Rachel Ray (novel)

{{Short description|1863 novel by Anthony Trollope}} {{EngvarB|date=September 2013}} {{Use dmy dates|date=January 2024}} {{Infobox book|  | name = Rachel Ray | title_orig = | translator = | image = Rachel Ray 1863 title page.jpg | caption = Title page of 1863 Chapman & Hall edition | author = [[Anthony Trollope]] | cover_artist = | country = England | language = English | genre = | publisher = [[Chapman and Hall|Chapman & Hall]] | release_date = 1863 | english_release_date = | media_type = Print (book) | pages = | isbn = 0-486-23930-6 | isbn_note = (1980 Dover edition) }}

'''''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 [[Evangelicalism|Evangelical]] 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 (referred to as Mrs. Ray). Rachel lives with her widowed older sister, Dorothea Prime (referred to as Mrs. Prime), and her mother in a cottage near [[Exeter]] 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 church|Low Churchman]] Charles Comfort; and upon his vouching for Luke, allows Rachel to attend a ball where Luke will be present.

At the ball, Luke dances multiple times with Rachel and indicates how much he likes her. The next day, he pays a call on Mrs. Ray and requests permission to court Rachel. Mrs. Ray is favorable impressed with Luke and consents to the request. He then meets with Rachel, proposes to her, and she accepts.

Soon after this, Luke falls into a dispute with the senior proprietor of the brewery, Mr. Tappitt, and travels to London to seek legal advice. While he is away, he writes a love letter to Rachel. Meanwhile, rumours circulate (largely coming from the Tappitt family) about Luke's conduct in Devon, for example, that he fled town while owing money. Comfort believes the rumours, and advises Mrs. Ray against permitting a Rachel-Luke correspondence until the young man's character can be established. Rachel obeys her mother's instructions to write Luke only once, in a somewhat cold, formal tone, as if to release him from the engagement. When he fails to reply to her letter or return to Devon, she grows increasingly depressed.

A subplot involves the abortive courtship of Mrs. Prime by her pastor, Samuel Prong. He is a zealous but intolerant Evangelical. His religious beliefs are in agreement with hers—and he also disapproves of Luke—but Prong and Mrs. Prime have incompatible notions of marriage: he 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.

Eventually, Luke returns to Devon, and the dispute over the brewery is settled to his satisfaction. The disparaging rumors about him are retracted. He calls upon the Rays and assures Rachel that his love for her is still strong. She assents to his renewed proposal. Marital bliss ensues.

==Major themes==

[[James Pope-Hennessy]] described ''Rachel Ray'' as "Trollope's tirade against the [[West Country]] evangelical clergy".<ref name=jph242/> Like his mother, [[Frances Trollope]], who had caricatured them in her ''Vicar of Wrexhill'', Anthony Trollope had no fondness for [[Evangelicalism|Evangelicals]]. In the novel, Samuel Prong, like Obadiah Slope of ''[[Barchester Towers]]'', has an ill-favored appearance, pursues marriage for money rather than love,<ref name=evangelicals/> and is "not a gentleman".<ref name=rachel06/> Mrs. Prime is morose and motivated by a love of power;<ref name=rachel01/> her [[Dorcas Society]] lieutenant, Miss Pucker, is a sour gossip-mongering spinster with a disfiguring squint.<ref name=companion-pucker/> Rachel's happiness is threatened by the machinations of the Evangelical characters, and the intervention of two of her non-Evangelical neighbours is critical in salvaging it.<ref name=companion-rr/>

==Development and publication history==

===''Good Words''===

[[File:Norman Macleod (Waddy, 1872).jpg|thumb|alt=Victorian caricature of man with large mutton-chop whiskers, seated at desk; scroll labelled "Sermons" and magazine "Good Words" beside him|Norman Macleod]]

In 1862, when Trollope was near the peak of his reputation,<ref name=gwobit/><ref name=escott/> he was approached by [[Norman Macleod (1812–1872)|Norman Macleod]]. A well-known Scottish [[Presbyterianism|Presbyterian]] 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]]''.<ref name=super150/>

''Good Words'', established in 1860 by Scottish publisher [[Alexander Strahan]], was directed at Evangelicals and [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|Nonconformists]], particularly of the lower middle class. The magazine included overtly religious material, but also fiction and nonfiction articles on general subjects, including science;<ref name=companion-gw/> the standard for content was that the devout must be able to read it on Sundays without sin.<ref name=jph/> In 1863, it had a circulation of 70,000.<ref name=super150/>

Strahan and Macleod sought a novel from Trollope for serialisation in the magazine in 1863. According to Trollope's autobiography, he initially demurred, but yielded when Macleod persisted.<ref name=auto10/> 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.<ref name=super150/>

