richard James Arthur Pope-Hennessy was born in London on 20 November 1916, the younger son of Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy, a soldier from County Cork in Ireland, and his wife, Una Constance Pope-Hennessy who was...
described Rachel Ray as "Trollope's tirade against the West Country
West Country
The West Country is an informal term for the area of south western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. It is often defined to encompass the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset and the City of Bristol, while the counties of...
evangelical clergy". Like his mother, Frances Trollope
Frances Trollope
Frances Milton Trollope was an English novelist and writer who published as Mrs. Trollope or Mrs. Frances Trollope...
, who had caricatured them in her Vicar of Wrexhill, Anthony Trollope had no fondness for Evangelicals
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
. In the novel, Samuel Prong, like Obadiah Slope of Barchester Towers
Barchester Towers
Barchester Towers, published in 1857, is the second novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". It is possibly Trollope's best known work...
, has an ill-favored appearance, pursues marriage for money rather than love, and is "not a gentleman". Mrs. Prime is morose and motivated by a love of power; her Dorcas Society
Dorcas Society
A Dorcas Society is a local group of people, usually based in a church, with a mission of providing clothing to the poor.The original society was founded in Douglas, Isle of Man on December 1, 1834, as part of the community's thanksgiving for being spared from an outbreak of cholera...
lieutenant, Miss Pucker, is a sour gossip-mongering spinster with a disfiguring squint. Rachel's happiness is threatened by the machinations of the Evangelical characters, and the intervention of two of her non-Evangelical neighbors is critical in salvaging it.
Good Words
In 1862, when Trollope was near the peak of his reputation, he was approached by Norman Macleod. A well-known Scottish PresbyterianPresbyterianism
Presbyterianism refers to a number of Christian churches adhering to the Calvinist theological tradition within Protestantism, which are organized according to a characteristic Presbyterian polity. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures,...
pastor and chaplain to Queen Victoria, Macleod was a personal friend of Trollope's and a fellow member of the Garrick Club
Garrick Club
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:The Garrick Club was founded at a meeting in the Committee Room at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Wednesday 17 August 1831...
. However, he wrote to Trollope in his capacity as the editor of the sixpenny monthly Good Words
Good Words
Good Words was a 19th-century monthly periodical in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1860 by Scottish publisher Alexander Strahan. Its first editor was Norman Macleod; after his death in 1872, it was edited by his brother, Donald Macleod....
.
Good Words, established in 1860 by Scottish publisher Alexander Strahan, was directed at Evangelicals and Nonconformists
Nonconformism
Nonconformity is the refusal to "conform" to, or follow, the governance and usages of the Church of England by the Protestant Christians of England and Wales.- Origins and use:...
, particularly of the lower middle class. The magazine included overtly religious material, but also fiction and nonfiction articles on general subjects, including science; the standard for content was that the devout must be able to read it on Sundays without sin. In 1863, it had a circulation of 70,000.
Strahan and Macleod sought a novel from Trollope for serialization in the magazine in 1863. According to Trollope's autobiography, he initially demurred, but yielded when Macleod persisted. A deal was struck: Trollope would write a novel for the magazine, for serial publication in the second half of 1863; Strahan would pay ₤1000 for the serial rights. For an additional ₤100, Trollope would write a Christmas story for publication in the January 1863 issue.
Trollope's "The Widow's Mite" duly appeared in the January issue. Strahan advertised the forthcoming serialization of the new novel, to be illustrated by John Everett Millais
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
, who had illustrated Framley Parsonage
Framley Parsonage
Framley Parsonage is the fourth novel in Anthony Trollope's series known as the "Chronicles of Barsetshire". It was first published in serial form in the Cornhill Magazine in 1860.-Synopsis:...
for Cornhill Magazine
Cornhill Magazine
The Cornhill Magazine was a Victorian magazine and literary journal named after Cornhill Street in London.Cornhill was founded by George Murray Smith in 1860 and was published until 1975. It was a literary journal with a selection of articles on diverse subjects and serialisations of new novels...
. Trollope wrote Rachel Ray between 3 March and 29 June 1863.
Attack of the Record
In April 1863, however, the CalvinistCalvinism
Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
Evangelical Anglican weekly Record launched a six-article series attacking Macleod and Good Words. It accused Macleod of attempting to reconcile God and Mammon
Mammon
Mammon is a term, derived from the Christian Bible, used to describe material wealth or greed, most often personified as a deity, and sometimes included in the seven princes of Hell.-Etymology:...
, labelled Trollope "this year's chief sensation writer", and of his writing, declared, "In some of these trashy tales the most ungodly sentiments are uttered and left to work their evil effects upon the young mind".
Trollope was probably an incidental target of the Records attack, which was directed principally at Macleod. The Disruption of 1843
Disruption of 1843
The Disruption of 1843 was a schism within the established Church of Scotland, in which 450 ministers of the Church broke away, over the issue of the Church's relationship with the State, to form the Free Church of Scotland...
