An Eye for an Eye

What It's About

Fred Neville, a young cavalry officer and heir to the Earl of Scroope, is posted with his regiment to the west coast of Ireland. There he meets and seduces Kate O'Hara, a beautiful but poor Catholic girl living in genteel isolation with her mother near the cliffs of Moher. Fred has made Kate a private promise of marriage, but when his uncle, the ageing Earl, learns of the entanglement, he extracts a firm undertaking that Fred will never make an Irish girl of no fortune or standing his Countess. Torn between the promise he has made and the duty he owes his family and title, Fred is drawn back to Ireland to confront the consequences of his own weakness, with Mrs O'Hara's fierce protectiveness of her daughter setting the stage for tragedy.

Key Concepts

The novel is built on a single moral dilemma played out to its conclusion, a structure Trollope favoured throughout his career. It examines the rigid double standard of Victorian sexual morality, under which a man's broken promise carried none of the ruin that fell on the woman he wronged. It also explores English prejudice against Irish Catholics, the suffocating weight of family pride and rank, and the way genteel poverty left women like Kate and her mother with almost no power to defend themselves.

About the Author

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) was an English novelist of the Victorian era. He spent much of his working life as a civil servant with the General Post Office, a career that took him across Britain and Ireland and gave him the material for his closely observed depictions of social class, institutions, and provincial life. He was known for his disciplined writing habits and for the psychological realism of his characters.