CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
JOHN FOWLES' THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN:
PAST FORMS, NEW DIRECTIONS
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in
English
by
Rose Marie Skertic
January 1988 The Thes~~ of Rose Marie Skertic is approved:
Dr. Arthur E. Lane
Dr. ~hony Arthur
Dr. Richard W. Lid, Chair
California State University, Northridge
ii DEDICATION
For my family.
iii ACKNOWLEDG~ffiNTS
I wish to thank the members of my committee for their time and expertise. I am especially grateful to
Dr. Lid, the chairperson, for his patience, his encour agement and his kindness.
iv (.l '
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page DEDICATION • • • ...... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iv ABSTRACT • • • • vi Chapter 1 - INTRODUCTION . . . •.. . 1 Chapter 2 - THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN AS A VICTORIAN NOVEL • • . • • • • • • • 15
Chapter 3 - THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN AS A MODERN NOVEL • • • • • • • • 42
BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 81
v ABSTRACT
JOHN FOWLES' THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN:
PAST FORMS, NEW DIRECTIONS
by
Rose Marie Skertic
Master of Arts in English
John Fowles is a writer who is consistently willing to take risks. While he pays tribute to the novel's past forms with his considerable narrative skills, he expands the tradition of the novel as an art form with his experi mental narrative technique. At the same time, Fowles reveals in the content of his novels his own unique exis tential view--a concern for modern man's attempt to estab lish a personal identity in a world hostile to the self.
In The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), Fowles has successfully imposed a twentieth century voice on a tale that is not only set in 1867 but adheres to the traditions of the Victorian novel in many ways. Using the techniques afforded him by the Victorian novelists, he measures one
vi era against another and discusses his role as a modern writer--within the narrative. Fowles thus lifts The
French Lieutenant's Woman beyond the realm of the Victo
rian novel and expands the modern tradition as well.
Chapter One will present the claims made for The
French Lieutenant's Woman as a popular and a critical suc
cess. Fowles' other works will also be discussed to
reveal his continuing concern with man's quest for per
sonal authenticity.
Chapter Two is concerned with The French Lieutenant's
Woman as a Victorian novel. Fowles has lovingly borrowed many of the traditions of the Victorian novel, such as a
strong plot, stock characters and epigraphs, giving the novel the "look" of a Victorian novel.
Chapter Three focuses on The French Lieutenant's
Woman as a modern novel. Its existential theme, its con cern with the novel-writing process, and its unique narra tive treatment move the novel as an art form in a new direction. Lastly, Chapter Three discusses Fowles' use of history to reveal the forces that were being exerted on his characters and on Victorian society as a whole. The historical framework and modern perspective enable the reader to see how the Victorian world evolved into the modern one.
vii Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, written
in 1967, is unusual in that it has been both a popular and
a critical success. Its popularity with the general pub
lic can be attributed to its success as an historical
novel that richly and skillfully evokes the Victorian era
of one hundred years ago--an era when duty, convention,
and class consciousness had an overwhelming influence on
English society even as the specter of change (in the form
of Marx and Darwin) began to assert itself. The novel's
great critical success, however, is a result of its narra
tive treatment, and of its twentieth century voice and
perspective. Fowles' technique affords the narrator the opportunity to comment, often ironically, on both nine
teenth and twentieth century morals, values, and histori cal events, as well as on the novel form itself. While
The French Lieutenant's Woman, then, is in so many aspects a conventional Victorian novel in form--complete with epigraphs, stock characters, an intruding and editorializ ing narrator and more--its twentieth century features can be seen in its existential theme, its self-conscious nar rator, and its concern with the godlike role of the novel ist. Thus, operating within two realms, the novel has a
1 2
unique quality which seems to be the product of the interplay of nineteenth and twentieth century ideas of form and technique and nineteenth and twentieth century social and political attitudes. I propose to examine The
French Lieutenant's Woman in terms .of these tensions of form and ideas between centuries and to assess the nature of Fowles' achievement.
Many claims can be made for the success of The French
Lieutenant's Woman. Immediately upon its publication,
American, German, and Italian readers received the novel particularly well, more so than did the British literary establishment, only a few members of which recognized
Fowles' achievement (Huffaker 131). An international suc cess, it has now been translated into nineteen languages.
With the screenplay by Harold Pinter, it was also made into a major film in 1981.
The third of seven novels by Fowles, The French
Lieutenant's Woman is still considered to be one of his finer efforts. According to Fred Kaplan, it is a "highly intelligent work of fiction that is also a highly popular work of fiction" (108) • In terms of its content, Kaplan calls it one of "the most serious and exhilarating explo-: rations of the Victorian consciousness in recent years"
(108). Fowles himself considers it "technically the best written" of his novels (Barnum 193). 3
Although at its most basic level The French Lieutenant's Woman is an historical novel, "a fresh attempt to capture the real undercurrents of Victorian life, based on historical evidence," Fowles revealed that he did not want to write an historical novel (Rackham 98). Instead he chose to write "a modern novel about Victorian England" (Garis 48). Thus, while Fowles has authentically evoked the Victorian milieu from the provincial country side to Lyme Regis to the darker side of London, and entertainingly informed the reader about Victorian atti tudes and concerns as well, his major achievement in The French Lieutenant's Woman lies in his "modern expansion of the traditional literary forms" (Huffaker 98). One such "expansion" of the novel form is evident in its narrative technique, particularly in its twentieth century omni scient narrator "whose consciousness and experience span at least a century," measuring the Victorian past against the modern present (Kaplan 118). Another "expansion" of the traditional literary form results when Fowles interrupts the narrative of the novel and questions the "fiction writing process itself," (Olshen, Reference Guide, ix) discussing with the reader the characters he, as the godlike novelist, has created. Rejecting this role, he pledges to free his characters, to allow them to choose their own destinies, their own authenticity. Fowles then not only lifts the restrictions .. 4
upon narrative technique but refutes the traditional role of the novelist as well. In so doing, he promotes the modern, existential theme of the novel. As Jeff Rackharn observes, "The Victorian figures which Fowles envisions are those who took the first timid steps into a world in which traditional values and accepted conventions are left behind and loneliness -- or, if you will, their alienation is all the more poignant for their early adventures in an unknown emptiness" {Rackharn 100). Thus, in employing a twentieth century perspective and an exis tential theme in his nineteenth century tale, Fowles had indeed expanded the traditional literary form and suc ceeded in writing a "modern novel about Victorian England."
As noted by William Palmer {and other critics as well), the major theme of The French Lieutenant's Woman, "modern man's attempt to establish a personal identity in a world hostile to the individual self," recurs as the major focus of most of Fowles' novels {3). These other works include his first published novel, The Collector (1963), which has also been successfully produced on stage and made into film. The Magus, Fowles' personal favorite and one he spent twelve years writing, was published in 1965 and revised, a rather unconventional procedure for a novel, in 1977 {Huffaker 30). Fowles' latest novels are Daniel Martin {1979), Mantissa {1982) and A Maggot (1985). 5
Fowles" most important non-fiction work is The
Aristes (1964, 1968, 1970). Presented merely as a listing of ideas or "notes • • • one side of a dialogue which the reader might ignore or reject as he pleases," The Aristes is nevertheless significant, for it is here that Fowles relates his philosophy of life and art (Wolfe 21). To understand and appreciate Fowles as a writer, then, it is important to look closely at The Aristes. Fowles derives his ideas from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, "who divided mankind into a moral and intellectual elite (the aristoi) and an unreflecting conformist mass (hoi polloi)" or, in Fowles• terms, the Few and the Many (Burden 30).
It is Fowles• belief that, "In societies dominated by the
Many, the Few lthe elect] are in grave danger of being suffocated" (Newquist 225). Miranda in The Collector is
Fowles• chosen symbol of the Few who "suffocates" at the hands of Clegg, a symbol of the Many. In the Preface to the 1970 edition, Fowles states, "My chief concern in The
Aristes is to preserve the freedom of the individual against all those pressures to conform that threaten our century" (7). It is a theme that runs, with variations, throughout the novels: "The individual struggling to maintain his individuality, struggling to achieve a measure of self-realization amidst the undirect or mis directed masses" (Olshen, Fowles, 3) . 6
Fowles clearly explains his personal existential view in The Aristes. Rather than a narrow, often negative view that embraces only a particular figure or doctrine in the existentialist tradition, his is a wider, more "utili- tarian" view (Baker 163). "Existentialism is not a phi- losophy, but a way of looking at, and utilizing, other philosophies. It is a theory of relativity among theories of absolute truth" (Fowles, Aristes, 122). In a modern world filled with anxieties, fears and hatred, existen- tialism offers a means of coping--and surviving--and being free.
To live authentically is not giving in to the anxieties, not running away from the nausea, but solving them in some way. This giving of a solution is the wonderful thing about existentialism • It allows you to face reality and act creatively in terms of your own powers and your situation. (Newquist 225)
Fowles' approach to modern life then, as revealed in
The Aristes, has its basis in the kind of "consensus exis- tentialism" which is derived from the ideas of Kierkegaard,
Sartre and Camus (Burden 31). As its core is a fundamen- tal concern with freedom--" ••• the business of whether we do have free will • • • to what extent you can change your life" (McSweeney 10).
In his observations about twentieth century man's dissatisfaction with his life, Fowles discusses the "nemo, the anti-self, or anti-ego ••• a feeling of nonexis- tence" (Burden 32). "Our stereotyping societies force us 7
to feel more alone. They stamp masks on us and isolate
our real selves" (Fowles, Aristes, 39). Existentialism
is then, among other things, "an attempt to combat the
ubiquitous and increasingly dangerous sense of the nemo in
modern man" (Fowles, Aristes, 22). To overcome this ennui,
man must, in Fowles' existential view, take control of the
decisions and events which affect his· life.
For Fowles, there is no real separation between his
personal philosophy and his role as a novelist. Indeed,
it has been said that he is a novelist who writes into a
mirror. "Each of his works reflects back upon his own
mind and vision" (Palmer 3). He acknowledges the impor
tance of having a committed philosophy in his role as a
writer. "I don't see that you can write seriously without
having a philosophy of life and literature to back you •
• . • The novel is simply, for me, a way of expressing my
view of life" (McSweeney 104). In his belief that "free
dom is inherent in the best art," he sees the finest
works of art, the creations of the human mind, as "demol
ishers of tyranny and dogma" (Fowles, Aristes, 157). He
·sees the novel itself as "an astounding freedom to choose.
• • • It will last just as long as artists want to be free
to choose. I think that will be a very long time"
(McSweeney 110).
While Fowles' novels differ dramatically in both
content and style, his "preoccupation with the nature and 8
possibility of freedom has remained constant" (Thorpe
10). Each of his protagonists-- Miranda, Nicholas Urfe,
Charles Smithson and Daniel Martin -- moves toward the
possibility of self-defined freedom in situations which
tend to discourage such growth.
Even though The French Lieutenant's Woman was set one
hundred years ago, Charles Smithson, the main character,
does share the same problems as modern man in his some
times unconscious dissatisfaction with his life. When he
ultimately rejects the role he was born to play, that of
the Victorian gentleman whose life is governed by a strong
sense of duty dictated by society, Charles takes control
of his own life. The choices he makes are both costly and
painful. The losses are great: his status as a gentleman,
his socially accepted marriage to a wealthy young woman,
and his dream of sharing his life with Sarah Woodruff. In
making these difficult choices which determine his future,
Charles attains at least a limited measure of freedom. He
is alone and lonely -- but free. Fowles' theme, as
revealed in both The Aristes and The French Lieutenant's
Woman, is very clear. "No one will save us but ourselves.
• • • We are or cari by exercise ~ecome free to choose
courses of action and so at least combat some of the hos
tile results of the general indifference of the process
to the individual" (Fowles, Aristes, 26). 9
In The Collector, it is Miranda, the twenty-year-old artist who struggles toward a more authentic existence.
She is kidnapped and held captive by Frederick Clegg, who holds no possibility for growth or enlightenment of ~ny kind. Fowles relates that his purpose in The Collector was "to attempt to analyze through a parable some of the results of the confrontation" between the Few and the Many as symbolized by Miranda and Clegg respectively (Fowles,
Aristes, 19) • For Miranda the results a're devastating.
Yet she does grow and change in her awareness. At the beginning of the novel she is "arrogant in her ideas, a prig, a liberal humanist snob, like so many university students" (as she is described by Fowles in The Aristes, p. 10). Her saving grace, her strong desire to live-- to be alive -- marks a major difference between her and Clegg who surrounds himself with death, with collecting -- both butterflies and young girls.
