Question 1

Is Can You Forgive Her? primarily about Alice or about Lady Glencora?

Accepted Answer

In Trollope's original conception, Alice was the primary character and Glencora a subordinate one. But in practice (and in nearly universal critical opinion since), Glencora is far more interesting and memorable than Alice — her near-elopement with Burgo Fitzgerald, her cold confrontation with Palliser after he discovers her plan, and the gradual development of respect and affection between them make the Palliser plot the emotional center of the book. Alice's repeated oscillation between John Grey and George Vavasor is psychologically consistent but difficult to find fully sympathetic, partly because Trollope's refusal to idealize her decision-making is more distancing than his refusal to idealize Glencora's.

Question 2

Is George Vavasor a villain?

Accepted Answer

George Vavasor is one of Trollope's most unsympathetic protagonists — a man who genuinely believes himself capable of political greatness, who uses Alice's money to fund unsuccessful parliamentary candidacies, and who eventually strikes and disfigures his own sister (who had been protecting him) when she threatens to cut off his financial support. He is not a villain in the melodramatic sense (Slope or Melmotte are villains; George is a failure), but his capacity for casual cruelty becomes clear enough that Alice's eventual rejection of him is satisfying even though it comes very late. The novel's title question ('Can you forgive her?') applies primarily to Alice's indecision rather than to Glencora's more understandable romantic impulse.

Question 3

Who is Burgo Fitzgerald, and what makes him interesting?

Accepted Answer

Burgo Fitzgerald is the man Glencora loved before her arranged marriage to Palliser — handsome, charming, financially ruined, and genuinely unable to save himself from his own self-destructive habits. He is one of Trollope's most touching minor characters: his love for Glencora is probably genuine, but his complete inability to support or protect her makes it clear that the marriage she was prevented from making would have been disastrous. The scene in which Glencora and Burgo meet at a ball and almost run away together is the most dramatically intense in the Palliser sequence, and Burgo's later reappearance (trying to recapture what he lost) shows Trollope's ability to give even failed characters a posthumous dignity.

Question 4

What is the status of women in Can You Forgive Her?

Accepted Answer

The novel is intensely interested in women's capacity for independent decision-making and the limits that Victorian society places on it. Alice's serial engagements and re-engagements are a form of assertion of independent judgment in a context where women's choices were severely constrained; Glencora's near-elopement is a more dramatic form of the same assertion. Trollope's title invites male judgment ('Can YOU forgive HER?') but the novel itself is far more interested in understanding than judging, and the reader who reaches the end forgiving Alice and Glencora both has understood what Trollope was doing. The novel is a significant document in the history of Victorian women's fiction precisely because of its refusal to resolve its moral questions cleanly.

Can You Forgive Her? Reading Order

Complete Can You Forgive Her? Book List