I saw the following sentence in Vanity Fair, and have been wondering
whether 'as if she were' is a better choice than 'as if she had been'.
The Lady Blanche avoided her as if she had been an infectious disease.
This sounds as if the woman the Lady Blanched avoided was no longer similar to an infectous disease at the time of the avoidance. But it would seem to make more sense if the avoidance and the similarity to an infectious disease occurred at the same time.
What do you think?
Best Answer
My apologies as I am new to this and am not fluent in the meta-language necessary to explain complex grammar, but for me '...as if she had been an infectious disease' doesn't work in terms of what the author is trying to convey. I agree with Apollyon's assessment of the way the sentence comes across.
For me, you need to make a distinction between an imaginary situation in the past from a present perspective (as in 'if I had been an infectious disease...') and an imaginary situation within a narrative structure in which the perspective/point of view is already in the past (as in 'The Lady Blanche avoided her as if she were an infectious disease'). In the former we are looking backwards, requiring past perfect, in the latter we are looking 'across', requiring past simple.
There is probably a much better way of putting this!