The Way We Live Now - Trollope's Own Views of His Novel

Trollope's Own Views of His Novel

In his autobiography, Trollope described his motivations for writing the novel as follows:

Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now.

Trollope wrote that The Way We Live Now "was, as a satire, powerful and good. The character of Melmotte is well maintained. The Beargarden is amusing,—and not untrue.... he young lady with her two lovers is weak and vapid...." Hetta, Roger, and Paul were all "uninteresting," in his view. "The interest of the story," he wrote, "lies among the wicked and foolish people,—with Melmotte and his daughter, with the American woman, Mrs Hurtle, and with John Crumb and the girl of his heart. ... Upon the whole," Trollope wrote, "I by no means look upon the book as one of my failures...."