In Brief
The Logans were an enchanting and admirable couple. Archie had snatched Liza from her own engagement party to someone else, wooed her, swept her off to his father in Scotland, and finally married her. Now bedded firmly into country life - three children, Archie the village doctor, Liza a teacher, everything comfortable, funny, affectionate - they awaited the arrival of Archie's father, the brilliant Sir Andrew Logan, a widower for over thirty years. When his city-clean Rover stopped in the drive, Sir Andrew was not alone. Beside him was a golden lady in caramel suede, a warm, witty, desirable widow whom everyone - except Archie - adored at once. Archie saw his father's mistress as the worm in the bud of his perfect life - a life that was to be wrenched apart before he and Liza could re-create their world.

Critical Appreciation
In 2003 Amanda Thursfield, writing for the British Council, said: Trollope chooses as her subject matter the universals of human experience: birth, death, love, loss, anger, pain, fear, jealousy, joy, poverty, despair and the fear of change, but she roots these in an environment that is quintessentially English… Likewise, social institutions and relationships - marriage, sexuality, parenthood, the generation gap, growing old and sibling rivalry are the basis of her plots, and are rooted not only in their physical environment but also their historical context. Reading Trollope's novels gives one the strong impression that she has her finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary Britain, indeed, a historian looking back to study the main social preoccupations of the 1980s and '90s and the early years of this century would learn a lot about how the power structure between men and women, and within the family, was changing during these years. One of Trollope's favourite themes is misconceptions between couples - she is particularly deft at describing how a relationship can be perfectly happy but can slip, almost imperceptibly, due to external circumstances, into disaster. Archie and Liza in A Passionate Man experience such a slip when he falls in love with his father's widow and she becomes infatuated with a younger colleague. Liza and Archie, however, grow from their experience and manage to save their marriage; giving the book a satisfyingly hopeful ending.

For Discussion:

I. Central to the story are the lives of the Logan family. The book’s first chapters are an introduction to Archie and Liza and a picture of family life:

a. Archie: Trollope makes the point, markedly, that he is a man "in whom a powerful sensual appetite had been planted along with a measure of wayward emotional and mental powers" (p.20). He is, professionally a doctor, and the novel opens with his visit to a patient, Granny Mossop, who is perfectly alive to the fact that "the doctor had sex appeal" (p.7), which enlivens his visits for her. As a country doctor, he is shown as both competent medically and full of a humorous humanity towards his patients. He is also a committed and ardent husband, a man drawn to his wife in the first place by "her mouth, with its faintly bee -stung lower lip" (p.10), and a devoted and laid-back father - look at his arrival home on p 11. And - crucial to the way the narrative develops - he is a loving and attentive son to his widowed father, Sir Andrew Logan. Look at the way he reacts to the news that his father has rung, on p. 13.

b. Liza: She is a woman who adoringly succumbed to being Archie’s wife and the mother of his children. The reader is introduced to Liza at the heart of family life, sitting at the kitchen table, with her red curls tied back, listening to her second son’s reading practice. Archie had captured her from another engagement and had “Taken (Liza) into a powerful, impregnable male citadel as a precious captive … transformed … into someone particular and valuable.” (Page 13) Liza finds still Archie irresistible and hopes that Sir Andrew’s interest in Marina will restore her husband’s sole attention to her. She is content with her life as wife, mother and teacher …“the pleasure of her life struck her forcibly.” (Page32) and the only cloud in her sky is Thomas, her son, who is so unhappy at his boarding school.

Question: What kind of person is being described here? What do you think changes Liza? By page 95 she feels that “she had come to the end of a particular road on the map of their marriage”.

II. The book explores different views of love:

a. There is the love between and parent and child love: Archie’s unconditional love for his children extends to an acute awareness of their love for him. He wants Imogen’s love, but freely given, and recognises his daughter’s “separate valuable power to love without abasing or compromising herself. In turn, Archie has always felt the same accord with his own father and knows that will not change. However, Sir Andrew made it plain that, in meeting Marina, he had another kind of love, “full of it.” (Page 50) and this makes Archie, in his own words, “bloody miserable.” (Page 21)

b. Correspondingly Sir Andrew, a widower, had “given himself over to his boy and his work” (Page 19 after his wife had been killed in a car crash. He finds it hard to be alone when Archie marries Liza and tells Archie, in an attempt to get him to understand that ‘When you fell in love and married… it reminded me for the first time in a long time, that I had my own life to lead. It was not easy. I was out of the habit.’” (Page 106) Archie finds it so very hard to respond, or even understand his own why he cannot.

c. Then, pivotal to the book, is the love in marriage: The book shows the reader, briefly, the close, marriage between Sir Andrew and his first wife, “the Welsh girl”. Trollope’s description is like a precursor for the Archie and Liza’s own marriage which Clare, Liza’s sister thinks is one “of those rare relationships where mutual roots seemed tangled round each other.” (Page 114) This entanglement, so essential to this relationship, develops and unravels with dissatisfaction, disloyalty and resentment.

