Blackwell Reference Online

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They were standing in the narrow pathway of the gate leading from the bridge into the gardens of the Great House, and the shadow of the thick-spreading laurels was around them. But the moonlight still pierced brightly through the little avenue, and she, as she looked up to him, could see the form of his face and the loving softness of his eye. ‘Because – ‘, said he; and then he stooped over her and pressed her closely, while she put up her lips to his, standing on tip-toe that she might reach to his face. ‘Oh, my love!’ she said. ‘My love! my love!’ (Trollope, The Small House at Allington , p. 98) At this dramatic moment in Anthony Trollope's 1864 novel The Small House at Allington , the heroine Lily Dale presses her lips to those of her fiancé, Adolphus Crosbie. What Lily doesn't know – but the reader does – is that Crosbie's intentions are not what they appear. Sure enough, shortly after this moonlight kiss, Crosbie jilts Lily for the glamorous but frosty Lady Alexandrina de Courcy. For Lily, the kiss represents her initiation into sexual, rather than simply romantic, desire. And from here there is no turning back: from this point forward, Lily considers herself married to Crosbie, bound to him morally if not legally. Crosbie, on the other hand, is overwhelmed by Lily's love and repelled by the thought of middle-class marriage. The double standard kicks in. To Lily's mind, she ... log in or subscribe to read full text