The Lifted Veil

Mary Ann Evans who is better known by her pen name George Eliot was a leading British Victorian novelist. Eliot was known for her realism and keenness in developing psychological plots. Evans decided to write under a male pen name so that her work would be taken seriously. Through her writings the reader is given insight into the character of Eliot and her friends. Eliot covers such topics as: philosophy, national consciousness, self-deception, plagiarism and moral blindness in her works. The Lifted Veil is a dark novel in which the hero has lost his mother at a young age, his father resented his inadequateness and he is in love with his brother's fiance. Real life events switch with tableaux of his various perversions. The shocking opening sequence is masterful. Latimer has the gift of "prevision" and tells of his own future death alone in a crumbling mansion abandoned by his careless servants. It is truly a chilling beginning.