Can You Forgive Her?

CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? is the first of the six Palliser novels. In this volume Trollope examines parliamentary election and marriage, politics and privacy. He dissects the Victorian upper class. Issues and people shed their pretenses under his patient, ironic probe.

But it is on women and their predicament that Trollope particularly focuses. "What should a woman do with her life?" asks Alice Vavasor. And each woman, being different and unique, has her own answer, from the uncomfortably married Lady Glencora to the coquettish Mrs. Greenow, to Alice's clear-headed cousin Kate.

"Anyone who thinks the women's movement began with Gloria Steinhem needs Trollope for perspective." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

Dinah Birch is Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool and writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.