"Ignorance Is Not Innocence" 19
my pages?" he had rejoined "whether from his pulpit, or at any
rate from his communion-table, he did not denounce adultery to
his audience; and if so, why it should not be open to me to preach
the same doctrine to mine." It is frustrating that Trollope did not
here reveal the identity of his correspondent, especially as he com¬
ments that he had received an invitation to continue the debate in
person and "stay a week with him in the country." Trollope con¬
cludes the recollection with the tantalizing note that the "oppor¬
tunity, however, has not yet arrived," testimony to the lasting im¬
pression made on him by the criticism.
For Anthony Trollope, "ignorance is not innocence" not only
because the conscious rejection of evil is more praiseworthy than
primitive blindness, but because ignorance of the ways of the
World is dangerous, and likely to lead to actual sin. Uninformed,
falsely naive young girls like Clara PuUeyn and Glencora Mac¬
Cluskie arc the most likely to be seduced by rakish charms because
they are unequipped to distinguish them from true merit. The
novelist, like the preacher, is obliged to render good attractive and
evil reprehensible, enabling and encouraging his readers to em¬
brace the one and reject the other. Trollope held firmly to the
conception of the novelist's role as a high and dignified calling not
unlike the preacher's, as his novels, his Autobiography, and his
letter in the Jack Harris Samuels Collection demonstrate.