Can You Forgive Her? Read Free Page A

wants – even though her present life in London, with a father who takes little interest in and spends little time with her, couldin effect hardly be more retired. And she dislikes Grey’s assumption that his life will suit her, just as she resents the conventional social judgement that it ought to suit her. She has the understandable feeling that her individuality is not being acknowledged. It is not a question of woman’s rights, however. Trol-lope brings up the question only to put it on one side: a ‘flock of learned ladies’,bold enough to ask the question what should a woman do with her life, are alluded to briefly in chapter 11 , but a consciously adopted feminist position is not an effective element in Alice’s motivation. Her feeling that she would like to identify herself with a cause, her willingness to support the career of George Vavasor, are as much symptoms of self-negation as of self-assertion. Apart froma general inclination towards Radicalism, the most obviously militant force in the established politics of the period, she does not seem to spend her abundant leisure in the serious study of public issues and events; it is more given over to morbid self-analysis. When she is introduced to the world of wealth and power at Matching Priory, she is too socially inhibited to make very much of an opportunitythat a more committed woman would surely have grasped – although she stands up to Palliser vigorously enough when her integrity is impugned.
    Part of Alice’s difficulties come from her tendency to be attracted by possibilities which frighten her when they threaten to become realities. Her restlessness and what she diagnoses as frustrated ambition easily attach themselves to George Vavasor, whoseenergy and aggressiveness she is encouraged by his sister Kate to see as part of a heroic struggle to make his way in the world. But when George, not unreasonably, wants from Alice some sign that her renewal of her engagement to him means a revival of her physical feelings towards him, he is refused it. The latent sense of violence which George carries about with him (and of which his facial scaris the rather obvious signification) excites Alice as long as it remains latent, but it horrifies her when it surfaces into his attack on her in chapter 46 . One is bound to wonder whether Alice’s troubles are partly due to sexual timidity and an instinct for self-preservation. Grey over-awes her physically: It was the beauty of his mouth, beauty which comprised firmness within itself, that madeAlice afraid of him’ ( chapter 11 ). However, she feels something like panic when she contemplates the physical relationship with George that she finds herself committed to:
    Was she able to give herself bodily, – body and soul, as she said aloud in her solitary agony, – to a man she did not love? Must she submit to his caresses, lie on his bosom, – turn herself warmly to his kisses? ‘No,’ she said,‘no,’ – speaking audibly as she walked about the room; ‘no; – it was not in my bargain: I never meant it’ [ Chapter 37 ]
    She is perfectly prepared to let George have her money as long as he doesn’t touch her, as indeed a substitute for touching her. Given the conventions of fiction in his day, and given too the innate delicacy of his own mind, Trollope cannot be very explicit about such things,but the ungovernable attractions and repulsions of sexual feeling operate powerfully in his novels, even if actual references to them are often as restrained as they are in these passages.
    Alice’s tendency to shrink from experience is partly rationalized (as we might now say) by her tendency to self-punishment It is as if she ‘pays’ for her independence by self-accusation. Goingback to Greyafter the Vavasor episode is even more difficult for her than throwing him over in the first place, because she will be making herself happy in a way that she feels she does not deserve. As her reflections recorded in chapter 70