At the start of the novel, Harry is jilted by his fiancée, the sister of Sir Hugh's wife, who proceeds to marry Lord Ongar, a wealthy but debauched earl.

This puts him in a position where he must behave dishonourably toward one of the two women in his life: either he must break his engagement, or he must acknowledge that he has gravely insulted Lady Ongar.

She is courted by Count Pateroff, one of her late husband's friends, and by Archie Clavering, Sir Hugh's younger brother.

He also writes to Lady Ongar, expressing his regret for his past conduct toward her and making it clear that he intends to remain true to his fiancée.

The Claverings treats what David Skilton calls "Trollope's dominating concern of the eighteen-sixties":[1] the choice of a career, in a broad sense.

[1] Trollope's particular interest in what he himself called a hero who "vacillates and is weak"[2] gives rise to an unconventional but deep exploration of the emotions of a man in love with two women at the same time.

[4] The 'hero' is left paralysed like Buridan's ass,[5] and is only rescued by the forces of matriarchal convention, in the form of his own mother and Florence's sister-in-law, as well as by the author's ruthless slaughtering of three male cousins to provide him with an unearned income.

Lady Ongar rejected Harry's honest love and married for worldly gain, and found misery despite her worldly wealth; in the Phineas novels, Lady Laura Standish chose the wealthy Robert Kennedy over the warm-hearted Finn, and found herself subjected to her husband's gloomy and domineering temperament.

[9] Examples include Obadiah Slope of Barchester Towers, Samuel Prong of Rachel Ray, and Jeremiah Maguire of Miss Mackenzie.

[17] Contemporary critics received the novel favourably, speaking approvingly of the moral lesson in the misery suffered by Lady Ongar after she married for money rather than love.

[18] The Saturday Review critic wrote that she had done "a wrong and a wicked thing", and that "she is punished just enough, and not more than enough, to vindicate the ways of society to women... Perhaps, if anything, she escapes too lightly.

Sadleir described it as one of Trollope's five technically faultless books: "there is not a loose end, not a patch of drowsiness, not a moment of false proportion.