Harry Clavering is perhaps the first well-born VIctorian hero to choose a career in civil engineering; he wants to transform the world with railways and bridges. Julia Brabazon, his first love, jilts him for a wealthy, dizzipated, and decrepit nobleman. Two years later, a rich yound widow, she reappears and forces Harry to choose between the comforts of a moneyed wife and the honourable course of marrying his fiancee, Florence Burton, and pursuing his avowed career. His struggles of conscience contrast strikingly with the emotional strength of the two women. Trollope deploys masterly realism and Victorian moral sense in portraying the anguish of making choices in both profession and marriage.Since its first appearance in 1867, this novel has been acclaimed as one of Trollope's most successful protrayals of mid-Victorian life. The Claverings is filled with contemporary detail and shows, as Trollope often does, the weakness of men and the emotional strength of women.