Can You Forgive Her? was published in monthly parts from 1864 to 1865 and in book form by Chapman & Hall in 1865. It is the first of the six Palliser novels — the political sequence that runs parallel to the Barsetshire novels and constitutes Trollope’s other great achievement. The title’s question is addressed to the reader: can you forgive Alice Vavasor for breaking off her engagement to the steady, admirable John Grey in favor of her wild, impoverished cousin George Vavasor, who needs her money to fund a Parliamentary campaign?
Trollope runs three parallel courtship plots, each exploring a woman’s choice between safety and risk. Alice chooses George and regrets it. Lady Glencora Palliser, trapped in a politically arranged marriage to the honorable but cold Plantagenet Palliser, is tempted to run away with Burgo Fitzgerald, a beautiful, worthless man she loves. Mrs. Greenow, a cheerful widow, plays two suitors against each other with the strategic skill of a general. Each story illuminates the others, and together they constitute Trollope’s most sustained meditation on the position of women in Victorian society — their limited options, their dependence on marriage for economic survival, and the way society punishes women for the same qualities of independence and passion that it rewards in men.
The Palliser marriage, introduced here, will sustain the entire six-novel sequence. Glencora’s decision to stay with Palliser — not because she loves him (she doesn’t, not yet) but because she recognizes that duty and compromise are the foundations of a life worth living — is the novel’s central moral argument. Trollope does not sentimentalize the choice: Glencora remains restless, dissatisfied, and occasionally reckless throughout the sequence. But she also grows, and her growth into a woman of political influence and genuine wisdom is one of Victorian fiction’s great character arcs.
Collecting Can You Forgive Her?
First edition (Chapman & Hall, London, 1865): Two volumes, cloth binding.
Market values:
- First edition, two volumes, fine: $2,000–$5,000
- Very good: $800–$2,000
- Parts issue (20 monthly parts): $1,500–$4,000 complete