Hidden Fraud in Trollope’s The Way We Live Now :: Literature Fortune Papers

Hidden Fraud in Trollopes The Way We Live in a flashHamilton K. Fisker supplies the impetus for rolling Augustus Melmotte onwards into almost unprecedented commercial greatness (Trollope 1.324). While his character occupies very little narrative space, Fisker functions as the catalyst which sets the impertinents financial ventures in motion Melmotte rolls because Fisker has pushed. Not only does Fisker bring the Great South Central Pacific and Mexican Railway (or at to the lowest degree the prospectus) to England, but he also delimits the board members role in the venture. He places Melmotte, the novels great financier, in charge and repels Paul Montagues entrust to involve himself as an active director in the railroads daily operations (1.217). Fisker rejects Pauls attempt to oversee the Mexican railroad lines actualization by arguing that building railway lines does not concern an investor such as Paul But Fisker got the better of him and put him down. lot what fortune had either of us? A few beggarly thousands of dollars not worth talk of the town of, and barely sufficient to enable a man to number at an enterprise. And now where are you? look here, sir theres more to be got out of the operating costing up of such an affair as this, if it should smash up, than could be made by years of hard work out of such fortunes as yours and mine in the regular way of trade. Paul Montague surely did not love Mr Fisker personally, nor did he relish his commercial doctrines but he allowed himself to be carried away by them. (1.85) If Fiskers momentum rolls Melmotte, it carries away Paul, and the force of Fiskers rhetoric subjugates Paul to his commercial doctrines Fisker put him down. Fisker gets the better of Paul by making speech subservient to lucrative economic principles. He does not indispensability Paul to enforce honest practices in the railroads financial transactions. Fiskers first commercial doctrine, then, declares that we shoul d consider small investors not worth talking of. Since small, individual investments financed the majority of English railway ventures in Victorian England (Robb 36), Fisker essentially declares that the Mexican Railways investors should not receive any narrative attention. unconstipated though Paul does not love Fisker or respect him personally, Fiskers dominant narrative carries him away. Similarly, even though The Way We Live Now cynically satirizes fraudulent business practices, Trollope takes Fiskers declaration that a few thousand dollars are not worth talking of to heart.