Can You Forgive Her? (Palliser Book One) by Anthony Trollope

 

Can You Forgive Her? (Palliser Book One) by Anthony Trollope.

This edition published 8th March 2012 by Oxford World Classics.

From the cover of the book:

'She loved him much, and admired him even more than she loved him...Would that he had some faults!'

Alice Vavasor is torn between a risky marriage with her ambitious cousin George and the safer prospect of a union with the formidably correct John Grey. Her indecision is reflected in the dilemmas of her friend Lady Glencora, confined in the proprieties of her life with Plantagenet Palliser but tempted to escape with her penniless lover Burgo Fitzgerald, and of her aunt, the irreverent widow Mrs Greenow, who must choose between a solid farmer and an untrustworthy soldier as her next husband. Each woman finds her choice bound up with the cold realities of money, and the tension between public expectation and private inclination.

Can You Forgive Her? is the first of Trollope's six Palliser novels, and its focus on the exercise of power, whether in the masculine world of parliament and the professions, or within the domesticities of friendship, courtship, and marriage, signals a new breadth and diversity of interest in his fiction.

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Alice Vavasor has grown up to be responsible for her own fate and fortunes, mostly without the interference of her grander relatives, but when it comes to marriage she is in two minds about what she wants. She is torn between marriage to the staid and sensible John Grey, who she loves, or rekindling a relationship with her reckless cousin George, who offers her the chance to have a purpose in life by financing his political ambitions. 

Meanwhile, her aristocratic friend Lady Glencora has been persuaded to settle for marriage to rising political star, the rather boorish Plantagenet Palliser (who we first met engaging in an awkward flirtation with the former Griselda Grantly in the Barstetshire novel The Small House at Allington), after being parted from the handsome, but penniless cad Burgo Fitzgerald. Glencora is convinced she cannot make her husband happy and longs to runaway with her former lover, but to do so would ruin her reputation.

And if two love triangles were not enough, Alice's aunt, the merry widow Mrs Greenow, is engaging in a flirtation with two men, while half-heartedly maintaining a period of mourning for her recently departed spouse - wealthy gentleman farmer Mr Cheeseacre, and his rather less respectable, dashing friend Captain Bellfield.

As in Trollope's Barsetshire books, this is a story very much about marriage and money, but it revolves around the world of politics rather than ecclesiastical circles. I was a bit worried that there would be too much in the way of politics, at the expense of more compelling storylines, but how wrong I was! The political wranglings are engagingly central to the plot, and this is a novel packed to the gills with drama! The rakish rotters in this tale are truly bad, in a way not even touched upon in the villains in the Barsetshire novels, and Trollope is not afraid to incorporate real darkness into their personalities and deeds - George Vavasor in particular is spectacularly awful.

Alongside the hefty kick of menace and dread these baddies elicit, there is plenty of Trollope's typical gentle humour, rambling romantic suspense, and sharp social commentary, and his characterisation is a joy. Many of these characters go on meaningful journeys across the course of this novel, getting to know themselves and what they want through their trials and tribulations, and making choices that fulfil the expected roles of men and women in Victorian Britain. Some of these are a little troubling from a modern perspective, especially since I completely understood the desire of the female characters to have some agency in their own lives. Does Alice Vavasor really need forgiving for wanting some purpose in her life, rather than submitting to a 'lord and master'? I think widow Greenow (my firm favourite) gets the balance right in the end, but I leave you to make up you own minds.

This was a great first foray into the Palliser series, which I have not read before, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know a whole new set of players on Trollope's literary stage. I am really looking forward to getting started on book two next, Phineas Finn.

Can You Forgive Her? is available to buy now in various formats.

About the author:

Anthony Trollope (1815-82) became one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of Trollope's best-loved works revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire, but he also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues and conflicts of his day.