Miranda: I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive, but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but dead .••• He showed me one day what he calls his killing-bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. (188-189)
Like Charles Smithson, Miranda changes in that she moves "beyond the values and assumptions of her class"
(McSweeney 35). At one point during her captivity she even feels compassion for the empty Clegg. "I feel the 10
sadness of his life, too, terribly •••• The great dull
hopeless weight of it. Like those Henry Moore drawings
of the people in the Tubes during the blitz. People who
would never see, feel, dance, draw, cry at music, feel the
world, the west wind. Never be in any real sense" (175).
Miranda ultimately realizes that even this horrible
experience has helped her have a greater appreciation of
existence. "I would not want this not to have happened •
• • • It's like firing a pot •.•• You have to risk the
cracking and the warping" (229).
In an interview Fowles reflected on Miranda's
experience. "The girl in The Collector is an existential
heroine although she doesn't know it. She's groping for
her own authenticity. Her tragedy is that she will never
live to achieve it. Her triumph is that one day she would have done so" (Newquist 225). Unlike Fowles' later novels,
The Collector ends pessimistically and tragically with
Miranda dying just as she "is learning·to be more authen-
tically alive" (McSweeney 107).
In The Magus, it is Nicholas Urfe, a decidedly smug
I young schoolmaster, who gropes for his own authenticity.
Nicholas' ordeal, which involves strange experiences on a
Greek island, are orchestrated by the mysterious Conchis.
An artist figure (magician or magus), Conchis guides
Nicholas in his maze-like journey of self-discovery, devising elaborate scenarios which Nicholas endlessly 0 • 11 attempts to understand. Slowly Nicholas becomes aware of his previous lack of selfhood. • • • All my life I had tried to turn life into fiction, to hold reality away; always I had acted as if a third person was watching and listening and giv ing me marks for good or bad behavior -- a godlike novelist to whom I turned like a character with the power to please •.• the ability to adapt himself to whatever he believed the novelist-god wanted. This leechlike variation of the superego I had created myself, fostered myself, and because of it I had always been incapable of acting freely. (549) Nicholas' growth can be measured in his relationship with Alison, a young Australian girl whom he treats con- temptuously and uses sexually. Progressing beyond "an initial state of intense egotism and a sense of class and national superiority to the classless and finally 'species- less' state," Nicholas ultimately learns to value Alison's humanity (McSweeney 123). Though. he is left standing alone at the end of the novel (just as Charles Smithson is alOne at the end of The French Lieutenant's Woman), Nicholas has achieved a sense of his own identity and strength. As noted by Ronald Binns, "Existential choice may leave Nicholas and Charles naked against the future but it is, finally, precariously affirmative, allowing them to discover in themselves an atom of good faith on which to build a new and authentic life" (324). In his first three novels, Fowles indeed remains true to those views he presented in The Aristes. Fowles' fourth novel, Daniel Martin, shares a similar affirmative theme with the main character defining "a new 12
and authentic life" for himself. Daniel Martin is a disillusioned screenwriter who is "faced with a crisis of conscience" about the emptiness of his life and work
(Thorpe 35}. Severing a relationship with a young actress and leaving Los Angeles, he returns to England to confront those elements he has been mentally at odds with over the years. "He had been split, internally if not outwardly, between a known past and an unkriown future. That was where his disturbing feeling of not being his own master, of being a character in someone else's play came from"
(579}.
When Dan makes a positive commitment to help Jane, his recently widowed sister-in-law whom he knew intimately once years before, he takes an important first step towards a personal renewal. As he tries·to draw her back from what appears to be "the brink of the void," it becomes apparent "that it is actually Jane, with her insistence on keeping her selfhood inviolated . • . who is drawing Dan out of the prison of the present into the liberating possibilities of the recovered past and the unknown future" (McSweeney 144). Ultimately he comes to terms with his writing, with his Englishness, and with this important relationship.
Unlike Fowles' earlier protagonists, Daniel Martin is not left facing the unknown future alone. Discussing 13
his uncharacteristic ending in an interview in Saturday
Review, Fowles related,
I attack the vogue in Daniel Martin of thinking that various works of art must end unhappily. This, for me, is a dominant foolishness of our age: that if you're really a serious and profound thinker, you must think this world's the worst. And so you must show your characters ending in despair or tragedy or nothingness. (Gilder 39)
Fowles' subsequent novels are Mantissa and A Maggot, which seem to move away from the concerns of his earlier works. Mantissa, a dark comedy about the creative process, has been called "an overblown essay in disguise" by one reviewer (Lyon 72). Mantissa means "a minor addition," and most reviewers see the novel as just that. In an interview Fowles related that his intent in the novel was to reveal "the conditioning that prevents us [writers] from being free" (Barnum, 202).
In A Maggot Fowles wrote what appears to be an historical novel. Yet in both the prologue and epilogue, he disclaims this. "What follows may seem like an histor- ical novel, but it is not. It is a maggot." A whim.
Once again, most reviewers seem to agree. According to
Julian Moynahan, "Fowles has failed to write a serious book" (49). In a Defoe-like tale of five characters on a journey across eighteenth century English countryside,
Fowles uses the narrative technique of an inquiry to advance an overly-long and convoluted plot. The novel ends with a fantastical religious conversion and the 14
apparent beginnings of the Shaker movement. Not until the
epigraph does Fowles' intent become clear, according to
D. J. Enright. 11 Though himself an atheist, he admires the
religious dissenters as men and women who exerted a revolu
tionary influence on their time--on its rigid conventions,
its tyrannous and unjust social system, its worship of
money. They were democrats ••• and in their early
stages ••• they provoked change 11 (85).
In these rather unusual novels, Mantissa and A Maggot,
it is apparent that Fowles is consistently creative in his
choice of subject and obviously willing to take risks. It
is also apparent that he has moved away from the existen
tial themes of his earlier novels and The French Lieuten
ant's Woman in particular. As his most complete success,
The French Lieutenant's Woman clearly illustrates on a
dramatic level the existential views he expressed so
directly in The Aristes. 11 My chief concern ••• is to
preserve the freedom of the individual against all those
pressures to conform that threaten our century" (Fowles,
Aristes, 7). The French Lieutenant's Woman thus becomes
a vehicle for John Fowles to present an unlikely modern hero and existential theme. In the process, he moves The
French Lieutenant's Woman beyond the conventions of both
the Victorian novel and the modern novel. Chapter 2
THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN
AS A VICTORIAN NOVEL
In The French Lieutenant's Woman John Fowles has
accurately and perceptively evoked the Victorian era. The
facts he presents are "extraordinarily comprehensive and
specific and the spirit [of the agel is intuitively
grasped" (Kaplan 109-110). An aspect of the novel's
uniqueness and success is that Fowles writes "within the
literary conventions current at the time of the novel's
Victorian setting" (Adam 344). As Kaplan notes, "Not only
are the major characters of the novel composite variations
of identifiable Victorian fictional heroes and heroines
but a good deal of its structure, substance, and many of
its fictional devices purposely imitate general patterns of major Victorian novels" (112). A strong plot, plot mirroring, a panorama of characters, some of whom are
stock characters, epigraphs which signal the themes and
foreshadow the action, and an omniscient narrator are just
some of the conventions Fowles emulates in his re-creation of the Victorian novel.
The French Lieutenant's Woman faithfully adheres to
the most important of all the Victorian rules for fiction, a strong plot. Indeed, " ••• the Victorian insistence
15 16
that fiction must tell a story, that there must be a plot that readers recognize as a series of external actions of a group of characters in an explicit environment," is one of the strengths of the novel (Kaplan 112). The story begins then very specifically in the Victorian.Golden Age of 1867 in the provincial seaside resort of Lyme Regis and ends about two years later in the burgeoning and impersonal city of London.
While the plot, which unfolds chronologically, seems simple, it has the necessary element of intrique charac teristic of the Victorian novel. According to Lord David
Cecil, the main outline of most Victorian novels consisted of a large number and assortment of characters and inci dents "knit together by an intrigue centering round a young attractive hero and heroine and rounded off with their happy marriage" (228). The French Lieutenant's
Woman closely follows this formula, at least until the first ending of the novel: a young gentleman who is engaged to marry becomes infatuated by a governess, an outcast of the community. His first thought is merely to help her situation, but he instead falls in love with her.
He sacrifices both his future marriage and his social standing to be with the governess, but she disappears.
When he finds her two years later, they reunite. Harmony and reconciliation prevail as the convention of a closed, happy ending typical of most Victorian novels is satis fied (Kaplan 115). 17
In conjunction with an intrigue-centered plot, the
Victorian novel was filled with a panorama of characters whose lives were knit together by the necessary intrigue
(Cecil 228). Adhering faithfully to this convention,
Fowles has peopled The French Lieutenant's Woman wi.th representatives from all levels of society--from baronet to man-servant, from minister to prostitute. Their lives and fortunes intertwine with that of Charles Smithson, the
"young, attractive hero." A member of the slowly dying aristocracy, Charles is a pseudo-scientist who fills his empty hours with gathering and studying fossils. "The problem was not fitting in all that one wanted to do, but spinning out what one did to occupy the vast colannades of
leisure available" (16) & In his "tranquil boredom,"
Charles looks forward to taking over the family estate when his uncle dies, but at this point in his life, "Toy ing with ideas was his chief occupation" (18). Looking into a mirror, Charles sees, "Too innocent a-face, when it was stripped of its formal mask; too little achieved.
There was really only the Doric nose, the cool gray eyes.
Breeding and self-knowledge, he most legibly had" (38).
Charles' young finance, Ernestina Freeman, represents the upper middle class whose wealth and status are gained through trade rather than through birth. "Her father was a rich man; but her grandfather had been a draper, and
Charles' had been a baronet" (12). Ernestina, at twenty, 18
is lovely, charming--and spoiled. Charles has occasional,
nagging doubts about Ernestina's superficial nature. "She
was very pretty, charming o o • but was not that face a
little characterless, a little monotonous with its one set
paradox of demureness and dryness?" (106-107).
With Charles' stirrings of discontent, the stage is
thus set for the intrigue in the novel, and Sarah
Woodruff, the French Lieutenant's Woman, provides it.
Sarah is a governess, a member of the lower class.
Because of her ~ducation, the "curse" of her life, Sarah
doesn't really fit anywhere.
Given the veneer of a lady, she was made the perfect victim of a caste society. Her father had forced her out of her own class, but could not raise her to the next. To the young men of the one she had left, she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to, she remained too banal. (48)
In the rigid Victorian social system, a relationship between Charles, an aristocrat, and Sarah, a governess, is out of the question. Yet Charles is fascinated by Sarah and all that she represents.
He said it to himself: It is the stupidest thing, but that girl attracts me. It seemed clear to him that it was not Sarah in herself who attracted him- how could she, he was betrothed--but some emotion, some possibility she symbolized. (107)
Charles' gradual involvement with the mysterious and melancholy Sarah is, of course, the major focus of the novel.
Another member of society who plays a major role in
Charles' life is his disgruntled manservant, Sam Farrow. 19
Sam is "too young to be a good manservant and besides [he is] absentminded, contentious, vain, fancying himself sharp; too fon<;l of drooling and idling," according to
Charles (39). Unlike the Dickens' character, Sam Weller, who was "happy with his role," this Sam "suffered it"
(40). Sam's great desire is to join the trade and make the quantum leap into the rising middle class. He ulti mately betrays Charles to do just that, by "playing his cards" just right at each opportunity.
Two other characters, Dr. Grogan and Mrs. Poultenay, are relatively important because of their influence on
Charles and Sarah. Grogan, the wise, old doctor of Lyme
Regis, stands above the provincial minds of the small town; for Charles, he is an intellectual breath of fresh air. For instance, when he and Charles discovered they were both "passionate" Darwinians, Grogan "seized his hand and gripped it: as if he were Crusoe, Charles, Man
Friday .••. They knew they were like two grains of yeast in a sea of lethargic dough--two grains of salt in a vast tureen of insipid broth" (132). But Charles also values
Grogan's wisdom. "There was a humanity in the Irishman
Charles greatly respected; in a way Grogan stood for all he respected" (310). In his role as confidant and coun selor to Charles, Grogan,.the voice of reason, advises him to walk away from his clandestine relationship with the melancholy and mysterious Sarah. But Charles, infatuated, 20
is unable to do this and thus sacrifices his friendship with Grogan.
