Can You Forgive Her?

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'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 asolid 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. The first of Trollope's six Palliser novels, Can You Forgive Her? concerns a woman's desire for independence painfully at odds with her feelings for two suitors, as Trollope explores the tensions in Victorian society between reform and tradition, and the interplay between money, power, and politics. Dinah Birch's lively introduction discusses the relationships at the heart of the novel and elucidates the complexities of the text. An emphasis on issues of gender, social and economic change, and politics in the introduction clarifies the novel's place in contemporary life. The edition reflects recent critical revaluations of Trollope's significance as a major novelist, including the influence of the new economic criticism, and new interests in Victorian liberalism. Updated critical bibliography. Invaluable appendix outlines the political context of the Palliser novels and establishes the internal chronology of the series and the relationship between fictional and actual political events, providing a unique understanding of the series as a linked narrative. Biographical Preface provides a compact biography of Anthony Trollope, and a Chronology charts his life against the major historical events of the period. Explanatory Notes elucidate cultural, literary, and political allusions.