As a previous reviewer has said, the story is perhaps rather slight: Harry Clavering's dilemma whether to go for the "tarnished" charms of his beautiful, aristocratic first love, or the solid worth of his middle class gem of a second love (and no guesses as to which he choses, this being Trollope!); but underneath lurks rather more. Indeed, the Claverings is a very interesting book on a number of fronts.
In the first place (and the point that most reviewers bring to the fore) it offers a rather wider picture of Victorian society than many Trollope novels. Harry Clavering is from a county family, and we become familiar with his uncle's home, and the rounds of the clergyman in the area, teaching and assisting with the needy. But he decides to "branch out" and become an engineer, and we thus become acquainated with the solid middle classes who are peopling the engineering world and changing the face of London, Paris, Moscow - as well as other country spots away from Harry's home. Indeed one of the side pleasures of this novel is the picture of Victorian London before the advent of the tube, when one of its advocaates walks home every day from the Strand to his home in Onslow Crescent (in the days when a middle class no more than adequately salaried engineer could afford to live there!) - and thinks nothing of such a walk, except to complain that there is no such thing as comfy boots!
Another major point of interest is the Victorian moral code: Florence Brabazon, Harry's first love, is the daughter of an aristocratic neer do well who has spent all her money. She accordingly does the prudent thing and marries an older man (not, as the previous reviewer says a Duke, but certainly a Lord) with stacks of loot. He treats her like dirt and spreads stories about her virtue, and the combination of the marriage (which is accounted a wrong) and the gossip is enough to ruin her in the eyes of society. The point of fascination is to ask oneself - exactly what did she do wrong? How was the poor girl to sustain herself after her father's death? Was it in chosing a Lord with too much loot that she erred, because surely if she had married someone of her own rank with a competence, no-one would blink an eye at such a suitable match? The proof of this we see in the position of Harry's sister Fanny, who has been brainwashed into believing that a marriage is not "suitable" unless an adequate modicum of money is involved, and whose very nice parents believe that her intended should at least be of the gentlemanly classes ...
But for me the particular pleasure in the book comes in viewing it as a companion piece to my favourite - The Small House at Allington, of whose story this is in some ways a reflection. In The Small House the "hero" loves a nice girl, whose virtues we clearly see, is tempted by the charms of an aristocratic wife (who is actually a very vapid creature) and succumbs, thereby ruining his life. Here Harry, a younger, less impressive person than Crosbie, is tempted by his first aristocratic love, whose charms, beauties and real worth are all made very present to our minds; and yet he choses the nice girl (who is by no means a beauty, and whose solid virtues do not sing from the page, at least not until quite late in the book). Of course being Trollope (who I regard as in many ways a great feminist writer, in that he writes strong women and regards most men as being as weak as water) Harry's decision is actually made for him by the various women who surround him ....
Not one of the greatest of Trollope's works, but a very fine book, with a myriad of pleasures along the way.
