Narrative Development (in terms of plot, duration, etc.) and Psychological or Physiological Character Development in 'The Lifted Veil' Anonymous College

The relationship between psychology and narratives is so inherent and well-established that there is a theoretical perspective within psychological thought, ‘Narrative Psychology’, that studies the ways in which humans create, observe, and listen to stories as a psychological method of dealing with various experiences (Sarbin). Within literature, argues Peter Garratt, author Mary Anne Evans (who wrote under the pen-name ‘George Eliot’, and will be referred to as such for the remainder of this essay), ‘has a special claim’ to the ‘psychological novel’ genre, ‘for her fiction not only teems with the energies and anxieties of multiple inner lives, it also dramatises Victorian debates over mind and matter, will and consciousness, the self and the soul’ (425). One example of Eliot’s work within which this relationship between literature and psychology is especially apparent is her novella The Lifted Veil (1859), within which the first-person narrator, Latimer, recounts his life, from schooling age to his eventual death, and his experience in living with seemingly psychic abilities that enable him to ‘see’ both the future, and the thoughts of other individuals around him. This essay will explore how, through the course of the novel,...