Because I Do: Trollope, Tautology, and Desire

This essay argues that in Anthony Trollope’s fiction, tautology functions as a characterological language for erotic desire. While in Can You Forgive Her? (1865) male characters exploit the irrefutability of tautology as a form of erotic and ideological coercion of women, in The Way We Live Now (1875) female characters embrace the opacity of tautology as part of a self-reflexive critique of the marriage economy--a critique that emphasizes the erotic over the logical and the anti-social over the social.