"She is—insignificant. I believe her to be a very good girl, but she is not qualified to fill the high position to which you would exalt her."
Lady Lufton is addressing her adult son, Ludovic who is eager to marry an attractive young woman named Lucy Robarts. Lady Lufton is devoting her energy to arranging a substantially more socially attractive match between her son and Griselda Grantly. At this point in the story, Ludovic has had quite enough and is pushing his mother to explain—in a word—what exactly it is that Lucy lacks. He has asked if his mother's disparagement is based on the fact that Lucy does come from a family with money. His mother has quite robustly disabused him of this notion, suggesting that even she does not believe in marrying simply for money. Finally, she explicitly states her objection in a single word. That word—insignificant—is itself quite significant as it relates to not just this novel, but the entirety of the Barchester Chronicles series. This response to her son's query about what Lucy lacks that Griselda Grantly does not, for instance, encapsulates the running theme which unifies this series of books: the viral malevolence of class division.
"When she commenced her curtsey she was looking full in her foe's face. By the time that she had completed it her eyes were turned upon the ground, but there was an ineffable amount of scorn expressed in the lines of her mouth. She spoke no word, and retreated, as modest virtue and feminine weakness must ever retreat, before barefaced vice and virile power; but nevertheless she was held by all the world to have had the best of the encounter."
On one level, this is a political novel. The story pits the political interests of the Whigs against those of the Tories. This longstanding oppositional relationship that characterizes Parliamentarian British political history is personified in the characters of the Duke of Omnium and Lady Lufton, respectively. The Duke is the foe in this passage and the woman whose curtsey is filled with unvoiced meaning is Lady Lufton. By this point in the story, it has become clear that she views the Duke as only slightly less evil than the devil himself. Lady Lufton is also unnerved by the fact that her son, Ludovic, has started moving away from her own Tory sensibilities toward embracing Whiggish political opinions as a result of coming under the influence of the Duke. This curtsey takes place at a lavish dinner party at which a number of the attendees are those whom she would consider "significant." This action pregnant with unspoken communication is as much a commentary on the sexism of the age as it is the political factionalism between Whigs and Tories which the face-off personifies.
"Dear, affectionate, sympathetic readers, we have four couple of sighing lovers with whom to deal in this our last chapter, and I, as leader of the chorus, disdain to press you further with doubts as to the happiness of any of that quadrille. They were all made happy, in spite of that little episode which so lately took place at Barchester; and in telling of their happiness—shortly, as is now necessary—we will take them chronologically, giving precedence to those who first appeared at the hymeneal altar."
This paragraph opens the final chapter. It is a model example of the approach to narration taken by the author in this and other novels. The novel as a storytelling form was still in its early stages at this point. It is not unusual at all to read novels written during this era in which the third-person narrator directly addresses the reader, often using the term "dear reader." Throughout the novel, the narrative is often interrupted by other examples of this approach. This paragraph does not just commence the final chapter, it commences a chapter titled "How They Were All Married, Had Two Children, And Lived Happy Ever After." While the address of readers as affectionate and sympathetic is not intended as irony, much of the content of this style of speaking directly to the reader does come off as ironic. The suggestion that the dramatic conflicts at play between the characters would lead to anything about a happy ending does turn out to be true, but at the same time, it carries just ironic distancing as to subtly suggest that the narrator is aware such happy endings rarely occur in the real world.
