The Lifted Veil

George Eliot 1859

George Eliot’s novella “The Lifted Veil” was first published in 1859. Eliot had written “The Lifted Veil” between the publication of her first novel Adam Bede, and that of her second novel, The Mill on the Floss. Eliot’s publisher was hesitant to publish the story, because it was nothing like Adam Bede, for which she had gained critical acclaim. He was concerned that this tale of horror would be bad for her literary reputation, but reluctantly published it in a literary journal, albeit anonymously.

“The Lifted Veil” concerns themes of fate, extrasensory perception, the mystery of life and life after death. Eliot’s interest in these themes stemmed partly from her own struggles with religious faith, as she was an extremely devout Christian as a child and young adult who later renounced Christianity completely. She also felt that she herself, like Latimer, the main character in “The Lifted Veil,” had extrasensory powers of perception, which she referred to as “double consciousness.”

While Eliot came to be considered one of the greatest novelists of the 19th Century during her lifetime, “The Lifted Veil” is one of her lesser-known stories, probably because it is so different from the realist novels for which she is so well known. Yet, while is does not seem to match the rest of her ouevre, “The Lifted Veil” does fit squarely into the Victorian tradition of Gothic horror stories, which began with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and included Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), as well as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1895). Such works of fiction were precursors of modern horror movies, such as Psycho, Night of the Living Dead, and Nightmare on Elm Street, as well as modern horror fiction, such as the novels of Stephen King.