In a society in which inheritance could be all important, the lover of the fox hunt was beginning to suspect that the laws of inheritance were not universally applicable: "And good blood too will have its effect—physical for the most part—and will produce bottom, lasting courage, that capacity of carrying on through the mud to which Sir Harry was wont to allude; but good blood will bring no man back to honesty."
He gives lessons in the art of negotiation: "Lady Elizabeth had not been instructed to propose a meeting. She had been told rather to avoid it if at all possible. But, like some other undiplomatic ambassadors, in her desire to be civil, she ran at once to the extremity of the permitted concession."
A serious interview ensues when George Hotspur plucks up his courage to ask Sir Harry for Emily Hotspur's hand. Two and a half pages of dialogue follow, during which George pleads his losing case well, leaving Sir Harry to decide: "He sat silent for full five minutes before he spoke again, and then he gave judgment as follows: 'You will go away without seeing her tomorrow.'" Trollope follows the narrative to a point further on, at which, "The process of parental yielding had already commenced."
Ever the patient instructor, he here teaches:
On all such occasions interviews are bad. The teller of this story ventures to take the opportunity of recommending parents in such cases always to refuse interviews, not only between the young lady and the lover who is to be excluded, but also between themselves and the lover. The vacillating tone—even when the resolve to suppress vacillation has been most determined—is perceived and understood.
Not always a dispassionate instructor, the compassionate narrator at one point has tender words for the doomed maiden: "Then he knelt down and prayed … that he might be as a brand saved from the burning. … Alas, dearest, no; not so could it be done! Not at thy instance, though thy prayers be as pure as the songs of angels."
The story is built with several materials familiar to Trollope readers: the faithful young woman who can never love another, whatever becomes of the love of her life; the father concerned with the integrity of his estate in generations to come; and the young man who never intends to work and would readily marry for money. Whereas, however, in other novels it all comes out all right (Ayala's Angel, for instance, is a comedy from first to last in which numerous young girls succeed in following their hearts without having to pine away) in this story the chips fall where they may, so the ending is a bit of a downer.
By all accounts Trollope considered himself rather a conservative citizen. But whether consciously or not, he holds up a number of Victorian conventions to the test of reductio ad absurdum and shows their absurdity to a later generation, whatever his contemporary readers may have thought. No feminist, he showed the disadvantaged state of women in novel after novel. And although Father may often know best, his stubborn attempt to prove it might include the risk of disastrous consequences, as shown in Sir Harry Hotspur.