Rivalry and Repose
On The Warden by Anthony Trollope
The Warden (1855) is often regarded as one of Anthony Trollope’s greatest novels. Its hero, Septimus Harding, is a dutiful priest in the Church of England, appointed as the Warden of an almshouse for elderly tradesmen. Yet Harding’s income and gentle routine come under scrutiny by the journalist John Bold, a reformer who launches a newspaper campaign against him, accusing him of living an unjust life of luxury. The ensuing conflict offers a depiction of the Victorian Age—its church hierarchy, legal system, social customs, and journalistic culture.
While the rivalry of Harding and Bold gives the novel much of its narrative energy, I would argue that its true centre lies somewhere else. The Warden is, rather, a study of Septimus Harding himself, describing his gradual withdrawal from the world. This is evident, first of all, in the novel’s title: The Warden. Harding is singled out for attention. As the novel unfolds, it is his inner life that increasingly takes precedence, a perspective most keenly felt during a dream sequence near the end of the story.
I first recognised Harding’s self-imposed exile when thinking about another, seemingly unrelated writer: Milan Kundera. The critic François Ricard, in his book Agnès’s Final Afternoon (2003), argues that Kundera’s fiction turns on moments of existential detachment—moments when characters step away from the structures that define them. Ricard writes that in Kundera
‘the novel is always written from the edges of the world. It is always a work of desertion… by which the world and its beings appear in a light that feels like dusk, alien, problematic… now comic, now pitiable, on the point of vanishing into nonsense at any moment.’
What Ricard describes here could also be applied to Harding’s story. Seen in this light, The Warden is not primarily a social chronicle or a moral contest between Harding and Bold, but an account of a man undergoing an estrangement from his established role in the world.
The climactic moment of Trollope’s novel occurs when Harding relinquishes his wardenship. In a clear sense, Bold’s campaign succeeds: Harding resigns and the almshouse readjusts its finances. Yet Trollope is equally clear that Harding’s resignation arises from within. Having read the newspaper articles accusing him of injustice, Harding decides for himself the path he must take. As he explains to another character:
‘A man is the best judge of what he feels himself. I’d sooner beg my bread till my death, than read such another article as those two that have appeared, and feel… that the writer has truth on his side.’
Harding chooses to resign his job, a decision that seems strange to many, including to Harding himself. Yet, once he has weathered Bold’s attacks, he chooses to turn away from the world. There is an amoral quality to his decision. Absent any clear moral injunction or guidance, he does what seems right to himself. The Warden must become someone else entirely.
In this sense, Harding’s withdrawal resembles the forms of departure that recur in Kundera’s fiction. He does not triumph, nor does he fully submit. Instead, he steps aside. What he relinquishes is a title and a position as well as a certain way of being in the world. He leaves behind the comfortable almshouse rectory and settles into modest lodgings above a chemist’s shop. But resignation is something he chooses.
Reading The Warden through this lens also brings into focus the novel’s psychological structure. The narrative begins with Harding firmly installed in his role at the almshouse and concludes only once he has resigned it. In this sense, the novel tells the story of a man who ceases to be what he was. Its narrative arc is that of detachment, exile, or relinquishment.
How, then, can Harding find any kind of repose after what appears to be a defeat? The answer lies in the peculiar light which pervades Trollope’s novel. Like Ricard’s description of Kundera’s characters, Harding comes to appear ‘at the edges’ of the world—slightly displaced from it, seen in a tone that is at once comic and pitiable. He was deeply troubled by the accusations of injustice levelled against him, yet after his resignation Trollope notes that ‘he is neither discontented nor an unhappy man.’ In other words, he is a man at rest. Outwardly, he appears to have fallen. Yet inwardly he has charted his own path. He has realised himself by following his conscience.