ABSTRACT
In an October 1857 Westminster Review article, George Meredith recommended Barchester Towers, praising its “masculine delineations of modern life” and approving it as “a novel that men can enjoy.”3 Much of this enjoyment, Meredith explains, derives from the intrigue of Eleanor Bold’s widowhood:
Why does Meredith find widows so delectable and widowhood so perilous? His “appetite” cannot be fully explained by the tantalizing effects of narrative deferral found in traditional courtship plots, for he explicitly affirms the text’s simplicity and transparency. Indeed, his self-assurance is authorized by an infamous intrusion in Barchester Towers itself, an intrusion which sabotages the suspense commonly relied upon to whet readerly appetite: “But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope
or Bertie Stanhope.”5 Given all this open and easy confidence, what can explain Meredith’s rapacious anxiety?
