Review: Can You Forgive Her?, by Anthony Trollope

Review: Can You Forgive Her?, by Anthony Trollope

by Rich Horton

I didn't really mean to read another Trollope novel so soon, but I bought a few of his books at a used bookstore, and I opened Can You Forgive Her? and before long I was hooked. This novel, from 1864/1865, was the first of the Palliser (or Parliamentary) novels to be written. 

It is a very long novel, over 800 pages. Supposedly Stephen King wrote, in his book on writing, that it should have been called Can You Even Finish It?, which seems a bit rich coming from a guy who wrote at least two novels of more than 1100 pages. (It's also by no means Trollope's longest novel -- I believe at least The Way We Live Now and possibly The Last Chronicle of Barset are longer.) I will say that my edition maintained the original two volume structure and pagination (bound in a single volume, though) and I was very confused when I got about 200 pages in, looked at the page number at the end of the book and saw 416 or so, but realized I clearly wasn't close to halfway through. And, to be fair to critics of its length, while I enjoyed this book, it's probably my least favorite of the Trollope novels I've read to date. It is fair to say that not much really happens in the book relative to its length. But Trollope being Trollope, it remains absorbing.

It is built around two very carefully paralleled stories of women torn between two men. The main character -- the one we must try to forgive -- is Alice Vavasor, a woman of 24, of a decent but declining county family, with (from her mother's side) a modest fortune, some £10,000. As the novel opens, she is engaged to a very fine and honest, but perhaps rather boring, man, John Grey. She had previously been engaged to her first cousin, George Vavasor, a more ambitious and perhaps interesting man than John Grey, but also a less trustworthy man, and she had broken the engagement when he went through a "wild period". (It takes a long time, but we do finally learn that he had kept a mistress, whom he left in terrible straits when he was finished with her.) Her cousin Kate, George's brother, believes George is better suited as a husband for Alice, partly because George's new interest -- he wants to stand for Parliament -- is something that interests Alice; but also because Kate wants to see her brother made financially sound, and Alice's money might do that.

In parallel is the story of Lady Glencora, a very wealthy somewhat distant connection of Alice, who had wanted to marry a dissolute but very handsome member of an aristocratic family, Burgo Fitzgerald. But Glencora's family thought Burgo would be a terrible husband, and they put pressure on her her to break off with Burgo and instead marry Plantagent Palliser, the son of the Duke of Omnium. Plantagenet is a highly regarded MP, in line to be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he is also somewhat boring (and quite hard working) and there are no real sparks between he and Glencora.

So -- that's the parallel: two well off young women, either married to or engaged to rather staid men, but still attracted to their previous, more exciting but less moral and less dependable, lovers. The parallels aren't exact -- Alice is more intelligent, and more strictly moral, than Glencora, and in fact she had refused to assist Glencora when she was tempted to elope with Burgo. But both women are much importuned by the pressure that older people (mostly women) put on them to do the expected thing. And very quickly, Alice shockingly breaks off her engagement to John Grey. Soon, as well, Glencora is driven to despair by Mr. Palliser's coldness, and by his apparent tendency to blame her for not getting pregnant with an heir. (The contemporary reader can't help but wonder if Mr. Palliser's habit of staying up late working instead of sleeping with his wife might have some effect on their chances at pregnancy!) Burgo's scheming Aunt cooks up a plan to rescue Burgo -- who is nearly ruined financially -- by having him run away with Lady Glencora. And eventually Alice decides to accept George's renewed offer of marriage, but soon realizes she does not love him, and out of guilt offers to contribute her fortune to aid George's Parliamentary ambitions, while refusing to set a date for their actual marriage.

There is a third thread about a woman choosing between two men, this one played for comic relief. It involves Alice's Aunt Greenow, a very rich widow, who is being courted by a wealthy but somewhat crude farmer, and by an impoverished ex-Navy man. In a way all three of these threads highlight aspects of an important question that informs almost any love story, or marriage story, from that era: what can a woman do with her life? And her money? Professions were not open to women, nor was politics, and most women lost control of any money they did have upon marriage. Trollope does not exactly buck against this social rule, but he does acknowledge it, and here we have three women, all somewhat wealthy.* One (Lady Glencora) is not really interested in any non-traditional female role: she just wants her husband to show affection, and she wants to show off her wit and sense of fun in social circles, and I suppose she wants children. Aunt Greenow wants to be in control of her money, and her husband -- and she is savvy enough to know how to do this. And Alice -- in some ways Alice is the sadder case, because she really does have suppressed ambitions to take a more active role in matters of state -- to at least be her husband's true partner; and by the end it's not clear she will quite be able to do that. (It is fair to say that Trollope shows her eagerly discussing matters like the price of sugar with her husband, but it also shows her telling herself that due to her earlier mistakes she realizes she must let her husband be the master in everything.)

I won't tell how things work out, though I don't think many readers will be surprised at the resolution. There is a certain amount of actual melodrama, it turns out. And a fair amount of Trollope's lightly ironical moralizing. As I said, it's not my favorite Trollope novel, but I still quite liked it. I'll be reading more and more Trollope, no doubt -- though the interval before I read the next book (probably Doctor Thorne) will probably be a bit longer. 

*(Obviously the prospects of women who were in addition to being disbarred from professional ambitions but who also had no money were even worse, and though in this novel Trollope does not much deal with that, he does touch on it in his other novels.)