, in which nearly half of the clergy and laity of the Church of Scotland
Church of Scotland
The Church of Scotland, known informally by its Scots language name, the Kirk, is a Presbyterian church, decisively shaped by the Scottish Reformation....
had left that body to form the Free Church of Scotland, had created lasting enmity between the members of the two churches. Macleod was the object of particular derision among Free Churchmen, as one of the "Forty Thieves": a group of ministers who had sought a compromise between the seceding Evangelical faction and the remaining Moderates, and who had refused to join the secession, pleading the importance of maintaining the Established
State religion
A state religion is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state...
church. This Free Church animosity was involved in the attack on Good Words: although the Record was staunchly Anglican, investigation by other journals revealed that the author of the anonymous articles was Thomas Alexander, a Presbyterian minister who had aligned himself with the Free Church during the Disruption.
The controversy did no harm to the circulation of Good Words, which continued to increase. However, it prompted Macleod, who up to that time had left most of the editorial duties to Strahan, to call for the galley proofs of Rachel Ray, which he had not read. Upon reading them, he concluded that the novel was unsuitable for the magazine. He emphasized to Trollope that he had found nothing morally objectionable in the story; however, he felt that the negative portrayal of all of the Evangelical characters would seriously offend his readership. Publishing Rachel Ray, he wrote, would "keep Good Words and its Editor in boiling water until either were boiled to death".
Publication
At about the time that Strahan and Macleod had purchased the serial rights to the novel, Trollope had sold publisher Chapman & Hall the book rights to an edition of 1500 copies for ₤500. Upon learning that there would be no serial publication, he resumed negotiations with Chapman & Hall, who agreed to pay an additional ₤500 to double their print edition. Trollope then offered a compromise to Strahan: although he was entitled to ₤1000 for the serial rights to the novel, he would accept the ₤500 difference between Strahan's contractual obligation and the additional ₤500 that he would get from Chapman & Hall. Strahan accepted this offer. In his autobiography, Trollope states that during his life, he received a total of ₤1645 for Rachel Ray.The affair did not affect the personal friendship of Trollope and Macleod. The novelist continued to write for Good Words: seven more stories and two novels, The Golden Lion of Granpère and Kept in the Dark
Kept in the Dark
Kept in the Dark is a novel by the 19th century English novelist Anthony Trollope. One of his lesser and later works, it nonetheless has interest...
, were published in the magazine.
The rejection of the novel by Good Words ended the plan to have it illustrated by Millais. The artist had produced one watercolour for the novel; this was subsequently used as the frontispiece for Chapman & Hall's one-volume "seventh edition", issued in 1864.
Beside the Chapman & Hall editions, the novel was published in 1863 by Harper
Harper (publisher)
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins.-History:James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishing business J. & J. Harper in 1817. Their two brothers, Joseph Wesley Harper and Fletcher Harper, joined them...
in New York, and by Tauchnitz
Tauchnitz
Tauchnitz was the name of a family of German printers and publishers.Karl Christoph Traugott Tauchnitz , born at Grossbardau near Grimma, Saxony, established a printing business in Leipzig in 1796 and a publishing house in 1798...
in Leipzig. A Russian translation was published in St. Petersburg in 1864, and a French translation by Hachette of Paris in 1869; both of these translations bore the title Rachel Ray. More recently, editions of the novel have been released by Dover Publications
Dover Publications
Dover Publications is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward Cirker and his wife, Blanche. It publishes primarily reissues, books no longer published by their original publishers. These are often, but not always, books in the public domain. The original published editions may be...
in 1980; by Arno in 1981; by the Trollope Society in 1990; and by Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
in 2008.
Reception
George EliotGeorge Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
was favorably impressed by Rachel Ray; to Trollope, she wrote, "[Y]ou have organized thoroughly natural everyday incidents into a strictly related well proportioned whole". Contemporary critics echoed this; an article in the Athenaeum
Athenaeum (magazine)
The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
compared the novel favorably with more sensational contemporary works, saying that the "simple story of doings in a picturesque nook of Devonshire is as delightful as it is healthy". Reviewers at the time of publication also praised Trollope's portrayals of the inner lives of women and their conversations among themselves.
Contemporary reviewers were less pleased with the descent from the clerical gentry of the Barsetshire novels
Chronicles of Barsetshire
The Chronicles of Barsetshire is a series of six novels by the English author Anthony Trollope, set in the fictitious cathedral town of Barchester...
to the lower middle classes. A Saturday Review notice acerbically described the heroine as "a young woman whose unhappiness is caused by her lover not setting up a brewery fast enough".
External links
- Rachel Ray—easy-to-read HTML version at University of Adelaide Library
- Rachel Ray at Project Gutenberg
- Rachel Ray, volume 1 and volume 2, reproduction of 1863 Chapman & Hall edition at archive.org.