Trollope vamping for cover until he can get back to his main plot

In the true style of novel published on the installment plan, Trollope's Framley Parsonage takes a plot detour; just as he builds the tension and has Lucy Robarts jeopardize herself by agreeing to sit by the bedside of a woman dying w/ typhus, Trollope leaves that scene and gives us some long (and sometimes tedious) chapters about an obscure Parliamentary struggle between two parties - the gods and the giants, he calls them (very difficult for a contemporary reader to follow, and all that I really get out of it is that Parliament in the 19th century did not represent the people of Britain in any way - the seats, even in Commons, were awarded based on land ownership and the parliamentarians did nothing of value and were completely unprincipled - but that's the topic of another set of novels) - and further chapters about the marital status of Mrs. Dunstable, perhaps the most wealthy untitled woman in England. She had rejected a proposal from Sowerby, who was at least frank enough to communicate to her (through his sister) that he wanted to marry her for her money, and now she accepts a proposal from her long-time friend, Dr. Thorne - the eponymous protagonist of the previous novel in the Barchester chronicles. Thorne, who has no regard for materials possessions, will now be extremely wealthy. These chapters feel peripheral to the plot of FP, and it may well be that Trollope was vamping for cover before he could get back to the more interesting and central plot strand. Will Lucy die of her good intentions, and will she ever be able to marry Lord Lufton, and if so w/ or w/out his mother's blessing?

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