SOURCE: Wallins, Roger P. “Mrs. Trollope's Artistic Dilemma in Michael Armstrong.” Ariel 8, no. 1 (January 1977): 5-15.

In the following essay, Wallins examines Trollope's attempt to balance the artistic integrity of her novel with her concern for the plight of children working in factories.

The nineteenth-century social novel generally establishes a limited area in which to identify and perhaps offer solutions to a particular problem, often some aspects of the living and working conditions of factory workers, miners or, less frequently, agricultural laborers. It seems to have begun with Oliver Twist,¹ Charles Dickens' first attempt to treat at length such serious social problems as the adverse effects of the New Poor Law and the existence of criminal training-schools in the slums of large cities. Dickens' novel has survived because he was able to incorporate his social criticism into a work that has not only topicality but also artistic merit. It...