Mrs. Poultenay, Sarah's employer, is a member of the hypocritical upper class whose role in life seems to be to make life miserable for those who work for her. Demanding a hundred hours of labor per week, she is an "incipient sadist" with two obsessions. "One was Dirt ••• and the other was Immorality. In neither field did anything unto ward escape her eagle eye. She was like some plump vul ture endlessly circling in her endless leisure" (22).
Sarah, her long-suffering victim, ultimately proves to be a match for the overblown Mrs. Poultenay.
There are many other minor characters in The French
Lieutenant's Woman whose lives touch that of Charles
Smithson--from a poor prostitute named Sarah, whose basic goodness charms him, to his aristocratic friends whose lives are empty and debauched. Just as the Victorian nov elists as noted by Cecil "cast their nets very wide,"
Fowles has presented a wide panorama of characters from all levels of society in his re-creation of a Victorian novel (Cecil 11).
Along with its provocative intrigue and its large assortment and number of characters, The French Lieuten ant's Woman owes much of its effectiveness to a narrative device seen often in Victorian fiction. Reminiscent of 21
the serial novelists such as Dickens who left their reading public waiting impatiently for the next week's installment, Fowles often ends chapters in a cliff-hanging fashion, with characters frozen in action, thus creating suspense and melodrama as the plot unfolds. The reader must sometimes wait several chapters before Fowles returns to resolve a situation or reconcile a relationship (Kaplan
112). For instance, in Chapter Two, as Charles Smithson walks along the Cobb with his fiance Ernestina, he comes face to face with the mysterious French Lieutenant's Woman and hears about her rather sordid past. His interest is definitely piqued.
She turned to look at him--or as it seemed to Charles, through him .•.• It was an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely, naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. ( 14)
The reader, of course, is just as intrigued as
Charles is, but for the next eight chapters, Fowles takes the narrative in a different direction, and Charles does not see the outcast of Lyme Regis, Sarah, again until
Chapter Ten. Because of the setting and situation, their next innocent meeting is filled with tension. While exploring the wild and isolated Undercliff, "an English
Garden of Eden, .. Charles discovers her sleeping on a ledge (59).
There was something intensely tender and yet sexual in the way she lay .••• He stood unable to do any thing but stare down, tranced by the unexpected encounter •••• She looked up at once •••• She said nothing, but fixed him a look of shock and 22
bewilderment, perhaps not untinged by shame. She had fine dark eyes •.•• Charles did not know it, but in those brief poised seconds above the waiting sea ••• the whole Victorian Age was lost. (62,63)
With this provocative statement, Fowles practically announces that Charles' and Sarah's fortunes will inter- twine with devastating results. Yet he keeps the reader waiting four more chapters before their paths cross again, this time in the "more civilized" home of Mrs. Poultenay,
Sarah's formidable employer. Here Charles and Sarah merely exchange furtive glances as they discover they share a common enemy, Mrs. Poultenay. In turn, the reader is left longing for this clandestine relationship to develop.
The device of then leaving the action suspended for several chapters successfully adds to the tension created by Charles meeting Sarah secretly, risking his reputation for reasons he himself does not fully comprehend. The most dramatic example of an unresolved situation occurs near the end of the book when Charles attempts to visit
Sarah in her hotel room in Exeter, after she has been fired by Mrs. Poultenay, an act Sarah has provoked. See- ing her in a long, white nightgown, her shoulders wrapped in a green shawl, her strained ankle propped on a stool,
Charles is overwhelmed by Sarah's vulnerability. "She seemed to him much smaller--and agonizingly shy. He could not take his eyes from her--to see her so pinioned, so invalid ••• so helpless" (271). Within moments, he 23
passionately carries her off to the bedroom. When he
later discovers that he "has forced a virgin," he realizes
that he has been trapped and lied to. "She had not given herself to Varguennes. She had lied. All her conduct,
all her motives in Lyme Regis had been based on a lie •
• She had no limp. There was no strained ankle"
{278). When Charles confronts her, she asks him to leave.
"She had turned on him. They looked for a moment like two mad people. Charles seemed about to speak, to spring
forward, to explode; but then without warning he spun on his heel and left the room" {279). Neither Charles nor the reader sees Sarah again or knows of her whereabouts until the final two chapters of the book, some sixty-six pages later. Charles is left to break his engagement, face a lawsuit, and spend two years traveling alone before he discovers Sarah living in London.
The technique of leaving this smouldering affair unresolved for thirteen chapters adds greatly both to the suspense of the novel and to the mystery of Sarah. With considerable narrative skill, then, Fowles has emulated the most basic convention of Victorian fiction--a suspense filled plot that pulls the reader along as it develops.
Another convention of Victorian fiction that Fowles emulates is the use of stock characters, those types--from the maiden aunt to the wily servant--that commonly make up 24
the repertory company of the Victorian novel. While it is the minor characters who are "exquisitely and humor ously" drawn, the main characters loosely fit the familiar stereotypes as well (Thorpe 31) .
According to Rene Wellek, a very common convention of nineteenth century fiction is the use of two heroines, one blonde and one brunette. "The blonde is the homemakerr unexciting, but steady and sweet, while the brunette is usually passionate, mysterious, alluring [and] untrust worthy" (220). Fowles' two heroines, Ernestina and Sarah, fit the respective stereotypes well.
Reminiscent of Dickens, whose characters' names often humorously signaled their personality or character (the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry of Oliver Twist, Mr. Gradgrind of Hard Times, and Lord Verisopht and the Cherryble Broth ers of Nicholas Nickleby, for example), Fowles reinforces the stereotype of the steady and sweet heroine in naming
Charles' fiance Ernestina. Kaplan observes that "Ernes tina is city cousin to the sweet ignorance of Thackeray's
Amelia Smedley and Dickens' Esther Summerson" (111). In
The French Lieutenant's Woman the narrator comments that
Ernestina has "exactly the right face for her age; that is, small-chinned, oval, delicate as a violet ••• At first meeting she could cast down her eyes very prettily, as if she might faint should any gentleman dare to address her" (26). ,, . 25
True to the stereotype, Ernestina often exhibits the same kind of behavior displayed by other Victorian hero- ines, particularly those found in the novels of Elizabeth
Gaskell; that is, Ernestina is "prudish, timid and demure, incapable of regarding any q~estion except in its personal aspect, addicted to cosy fireside conferences, inclined to admonish [her] sweetheart with the tender severity of a mother" (Cecil 234). For instance, after Charles learns that his uncle is about to marry, thus denying him of his long-awaited inheritance, he informs Ernestina that he must make an important trip to London to visit his solici- tor. In her shallow manner, Ernestina immediately pro- tests his leaving, and in the same breath, asks how many rooms their new., smaller home will have. Then, aware of her self-centered reaction, she coyly relents.
It was after all rather maidservantish • . • to make such a fuss about a brief absence. Besides, male vanity lay in being obeyed; female in using obedience to have the ultimate victory. A time would come when Charles should be made to pay for his cruelty. "You will write each day?" " • I promise." "And to return as soon as you can? • • • I shall write to Papa with strict orders to send you straight back • u ( 2 0 9 )
As noted by Patrick Brantlinger, Ernestina is "a pretty but shallow girl who represents the Victorian ideal of womanhood; that is she is chaste, repressed and igno- rant" {340)~ For instance, though Ernestina's only goal in life is to marry Charles, to be the sweet and steady homemaker, she has an unspoken horror of sex. 26
It was not only her profound ignorance of the reality of copulation that frightened her; it was the aura of pain and brutality that the act seemed to require. . • • She had once or twice seen animals couple; the violence haunted her mind •••• Ernestina wanted a husband, wanted children, but the payment she vaguely divined she would have to make for them seemed exces sive •••• Most women of her period felt the same way. (29)
While Ernestina represents the blonde heroine, the
"pampered pretty flower" of many Victorian novels, Sarah, the dark heroine, seems to fit two stereotypes (Thorpe 31).
She is "both the friendless, vulnerable lady's companion or governess ••• and the 'outcast', the French lieuten- ant's fallen woman stereotypes of Victorian fiction"
(Thorpe 26). Kaplan observes that Sarah "is born of a close reading of the passions of not only Hardy heroines like Tess and particularly Sue Bridehead but also Dickens'
Miss Wade and even Eliot's Dorothea Brooke" (111). In her movement in the novel, from governess to outcast and ulti- mately to independent woman, Sarah passes "through both early and late stages of Victorian female stereotype"
(Thorpe 26-27).
Reminiscent of such early Victorian heroines as Becky
Sharp and Jane Eyre, Sarah is employed as a governess before the action of the novel begins. After leaving her position as governess, Sarah fills another familiar role as well, that of the "vulnerable lady's companion" to the
"incipient sadist," Mrs. Poultenay. Sarah's position in this "Stygian domain" rivals that of any long-suffering 27
Victorian heroine. It is while living with the sea captain's family as governess, however, that she meets the injured lieutenant, Varguennes and, in nursing him back to health, becomes scandalously involved in an apparent love affair. Because of her suspected moral offenses, Sarah is viewed as the fallen woman, the outcast of Lyme Regis. In fact, the villagers actually call her "Tragedy," or worse,
"the French Loot'n'nt's Hoer" (73). In her role as out- cast and sinner, she indeed fits Wellek's definition of the dark heroine.
Like her predecessor Becky Sharp, Sarah "begins with nothing, has nothing to lose and everything to gain.
[In the worst of circumstances] she is able to maintain an attitude of detached relish" (Betsky 148). In fact,
Sarah's coolness under the prying eyes and hushed whispers of the villagers is one of her more intriguing qualities.
For instance, in delivering religious tracts to villagers in the name of Mrs. Poultenay;
Sarah evolved a little formula. "From Mrs. Poultenay. Pray read and take to your heart." At the same time she looked the cottager in the eyes. Those who had knowing smiles soon lost them; and the loquacious found their words die in their mouths. (52)
When Charles first sees her, he, too, is struck by her bold look. "Again and again, afterwords, Charles thought of that look as a lance •••• He felt himself in that brief instant an unjust enemy; both pierced and deservedly diminished" (15) • 28
Later, in a chance meeting in the Undercliff, Charles becomes even more aware of Sarah's independent spirit and
some hidden, "darker qualities."
They [her eyes] could not conceal an intelligence, an independence of spirit; there was also a silent con tradiction of any sympathy; a determination to be what she was .••• The suppressed intensity of her eyes was matched by the suppressed sensuality of her mouth, which was wide. • • • He associated such faces with foreign woman--to be frank ••• with foreign beds. This marked a new stage of his awareness of Sarah. He had realized she was more intelligent and independent than she seemed; he now guessed darker qualities. (99)
With Charles' drawing a parallel between Sarah and prostitutes he has known in the past, the convention of the fallen woman, the outcast of Victorian fiction, is dramatically fulfilled. Eventually, Sarah herself embraces the role as she attempts to explain to an amazed
Charles why she gave herself to Varguennes.
Her color was high, but it seemed to him less embarrassment than a kind of ardor, an anger, a defi ance; as if she were naked before him, yet proud to be so. "I gave myself to him. • • • So I am a doubly dishonored woman. By circumstances. And by choice • • • • I did it so that I should never be the same again. I did it so that people should point at me, should say, there walks the French LJ.eutenant's Whore--oh yes, let the word be said .••• It was a kind of suicide. An act of despair .••• What has kept me alive is my shame, my knowing that I am truly not like other women. • • • Sometimes I almost pity them. I think I have a freedom they cannot under stand. No insult, no blame, can touch me. Because I have set myself above the pale. I am nothing, I am hardly human anymore. I am the French Lieutenant's Whore. ( 142) 29
In choosing Charles as her only confidant, Sarah weaves a web of influence over him. In listening to her
lurid story, he shamedly fantasizes.
He saw the scene she had not detailed: her giving herself. He was at one and the same time Varguennes enjoying her and the man who sprang forward and struck him down; just as Sarah was to him both an innocent victim and a wild, abandoned woman. Deep in himself he forgave her her unchastity; and glimpsed the dark shadows where he might have enjoyed it him self. (143)
In a conversation that Charles later has with
Dr. Grogan, Charles reveals the power that Sarah exerts.
In all that relates to her, I am an enigma to myself. I do not love her. How could I? A woman so compro mised. • • • But it as if • • • I feel like a man possessed against his will--against all that is bet ter in his character. Even now her face rises before me, denying all you say. (181)
Because of Sarah's "sinful" past and her status in
society, Charles' gradual involvement with her proves
scandalous. While she is a composite of various fictional
stereotypes--the governess, the vulnerable lady's compan-
ion, and the outcast--her most important role in the novel
is as the brunette, the "passionate, mysterious, alluring, and untrustworthy" female of Victorian fiction (Wellek and
Warren 220).
