How Trollope's endings differ from those of Hardy, Dickens

Trollope, at heart a devotee of romantic-comic fiction, will bring his characters around and ensure a happy ending, for most at least, consisting of marriage and inheritance - or so I think, nearing the conclusion of Framley Parsonage. Mostly, we were concerned about the fate of Lucy Robarts, off tending to the nearly mortally ill Mrs. Crawley following the curt dismissal from Lady Lufton, who refused to bless the proposed marriage of Lucy and her son, Lord (Ludovic) Lufton. What would happen in a Hardy novel? Lucy would contract typhus and would die, and Lord Lufton would break with his mother and spend the rest of his life as a hermit. Or in a Dickens novel? Lucy would die, but would offer a tearful pardon to Lady Lufton w/ her last breath, an mother and son would embrace. But in Trollope, Lucy recovers - and Lady Lufton visits her and apologizes for her earlier prejudice, she blesses the marriage and welcomes Lucy to the family, and the 2 embrace. What's truly remarkable here is that Lady Lufton is one of the few characters in literature, excepting heroes of true bildungsromans such as Tom Jones or Great Expectations, who truly changes, grows, evolves over the course of the novel: Her embrace of Lucy is the most emotional and touching moment in this long novel, and is a glimpse perhaps into a future in which birth and property will no longer be so determinant. But in Trollope's day, that was no more than a vision of hope (still the case), so even as we move toward the Robarts-Lufton nuptials we see another couple - the icy Griselda Grantly and her fiance, the wealthy Lord Dumbello (!) - heading toward a break-up. In a way, they both deserve better. But their break-up is a reminder that match-making on the basis of beauty (on her part) and wealth (on his) can be a folly that will lead to a hellish life for both.

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