SOURCE: Sheasby, Ronald E. “The Black Veil Lifted: A Note on Eliot and Hawthorne.” CLA Journal 44, no. 3 (March 2001): 383-90.

In the following essay, Sheasby suggests that Nathaniel Hawthorne's “The Minister's Black Veil” may have influenced “The Lifted Veil.”

Many have found traces of Nathaniel Hawthorne in the works of George Eliot, but nobody as yet has suggested that “The Minister's Black Veil” influenced “The Lifted Veil.” While there is no hard evidence, there are echoes enough of a verbal, structural, thematic and symbolic nature to suggest that she had the black veil in mind as she wrote of the lifted one. This paper is offered as a brief addendum to the vast amount of work already done in this field by many others, especially Jonathan R. Quick, Ellin Ringler and Edward Stokes.

Stokes tells us that George Eliot both read and was influenced by the American, pointing out...