Serialized between January 1864 and August 1865, Anthony Trollope’s first in his Palliser series, Can You Forgive Her? proved instantly popular. Based on reworked material from his failed comedy The Noble Jilt, its plot focuses on Victorian discontent with social attitudes toward courtship and marriage. The system forced women too often to choose between love and security, leading to the self-questioning emphasized by the novel.
Although that might have proved true, Trollope’s premise in the novel—that once a woman had agreed to marry a certain man she could never change her mind—did not. In a preface to a 1948 edition, Sir Edward Marsh stated he felt Trollope erred in believing that even the strictest of Victorians would expect a woman to keep her promise of love, no matter how “unworthy its object might be.”
For balance and variety, Trollope features three different love triangles, one comedic and the remaining two serious. Of all its characters, Lady Glencora Palliser dominates the novel and becomes a character for which devoted readers would return to every book in the series of six Palliser tales. Trollope’s skill in developing Glencora as a woman of spirit and wit compensated for the flat treatment he affords to her aristocratic husband, Plantagenet Palliser, declared by the author to be one of his favorite characters, although readers did not share his opinion. They first met the Pallisers in Trollope’s fifth Barsetshire sequence novel, The Small House at Allington (1864). Trollope may have later regretted his introduction of Palliser as a misguided hero involved in a momentary flirtation with a married woman.
Each of the novel’s love triangles involves a woman who cannot choose between two men, one representing a wild and sometimes evil personality, the other a stodgy and trustworthy one. The triangle involving the Widow Greenlow and her two suitors, Mr. Cheesacre and Captain Bellfield, serves purely for comic effect, and not a very skillful one. Most critics agree that readers may skip that narrative and miss little. It does serve to balance the other two triangles, as the widow runs away with the ne’er-do-well, while the two young women choose more wisely. Her connection to two other main characters, Alice and George Vavasor, should provide a link to the main body of the novel, but even that relation appears doubtful as the Vavasors’ reputation as gentlefolk does not accommodate the widow’s foolish behavior.
In the more serious and enjoyable portion of the novel, Alice Vavasor breaks her engagement to a country gentleman named John Grey, described by both Alice and the title of the third chapter as a “Worthy Man.” She longs for the past excitement shared with her rascal cousin, George Vavasor, and she develops a scheme to invite him to travel with her and his sister Kate to the Continent. Grey proves his commendable nature when he “approves” of Alice’s plan, even though she had been engaged to marry George in the past. The letter he writes to her on the subject contains a passage of interest to feminist critics:
It’s a very fine theory, that of women being able to get along without men as well as with them; but, like other fine theories, it will be found very troublesome by those who first put it in practice. Gloved hands, petticoats, feminine softness, and the general homage paid to beauty, all stand in the way of success.
Alice remains enthralled with George’s false charm, as he pursues her fortune, which he plans to use to obtain a position in Parliament. This appeals to Alice’s desire to be a political wife, and she breaks her engagement to the devoted Grey. Her blindness to George’s failings can be explained in part by the fact that she knew him originally as a brilliant, courageous, and respectable man. However, pressure from peers and his family, including the self-centered Alice, drives him to sacrifice his honor and converts him into an evil, manipulative personality.
He stoops to emotional blackmail of those closest to him for money to support his “career.” He embarrasses Kate by demanding that she request money on his behalf from Alice. At first taking “immense pride in the renewal of the match between her brother and her cousin,” Kate knows she can no longer speak to Alice “of George as one who was to be their joint hero.” He falls so far from being a hero that he even considers murdering John Grey.
While readers understand George’s callow self-centeredness, they still feel little sympathy for Alice, due to her egoistic attitude and her continual insistence that others allow her to take charge of her own affairs when she obviously lacks the self-confidence to do so. Readers also find her an unrealistic character, almost as much so as the comic widow, as she makes and breaks engagements to both men twice, despite Grey’s obvious superiority. Alice eventually regrets leaving Grey, particularly when she learns that he stands for election representing the borough of Silverbridge. By the novel’s conclusion, the two reunite, much to the relief of readers who care for Grey, and Alice somewhat redeems herself as she considers the sacrifice that Grey makes for her:
She had no right to such happiness after the evil that she had done. She had been driven by a frenzy to do that which she herself could not pardon.
Grey answers the book’s title question affirmatively, and Alice gets her happy future.
The final triangle involves another of Alice’s cousins, Lady Glencora, who has already married prudently to Palliser, a promising politician and heir to a dukedom. The independent Glencora, unlike Alice, becomes an instant favorite with readers. A woman of imagination, she desires a passionate mate. However, Palliser knows little of how to charm a woman, and Glencora begins to long for Burgo Fitzgerald, the beautiful cad she had rejected in favor of Plantagenet in The Small House at Allington. As the narrator tells readers:
I think that she might have learned to forget her early lover, or to look back upon him with a soft melancholy hardly amounting to regret, had her new lord been more tender in his ways with her.
Burgo, a charming, egoistic womanizer, convinces Glencora to run away with him. Palliser learns of the plan and arrives just in time to rescue Glencora. He understands he must sacrifice to retain his wife’s devotion, and he chooses not to run for Chancellor of the Exchequer. Instead, he takes Glencora on a tour of the Continent. There they enjoy the birth of their first child, Lord Silverbridge, who ensures inheritance of the Duke of Omnium title. Palliser proves himself compassionate when he advances the destitute Fitzgerald’s landlord three months’ rent, preventing Burgo’s ending up on the street. He also counsels John Grey regarding problems with the Vavasors.
As in all of Trollope’s novels, these characters operate with clear motivations. Although readers may not agree with choices the characters make, they find the plot realistic and believable. Sir Edward Marsh wrote that when he first read Trollope’s works at the close of the century, his portrayal of English life remained true. When he returned to it, the culture had changed, but the novel offered new readers the opportunity to live fully in another era, due to Trollope’s accomplished attention to exquisite detail and his devotion to capturing correctly human nature.
Bibliography
Glendinning, Victoria. Anthony Trollope. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Marsh, Edward, Sir. Preface to Can You Forgive Her?, by Anthony Trollope. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Skilton, David. Anthony Trollope and His Contemporaries: A Study in the Theory and Conventions of Mid-Victorian Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.
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