Besides the major characters who fit the familiar stereotypes of Victorian fiction, Palmer notes that, "Like
Dickens, Fowles creates broadly comic characters and starkly realized grotesques to populate'the subplots and backgrounds" of The French Lieutenant's Woman" (23). One 30
stock character that Fowles has successfully drawn is Sam
Farrow, Charles' Cockney manservant, who is described by various critics as "Pickwickian" and "wily." Palmer views
Sam as "the most obviously Dickensian character • • • a later nineteenth century version of Pickwick's lively com panion, Sam Weller" (23). Even the narrator draws the parallel. "Of course to us a Cockney servant called Sam evokes immediately the immortal Weller; and it was cer tainly from that background that this Sam has emerged"
(39) •
Having been together for four years, Charles and Sam know each other well and have at times a relatively close relationship. Indeed, from Charles' point of view, "Sam supplied something so very necessary in his life~~a daily opportunity for chatter, for a lapse into schoolboyhood
[sic] • his relationship did show a kind of affection, a human bond" (39, 40).
Sam, of course, deviates from the Pickwickian norm as he reveals himself as the not-so-content servant who has an eye for rising above his menial position (Palmer
24). In fact~ Charles is amazed at how much Sam values the merchant, Mr. Freeman's, advice and potential help, calling forth another Dickens' character. "He began to wonder if there wasn't something of a Uriah Heep beginning to erupt on the surface of Sam's personality: a certain duplicity·. He had always aped the gentleman in his 31
clothes and manners; and now there was vaguely something else about the spurious gentleman he was aping" (259).
While Sam at the beginning of the novel is the loyal ser vant seen often in Victorian fiction, he moves away from the stereotype in his successful bid to become a member of the trade.
Many of the minor characters of The French
Lieutenant's Woman are stock characters as well. The most humorously drawn is the hypocritical Mrs. Poultenay.
According to Kaplan, Mrs. Poultenay is "the embodiment of various Victorian witches ••. Mrs. Clennarn, Miss
Haversharn, and especially Mrs. Proudie" (111). Indeed,
Kaplan views her as both "a representative figure and a composite portrait ..• a figure from Victorian fiction rather than from a particular novel, described not only with a flair that suggests Dickens but with a ... sense of moral finality that suggests Eliot" (113). The narra tor wryly observes that Mrs. Poultenay "bore some resem blance to a white Pekinese; to be exact, to a stuffed
Pekinese, since she carried concealed in her bosom a small bag of camphor as a prophylactic against cholera • • • so that where she was, was always also a delicate emanation of mothballs" (31). Her hypocrisy is revealed as she com petes with Lady Cotton in doing good deeds--to earn points to get into. heaven, which is the only reason she agrees to take the rnisfortunate Sarah into her horne as a companion. 32
At the same time, her treatment of those who work for her borders on the inhumane.
Butlers, footmen, gardeners, grooms, upstairs maids, downstairs maids--they took just so much of Mrs. Poultenay's standards and ways and then they fled. This was very disgraceful and cowardly of them. But when you are expected to rise at six, to work from half past six to eleven, to work again from half past eleven to half past four, and then again from five to ten, and every day, thus a hundred-hour week, your reserves of grace and courage may not be large. (22)
The narrator with his modern perspective sums up her character well. "There would have been a place in the
Gestapo for the lady ••. in her fashion she was the epit- orne of all the most crassly arrogant traits of the ascen- dant British Empire" (23).
Fowles' description of Mrs. Poultenay, then, is both incisive and funny, particularly when he reveals her attempt to get into heaven in his "thoroughly traditional ending," which he later reveals as only a flight of the imagination.
"My man! Make way. I am she. Mrs. Poultenay of Lyme Regis." "Formerly of Lyme Regis, rna'rn. And now of a much more tropical abode." With that the brutal f 1 unkey slammed the door in her f ac.e • • • · • One by one, the steps up which Mrs. Poultenay had so impe rially mounted began also to disappear •••• Mrs. Poultenay stood on nothing ••• and then she fell, flouncing and bannering and ballooning, like a shot crow, down to where her real master waited. (265-266)
With his portrait of Mrs. Poultenay, Fowles has created the quintessential Victorian witch who can hold her own with the best--or worst--of them. 33
In opposition to the predictably nasty Mrs. Poultenay
is the kindhearted Mrs. Tranter, Ernestina's aunt and
Mary's employer. Aunt Tranter is the familiar maiden aunt
of nineteenth century fiction.
Nobody could dislike Aunt Tranter; even to contem plate being angry with that innocently smiling and talking--especially talking--face was absurd. She had the profound optimism of successful old maids. • • • Aunt Tranter had begun by making the best of things for herself, and ended by making the best of them for the rest of the world as well. (27)
Unlike Mrs. Poultenay, who treats.her servants
cruelly, Aunt Tranter not only appreciates Mary's charm
but she enjoys her company as well. "Ernestina did not
know a dreadful secret of that house in Broad Street;
there were times, if cook had a day off, when Mrs. Tranter
sat and ate with Mary alone in the downstairs kitchen; and
they were not the unhappiest hours in either of their
lives" (65).
Indeed, Aunt Tranter's charitable and loving nature
are genuine, and it is against her kind deeds that one is able to measure the extent of Mrs. Poultenay's hypocrisy.
In his use of stock characters, then, who "populate the
subplots and backgrounds" of The French Lieutenant's Woman,
Fowles successfully adds both humor and commentary to the novel (Palmer 23).
Besides the use of familiar stereotypes, Fowles employs another device of the Victorian novel, "plot 34
mirroring in parallel master and servant romances" (Adam
344). According to Rene Wellek, Victorian novels often kept two or three plot sequences in "alternate movement" and eventually they would interlock. "Artistically han dled, one plot parallels the other • • • and hence under lines the other" (222). In The French Lieutenant's Woman the parallel romances of Charles and Sam not only add sus pense to the novel but advance the theme of self-discovery as well.
Just as Charles is becoming more involved with Sarah and her misfortunes, his servant Sam is developing a rela tionship with Mary, Mrs. Tranter's charming maid. Mary is as simple and honest as Sarah is complex and mysterious.
This basic difference between Mary and Sarah is reflected in their relationships with Sam and Charles respectively.
Because of his engagement to Ernestina and his position in society, Charles' meetings with Sarah, innocent though they may be at first, must necessarily be secret, away from the probing eyes of the villagers. Thus, they usu- ally meet in the Undercliff, a rather wild-area near the sea. The forbidden aspect of their relationship and the self-denial Charles experiences contrast sharply with the honesty and ease of Sam and Mary's relationship. "Sam and
Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen. They did not speak. They did not need to. • Why Sam, in spite of • • . the silence, should have found Mary so 35
understanding is a mystery no lover will need explaining"
( 111) •
At one point in the story, the parallel romances literally collide. Because Sam and Mary also take advan tage of the seclusion of the Undercliff, they accidentally come across Charles and Sarah in their first guilty embrace in a deserted barn.
It would be difficult to say who was more shocked- the master frozen six feet from the door, or the ser vant no less frozen some thirty yards away. So astounded were the latter that Sam did not even remove his arm from round Mary's waist ••. Sam's mouth fell open. (203)
More than just an embarrassing situation for all concerned, Sam's discovery of this illicit relationship proves to be a major reversal of Charles' fortune. His future with Mary threatened by his master's intrigue, Sam decides to take matters into his own hands, quite liter- ally, and intercepts a letter Charles wrote to Sarah.
"Sam did not think of his procedure as dishonest; he called it 'playing your cards right'" (259). With Sam's deliber ate failure to deliver this important letter, the two plots join. Charles' intentions are frustrated, and he loses contact with Sarah. Sam's betrayal, then, is partially responsible for Charles' two-year odyssey to find Sarah. Ultimately it becomes a journey of self- discovery. Fowles thus uses t~e Victorian device of plot mirroring not only to add suspense and tension to the novel but to advance a major theme as well. 36
Another convention of the Victorian novel which
Fowles emulates is the use of epigraphs before each chap ter. As Palmer notes, "Fowles' imitation of Victorian style blends with the original Victorian writing in the epigraphs" (28). Most of the major Victorian novelists- from Dickens to Eliot to Hardy--used epigraphs, usually to signal the action of the chapter or to summarize its events. The French Lieutenant's Woman has sixty-one chap ters, each preceded by at least one epigraph. Some high light or reinforce theme while others merely act as a hook to pique the reader's interest.
Most of the epigraphs in The French Lieutenant's
Woman are from Victorian poetry. For instance, nineteen are from Matthew Arnold, eight are from Thomas Hardy and eight are from A. H. Clough. All of these writers were major poets who reflected the typical concerns and popular attitudes of their age (Kaplan 110). In most cases, the epigraphs from Victorian poetry illuminate or highlight the events of the chapter (Palmer 28). For instance, the first epigraph to Chapter Ten is from Tennyson's "Maud."
"And once, but once, she lifted her eyes I And suddenly, sweetly, strangely blush'd I To find they were met by my own" (58). It is in this chapter that Charles comes upon
Sarah sleeping on a secluded ledge in the Undercliff. He is overcome by her vulnerability--and her sexuality. The 37
poetic epigraph signals their innocent-yet-provocative first meeting.
Another example.where an epigraph from Victorian poetry foreshadows the events of the chapter occurs in
Chapter Forty-nine. The epigraph is once again drawn from
Tennyson's "Maud." "I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander and steal •.• " (287). It is in this chapter that Sam, putting his and Mary's interests before
Charles', conspires against him. Sam decides not to deliver the letter in which Charles professes his love for
Sarah. The brooch Charles meant Sarah to have ends up around Mary's neck, as Sam continues to "play his cards just right."
Some of the epigraphs are playfully ironic as they relate to the events of the chapter. For instance, Chap- ter Five is prefaced with this quote from Jane Austen's
Persuasion. "The young people were all wild to see Lyme"
(26). In fact, Ernestina, the city girl, dreads her annual stay in Lyme. She always descended in the carriage to Lyme with the gloom of a prisoner arriving in Siberia. The society of the place was as up-to-date as Aunt Tranter's lum bering mahogany furniture; and as for entertainment, to a young lady familiar with the best London can offer it was worse than nil. (28)
Quite often, Fowles uses the poetic epigraphs to advance the major themes of the novel, which are the major themes of Victorian fiction as well. Robert Burden (1 • 38
observes, "As well as enabling the evocation of a real historical period, these references [epigraphs] sign-post
the principal thematic concerns in the portrait of an age
and its fundamental crises" (273). Kaplan concurs that in the epigraphs "Fowles has made a purposeful attempt to present characteristic themes of the period: the free thinker in a conventional society . • • the search for self-identity .••. the emancipation of women, sexuality in a society in which the Puritan heritage controls the manner in which the body can express itself" (110). In the epigraph preceding Chapter Fifty-nine, for instance,
Charles' search for self-identity is signaled with the following lines from Matthew Arnold's "Self-Dependence":
"Weary of myself, and sick of asking I What I am and what
I ought to be, I At the vessel's prow I stand, which bears me /Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea" (338). It is in this chapter that the final stages of Charles' two year odyssey, his travels around the world and in America, are recounted. During this quest, he has developed an appreciation of the American spirit, and with it, an awareness that he is ready to return· to England, to con tinue his life after his fruitless search for Sarah.
"What the experience of America • . • had given him--or given him back--was a kind of faith in freedom," his own freedom (341). The epigraph both signals and reinforces a major theme of the novel. (l 39
Drawn from Tennyson's 11 In Memoriam, .. the epigraph preceding Chapter Twenty again reinforces a theme common to both Victorian literature and The French Lieutenant's
Woman, the free thinker in a conventional society. While
Charles painfully gropes towards his own self-identity,
Sarah wears hers like a flag, as hinted at in the epi- graph.
Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems So careless of the single life . • • (133)
In this chapter Sara reveals her insistence on being her own person as she explains her shady past and lonely present to Charles.
11 What has kept me alive is my shame, my knowing that I am truly not like other women. I shall never have children, a husband, and those innocent happinesses they have ••• Sometimes I almost pity them. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. (142)
Sarah, the free thinker, is indeed very 11 careful of the type she seems. 11
Other epigraphs which support various themes of the novel are drawn from such prominent Victorian thinkers as
Karl Marx and Charles Darwin. As Palmer observes, 11 Fowles uses Marx and Darwin to give definition to the situation of man in the Victorian world 11 (28).
