THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN – JOHN ROBERT FOWLES

 

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN - JOHN ROBERT FOWLES

            John Robert Fowles, one of the greatest novelists of international stature, was born on March 31, 1926, in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, England.  As he grew up in the English suburban culture, his early life was intensely conventional.  After the education from the University of Edinburgh, Fowles had two years military service.  However, he realized in 1947 that military life was not fit for him.  Then he spent four years in Oxford.  Having had several teaching jobs, he served as English department Head at St. Gordic College, London. Though Fowles never identified himself as an existentialist, the writings of Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus motivated him to develop a feeling that the world was absurd.

            ‘The Collector’, Fowles’s first book was published in 1963 and became an immediate best-seller.  Among the seven novels, the most commercially successful novel of Fowles, ‘The French Lieutenant’s woman appeared in 1969.  It is a Victorian-era romance with structure and details along with a post-modern twist.  In this novel Fowles created, Sarah Woodruff, one of the most enigmatic female characters in literary history.  His conception of femininity and myth of masculinity that are pictured in this novel are no doubt psychoanalytically proved and accepted ones.

            Sarah Woodruff is the Scarlet women of Lyme Regis.  She was sexually exploited and abandoned by a French sailor who returned to France and married another woman.  She usually spends some time after her domestic work on the Cobb, staring at the sea.  One day she is seen by Charles Smithson and his fiancé, Ernestina Freeman, the daughter of a wealthy tradesman, who stays with her aunt Tranter.  Ernestina tells Charles the story of Sarah and he develops a strong curiosity about her.  Charles, who is thirty two now, lost his parents and waiting to inherit the wealth of his sixty seven year old uncle at Winsyatt.  As he is a Paleontologist, he regularly goes to Ware Commons, a state of total wilderness, for fossil hunting.  Once he happens to see Sarah who sleeps on the edge of a plateau.  When Charles keeps looking at her ruddy complexion, she wakes up suddenly and leaves that place embarrassingly.  This innocent and unscheduled encounter however, creates the stirrings of sexual promises on both.

            Sarah Woodruff becomes the secretary cum-companion to Mrs. Poulteney and begins to enjoy a happy domestic atmosphere in Marlborough house.  Earlier she was the governess of the children of Mr. and Mrs. Talbot, where she met Varguennes.  Varguennes was brought to Captain Talbot’s house after a shipwreck.  His flesh was torn from his hip to his knees.  Though he was in great pain he never cried.  She gave him company as she knew a little bit of French in the absence of Captain Talbot.  When he recovered he talked of marriage and wanted Sarah to accompany him to France.  Since the death of her father she had never known a home of her own.  So, she believed him.  As he demanded she followed him to France after a week of his departure.  Finding him a fraud she decided not to marry him.  So, she married Shame and became a Scarlet woman.

            Charles meets Sarah again in Ware Commons. She tells her tragic story to him.  The more Charles wants to keep himself away from Sarah the more he gets attracted towards her.  In one of the their meetings they happen to see Sam, Charle’s man servant and Mary, Aunt Tranter’s maid, who engaged in love making, in Ware Commons.  Doubtless, their accidental voyeurism of Sam and Mary when making love is a turning point in their relationship. Moreover, he learns his expected inheritance from his uncle is in danger, as the uncle is now engaged to the widow, Mrs. Tomkins.  Unexpectedly Sarah is dismissed by Mrs. Poulteney for her roaming in Ware Commons.  Mrs. Fairley, the house keeper of Mrs. Poulteney who is jealous of Sarah, is behind this dismissal.  Sarah wants to meet Charles by sending two notes to him, without mentioning her whereabouts.

            Charles meets Dr. Grogon and tells him all except his attraction towards her.  He says that Sarah is fake and hysteric.  He diagnoses Sarah’s case as that of a complex schizophrenic personality.  He insists that Sarah should be sent to a mental asylum.  He advises Charles to forget Sarah and stick to Tina.  He also gives a book containing several cases of hysterical women.  Though Charles is deeply affected by the hysterical women, who have always brought harm to themselves and to others, he is still haunted by Sarah’s eyes ‘that a man could drown in’.  So he goes to Ware commons and finds Sarah sleeping in a barn.  Though he takes her into his arms and kisses her, he pushes her and leaves the barn.  Unfortunately they are seen by Sam and Mary then.  However, Charles gives her some money and advises her to go to Exeter.  Sarah goes to Endicott’s Family hotel in Exeter and stays there.  She hopes that Charles is bound to follow her there to seduce her.  Charles meets Mr. Freeman in London and discuses with him the changed circumstances concerning his inheritance.  Freeman asks Charles to join him as a partner in business as he knows fully well that his daughter loves him sincerely.  Then Charles decides to take a walk in the streets of London.  Thus he goes to the club and meets his University friends.  Having drunk they decide to go to brothel.  But, Charles leaves them and finds a solitary girl.  As she is also a prostitute she takes him to her room.  Before committing the fatel deed he vomits on her pillow and is sent back in a cab to his residence.

