Can You Forgive Her?

Can You Forgive Her? is the first in the series of Anthony Trollope’s political novels, known collectively as the Palliser novels. They serve in many ways to extend his earlier Chronicles of Barsetshire: the Palliser family is already introduced there, especially in Doctor Thorne and The Small House at Allington. In fact, Trollope completed this, the first of his “parliamentary” novels, in 1864, before embarking on The Last Chronicle of Barset in 1866.

While the Barchester books have the intrigues of provincial clergy and cathedral as their focal point, the Palliser series moves on to the high politics of parliament and Westminster. And much as the interest in clerical life ebbs and flows in the Barchester series, so too politics comes into prominence and recedes through the Palliser novels.

In Can You Forgive Her?, political aspiration is present throughout, though personal politics comes in for closer scrutiny than the parliamentary variety. The exploration of whether others can forgive Alice parallels the need for almost every other character in the novel to be forgiven for something by someone. Trollope also examines the question of whether Alice can forgive herself, or receive the forgiveness of others—and he pointedly invites the “gentle reader” to reflect on their own preparedness to forgive.

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