The Lifted Veil

Alternate Titles

• Brother Jacob.

Description

George Eliot's Gothic story, published the same year as her staunchly realist novel, Adam Bede, continues her preoccupation with human communication and sympathy through the figure of the telepathic narrator. Latimer, one of her least likeable characters, suffers tremendously under his heightened awareness of others' petty and selfish thoughts. Latimer chooses to tell the story of his abilities as a tale of disability, a kind of pathography about his gift. The vehemence of his disgust for human frailties suggests that Latimer's pain derives at least in part from his failure of empathy for others (except at his father's death)--that his discomfort with telepathic communication rests on his resistance to human connection in general. Thus, his uncanny hearing unmasks a kind of sympathetic deafness to others, and his progressive heart disease indexes the shriveling of his capacity for human love and friendship.

Subjects

Series Statement

• Oxford world's classics

Other Editions

• The Lifted Veil: and, Brother JacobOxford University Press2009-01-01
• The lifted veilVirago1985-01-01
• The lifted veilPenguin Books--Virago Press1985-01-01
• The lifted veilChivers1986-01-01
• The lifted veilOxford University Press1999-01-01
• Lifted veil ; and, Brother JacobPenguin2001-01-01