Analysis of Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 21, 2025

Anthony Trollope wrote The Way We Live Now to study what he termed “the commercial profligacy of the age,” and he succeeded in publishing the most savage attack on human nature since William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848). He viewed his era as guided by greed, resulting in the most immoral cheaters of all time.

His novel has as its center Lady Carbury, who represents the frailties of human nature, although Trollope goes to lengths to demonstrate her own victimization. With divorced parents, she entered an abusive marriage at 18, producing a profligate son, Felix, who has already spent his own inheritance and demands that of his mother as well as his sister Henrietta (Hetta). Lady Carbury, a hack writer, nurtures her career at all cost. Trollope may have based her character on popular author Margaret Oliphant or, in some respects, even on his own mother, Frances Trollope.

Lady Carbury and her children consult often with the Carbury family head, Roger. At age 40, Roger Carbury still lives alone at Carbury Hall and represents traditional values in the novel. He loves Hetta but gives way to his friend and rival for her affections, Paul Montague. Montague is a decent man, but in his past in America had formed an alliance with Mrs. Hurtle, which will soon return to haunt him.

The handsome but wicked Felix Carbury seeks a solution to his eternal need for money from Marie Melmotte. Her father, Augustus Melmotte, has an obscure past that does not discourage admirers drawn to his reportedly enormous wealth. A supposed financier, he tempts others by promises of sharing in his wealth through investment in an American railroad. Ostensibly persuaded to do so by a corrupt American friend of Paul Montague named Hamilton Fisker, Melmotte is drawn into a scheme far more fraudulent than he understood. In fact, the railroad does not exist, but Melmotte continues the ruse as he receives attention usually reserved for royalty, activity that includes entertaining the Emperor of China at his Grosvenor Square mansion.

Investors rush to hand him their money, because “money was the very breath of Melmotte’s nostrils, and therefore his breath was taken for money.” He eventually comes to believe in his own myth and advances to elected office as a member of Parliament. Pulled into the impending disaster is Melmotte’s daughter Marie, who is regularly slapped and beaten by Melmotte. She loves the ne’er-do-well Sir Felix, envisioning him as her key to freedom.

Lady Carbury has suffered financial setbacks and hopes to regain her good standing through the marriage of Felix to Marie. When Sir Felix disgraces himself by gambling away at the Beargarden Club the money Marie gives him to finance their elopement, the wedding plans are destroyed. Poor Marie knows nothing of the change in plans and is already on a train, receiving a telegram at Liverpool with the message for her to return home. Humiliated and heartbroken, the bewildered girl remains in love with Felix. An outsider in her father’s newfound society, she is so desperate for companionship that she turns a blind eye to Felix’s abundant faults.

Trollope emphasizes anti-Semitism in the regard of Miss Goldsheiner by Lord Nidderdale as worthy only if “the money’s really there.” Georgiana Longstaffe, having searched for a husband for 12 long years, accepts, to the horror of her father, the Jewish Brehgert’s proposal, who comments that he is a nice person but “absolutely a Jew.” She is later outraged when he breaks the engagement with her due to her obvious disappointment over his financial losses, caused by her own father.

Trollope also satirizes the marriage market through Nidderdale, who laments the lack of a published statement revealing the worth of all eligible women, most of whom engaged in trickery themselves, wearing false hair and strategically padding certain body parts.

Roger Carbury argues for rationality and also for proof that the American railway is advancing, somewhat alienating Hetta. Into the mix Trollope adds the American Mrs. Hurtle, who has come to England in pursuit of her previous lover, Paul Montague. Montague loves Hetta, not the scandalous Mrs. Hurtle. Unwilling to cede Montague to Hetta, Mrs. Hurtle threatens to blackmail him with the information of their previous affair.

Felix is sought by Ruby Ruggles, a country girl whom Felix has compromised. Although he does not care for her, Ruby loves Felix and refuses to marry her fiancé, the corpulent miller John Crumb. Felix becomes angered at his sister Hetta for her scolding of him regarding his heartless treatment of Marie Melmotte. He retaliates by divulging Montague’s attachment to Mrs. Hurtle, causing her to break their engagement. Eventually, Hetta accepts Montague, while a desperate Mr. Longstaffe in need of his funds discovers Melmotte’s role in cheating the railroad investors.

Rumors spread regarding his financial situation, and many important members of London high society refuse to attend his dinner for the Chinese emperor. Deserted by his one-time friends, Melmotte faces prosecution. Suffering under the pressure, his false sense of identity collapses, and he attends Parliament drunk. He is ousted and then commits suicide. Melmotte’s death and the loneliness of Mrs. Hurtle and Carbury lend a sad tone to the novel’s conclusion, although some satisfaction may be derived from the beating Felix receives over Ruby by Crumb.

As with all Trollope’s novels, The Way We Live Now contains autobiographical aspects, some mentioned above. In addition, one of its positive characters, the Bishop of Elmham, he based on Dr. Longley, the headmaster of Harrow when Trollope attended in 1830 as a charity boy. He commented that Dr. Longley never let pass one angry word; Longley later became Archbishop of Canterbury.

Melmotte was based in part on Charles Bianconi, an Irish mayor with Italian ancestry who ran fleets of horse-drawn “long cars” with the mail around Ireland until the railroads destroyed his business. Trollope’s own father-in-law, Edward Heseltine, had been involved in scandals including one at a bank that involved a railway swindle. Others involved left the country, while Heseltine died a short time later, and one John Sadleir, a crooked politician as well as banker, committed suicide.

Trollope had written in his story The New Zealander, “It is not of swindlers and liars that we need to live in fear, but of the fact that swindling and lying are gradually becoming not abhorrent to our minds.” He wondered in writing later whether Sadleir would have perished if those around him had not been so accepting of his unethical behavior. Trollope long held that when a community perceived individual dishonesty as success, it had a widespread corrupting effect on that community.

Critics of Trollope’s day viewed his indictment of various aspects of society as misanthropy and did not evaluate the novel positively. Not only did he savage the world of gambling and speculation, but he also took on corruption in the world of publishing and the Church of England, city frauds, and the materialistic approach to love and marriage. The novel would outlive their criticism, to be declared a great achievement in the 21st century, when a television version would be produced. Its critics observed how timely Trollope’s plot appeared, more than a century after its first publication.

Trollope biographer Victoria Glendinning goes so far as to claim that had Trollope written no other novel, The Way We Live Now would have assured him eternal fame.

Bibliography
Bell, Arnold Craig. A Guide to Trollope. Braunton, Devon, U.K.: Merlin, 1989.
Glendinning, Victoria. Anthony Trollope. New York: Knopf, 1993.