A political conspiracy of women

Phineas is damaged politically by the scandal-mongering of the journalist Slide and by his own thin-skinned quarreling with the junior leader Bonteen. Thus falling out of position for an office in the new Government, he is informed by Mrs. Goesler that she is conspiring with Lady Glencora, and with other political spouses, to improve his chances.

Throughout his career, Phineas has gained advancement by the attentions of women who worked in his interest. Phineas stiffly and pridefully objects to this latest campaign on his behalf, to which Mrs. Goesler responds "If you have enemies behind your back, you must have friends behind your back also."

Laura Kennedy's aged and worried father, Lord Brentford, on the need to come to terms with his daughter's mad husband: "Mad people never do die. That's a well known fact. They've nothing to trouble them, and they live forever."

Brentford on the change in political culture that has enabled the rise of such as Bonteen: "There used to be a kind of honor in these things, but that's all old fashioned now. Ministers used to think of their political friends; but in these days they only regard their political enemies. If you can make a Minister afraid of you, then it becomes worth his while to buy you up. Most of the young men rise now by making themselves thoroughly disagreeable."

Finn privately disparages and underestimates Glencora, but she uses her considerable domestic political skills to attempt to advance his case -- largely in order to spite Bonteen, who she loathes but also in support of her friend Mrs. Goesler and in revenge upon those who have brought scandal upon her friend Laura Kennedy. Glencora helps to defeat Bonteen by giving him a social opportunity to make an ass of himself.

The Duke of St. Bungay is unknowingly enlisted in the anti-Bonteen cause. He, too, is drawn to the fading hereditary nature of Parliamentary politics: "Bonteens must creep into the holy places. The faces he loved to see, -- born chiefly of other faces he had loved when young, -- could not cluster around the sacred table without others who were much less welcome to him. . . . There must be Bonteens; -- but when any Bonteen came up, who loomed before his eyes as specially disagreeable, it seemed to be his duty to close the door."

Glencora's campaign succeeds in spiking Bonteen's ambitions but, as her manipulations become public in the form of rumors, not in elevating Finn -- the incoming Prime Minister, Gresham, being determined that "no woman's fingers should have anything to do with his pie."

Phineas despairs, believing the women's conspiracy on his behalf will be forever held against him, but Marie Goesler is not entirely sympathetic, judging "the thing lost is too small, too mean to justify unhappiness."

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