With "Can You Forgive Her? " Trollope begins his masterful series of Parliamentary novels, but here he is concerned with the politics of love and the demands of society. Alice Vavasor, lovely, intelligent and just a bit prudish, is torn between two men - the upright if plodding John Gray, and the evasive yet alluring George Vavasor. She has accepted and rejected their proposals of marriage, uncertain of her own worthiness and the worth of her love. Alice"s dilemma makes for a sharp exploration of free choice, a woman"s role in a constricted society, and self-examination to the point of emotional stalemate. Add to this the predicament, on a grander scale, of Lady Glencora Palliser, Alice"s cousin. The energetic, vivacious and utterly charming Glencora is married to Plantagent Palliser, heir to a ducal throne, who is a man who finds passion in Parliamentary proceedings, not people. Glencora is still pining for the beautiful ne"er-do-well, Burgo Fitzgerald, whom she was forced to leave behind in order to marry as she had been groomed to. Glencora feels that her young marriage is a sham. She feels she cannot live a life without ardent love, that the future for her is bleak without a burning, almost tragic, passion. Here, Trollope examines a marriage in its first tentative stages (in the Palliser novels he gives us the most discerning and moving portrait of a marriage in literature), with all of the self-sacrifice, compromise and reluctant devotion that marriage entails. The novel"s third subplot, involving Alice"s aunt"s choice between somewhat unsuitable suitors, provides a comic, yet still subtly touching, foil to the two main stories. Throughout, Trollope brilliantly evokes the power of society on its players, their private tumult, their public displays of decorum or disgrace. One scene in particular, at a fabulous ball, is among the most thrilling in literature, because Trollope manages to convey,