'The Prime Minister' by Anthony Trollope

A frequently repeated locution in ‘The Prime Minister’ is the instructive ‘taught’. It occurs thirty two times in various forms which in a writer of Trollope’s attainments must be significant and more than careless repetition. In some of the cases you are a moral autodidact, in the others society and the power of the family will ‘larn’ you.

much perverseness in the girl, who might have taught herself 

must have taught you that when a man is cut up about a woman, 

in which she had first learned to love him, and had then taught herself to understand by some confused and perplexed lesson 

We had taught ourselves to think that you would have bound yourself closer with us down here 

She must be taught the great importance of money 

and she must be taught to use this influence unscrupulously 

she must be taught how imperative it was 

And so the first lesson was taught 

and she had taught herself to fancy that she could not live without Mrs. Finn. 

I think he ought to be taught to forget her 

had declared that there were some men to whom such lessons could not be taught, 

He had taught himself really to think that Fletcher had insulted him 

and she knew that the lessons which it taught were vulgar and damnable. 

and I've taught myself to think that they are not very different from other men. 

he had taught himself to look upon the sum extracted 

the tricks of trade as taught by Ferdinand Lopez 

It is because he has been taught to think that I am in a small way.He'll find his mistake some day." 

And so he taught himself to regard the old man as a robber and himself as a victim 

. and she must be taught to endure his will, 

His sense of honour had taught him to think 

he had already taught himself to regard it as one of those bygones 

snd she had taught herself to think that absolute banishment 

I think I have taught myself to think nothing of myself 

He had trusted that the man whom he had taught himself some years since to regard as his wished-for son-in-law 

, and he had almost taught himself to think that it would be better for herself  

Mrs. Fletcher the elder at last almost taught herself to believe 

could be taught to seem to forget him

The universe of ‘The Prime Minister’ is a very moral one and if I labour this point its so you don’t have to teach yourself to notice this thread of self mastery, self injunction and proceeding by mottoes and affirmations. You will notice that the recalcitrant women are poorly self taught or wrongly other taught and generally bound to go astray. Lady Glencora doesn’t teach herself anything being a creature of impulse and intuition and spur of the moment plans. Emily Wharton lacks that inner instructress and falls under the rod of Lopez whose copy book heading is ‘What I will is the good’. The Whartons and the Fletchers have been taught by history and civilisation and homo hierachicus. Foreigners are not part of the lesson plan, a Jew is automatically a bounder and so forth. Decent whiggery from the right sort is acceptable but really the Tories are godly you know. Have you learned your lesson: Trollope is a stern invigilator and if you fail your exam you may not be allowed to re-sit. Its quite bracing. One trusts Trollope or so I have taught myself. The character of Lopez is precisely demonstrated, his inner emptiness bolstered by outer show. I’m inclined to think that in a quiet way ‘The Prime Minister’ may be the strongest of the Palliser series. Now on to ‘The Duke’s Children’.