Criticism > Short Story Criticism > The Lifted Veil, George Eliot - U. C. Knoepflmacher (essay date 1968)

The Lifted Veil, George Eliot - U. C. Knoepflmacher (essay date 1968)

U. C. Knoepflmacher (essay date 1968)

SOURCE: Knoepflmacher, U. C. “Escape through Fantasy: ‘The Lifted Veil.’” In George Eliot's Early Novels: The Limits of Realism, pp. 128-61. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.

[In the following essay, Knoepflmacher investigates the origins of “The Lifted Veil” and considers the story essential to Eliot's development as a philosophical novelist.]

Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it—he sought,
For his heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many did he move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Among...

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