The “Curse” of the Lifted Veil The “veil” in George Eliot’s novella “The Lifted Veil” symbolizes the boundary between the natural world and the world of the supernatural, which in this story includes the realm of the spirit and of death. The words “shroud” or “curtain” also appear throughout the story as references to the…
Tag: United Kingdom
The Lifted Veil – Setting
The Victorian Era Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901), Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1819-1901) was born in the same year as George Eliot. Victoria’s reign lasted from 1837 until her death. Because her life span and reign came to characterize this period in history, it came to be known as the “Victorian”…
The Lifted Veil – Literary Devices
Narration ”The Lifted Veil” is written in the first person, meaning that the story is told entirely from the perspective of one individual, the main character, Latimer. “The Lifted Veil” is Eliot’s only story written in the first person. Because the reader sees the events of the story only through the eyes of the main…
The Lifted Veil – Themes
Science versus the supernatural “The Lifted Veil,” like many Gothic tales, interrogates the boundaries between scientific knowledge and the supernatural, between the rational and the irrational. This set of dichotomies is laid out in the differences between Latimer and his friend Meunier. Latimer describes their childhood friendship as an attraction of opposites, a meeting of…
The Lifted Veil – Characters
Alfred Latimer’s older brother Alfred is his opposite. Latimer describes him as ”a handsome, self-confident man of 6 and 20 a thorough contrast to my fragile, nervous, ineffectual self.” Alfred is their father’s favorite, as he embodies all that the father desires in a son. When Latimer is introduced to Bertha as a probable future…
The Lifted Veil – Summary
Latimer is the first-person narrator of ”The Lifted Veil,” as well as the main character. The story begins, as he informs the reader, exactly one month before his death. “Before that time comes,” he explains, ”I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience.” The…
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: Analysis
Romanticism was a highly complex literary and artistic movement that began roughly in the mid-eighteenth century and reached its full flowering in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Literary historians usually distinguish between the Romantic movement or Romanticism and a more generic ‘‘romanticism’’ that can be found in later literature, including that written in…
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: Setting
Relations between England and Scotland had long been tumultuous when Scott was born in 1771. Historically, England had dominated Scotland, regarding it as a possession rather than a partner. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, disputes about religion erupted, and many of these disputes continued into the eighteenth century. There was fear in England that…
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: Symbolism & Foreshadowing
Symbolism One of the chief symbols in Ivanhoe is Front-deBoeuf’s castle at Torquilstone. The name of the castle derives from the word torque, which comes from the Latin word torquere, meaning ‘‘twist.’’ This word is also the origin of the word torture. Torquilstone symbolizes some of the major themes of the novel. It is a…
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: Themes
Culture Clash Ivanhoe is set against the backdrop of the clash between two cultures, the Saxons and the Normans. Saxon is a catch-all term to refer to several Germanic tribes that migrated to the British Isles beginning in about the fifth century; often the term ‘‘Anglo-Saxons’’ is used. At the time of the novel, the…