George Eliot

The Lifted Veil George Eliot

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Eliot here explores mystical themes, considering the world of phenomena which are felt but not seen. Yet in doing so she suggests that the apparent clairvoyance of her main character, Latimer, may in fact be, at least in part, psychological expressions of his early life experiences. This view is supported by the fact that most of Latimer's vision-based predictions of how people will behave and events unfold do not, in the end, turn out as he had foretold.

Much of this work's power and complexity lie in Latimer's relationship with Bertha, whom he ultimately, unhappily, marries. Bertha is the one person whose thoughts and feelings he is not able to read, raising the question: What is it about Bertha that renders her inaccessible to his psychic penetration - and what does this tell us about her, and about him.

The Lifted Veil is absolutely unique from all George Eliot's other writing, in that it represents the only time she ever used a first-person narrator, and it is the only time she wrote about the supernatural.