“He certainly was rough to look at”: Social Distinctions in Anthony Trollope’s Antipodean Fiction

Abstract

The following article concentrates on the representation of social class in Anthony Trollope’s Antipodean stories, Harry Heathcote of Gangoil (1874) and “Catherine Carmichael” (1878). Although Trollope was aware of the problematic nature of class boundaries in the Antipodes, he nevertheless employed the English model of class distinctions as a point of reference. In the two stories he concentrated on wealthy squatters’ attempts to reconstruct the way of life of the English gentry and on the role of women, who either exposed the false pretences to gentility, as in “Catherine Carmichael,” or contributed to consolidation of the landowning classes as in Harry Heathcote of Gangoil.