The epigraph preceding Chapter Nineteen is drawn from
Darwin's The Origin of Species. It signals a major con cern of both Victorians and The French Lieutenant's Woman, eyolution. While Darwin was concerned with the evolution 40
of man, the novel is concerned with the evolution of the middle class and the looming extinction of the aristocracy.
The epigraph reads:
As many more individuals of each species are born then can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for exis tence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in an manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. (120)
It is in this chapter that Charles and Dr. Grogan share their enthusiasm about Darwin's theories. Ulti- mately they consider themselves superior beings, the select. There is, of course, a certain amount of irony, as Charles slowly develops the awareness that he is far from free, and that his species, the aristocracy, is far from select. It is the rising middle class that is "more apt for survival than the outmoded aristocracy symbolized in Charles Smithson" (Burden 273) •
In borrowing the Victorian technique of using epigraphs, Fowles successfully gives The French Lieuten- ant's Woman the "look" of a Victorian novel. However, the epigraphs serve an integral function as well. They either signal or foreshadow events of the chapter, or they rein- force the major themes of the novel, which are the same themes that Tennyson, Arnold, Hardy, Marx and Darwin pre- sented one hundred years ago.
Through an exploitation of style and character types, then, Fowles has successfully written a novel which is not 41
only situated in the heart of the Victorian age but has the look of the "big, baggy monster" of Victorian fiction.
In selectively borrowing the conventions of the Victorian novel, Fowles pays tribute to the celebrated novelists of the Victorian age, as he renders a novel which is uniquely his own. Chapter 3
THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN
AS A MODERN NOVEL
While Fowles has successfully employed many of the conventions of the Victorian novel in The French Lieuten ant's Woman, he has also expanded these traditions, render ing a novel that is both modern in its theme and experi mental in its technique. Charles Smithson's difficult journey to self-identity in a society which held conform ity and duty as sacrosanct serves as a symbol of modern man's quest for his own personal freedom. In detailing
Charles' setbacks and progressions, Fowles has adopted the leisurely pace of the Victorian narrator who occasionally interrupts the narrative to comment or editorialize
{Palmer 56)• Yet, early in the novel he establishes him self as a twentieth century novelist writing of the pre vious century. In doing so, according to Robert Huffaker,
Fowles assumes "the unique vantage point to command the necessary historic view •..• Omniscience enables Fowles to step into pre-1867 past as well as twentieth century present" (103). With his twentieth century voice and per spective, Fowles measures the past against the present.
In addition, in putting the novel within a specifically defined historical framework, Fowles also creates tension
42 43
between fiction and history. Drawing on the writings of
Darwin and Marx, in particular, Fowles dramatizes the very real conflicts and changes that were occurring in Victor ian society. Fowles thus scrutinizes both a society and its favorite art form, the novel.
Fowles has acknowledged that his intention in The
French Lieutenant's Woman was "to show an existential awareness before it was chronologically .possible" (Fowles in Afterwords, 165}. Charles Smithson, the Victorian gen tleman, is an unlikely existential hero. Charles does not willingly go gentle into the purified air of self determination. He is nudged along, first by circumstance and then by choice. Charles' guide, or the person who does the-nudging, is Sarah Woodruff, the French Lieuten ant's woman. According to Palmer, Sarah "has attained selfhood before the novel begins. She knows how to encourage the grasping freedom of· others"· ( 7 5} • Through the possibilities Sarah presents to him, Charles ulti mately finds the strength to reject not only the safe, yet stifling, values of Victorian society, he rejects what
Sarah offers as well. Though alone arid .isolated at the end of the novel, Charles, "an existentialist before his time," asserts a measure of control over his own destiny.
According to Robert Burden, Fowles' view of existentialism is revealed as "an attempt to re-establish man's sense of his own uniqueness, his need to re-assert ' '
44
control of his own life. The individual is invited to reject the rigidity of conformity for the sake of a.lim ited freedom" (31). As the novel opens, Fowles' hero, like most Victorian gentlemen, is bound by "the Victorian emphasis on conformity and respectability" (Klingopulos, in Pelican, 102). Charles' role in life is to one day take over his uncle's estate and title. Or so he believes.
Seeing Winysatt, his uncle's· estate, evokes a feeling of pride in Charles, "that ineffable feeling of fortunate destiny and right order ••.• This piece of England belonged to him, and he belonged to it; its responsibili ties were his, and its prestige ••.• Inunense duties lay ahead, as they had lain ahead of so many young men of his family in the past. Duty--that was his real wife" (158,
159).
Though intelligent and educated, Charles, at thirty two, has managed to evade any real responsibility or com-· mitment to anything other than a dilettantish interest in paleontology. Before the action of the novel begins, how ever, Charles has proposed marriage to Ernestina Freeman, a wealthy merchant's daughter. Ernestina "had touched an increasingly sensitive place in Charles' innermost soul; his feeling that he was growing like his uncle at
Winsyatt, that life was passing him by, that he was being, as in so many other things, overfastidious, lazy, selfish"
(70). Sexually frustrated and bewitched by Ernestina's 45
youthful and coquettish charm, then, Charles at first embraces the idea of marriage, imagining her "demure, sweetly dry little face asleep beside him--and by heavens
• legitimately in the eyes of both God and man" (70).
Yet early in the novel, Charles reveals his uneasiness with both Erriestina and the direction his life is taking.
Charles stared at his face in the mirror. His thoughts were too vague to be described. But they comprehended mysterious elements; a sentiment of obscure defeat • • • to whether his interest in pale ontology was a sufficient use for his natural abili ties; to whether Ernestina would ever really under stand him as well as he understood her; to a general sentiment of dislocated purpose. (15)
After meeting the mysterious Sarah, Charles looks at
Ernestina through even more critical eyes. "He caught him- self looking at her as if he saw her face for the first time, as if she were a total stranger to him." He sees only a "vapid selfishness" (106-107).
Charles ultimately realizes he has made a mistake because of a blind adherence to convention.
In this vital matter of the woman with whom he had elected to share his life, had he not been only too conventional? Instead of doing the most intelligent thing had he not done the most obvious? What then would have been the most intelligent thing? To have waited. (107)
Because qf his nagging discontent with his too- predictable future, Charles is primed for the awakening
Sarah represents. "She had made him aware of deprivation.
His future had always seemed to him of vast potential; and now suddenly it was a fixed voyage to a known place. She had reminded him of that" (107). 46
Charles' movement from feeling relatively comfortable
and complacent with his life to feeling trapped and bound
by convention is spurred on by the independent Sarah, and
her essential mystery. Sarah, the governess, the outcast,
propels the Victorian gentleman on his rather perilous
journey to personal freedom. Knowing the risks involved,
both to his reputation and his future, Charles seems corn-
pelled to meet Sarah in the Undercliff to hear the "truth"
of her past. Yet even his agreement to do so causes the
convention-bound Charles a degree of consternation.
It was if the road he walked, seemingly across a plain, became suddenly a brink over an abyss •••• He could not say what had lured him on . • • but both lost and lured he felt .••• He knew he was about to engage in the forbidden, or rather the forbidden was about to engage in him. The farther he moved from her, in time and distance, the more clearly he saw the folly of his behavior. (119-120)
Another major impetus in Charles' movement towards an existential awareness occurs through chance or hazard. As a result of his uncle's decision to marry a young widow.
Charles is faced with the prospect of losing his title and much of his anticipated wealth. "Whipped and humiliated; a world less," Charles is thus forced to reassess his
future, and in particular, his marriage to Ernestina
(171).
Charles now felt himself in a very displeasing position of inferiority as regards Ernestina .• As the future master of Winsyatt he could regard himself as his bride's financial equal; as a mere rentier he must become her financial dependent • . (174) 47
Just as Charles learns of the major reversal of his fortune, Sarah, well aware of Charles' infatuation, gets herself fired and disappears, leaving behind messages for him to meet her in the Undercliff one more time. Charles' lone confidant, Dr. Grogan, understands better than
Charles Sarah's manipulations and Charles' conflicting feelings. Attempting to peel away Charles' many layers of self-delusions, Grogan also plays a role in Charles' discovery of self.
"You are half in love with her .•.. Man, man are we not both believers in science? Do we not hold that truth is the one great principle? What did Socrates die for? A keeping social face? A homage to decorum? Do you think • • • I have not learned to tell when a man is in distress? And because he is hiding the truth from himself; Know thyself, Smithson, know thy self." (179)
After a certain amount of internal conflict, Charles rejects Grogan's advice concerning Sarah's manipulations.
Instead, he submits to "Destiny. Those Eyes" (189). Risk- ing all, he attempts to find Sarah in the Undercliff.
Stepping into the freshness of the early morning, Charles reaches a new awareness about "the universal parity of . existence" as the existential theme of the novel is pro- claimed by no other than a tiny wren.
He stopped for a moment, so struck was he by this sense ofan exquisitely particular universe, in which each was appointed, each unique. A tiny wren perched on top of a bramble not ten feet from him and trilled its violent song ••• a midget ball of feathers that yet managed to make itself the Announcing Angel of evolution: I am what I am, thou salt not pass my be ing now •••. It seemed to announce a far deeper and stronger reality.••• perhaps nothing more original 48
than a priority of existence over death, of the individual over the species. (191-192)
For perhaps the first time, Charles understands the uniqueness of each individual over its species--or its class. More importantly, for the first time he identifies with Sarah in her aloneness, as each faces a hostile and stifling Victorian social system.
For it was less a profounder reality he seemed to see than universal chaos, looming behind the fragile structure of human order .... Charles felt in all ways excommunicated. He was shut out, all paradise lost. Again, he was like Sarah--he could stand here in Eden, but not enjoy it, and only envy the wren its ecstasy. (192)
When he finally finds Sarah sleeping in an isolated barn, Charles is overcome by both his desire to protect her and his physical attraction to her. With this first kiss, "The moment overcame the age" ( 199) .. Bound by con- vention, however, Charles is still unable to acknowledge to himself or to society his feelings for Sarah or his frustration with his impending marriage.
His trip to London to discuss his changed financial situation with Ernestina's .father provides a powerful impetus, however. When Mr. Freeman, a member of the newly powerful bourgeoisie, offers him a management position in his stores, Charles feels stunned and threatened. "He was a gentleman; and gentleman cannot go into trade" (227).
Feeling like "a victim of evolution;" Charles despairs about his future. "It was to Charles as if he had traveled all his life among pleasant hills; and now carne 49
to a vast plain of tedium • • • he saw only Duty and
Humiliation down there below--most certainly not Happiness or Progress"· (228). Leaving the Freeman's in an agitated state, Charles walks aimlessly among the poor of London, slowly developing an understanding that they are happy, that they possess a freedom he does not have. This sur- prising insight helps him to perceive his own situation more clearly.
He was unhappy; alien and unhappy; he felt that enormous apparatus rank required a gentleman to erect around himself was like massive armor that had been the death warrant of so many ancient saurian species • • . • And he flushed, remembering what had been offered. He saw now it was an insult, a contempt for his class, that had prompted the suggestion. Freeman must know he could never go into business, play the shopkeeper •••• And here we come to the real germ of Charles' discontent: this feeling that he was now the bought husband, his in-law's puppet. (231-232)
Though he feels trapped by the convention of rank and his dismal financial situation, Charles takes a necessary step towards self-determination when he rejects both
Freeman's offer and his value system. In choosing,
Charles asserts a measure of control over his life as well as gaining insight into his own value system.
There was one noble element in his rejection: A sense that the pursuit of money was an insufficient purpose ·in life. He would never be a Darwin or a Dickens, a great artist or a scientist; he would at worst be a dilettante, a drone. • ~ • But he gained a queer sort of momentary self-respect in his nothing ness, a sense that choosing to be nothing ••• was the last saving grace of a gentleman; his last free dom, almost. (233) 50
Burden observes, ..... for Fowles, man must become the author of his life in order to escape the determinism of the plots of others, or of society itself 11 (254). While he has asserted himself, Charles still feels threatened by the changing social order. 11 He stood for a moment against the vast pressures of his age; then felt cold, chilled to his innermost marrow by an icy rage against Mr. Freeman and Freemanism" (234-235). The next important moment of existential awareness for Charles occurs during his disastrous visit to the prostitute Sarah in London and has to do with his percep- tion of time. As he attempts to amuse her young child with his timepiece, he realizes that time is not, as most believe, 11 . a road, on which one can constantly see where one was and where one probably will be. [The truth is] that time is a room, a now so close to use that we regularly fail to see it11 (252). With his modern perspec- tive, the narrator· explains that 11 Charles' was the very opposite of the Sartrean experience [in which] the ulti mate hell was infinite and empty space 11 (252). Charles' realization is an essential one, a 11 truth necessary for survival in the 'strange, dark labyrinths of life'"(Palmer
92) • Existential man can live only in present time; therefore each individual situation in a man's life, each meeting with another person (wanderer in the labyrinth) , each moment of isolated introspection, is another room to be explored, lived in, and opened up to others. (Palmer 93) 51 I .
