He Knew He Was Right

He Knew He Was Right is widely regarded as one of Trollope`s masterpieces, displaying the full range of his mature art by turns humorous, pathetic, tragic, and socially aware.
Louis Trevelyan seems the most fortunate of mid-Victorian gentlemen: young, rich, well-educated, handsome, and with a beautiful wife. But his life is ruined by ungrounded jealousy. In the later mad scenes, in which the unlucky hero has been utterly consumed by an obsession with his wife`s imaginary infidelity, Trollope`s writing reaches a Shakespearian pitch unmatched anywhere else in his vast fictional corpus. In the sub-plot dealing with the marriages of his English and American heroines, Trollope engages head-on the issue of women`s rights, a topic which was as alive for his contemporaries of the late 1860s as it is today. And in the person of Miss Jemima Stanbury, the virtuous dragon of Exeter Cathedral Close, Trollope created one of his most notable comic characters.