Trollope's "The Widow's Mite" duly appeared in the January issue.<ref name=widow/> Strahan advertised the forthcoming serialisation of the new novel, to be illustrated by [[John Everett Millais]], who had illustrated ''[[Framley Parsonage]]'' for ''[[Cornhill Magazine]]''.<ref name=hall/> Trollope wrote ''Rachel Ray'' between 3 March and 29 June 1863.<ref name=chronology/>

===Attack of the ''Record''===

In April 1863, however, the [[Calvinism|Calvinist]] Evangelical Anglican weekly ''Record'' launched a six-article series attacking Macleod and ''Good Words''.<ref name=hall/> 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".<ref name=record/>

Trollope was probably an incidental target of the ''Record''{{'}}s 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 (1843–1900)|Free Church of Scotland]], had created lasting enmity between the members of the two churches.<ref name=srebrnik/>{{rp|18–19}} 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 [[State religion|Established]] church.<ref name=srebrnik/>{{rp|30–31}} 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.<ref name=srebrnik/>{{rp|58–59}}

The controversy did no harm to the circulation of ''Good Words'', which continued to increase.<ref name=hall/> 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.<ref name=evangelicals/> He emphasised 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".<ref name=macleod-memo/>

===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.<ref name=companion-rr/><ref name=super150/> In his autobiography, Trollope states that during his life, he received a total of £1645 for ''Rachel Ray''.<ref name=auto20/>

The affair did not affect the personal friendship of Trollope and Macleod.<ref name=gwreview/> 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.<ref name=chronology/>

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.<ref name=hall/><ref name=illustration/>

Beside the Chapman & Hall editions, the novel was published in 1863 by [[Harper (publisher)|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 (publisher)|Hachette]] of Paris in 1869; both of these translations bore the title ''Rachel Ray''.<ref name=tingay/> More recently, editions of the novel have been released by [[Dover Publications]] in 1980; by Arno in 1981; by the Trollope Society in 1990;<ref name=moody/> and by [[Oxford University Press]] in 2008.<ref name=worldcat/>

==Reception==

[[George Eliot]] was favourably impressed by ''Rachel Ray''; to Trollope, she wrote, "[Y]ou have organized thoroughly natural everyday incidents into a strictly related well proportioned whole".<ref name=super159/> Contemporary critics echoed this; an article in the ''[[Athenaeum (British magazine)|Athenaeum]]'' compared the novel favourably 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".<ref name=athenaeum/> Reviewers at the time of publication also praised Trollope's portrayals of the inner lives of women and their conversations among themselves.<ref name=hall/>

Contemporary reviewers were less pleased with the descent from the clerical gentry of the [[Chronicles of Barsetshire|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".<ref name=brewery/>

==References== <references>

<ref name=athenaeum>''Athenaeum'', 17 October 1863; quoted in N. John Hall, ''Trollope: A Biography''. Oxford University Press, 1991. p. 255.</ref>

<ref name=auto10>Trollope, Anthony. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080814182634/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/autobiography/chapter10.html ''An Autobiography'', chapter 10.] Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=auto20>Trollope, Anthony. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080814183849/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/autobiography/chapter20.html ''An Autobiography'', chapter 20.] Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=brewery>''Saturday Review'', 24 October 1863; quoted in Gordon N. Ray, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3816889 "Trollope at Full Length".] ''Huntington Library Quarterly'', vol. 31, no. 4 (August 1968), pp. 313–340. Available by [[JSTOR]]. Retrieved 14 April 2011.</ref>

<ref name=chronology>Moody, Ellen. [http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/trollope.writing.chron.html "A Chronology of Anthony Trollope's Writing Life".] [http://www.jimandellen.org/ellen/emhome.htm Ellen Moody's Website: Mostly on English and Continental and Women's Literature.] Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=companion-gw>Malcolm, Judith Wittosch. "''Good Words''" in ''The Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope'', ed. by R. C. Terry. Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 219–221.</ref>

<ref name=companion-pucker>Turner, Mark W. "Pucker, Miss" in ''The Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope'', ed. by R. C. Terry. Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 219–221.</ref>

<ref name=companion-rr>Hamer, Mary. "''Rachel Ray''" in ''The Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope'', ed. by R. C. Terry. Oxford University Press, 1999. pp. 457–458.</ref>

<ref name=escott>Escott, Thomas Hay Sweet. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=sa08AAAAYAAJ Anthony Trollope.]'' London: John Lane, 1913. pp. 227. Retrieved 25 April 2011.</ref>