For Charles, the small child, her young mother, the
cozy room--their reality and warmth--keep "the infinite
and empty space" at a safe distance. "He felt suddenly
able to face his future which was only a form of that ter
rible emptiness. lVhatever happened to him such moments
would recur; must be found, and could be found" (253).
With this insight, Charles has gained a new-found strength
to face the hostile forces that loom so large: duty, con- vention, the unknown.
Charles experiences two more moments of existential
awareness which lead him to a limited personal freedom.
Both are motivated by Sarah. Continually wavering,
Charles sees her as a symbol of "lost possibilities,
extinct freedoms, his never to be taken journeys" (262).
When he receives her note which says only "Endicott Family
Hotel," he feels once more compel,led to see her. Thenar-
rator comments that the three-word letter "tormented him,
it obsessed him, it confused him" and it terrified him
(267).
But above all it seemed to set Charles a choice; one part of him hated having.to choose .•• another part of him felt intolerably excited by the proximity of the moment of choice. He had not the benefit of exis tentialist terminology; but what he felt was really a very clear case of the anxiety of f~eedom-~that is, the realization that one is free and the realization that being free is a situation of terror. (267)
While Charles deludes himself concerning his reasons
for visiting Sarah at her hotel in Exeter,. he nevertheless chooses to go, risking his reputation once more. What 52
starts as an innocent visit rapidly progresses into passionate lovemaking and Charles' eventual discovery that Sarah was a virgin and not the "fallen woman" she had claimed-to be. Shocked and hurt, Charles confronts Sarah with her lie but clearly does not understand her explana- tion. "You have given me the consolation of believing that in another world, another age, another life, I might have been your wife. You have given me the strength to go on living" (278-279). Sarah's motives ultimately run deeper than her explanation reveals, according to Dwight Eddins. The basic fiction that she has given herself to a French officer is designed to free her from expecta tions of conventional behavior, as she finally admits. She is thus duping the Victorian Age in an escape that is also a mockery of the age's imprisoning forces •••• Sarah, gripped by a real enough loneli ness and alienation, turns to Charles for emotional support consciously using her assumed role as an 'outcast' in order to enlist that support. In love with him, she nonetheless uses him as a test case for her self-image. (221) While Sarah has found the means to face the here and now, Charles has·already forgotten the lessons learned with the other Sarah. This devastating experience and Sarah's cold strength, however, propel him towards an existential epiphany that changes his. life forever. Rush- ing out of her room, he seeks sanctuary in a dark and deserted church, where he undergoes what Palmer calls a "dark night of the soul" (97). Listening to the voices of his two selves, Charles comes to realize that he is 53
trapped by duty--an obligation to·Ernestina and an.unhappy marriage--because he allows himself to be. The knowing voice tells him that escape from the prison of his· future is not just "one act," not just one decision, but a seiies of choices.
Each day, Charles, each hour, it has to be taken again. Each minute the nail waits to be hammered in. You know your choice. You stay in prison, what your time calls duty, honor, self-respect, and you are comfortably safe. Or you are free and crucified. (284)
After this important insight, Charles begins to
understand the role Sarah plays in his life. "He stared at the crucifix; but instead of Christ's face, he saw only. Sarah's" (281). "To uticrucify!" (285). To liberate. To lead him out of a stultifying situation. Palmer observes that in accepting Christ as uncrucified, Charles also undergoes "a conversion away from conventional belief and organized church morality into a more humanistic religious context" (97).
In a sudden flash of illumination Charles saw the right purpose ·of Christianity; and it was not to celebrate this barbarous image. • • • but to bring about a world in which the hanging man could be des cended, could be seen with ••• the smiling peace of a victory brought about by, and in, living men and women. (285)
With this awareness of the humanity of Christ,
Charles chafes under the bonds of an impersonal, uncaring society that is merely "a machine."
He seemed as he stood there to see all his age, its tumultuous life, its iron certainties and rigid con ventions, its repressed emotion and facetious humor, 54
its cautious science and incautious religion, its • immutable castes, as the great hidden enemy of all his deepest yearnings. That was what had deceived him; and it was totally without love or freedom •••• [He saw] what he was: more an.indeci sion than a reality, more a dream than a man •• And fossils! He had become, while still alive, as if dead. (285)
As Palmer observes, "Charles emerges from this dark empty inner space a different, freer man [Now he] must put his new-found self-knowledge to work in the day- light world" (97). Indeed, Charles now sees "a new real- ity," a "concrete" vision--Sarah by his side. With his new-found faith in the here-and-now, and in himself,
Charles at last has the personal strength to free himself from Ernestina and a safe-though-stifling marriage in favor of a life with Sarah. As the narrator comments,
"But I hope you will believe that Sarah on his arm in the
Uffizi did stand, however banally, for the pure essence of cruel but necessary (if we are to survive--and yes, still today) freedom" (287). It is a choice filled with painful repercussions for Charles. As Huffaker observes, "In choosing her [Sarah] he is still choosing ostracism for himself" (113).
Charles' relationship with Sarah is never fulfilled, however. Because of Sam's self-serving manipulations, she never receives Charles' letter declaring his intentions.
Virtually disappearing, Sarah leaves Charles to face the consequences of his actions alone. Hostility from the
Freemans and Sam, plus a humiliating lawsuit, test 55
Charles' strength and resolve. Yet he persists. Burden observes, "Charles, the Victorian Everyman, strives to overstep the limits of his petrified existence and become a more enlightened existential man" (164). In his final conversation with Dr. Grogan, who considers Charles' act
"a monstrous affront to provincial convention," Charles reasons, "Grogan, would you have had me live a lifetime of pretense? Is our age not full enough as it is of a mealy mouthed hypocrisy, an adulation of all that is false in our natures?" (309).
Surprising even himself, Charles survives his ordeal, his sense of self-identity intact. Huffaker observes that,
"Despite the ignominy and pain of his decision, Charles continues to renew it even when he begins to lose hope of finding Sarah. Plunged into the existential void, he grows stronger during his two years of lonely wandering"
( 113) •
Charles' last and most significant moment of existential awareness occurs when he discovers Sarah liv ing with the Pre-Raphaelites in London. Charles reacts bitterly to the platonic relationship Sarah offers.
According to Eddins, she "abandons him in the ultimate ending--when he has become a threat to her existential growth" (221). Confronting her, Charles finally under st·ands her motivation and his own self-worth. 56
He sought her eyes for some evidence of her real intentions, and found only a spirit prepared to sac rifice everything but itself--ready to surrender truth, feeling, perhaps even all womanly modesty in order to save its own integrity •••• He saw his own superiority to her: which was not of birth or educa tion, not of intelligence, not of sex, but of an ability to give that was also an inability to compro mise. She could give only to possess; and to possess him. • • • From the first she had manipulated him. She would do so to the end. (364)
In rejecting Sarah and a relationship on her terms,
Charles liberates himself. "It is as if he found himself reborn, though with all his adult faculties and memories"
(365). While Sarah may have guided--or prodded him--on this journey to existential awareness, he no longer needs her. Escaping both the determinism of society and of
Sarah herself, Charles has indeed become "the author of his own life" (Burden 254). Standing alone at the end of the novel, Charles' pain is real but his selfhood is intact.
He has at last found an atom of faith in himself, a true uniqueness, on which to build: has already begun though he would still bitterly deny it. • • . to realize that life is not a symbol, is not one rid dle and one failure to guess it, is not to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly in the city's iron heart, endured. (366)
Burden notes, "By the end of the novel, Charles has escaped the confines of historical determinism, trans scended the identity which the past and convention has written for him" (164). Ronald Binns agrees. "Existen- tial choice may leave • • • Charles naked against the future but it is, finally, precariously affirmative, 57 allowing him to discover a hidden strength in himself and (1 ' an atom of good faith on which to build a new and authen tic life" ( 324) ~
Besides an existential theme, The French Lieutenant's Woman lays claim to being a modern novel with Fowles• unique adaptation of a common convention of the Victorian novel, the omniscient, intrusive narrator. Frederick Holmes observes:
The intrusive narrator is • • • standard in many Victorian novels. In the work of writers such as George Eliot or Trollope, the narrator is the medium through whom novelistic authority is established. The source of authority is the narrator's omni science. ( 188)
Unlike many modern writers who take great pains to detach themselves from the narrative, Fowles employs the omniscient, intrusive narrative technique boldly and with great flair, ~recreating the grand style of the high Vic- torian novel" (Palmer 56). He comments, editorializes, footnotes, and even discusses his characters with the reader. Yet he expands the convention with his modern perspective. Huffaker notes, "Fowles defies both Victor- ian preoccupation with the illusion of omniscience and contemporary fixation upon the illusion of detachment" (100). While most modern writers rarely intrude into the narrative, Fowles does j'ust that, imposing his twentieth century voice on his Victorian tale. According to most critics, the narrative viewpoint is the most interesting experimental feature of the novel. Fowles' use of this 58
viewpoint allows him to "interpret the realities of the past as they bear upon the present or to interpret our present obsessions in light of their origins • • e in the past" (McDowell 428). Sheldon Rothblatt observes, "One of
Fowles' aims is to explain why his characters are Victor ians and why we are not. And by showing us what we are not, he has helped us to see ourselves as we are" (348).
Weaving his commentary into the narrative at times, and interrupting it completely at other times, the narrator discusses the Victorian concepts of time and duty, sex, and the novel writing process itself, ultimately creating
"dynamic tensions between fiction and history and between past and present" (Olshen 70).
Fowles establishes the narrator's presence immediately in Chapter One as he describes Lyme Bay. In the first two paragraphs, he uses such judgmental words as a "disagreeable wind" and "a superb fragment of folk art." In a conversational tone, he develops a relation ship with the reader, even intruding into the narrative, like Dickens or Thackeray, when he asks rhetorically, "I exaggerate? Perhaps!" (10). Then, surprising the reader, who has just been informed that the novel is set in 1867, he compares the Cobb or sea wall to a Henry Moore sculp ture. With this amazing statement, the narrator estab lishes his twentieth-century voice or modern perspective. (l '
59
Often Fowles uses the comparative technique to criticize the quality of modern life. David Gross observes, "The modern period is invariably shown to be bereft of certain essential qualities which the past pos- sessed" (21). The narrator's first brief commentary, which appears in Chapter Three, supports this point. He is comparing Charles' (and all wealthy Victorians') con- cept of time to that of the wealthy today. The narrator acknowledges that Charles, "as a scientific young man" would not, in all likelihood, be too surprised by such technological developments as the jet airplane, television or radar. But he would be amazed at modern society's fast-paced living. The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that . . • is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things--as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer, not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning flash. But for Charles, and for almost all his contemporaries and social peers • • • the problem was not fitting in all that one wanted to do but spinning out what one did to occupy the vast collan ades of leisure available. (16) Then, drawing on his knowledge of modern psychology, the narrator makes the judgment that a symptom of wealth today is "destructive neurosis" while in Charles' day, it was "tranquil boredom" (16). As Burden observes, "The narra tor evinces a certain regret for.something lost in the acceleration of the modernization of life, despite our increased enlightenment" (275). 60
In Chapter Sixteen,· as Charles reluctantly prepares to face an evening dictated by convention, the narrator again discusses the Victorian sense of long hours slowly unfolding, the "tranquil boredom" mentioned previously. In this particular commentary, he takes a swipe at the Victorian rich who had a problem that the working poor never had the luxury of facing. And the evenings! Those gaslit hours that had to be filled and without benefit of cinema or television! For those who had a living to earn this was hardly a great problem: when you have worked a twelve-hour day, the problem of what to do after your supper is easily solved. But pity the unfortunate rich; for whatever license was given. them to be solitary before the evening hours, convention demanded that then they must be bored in company. ( 9 4) · The convention or duty that pulls at Charles here is a theme that Fowles in his modern voice returns to repeat-· edly in The French Lieutenant's Woman. In his various · commentaries, the narrator sometimes presents the silli- ness or absurdness of the demands of duty. At other times, he reveals how this giant force has had a different and long-lasting effect. In measuri,ng the. past aga·inst the present, he .comes to the conclusion that· perhaps we mis judge the convention-bound Victorians, that what appears to us to be foolish adherence to duty has ultimately proven to have a.positive impact on modern society. For instance, in Chapter Eight, the narrator, in an amused tone, describes an overdressed Charles as he sets out to look for fossils at the Cobb. 61
He would have made you smile, for he was carefully equipped for his role. He wore stout nailed boots and canvas gaiters that rose to encase Norfolk breeches of heavy flannel. There was a light and absurdly long coat to match. • . • • Nothing is more incomprehensible to us than the methodicality of the Victorians .••• Where, one wonders, can any pleas ure have been left? How, in the case of Charles, can he not have seen that light clothes would have been more comfortable? (43)
From here, the narrator goes on to observe that it is just this sense of "methodicality" that served the Victorians so well--that it was men like Charles, in their thorough- ness and discipline, who set the groundwork for modern science.