Question: Do you think the collapse of Archie and Liza’s peaceful existence was inevitable? What mistakes did they make and what chances do you think they have of redeeming their marriage by moving to Scotland?

d. Acting as a backdrop, a sub-plot, is the second marriage of Sir Andrew and Marina. Marina’s first marriage had been one of convenience, for Marina had been “absolutely sick of the brave struggle of living alone.” (Page 73). Her husband, Louis de Breton, had been a bullying multimillionaire who had died before Marina could be just another of many wives he had divorced. Marina loves Sir Andrew in an endearingly, caring way, and this is more than reciprocated by Sir Andrew who adores Marina. “He was not, as he had feared, a victim of elderly and absurd folly, but rather one of the chosen… Sir Andrew was shaken with a shudder of unquestionable ecstasy.” (Page 46.)

e. Further complicating the plot is middle-aged sex, with an affair, a relationship between a widow and her deceased husband's son, and an infatuation.
i. The affair: Archie affair with Marina is a passionate, physical reaction. Returning from seeing Marina, Archie: “...wanted to sing and to weep. Whatever he had done, whatever came now, he had never felt so absolutely alive before.” (Page 216.) It is poignant and painful that Liza finds out as she tries to redeem her own unfaithfulness. The pace accelerates to the almost inevitable confrontation between Liza and Marina. Liza rounds on Marina, “‘But what about me and Archie? What will happen to us? What have you done to us?’ Marina dropped her arms. ‘He loves you…he never stopped. What happened was no part of it,’” (Page 274) The scene closes with Liza, unexpectedly, finding her redemption and liberty through Marina
ii. Infatuation: The wayward, charming Blaise O’Hanlon, June Hampole’s Irish nephew, has been sent to Bradley Hall for a “little English stiffening.” He starts a flirtation with Liza as a welcome diversion. He is convinced that “Serious lust has turned into serious love.” (Page 63), But it is not, and the infatuation is short lived. The ending is unpleasant and bitter, Blaise is bored and ill-tempered, and Liza has woken from her fantasy; so it is not surprising that a scene erupts. Blaise hurls abuse with a “dull fury”, saying: “‘Rotten little kisses. Cock-teasing kisses…. I am sick of being played with.’” Liza’s world of fantasy and illusion crumbles and she retorts, “‘You’re loathsome… and you’re mad.’” (Page 224-5) The situation is deftly concluded by Trollope like a game of consequences. June Hampole, happening on the scene, comments, “‘how sordid.’” It is Clare that Liza turns to for comfort and she says, as if to validate Liza’s part in the situation, and to bring it to its conclusion, “‘You allowed someone else to make a fool of you.’”



Question: Amanda Thursfield comments that: Sex features quite often in the novels, but Trollope's attitude towards it is neither prudish nor sensationalist. She sees sexuality as a subject of scrutiny in that it symbolises strong feelings between individuals and for the sensations of unease it creates in those around those individuals.
Discuss how this relates to what happens to Archie, Liza, Marina and Blaise.

III. Both Diana & Marina enable dramatic changes to take place in the Logan’s life. Both have their own inimitable perception. Discuss what might have happened if…


a. Diana had not found Liza a teaching post
b. Marina had not met and married Sir Andrew – or invited Liza to London – or had sex with Archie.

IV. Thomas: His unhappiness and difficulty in settling into boarding school act almost as mirror to the Logan’s family life. The innocent selfishness of his brother and sister, the fierce arguments between his parents amplify his own misery.

a. Do you agree with boarding schooling?
b. Is someone like Thomas ever going to happy with a boarding school?
c. Do his parents really understand what makes Thomas unhappy and how much are they bound by Sir Andrew’s traditional view of bringing up a boy?

V. Village life: “the Stoke villages fill up with weekenders and commuters and retired people…miscellaneous cottages were being bijoued up into Hansel and Gretel dwellings…” (Page 91) Richard Prior’s solution is to build some starter homes for young couples who not been born more than ten miles from the village. “’It’s the only way to keep the village going….” (Page 92)
a. Why do you think the plan met with such opposition?
b. Can you suggest a better way of approaching the loss of traditional village life?

VI. Amanda Thursfield says: The happy ending is another feature that leads some critics to think that Trollope's work is not 'serious'. Such a generalisation is wrong; firstly because, though all Trollope's novels involve change and personal growth and often, a positive view of the future, it is a simplification to say they end 'happily'.
a. Discuss how far this statement is true of A Passionate Man.
b. Read the first and last chapter of the book. Make a list comparing what has changed about Archie, Liza, Diana and Sally.
c. What word would you rather use to describe how each character feels by the end of the book?

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