Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope oozes sex and politics. It’s funny, moving and enlightening. The book examines the question: “What should a woman do with her life?” It also introduces characters such as the passionate Lady Glencora Palliser and the anguished Duke of Omnium, who feature in later novels. Want a master class in story-telling? Give Can You Forgive Her? a go.
Trollope’s “Parliamentary Novels”
Can You Forgive Her, published in 1869, is one of six novels by Anthony Trollope that together make up the “Palliser Novels” or “Parliamentary Novels”. Neither summation does justice to this sprawling web of dense, interlocked works. The full set are:
- Can You Forgive Her? (1864) – this review
- Phineas Finn (1869) – review in planning
- The Eustace Diamonds (1873)
- Phineas Redux (1874)
- The Prime Minister (1876)
- The Duke’s Children (1879)
John Major – the Vice-President of the Trollope Society – once told me he considered the Palliser novels the best description of politics in fiction. I agree wholeheartedly. Indeed, I’ve blogged before on why Trollope is straight-up awesome (links in bold italics are to other posts on this site) and on Trollope’s insights into how politics work.
“Can You Forgive Her?” Politics and sex
Can You Forgive Her oozes sex and politics. But Trollope is also a genius on gender – as I have recounted in my posts He Knew He Was Right (you’ll never insist on winning an argument again) and Lady Anna.
Can You Forgive Her studies the role power plays in relationships. I think it’s funny, moving and enlightening. But it’s big and thick, even without reading the five other novels in the series. That’s no bad thing. My post The Way We Live Now: How to Increase your Attention Span points out that reading a long book – provided it’s good – is both fun and rewarding.
Let’s go.
Can You Forgive Her? The Plot
Can you forgive her? came out in 1864. The plot (no spoilers!) revolves around Alice Vavasor, an attractive but indecisive character. As in many 19th-century novels, Alice must decide who to marry. Should she choose straight-laced Mr Grey (quite unlike his EL James counterpart)? Or should she go for dashing, scarred George Vavasor, whom she has long admired?
Urged on by friend Kate, George’s sister, Alice marries one, and rejects the other. Only after her marriage does she realise she has made a terrible mistake. She spend the rest of the book trying to recover the situation. On the way, Alice becomes friends with the passionate Lady Glencora Palliser, dragooned by her family into marrying the turgid but powerful Plantagenet Palliser, future Duke of Omnium. But Glencora longs and lusts after her love, the dastardly Burgo Fitzgerald. Should she elope with him? Can the dull but worthy Plantagenet win her over?
Check out these quotes; then read the book.
Can You Forgive Her? On Marriage
(Alice, in a letter to Grey): Marriage is a great change in life, – much greater to me than to you, who will remain in your old house, will keep your old pursuits, will still be your own master… But I must change everything. It will be to me as though I were passing through a grave to a new world. I shall see nothing that I have been accustomed to see, and must abandon all the ways of life that I have hitherto adopted.
Later, Lady Glencora shows her style: “I like to have a plan,” said Mr. Palliser. “And so do I,” said his wife,–“if only for the sake of not keeping it.“
Trollope on Women
Trollope is often more generous to his female characters than to their male equivalents. Consider this sensitive analysis of what make Lady Glencora happy. It could apply to many relationships today:
I do not know that Lady Glencora’s heart was made of that stern stuff which refuses to change its impressions; but it was a heart, and it required food. To love and fondle someone, – to be loved and fondled, were absolutely necessary to her happiness. She wanted the little daily assurance of her supremacy in the man’s feelings, the constant touch of love, half accidental half contrived, the passing glance of the eye telling perhaps of some little joke understood only between them two rather than of love, the softness of an occasional kiss given here and there when chance might bring them together, some half-pretended interest in her little doings, a nod, a wink, a shake of the head, or even a pout.
This quote about Lady Glencora’s love of nature reminds me of some people I know:
Lady Glendora herself had a love for the mountains and lakes, but it was a love of that kind which requires to be stimulated by society, and which is keenest among cold chickens, picnic-pies, and the flying of champagne corks.
Trollope on men
Trollope is mostly less generous about men, as in these two quotations:
Every man to himself is the centre of the whole world;—the axle on which it all turns. All knowledge is but his own perception of the things around him. All love, and care for others, and solicitude for the world’s welfare, are but his own feelings as to the world’s wants and the world’s merits.
On Plantagenet Palliser: If he was dull as a statesman he was more dull in private life, and it may be imagined that such a woman as his wife would find some difficulty in making his society the source of her happiness.
Can You Forgive Her? On Politics
Finally, here are a couple of quotations on politics. The first, considering the benefits of dullness in a politician, contains much from which today’s politicians could learn:
Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future. He could afford to learn to be a statesman, and had the industry wanted for such training. He was born in the purple, noble himself, and heir to the highest rank as well as one of the greatest fortunes in the country, already very rich, surrounded by all the temptations of luxury and pleasure, and yet he devoted himself to work with the grinding energy of a young penniless barrister labouring for a penniless wife, and did so without any motive more selfish than that of being counted in the roll of the public servants of England. He was not a brilliant man, and understood well that such was the case. He was now listened to in the House, as the phrase goes; but he was listened to as a laborious man, who was in earnest in what he did, who got up his facts with accuracy, and who, dull though he be, was worthy of confidence. And he was very dull. He rather prided himself on being dull, and conquering despite his dullness.
Trollope’s views on parliamentary eloquence, too, are elegant:
There are many rocks which a young speaker in Parliament should avoid, but no rock which requires such careful avoiding as the rock of eloquence. Whatever may be his faults, let him at least avoid eloquence. He should not be inaccurate, which, however, is not much; he should not be long-winded, which is a good deal; he should not be ill-tempered, which is more; but none of these faults is so damnable as eloquence.
In Faint Praise of Shap
Just as in He Knew He Was Right Trollope writes timeless prose on the ghastliness of The Railway Sandwich (scroll to the bottom of the post at the link), so, in Can You Forgive Her, he reflects on the questionable virtues of of Shap, a village in Cumbria:
He made up his mind to see Kate, and with this view he went down to Westmoreland; and took himself to a small wayside inn at Shap among the fells, which had been known to him of old. He gave his sister notice that he would be there, and begged her to come over to him as early as she might find it possible on the’ morning after his arrival. He himself reached the place late in the evening by train from London. There is a station at Shap, by which the railway company no doubt conceives that it has conferred on that somewhat rough and remote locality all the advantages of a refined civilization; but I doubt whether the Shappites have been thankful for the favour. The landlord at the inn, for one, is not thankful. Shap had been a place owing all such life as it had possessed to coaching and posting. It had been a stage on the high road from Lancaster to Carlisle, and though it lay high and bleak among the fells, and was a cold, windy, thinly-populated place, – filling all travellers with thankfulness that they had not been made Shappites, nevertheless, it had had its glory in its coaching and posting. I have no doubt that there are men and women who look back with a fond regret to the palmy days of Shap.
I’ve been to Shap. I think Trollope is unfairly hard on it.
Do you like Trollope?
Trollope is one of my favourite authors. A couple more blogs are here:
Dr Wortle’s School: A Feast of Wisdom about Taboos
How Politics Work: Major Magruder’s Committee
What to do next
Do take a look at all my books, here. They include thrillers, comedies and guides to diplomacy. Or if you fancy some short comedies about gender and relationships, try my Seven Hotel Stories.
