Eustace Diamonds

Lizzie Eustace is one of the most memorable villains in Victorian fiction, not because she steals diamonds or marries a dying man for his money, but because she lies compulsively, even when lying serves no purpose. When her elderly husband Sir Florian dies shortly after their marriage, Lizzie finds herself a wealthy young widow with an heirloom necklace she has no legal right to keep. The diamonds become a battleground: the family lawyer Mr. Camperdown is determined to reclaim the Eustace heirloom, while Lizzie's relatives debate whether to antagonize the mother of their heir. What follows is Trollope's wickedly funny examination of Victorian marriage as economic transaction, of class honor as self-interest, and of a woman who cannot stop performing even when no one is watching. Lizzie is neither purely villainous nor purely sympathetic - she is something more unsettling: a person who has mistaken performance for reality. This is Trollope at his most incisive, skewering the hypocrisies of high society with a sharp eye and a darker wit than his more pastoral novels.