University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Spring 1986 A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE NOVELS OF JOHN FOWLES KATHERINE M. TARBOX University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation TARBOX, KATHERINE M., "A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE NOVELS OF JOHN FOWLES" (1986). Doctoral Dissertations. 1486. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1486 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE NOVELS OF JOHN FOWLES BY KATHERINE M. TARBOX B.A., Bloomfield College, 1972 M.A., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1976 DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English May, 1986 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. This dissertation has been examined and approved. .a JL. Dissertation director, Carl Dawson Professor of English Michael DePorte, Professor of English Patroclnio Schwelckart, Professor of English Paul Brockelman, Professor of Philosophy Mara Wltzllng, of Art History Dd Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I ALL RIGHTS RESERVED c. 1986 Katherine M. Tarbox Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. to the memory of my brother, Byron Milliken and to JT, my magus IV Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am fortunate to have had enthusiastic support from so many kind friends and teachers during the writing of this dissertation. Patsy Schweickart read the draft very carefully and made valuable suggestions. Carl Dawson has been of incal­ culable value as the director of this work. I thank him for giving me a great deal of freedom while at the same time setting such high standards. Mike DePorte has shared with me from the beginning an enthusiasm for Fowles. His intelligent commentary and warm support have made my task more pleasant. Special thanks go to the University of New Hampshire for giving me a Dissertation Fellowship, and to the Central University Research Fund for its extremely generous support of my interview with Fowles. I would also like to thank Fowles himself for being so gracious and helpful; Ellen Tarbox for making the pilgrimage to Lyme with me; Pat Vasalle for working many long, hard hours transcribing the tapes of the interview; and my husband, Jack, for being an excellent critic and editor. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............. • • • • • v ABSTRACT.................. .... vii CHAPTER p a g e INTRODUCTION. ........................... 1 I. The Magus. .......... 10 II. T ^ Collector........................... 50 III. The French Lieutenant * s W o m a n ........... 81 IV. Daniel Martin ..................... 121 V. Mantissa................................. 108 VI. Fowles Has the Last Word............. 188 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................... 220 VI Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE NOVELS OF JOHN FOWLES by Katherine M. Tarbox University of New Hampshire, May, 1986 This dissertation offers a prismatic view of John Fowles's novels. My approach accords with his major theme: that true perception is "seeing whole." My readings involve, first, a close textual analysis which demonstrates how Fowles uses patterning, counterpoint, symbol and image clusters to suggest the nature of reality. I also examine extensively Fowles's use of rhetoric. The study of his artistry inevitably leads to a discussion of his themes, I have considered Fowles's theory of history, his feeling that individual self-awareness is the key to the evolution of the species, and that one's personal freedom should be unassailable. p My work also considers meta-fictional subjects related to the novels. I have examined the nature of author-ity as Fowles sees it and the writer's relationship to his reader's freedom. I have explained Fowles's feeling that the art of reading is much like the art of living. As the reader gropes his way through the multiple deceptions of each Fowles text, his activity mirrors the ways in which he must penetrate his own and others' roles and games in real life. vii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Each novel brings up new subjects and establishes its own relationship to being. In the chapter on The Magus I discuss the novel as an epistemology and an exploration of the relationship of generic conventions to quotidian reality. In The Collector chapter I show how Fowles uses the double point of view to reveal the many ways in which freedom may be abused. The chapter on The French Lieutenant's Woman deals with Fowles' understanding of history and his ideas about authorship. My reading of Daniel Martin considers how Fowles uses cinematic conventions as a foil for novel- istic conventions in an examination of the nature of percep­ tion as it relates to personal identity. My discussion of Mantissa reveals Fowles' light-hearted skepticism about novel-writing and academic criticism. My last chapter is an interview with Fowles, conducted in Lyme Regis, in which he talks about writing and being a writer. Vlll Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INTRODUCTION The following project on the novels of John Fowles (b. March 31, 1926) came about for several reasons, not the least of which is my profound and long-standing regard for his work. It is just now that he is beginning to get the critical attention he deserves, with the publication of special issues on Fowles in two major scholarly journals, the latest of which is Modern Fiction Studies, Spring, 1985. It is gratifying to see that Fowles is finally being recognized as a major talent, his dizzying successes at the booksellers notwithstanding. But there is still much work to be done. Past and present critics of Fowles share a reluctance to deal with each novel as a complete entity. Rather, they tend to produce many excellent, though limited, theme readings of the novels. Fowles does write complex novels, but his aim is to mirror the complexity of life, the overwhelmingness of experience in day-to-day living. Perhaps his most important theme is whole sight; the idea that the only way one can make sense of his or her life is by seeing clearly and unifying all the seemingly disparate elements of our lives, both as individuals and social animals. Protagonist after protagonist is forced to see what is real (to borrow Fowles' sublime indifference to the com­ plexities of that word) by seeing his life and the history Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. of humanity in its totality, all at once. He must see what constants lie at the bedrock of history and give stability to the flux which is the usual order of any day. He must learn to see what is real and constant in himself so that he will be able to see through the roles we are all forced to play. And in order to achieve this ideal of whole sight he must go through a process of intense self-deconstruction and -reconstruction. The effort involved in this task is rewarded by a degree of self-realization such as few achieve. I have written an essay on each of the five novels (omitting discussion of The Ebony Tower, because it is, in intent, theme, and technique, so close to The Magus, that many unfruitful redundancies would have occurred). Each essay has been inspired and guided by Fowles* own demand that we see whole. In each novel Fowles makes a parallel between the act of reading and the act of living. He asks the reader, usually along with the protagonist, to come to terms with a very dense text, to perform the same operations on the text as the protagonist performs on the canvas of his life. Thus, in order for the reader to see whole, he must be released from the kind of tunnel vision which can be so misleading and which is represented by the theme reading. My essays seek to be prismatic, to address all the various elements of Fowles* achievement--the artistic, thematic, stylistic, generic, the theoretical, the political, and so on--and see how they come together into a unified vision. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Many of Fowles' largest thematic concerns are quite naturally repeated in all the novels. Corollary to his idea of whole sight is his idea of self-hood, his own brand of existentialism. He believes that self-knowledge, and its concommitant authenticity, is the answer to most of mankind's problems, both personal and social. Anthony's final edict to Daniel Martin, "Turn in," is the descant over all Fowles' compositions. Authenticity, or a rebellion against frivolous conformity and the done thing, would obviate the obsessive repetition of war and persecution, since the great majority of men and women are essentially decent in their impulses. Self-knowledge, then, is, as Fowles so often suggests in the novels, the key to the evolution of the species, to "charting the voyage," in the words of Lily de Seitas. Self-knowledge would also ameliorate the sometimes bitter love struggles between men and women. The tendency of every Fowles protagonist is to project all his unful­ filled essence onto the woman he loves, making her a shadowy incarnation of his anima, and making impossible any real relationship.