<ref name=evangelicals>Pollard, Arthur. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3044654 "Trollope and the Evangelicals".] ''Nineteenth-Century Fiction'', vol. 37, no. 3, Special Issue: Anthony Trollope, 1882–1982 (December 1982), pp. 329–339. Available by [[JSTOR]]. Retrieved 14 April 2011.</ref>

<ref name=gwobit>Oliphant, Margaret ("Mrs. Oliphant"). "Anthony Trollope". [https://books.google.com/books?id=D_BLAAAAYAAJ ''Good Words for 1883''.] pp. 142–144. Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=gwreview>Macleod, Donald. "Anthony Trollope." [https://books.google.com/books?id=T4BMAAAAMAAJ ''Good Words for 1884''] pp. 248–252. Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=hall>Hall, N. John. ''Trollope: A Biography''. Oxford University Press, 1991. pp. 251–256.</ref>

<ref name=illustration>Moody, Ellen. [http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/pictures.RachelRay.html "On the Original Illustrations of Trollope's Fiction: ''Rachel Ray''".] [http://www.jimandellen.org/ellen/emhome.htm Ellen Moody's Website: Mostly on English and Continental and Women's Literature.] Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=jph>Pope-Hennessy, James. ''Anthony Trollope''. Originally published 1971. Phoenix Press paperback edition, 2001; pp. 261–263.</ref>

<ref name=jph242>Pope-Hennessy, James. ''Anthony Trollope''. Originally published 1971. Phoenix Press paperback edition, 2001; p. 242.</ref>

<ref name=macleod-memo>Letter from Norman Macleod to Anthony Trollope, 11 June 1863; quoted in full in Macleod, Donald, [https://books.google.com/books?id=DS8DAAAAYAAJ ''Memoir of Norman Macleod''.] Toronto: Belford Brothers, 1876. pp. 300–301. Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=moody>Moody, Ellen. [http://www.jimandellen.org/trollope/rachelray.introduction.html ''Rachel Ray'', introduction.] [http://www.jimandellen.org/ellen/emhome.htm Ellen Moody's Website: Mostly on English and Continental and Women's Literature.] Retrieved 5 July 2011.</ref>

<ref name=rachel01>Trollope, Anthony. ''Rachel Ray'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20080823120026/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/rachel/chapter1.html chapter 1]. Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=rachel06>Trollope, Anthony. ''Rachel Ray'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20080514012202/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/rachel/chapter6.html chapter 6]. Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=record>''Record'', 13 April 1863. Quoted in Sadleir, Michael (1927), ''Trollope: A Commentary''. Revised American edition, Farrar, Straus and Company, 1947. p. 245.</ref>

<ref name=srebrnik>Srebrnik, Patricia Thomas. ''Alexander Strahan, Victorian Publisher''. University of Michigan Press, 1986.</ref>

<ref name=super150>Super, R. H. ''The Chronicler of Barsetshire: A Life of Anthony Trollope''. University of Michigan Press: first paperback edition, 1990. pp. 150–155.</ref>

<ref name=super159>George Eliot to Anthony Trollope, quoted in Super, R. H., ''The Chronicler of Barsetshire: A Life of Anthony Trollope''. University of Michigan Press: first paperback edition, 1990. p. 159.</ref>

<ref name=tingay>Tingay, Lance O. (1985). ''The Trollope Collector''. London: The Silverbridge Press. p. 20.</ref>

<ref name=widow>Trollope, Anthony. "The Widow's Mite". [https://archive.org/details/1863goodwords00macluoft ''Good Words for 1863''.] pp. 33–43. Retrieved 25 May 2011.</ref>

<ref name=worldcat>[https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/297532039 "Rachel Ray".] [http://www.worldcat.org/ WorldCat.] Retrieved 5 July 2011.</ref>

</references>

==External links== *{{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anthony-trollope/rachel-ray}} *[https://web.archive.org/web/20080823134950/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/t/trollope/anthony/rachel/complete.html ''Rachel Ray''] – easy-to-read HTML version at [https://web.archive.org/web/20071012100614/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/ University of Adelaide Library] *[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34000 ''Rachel Ray''] at [https://web.archive.org/web/20060714134745/http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page Project Gutenberg] *''Rachel Ray'', [https://archive.org/details/rachelray00trolgoog volume 1] and [https://archive.org/details/rachelray01trolgoog volume 2], reproduction of 1863 Chapman & Hall edition at [https://archive.org/index.php archive.org]. * {{librivox book | title=Rachel Ray | author=Anthony Trollope}}

[[Category:Novels by Anthony Trollope]] [[Category:1863 British novels]] [[Category:Novels first published in serial form]] [[Category:Novels set in Devon]] [[Category:Chapman & Hall books]]