Well, we laugh. But perhaps there is something admirable in this dissociation between what is most comfortable and what is most recommended. We meet here, once again, this bone of contention between the two centuries: is duty to drive us, or not? If we take this obsession with dressing the part, with being prepared for every eventuality as mere stupid ity, blindness to the empirical, we make, I think, a grave--or rather a frivolous--mistake about our ancestors; because it was men not unlike Charles, and as overdressed and overequipped as he was that day, who laid the foundations of all our modern science. • • • They sensed their current accounts of the world were inadequate, that they had allowed their windows on reality to become smeared by convention, religion, social stagnation; they knew in short, that they had things to discover; and that the discovery was of the utmost importance to the future of man. (43-44) Again, modern man, in his smugness, comes up short in
Fowles' view. "We think • that we have nothing to discover, and the only things of-the utmost importance to us concern the present of man. So much the better for us?
Perhaps. But we are not the ones who will finally judge" { 44) • 62
Besides weighing the nature of the Victorian concepts of time and duty against that of modern society, Fowles also uses his one-hundred years of hindsight to comment on Victorian sexuality, what many perceived as another "duty." For instance, in Chapter Five, Ernestina, peering in a mirror, comes face to face with her sexuality, and is frightened by it. The narrator is given the opportunity to comment on the sexual repression of the Victorians and its negative effects on twentieth-century culture. She had evolved a kind of private commandment--those inaudible words were simply "I must not"--whenever the physical female implications ofher body, sexual, menstrual • • • tried to force an entry into her con sciousness •••• She sometimes wondered why God had permitted such a bestial version of Duty to spoil such an innocent longing. Most women of her period felt the same; so did most men; and it is no wonder that duty has become such a key concept in our under standing of the Victorian age--or for that matter, such a wet blanket on our own. (29) With this comparison, Fowles puts into perspective those Victorian values we quickly, and perhaps wrongly, ridicule, and at the same time, he gives us insight into the energy behind the Victorian Age itself. Later in the novel, in Chapter Twenty, the narrator compares the inhibitions of the Victorians, "their fear of the open and of the naked" to the openness of modern soci- ety in sexual relationships. In listening to Sarah tell the story of her seduction by the French lieutenant, Charles fantasizes, putting himself in Varguennes' place, and is instantly embarrassed by his sexual fantasy. 63
Such a sudden shift of sexual key is impossible today. A man and a woman are no sooner in any but the most casual contact than they consider the possi bility of a physical relationship. We consider such frankness about the real drives of human behavior healthy, but in Charles' time private minds did not admit the desires banned by the public mind; and when the consciousness was sprung on by these lurking tigers it was ludicrously unprepared. (143)
With this commentary, Fowles gives the reader insight into
the conflict between desire and repression that Charles,
and most Victorians, experienced.
In Chapter Thirty-five, Fowles interrupts the
narrative completely to comment on the paradoxes or con-
tradictions in the Victorian culture concerning sex. Hav-
ing ended the previous chapter with the provocative ques-
tion, "What can an innocent country virgin [Mary] know of
sin?" he sets the basis for his lengthy discussion. About
Mary he concludes that "What she was not was an innocent
country virgin, for the very simple reason that the two
adjectives were not compatible in her century • that
'tasting before you buy' ••• was the rule, not the
exception," at least in rural England (214). Fowles'
point is that, when it came to sexual mores, the Victorian
age was filled with paradoxes, that tensions existed
between "lust and renunciation ••• lyrical surrender
and tragic duty" (216). What are we faced with in the nineteenth century? An age where woman was sacred; and where you could buy a thirteen-year-old girl for a few pounds--a few shillings, if you wanted her for only an hour or two. . • • Where there was an enormous progress and liber ation in every other field of human activity; and 64
nothing but tyranny in the most personal and fundamental. (211, 212) Fowles comments that on the surface it seems that the - I sexual repression of the Victorians was responsible for the many advancements of Victorian society, that the Vic- torians "poured their libido" into other fields. "It is the business of sublimation" (212) • Yet he prefers to believe that the Victorians merely treated sex more seri- ously than we do, that they chose "not to talk openly about sex" (213). Ultimately, in comparing their atti- tudes about sex with those of modern society, he concludes that the Victorians experienced a "keener, because of less frequent, sexual pleasure than we do" (213). Their encounters were more meaningful and significant--and cer- tainly more emotionally charged (Gross 23). The narrator comments: In a way, by transferring to the public imagination what they left to the private, we are the more Victorian--in the derogatory sense of the word- century, since we have, in destroying so much of the mystery, the difficulty, the aura of the forbidden, destroyed also a great deal of the pleasure. (213- 214) As Gross observes, through contrast and juxtaposition Fowles not only illuminates the Victorian age but he also provides commentary on the present--often resulting in epiphanies or insights about our own experiences (19}. With Fowles' unique use of omniscience, the awarenesses occur often, as was apparent in his discussions of the Victorian concepts of time and sex--when we realize that (1 • 65
perhaps the Victorians enjoyed a quality of life that modern man has lost through "progress." In a brief corn- rnentary about educated men, past and present, Fowles once
again leads the reader to a new awareness. In Chapter
Nineteen, Charles and Dr. Grogan, enjoying the pleasures
of conversation, discuss a wide variety of topics, from
politics and philosophy to science; something, Fowles
observes, modern man in the age of specialization is
incapable of doing.
These two men still lived in a world where strangers of intelligence shared a common landscape of knowl edge, a community of information, with a known set of rules and attached meanings. What doctor today knows the classics? What amateur can talk comprehensively to scientists? These two men's was a world without the tyranny of specialization; and I would not have you--nor would Dr. Grogan, as you will see--confuse progress with happiness. (123)
Fowles thus leads the reader to the realization that although great strides in learning have been made, a price has been exacted, as he again casts a critical eye at
twentieth century man--and education that is too narrow.
While Fowles' innovative use of the intrusive, omniscient narrative technique enables him to comment
freely on a wide variety of subjects, all pertinent and relative to The French Lieutenant's Woman, it is his sus- pension of the narrative to discuss the novel writing pro- cess itself that is considered most modern or experimental.
Burden observes that the novel is modern in that it is
"constructed, in part, at least, in terms of an in-built 66 ,, .
aesthetic discourse with the literary tradition which
defines and constricts it" (264). In breaking the illu
sion of the novel, then, to discuss his characters and his
role in the "godgame," Fowles, as a self-conscious narra
tor, moves beyond "the restrictions upon narrative tech nique • • • and content • • • established by the Victorian novel" (Palmer 23). In discussing the conventions of the modern novel, which Fowles expands, Burden notes that the modern reader is rather sophisticated and used to experi mentation. "Such a 'modern' reader is asked in various ways to be aware of the anxieties involved in creating novels which are thoroughly modern, when many of the ways of being modern have become established conventions"
(266). Fowles moves beyond these conventions, particu
larly when he questions "contemporary fixation upon the illusion of detachment" (Huffaker 99). Huffaker observes:
"In: the process, he makes considerable fun of the tradi tion which has in recent decades come to insist that the author himself be ousted from his own fiction" (99).
(Fowles, of course, twice intrudes into the novel as a character who both observes the action and slyly manipu- lates the ending.)
In Chapter Thirteen, Fowles jolts the reader when he breaks the illusion of the novel to confess: "I do not know. This story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside of my own mind" 67
(80). Unlike a Victorian novelist who assumed an
authoritative voice and god-like control, Fowles is no
longer willing to just pull the strings. "We are no
longer the gods of the Victorian image, omniscient and
decreeing; freedom [is] our first principle, not author-
ity" (82). Committed to the novel as a living work of
art, he explains: "A genuinely created world must be
independent of its creator; a planned world is a dead world" (81). Reinforcing the existential theme of the
novel, then, he relinquishes control of his characters.
"To be free myself, I must give [Charles] and Tina and
Sarah ••• their freedom as well" (82). His belief is
that when his characters begin to "disobey" him and become
autonomous, then they begin to live. And so does his
novel. Palmer notes:
Fowles believes that just as men and women like Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff can be free to exist, so also can the novel, that "free form," be a living and existential art form. . •. As long as everyone involved--the novelist, the characters, the reader--is capable of acting freely, then the novel can come alive. (67)
In freeing his characters and events, Fowles moves the novel beyond the realm of the Victorian novel to a new direction. Burden observes: "Fowles wants to say some-
thing about the potential for over-determining characters
in the novel, the power of the novelist, and especially
the convention universally accepted in the nineteenth century, 'that the novelist stands next to God'" (280). 68
In Chapter Fifty-five, Fowles again interrupts the narrative, this time to discuss his dilemma over how to end a Victorian novel based on existential principles.
"The conventions of Victorian fiction allow, allowed no place for the open, the inconclusive ending" (317). This type of ending was a reflection of nineteenth century belief that "all would come out well in the end because there was some great plan over all" (McSweeney 141).
After the narrator reminds the reader that he has already granted his characters their freedom, he ironically intrudes into the·novel as a character. Fowles has fun describing the "massively bearded" lay preacher who enters
Charles' railway car and stares so intensely at him. Then he admits that it is he, the author/narrator, who is scrutinizing the sleeping Victorian gentleman. Acknowl edging that although he knows what Charles wants, Sarah is still a mystery to him. In fact, proving that Sarah is indeed the author of her own life, he confesses, "I am not sure where she is at the moment" (317). As Holmes notes, however, "In The French Lieutenant's Woman it is the emancipation of the reader as well as the major characters from the coercions of the text which· is part of the pro gramme" (15). Refusing then to "fix the fight" -- to control the outcome--Fowles offers alternative endings.
Thus he frees the reader, giving him the choice of the closed, happy ending of Victorian fiction or the open, 69 inconclusive ending of the modern novel--in other words, the choice of Charles and Sarah living happily ever after or Charles facing the unknown future alone--by his own choice. Burden explains: Fowles wants to include a more post-Modernist attitude to 'authority', to create a situation whereby characters may appear to be less deter mined: and the various endings offer choices which dramatize this need for the reader as well" (280). Ultimately, Palmer observes, "The French Lieutenant's Woman is about art." It examines the style and tradition of the genre's past, not in imitation of that past, but rather as a means of breaking the bonds of tradition. Fowles' intrusive commentaries in The French Lieutenant's Woman on the genre of the novel are a plea for art to imitate life, a plea for the genre to rebel, as Smithson is given the opportunity to do, against the tyranny of the past and find identity in new experi mental forms. (65) With its self-conscious narrator who not only measures one era against another but who also celebrates the novel as a living work of art, The French Lieutenant's Woman is ' \ indeed a "new experimental form."
A last feature of The French Lieutenant's Woman that is considered modern--and unique--is Fowles' use of his- tory. As Sheldon Rothblatt observes, the novel is "deeply historic in spirit and character" (348). Discussions of science, politics, economics and customs abound.within the novel. Yet it is more than a novel which attempts to 70 recreate a certain period, that of 1867. Together with the omniscient point of view and the modern perspective, the historical references contribute to the tensions between past and present and fiction and history that exist in the novel (Olshen 70). In alluding to the works of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin and other prominent Victorian thinkers, in both the epigraphs and the narrative, Fowles sheds light on the forces that were being exerted on Vic torian society. Darwin's views as presented in The Origin of Species (1859) are woven into the fabric of the novel itself, with evolution and survival operating as major themes. Fowles also draws on the writings of Karl Marx, particularly in the epigraphs, to underscore the conflicts and changes that were occurring in a society generally characterized by rigid class divisions. In placing his novel within a specifically defined historical framework, Fowles is thus able to explore "how the Victorian world evolved into the modern one dnd how his characters respond to the new currents in the air" (Scruggs 98). Because of its impact on Victorian consciousness, more references are made to Darwin's The Origin of Species than perhaps to any other historical document. Fowles draws on Darwin. to explain not only what was happening within the slowly evolving Victorian society but also to reveal Charles' role as a gentleman. For instance, the epigraph to Chapter Three illustrates these concerns. 71
But a still more important consideration is that the chief part of the organization of every living creature is due to inheritance; and consequently, though each living being assuredly is well fitted for its place in nature, many structures have now no very close and direct relations to present habits of life. (15) (Darwin, ~he Origin of Species)
Charles indeed owes his place in the order of things
to inheritance. His grandfather, the narrator relates, was a baronet whose only role in life seemed to be as a
"scholarly collector of everything under the sun" (16).
Since his uncle never married and his father died young,
Charles, as the only heir, would one day inherit a sizable
amount of land and money. As a gentleman, Charles does very little but travel and pursue his hobby of paleontol-
ogy. Yet he is intelligent and well-read, familiar with
the writings of Lyell, Darwin, Disraeli and Gladstone.
While he might have wanted to "write history" or be in the
forefront of scientific discovery, .the narrator explains, what use would that be with such luminaries already domi-
nating the picture? "You will see that Charles set his
sights high. Intelligent idlers always have, in order to
justify their intelligence" (19). The epigraph from
Darwin is an accurate reflection of Charles and others
like him who in their privileged "ennui" seem to be dis- connected from any useful or relevant role in society. 72
With his ability to look back one hundred years,
Fowles is well aware of the effect of Darwin on Victorian sensibility. Early in the first chapter Darwin's presence is felt during a light conversation between Charles and
Ernestina. While Charles takes Darwin's work seriously, we learn that Mr. Freeman believes he "should be exhibited in a cage in the zoological gardens. In the monkey house"
(12). Within the narrative, it is Charles and Dr. Grogan who are the representatives of the more enlightened Vic- torian thinking. The epigraph that accompanies Chapter
Nineteen, also drawn from Darwin's The Origin of Species, serves to illuminate the way Charles and Dr. Grogan per- ceive themselves.
As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. (120)
It is in this chapter that Charles' and Grogan's bond of friendship is sealed when they discover they have both read and been excited by Darwin's book. Rather ironically, they see themselves as superior to the others in Lyme; they are the "select."
A lengthy celebration of Darwin followed. They ought, one may think, to have been humbled by the great new truths they were discussing; but I am afraid the mood in both of them . • . was one of exalted superiority, intellectual distance above the rest of their fellow creatures. Unlit Lyme was the ordinary mass of mankind, most evidently sunk in 73
immemorial sleep; while Charles the naturally selected . • • was pure intellect • . • free as a god ••• understanding all. (132)
Fowles draws on Darwin in this epigraph to both define his
characters and to reflect the impact Darwin's work had on
Victorian consciousness.
"Just as Victorians themselves lived with the theory
of evolution," so is Charles made to feel the pressures
of being a member of a threatened species (Fowles, After-
words, 165). He must evolve to survive. Though he con-
siders himself select, Charles feels the pressure of a
society in flux as he is confronted with Mr. Freeman's
offer of a partnership in Chapter Thirty-Eight. Burden
notes that "Mr. Freeman is the representation of that man
who creates the world after his own image, and Charles is
in danger of extinction as represented in the rise of corn- rnerce and the middle-class businessman" (278). Leaving
Mr. Freeman's, Charles reflects, "The abstract idea of
evolution was entrancing; but its practice seemed as
fraught with ostentatious vulgarity as the freshly gilded
Corinthian columns that framed the door" (229).
For Charles and other members of the upper class, it
is the dinosaurs and fossils which represent their pre- carious situation. Feeling like.a "superseded monster,"
Charles views himself as a "poor living fossil" (230).
As he walks among the bustling city streets, jostled by
"brisker and fitter forms of life," Charles feels like a Q •
74 hedgehog--"an animal whose only means of defense was to lie as if dead and erect its prickles, its aristocratic sensibilities" (231). The narrator then appeals to the reader to see Charles for what he is--not a snobbish aristocrat--but "a man struggling to overcome history" (234). And history, as Burden observes, is "a powerful deterministic force" in this novel. "The allusions to Darwin [and the recurring fossil imagery] are symptomatic of this concern" (277). Fowles continues to draw on Darwin in Chapter Fifty to give credibility to Charles' continuing struggle against a force greater than himself, the up and coming middle class, which is more equipped for survival than is Charles. The epigraph from Darwin which accompanies this chapter both reinforces the theme of evolution and partie- ularizes the pressures Charles feels when he bravely breaks his engagement to a shocked Ernestina. I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most. (293) (Darwin, The Origin of Species) Responding to Charles' news, Ernestina vents her wrath at not only him but the aristocracy he represents. "Oh • • • if I had only listened to my poor dear father! He knows the nobility. He has a phrase for them--Fine manners and unpaid bills •••• You behave as if your rank excuses you all concern with what we ordinary creatures of the world believe in • • • (299) 75
Ironically, the character in the novel who refutes Darwin so vociferously is the perfect example of his theories in action. Mr. Freeman, the successful merchant, is a man who is equipped and ready to survive in a social system that in many respects is fossilized. He, along with Sam, are the representatives of the rising middle class which one day soon would hold the political and eco nomical power of England. In Chapter Thirty, the narrator reveals Mr. Freeman's view of the aristocrats as "so many drones." He refutes Darwin even as he offers Charles a means of survival, a partnership in the trade. "You wil.l never get me to agree that we are all descended from monkeys. I find that notion blas phemous •••• I would have you repeat what you said • • • about the purpose of this theory of evolution. A species must change ••• ? I have spent my life in a situation where if one does not ••• change oneself to meet the taste of the day, then one does not survive. (228) Although what Freeman represents seems repugnant to Charles, he is indeed the voice of the future. In a subplot of the novel, it is·Sam, fittingly enough, who goes to work for Mr. Freeman, making the leap out of the servant class. He has an eye on owning a shop of his own, and one is convinced that one day he will. When Darwin observed, "It follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself ••• will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected," he might have had Sam in mind. Sam "had played his cards" just right in Lyme and in London. 76
Thus Sam gained a footing, a very lowly one, in the great store. But it was enough. What deficiencies he had in education he supplied with his natural sharpness. His training as a servant stood him in good stead in dealing with customers. (329-33) Mr. Freeman and Sam are perfect examples of the fittest surviving in the slowly evolving social system of Victorian England. In weaving Darwin's theories into the narrative, Fowles successfully creates tension between fie- tion and history. Charles' struggles are given a credi- bility they would not otherwise have. In his decision to reject Freeman's offer and ultimately to cast off the bur- dens of convention, Charles evolves into a thinking exis- tential man, one who has the strength and sense of self to survive--in his own unique way. Thus the allusions to Darwin reinforce the themes of evolution and survival which are at the heart of The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Fowles draws on the writings of Marx as well to comment on the inequities between the social classes that existed in Victorian England. Burden observes, "The quo- \ tations from Marx delineate the plight of the working class and generally refer to the dehumanized nature of the human condition" (273). Fowles thus illustrates for. the modern reader the turmoil within the social system. The first reference to Marx within the novel is the epigraph to Chapter Seven, which signals the discussions of servant-master relationships in ~he chapter. 77
The extraordinary productiveness of modern industry • • • allows of the unproductive employment of a larger and larger part of the working class and the consequent reproduction, on a constantly extend ing scale, of the ancient domestic slaves under the name of a servant class, including man-servants, women-servants, lackeys, etc. (36) (Marx, Capital, 1867) The epigraph from Marx makes the observation that the increased "productiveness of modern industry" results in growing numbers of people who are unproductive--those who are unable to do anything other than be a "domestic slave" or a "lackey," which made them easy targets of the likes of Mrs. Poultenay or even Ernestina. In the novel Mrs. Poultenay and Ernestina represent the worst of the bourgeoisie and the pompous rich who exert a heavy hand over their servants. In pointing out Mrs. Poultenay's inhumane treatment of her servants--demanding one hundred hours of labor a week--even as she attempts to buy her way into heaven with her good deeds, Fowles calls her an "incipient sadist... Ernestina does not escape Fowles' critical scrutiny either. As a member of the nouveau riche who are generally uncomfortable with their newly acquired status, she really does not know how to treat her servants. Typically, the narrator comments, she errs on the side of harshness. Unlike Ernestina, Charles had "generations of servant handlers behind him" (40). As the narrator puts it, the relationship between Charles and Sam revealed "a kind of human bond that was a good 78
deal better than the frigid barrier" that the newly rich erected between themselves and their servants (40). Con- tinuing to explain the differences between Charles'
treatment of his servants and those unaccustomed to this role, the narrator ultimately indicts the newly rich for their inhumanity.
The new rich of his time • • • were very often the children of servants. He could not have imagined a world without servants. The new rich could; and this made them much more harshly exacting of their rela tive status. Their servants they tried to turn into machines, while Charles knew very well that his was also partly a companion. • • • He kept Sam • • • because he was frequently amused by him; not because there were not better "machinesn to be found. (40) Another important reference to Marx is found in the epigraph to Chapter Thirty-seven. Drawn from Marx' Commu nist Manifesto, it thematically signals Charles' confron tation with Mr. Freeman, who is indeed attempting to fashion Charles into his own image. It also explains his- torically the reasons for the rise of the middle class and why the specter of change loomed so large in Victorian England.
The bourgeoisie ••• compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of produc tion; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst,.that is, to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. (222)
This epigraph also gives the narrator the opportunity to comment on Mrs. Freeman's influence on the future eco- nomic and s·ocial structure of England.. As "new recruits to the upper middle class, "··he and other successful 79 merchants understood their role as "powerful captains in their own world of commerce" (222) • The narrator gives Freeman credit for being the "forerunner of the modern rich commuter." The difference, the narrat·or caustically notes, between Freeman and his modern counterpart is that where the modern business tycoon "goes in for golf, or roses, or gin and adultery, Mr. Freeman went in for earn- estness • [and] profit" (222-223) • He had thrived on the great social-economic change that took place between 1850 and 1870--the shift of accent from manufactory to shop, from producer to customer. That first great wave of oonspicuous con-. sumption had suited his accounting books very nicely; and by way of compensation • • • he had become exces sively earnest and Christian in his private life. Just as some tycoons of our own time go in for col lecting art, covering excellent investment with a nice patina of philanthropy, Mr. Freeman contributed handsomely to the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge and similar militant charities. His apprentices • • • were atrociously lodged and exploited by our standards •.•• When he went to heaven ••• his heirs would have the profit there from. (223) Fowles draws on the writings of Marx in this particular chapter to illuminate those changes that were occurring, however slowly, in the Victorian social structure and to reveal the major influence profit-minded men like Mr. Freeman had on modern society. Finally, the most important allusion to Marx is used as a preface to the riovel, signaling its major theme of freedom. "Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to man himself" The Victorian Charles Smithson is thus representative of 80
every man who struggles against a dehumanizing social
system or a suffocating relationship. How much easier
it would have been for Charles to play the role of gentle
man, to marry well, to perhaps become manager in Mr.
Freeman's great store, or even to accept a relationship
with Sarah on her terms.· But braving loneliness and an
unknown future, he does none of these. Charles' emancipa
tion reveals his strength to make the difficult choices
necessary to establish a personal freedom. Thus he
becomes, in Marx's view, more human.
In setting The French Lieutenant's Woman within a
specifically defined historical framework, Fowles skill
fully evokes a society that is on the brink of change.
The allusions to Darwin and Marx create tensions between
fiction and history as his characters are shown "strug
gling to adapt themselves to their changing historical
situations and to evolve in order to survive" (McSweeney
139). Charles and Sarah are indeed the brave young Vic
torians who took the first timid steps into the twentieth
century. With his modern point of view, Fowles leads us
to see that their struggles are our struggles. As a writer with considerable narrative skill and a genuine
concern for his characters' and his reader's freedom,
Fowles moves the novel as an art '£orm into new directions
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