            Charles gets a letter from Sarah with her present address.  Charels crumples the sheet of paper in his hand and throws it into the fire.  Here, Fowles ends the novel but offers three different endings. 

In the first ‘Fake’ ending, Fowles concludes the novel in a conventional way.  Charles goes to Lyme Renis and marries Ernestina.  They are blessed with seven children.  Charles finally goes into business and his sons later control the Freeman Empire.

            In the second, Charles goes to Exeter and reaches the lodge of Mrs. Endicott.  Mrs. Endicott mistakes him to be a lawyer.  As Sarah’s ankle is swollen, he is led to Sarah’s room by a waitress.  On seeing him she says ‘I thought never to see you again’.  They hold hands for a while.  Then they kiss violently and make love.  Unexpectedly Charles perceives a red stain on the front tails of his shirt and realizes that he had forced a virgin and she had not given herself to Varguennes.  He asks her why she had lied.  Sarah tells that she loved him from the moment she saw him.  However, Charles leaves her thinking her to be false and himself duped.

            Next day Charles writes a letter to Sarah ‘in which he says that he goes to terminate his engagement to Ernestina first, before his claiming her for himself.  He gives it to Sam to deliver to Sarah but Sam finds a gold brooch inside the letter.  As, he wants to present it to Mary, Sam decides not to deliver it to Sarah.  When Charles breaks his engagement, Ernestina threatens to destroy Charles’ reputation.  Charles goes to find Sarah and finds her gone without trace.  He also finds that his letter was never delivered to her.  He resolves to find her.  Mr.Freeman’s lawyer accusing him of breach of trust to marry Ernestina.  When his illicit involvement with Sarah is taken into account, he has to lose his right to be considered as a gentleman.  His solicitor friend, Harry Montague advises him to leave the country and go abroad.  His European, Mediterranean and American travels last for about fifteen months.

            However, Charles hears about one Mrs. Roughwood, who is suspected to be Sarah and meets her.  It is actually Sarah Woodruff, who actually seems to be two years younger.  She lives with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his sister Christina Rossetti.  She says that she is where now is actually where she belongs.  Charles then starts blaming her for ruining his life and having taken pleasure in doing so.  Then Sarah says that she can’t let him go with that belief.  She shows ‘Lalage’, a little girl, who is the daughter of Charles and Sarah.  Thus, the child becomes the healer of the breach and unites them in the second ending.

            In the third end, all the events are the same as in the second ending.  Charles realizes that he has been used.  But, Sarah doesn’t tell him about the child and expresses no interest in furthering their relationship.  We are led to assume that Dr. Grogan was right of his assessing Sarah as a deceiver.  Thus, Sarah seems to fit the role of sphinx.  One of the most impressive aspects of the novel is Fowles’s ability to shift the characters and make the reader move between the nineteenth and the twentieth century.  The novel is written in a familiar style as though the narrator is conversing with the reader.   It also contains a mixture of straight forward prose narrative and dialogue that captures the tone of the Victorian period.

THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN - A SATIRE ON VICTORIAN LIFE, MANNERS AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS SEX AND RELIGION

 

            John Fowles’s novel ‘The French Lieutenant’s woman’ is set in Victorian England, covering a period of two years from March 1867 to May 1869.  Charles Darwin’s ‘The Origin of Species’ was published in 1859 and ‘The Theory of Evolution’ advanced by him was sensational invention.  It contradicted the biblical theory of divine creation.  Hence, Victorian age was an age of doubts and disputes, conflicts and controversies, restlessness and psychological complexity.  The age was half way between science and religion, materialism and spiritualism, conservatism and liberalism.  This novel is an immaculate recreation of Victorian England, where the novelist tells the story of Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff seeking escape from the cant and tyranny of their age.

            The Victorians’ attitude to science is ambivalent.  The educated and enlightened class, represented by Charles subscribed to Darwin’s theory of evolution while the rest think the idea to be absurd.  Mr. Freeman differs with Charles when they talk of Darwinism as he cannot believe that he has descended from apes.  Charles is an amateur paleontologist researching in fossil rocks to establish his own hypothesis.  However, at the end when he realizes that he is mere dilettante, he gifts most of his fossil to the Geological museum and to some students.  Thus the whole novel has a number of events and incidents those are connected with Darwin’s post evolutionary theory.

            In the wake of the industrial revolution of 1789, a new trading class had come up in England.  They were not sophisticated as the landed gentry and aristocracy.  They have been portrayed here by Ernestina’s father, Mr. Freeman, who is a successful trader in hosiery and textiles while his father was a mere draper.  He dismisses the landed gentry and aristocratic class as people with ‘fine manners and unpaid bills’.  When he hears about the unexpected marriage of Charles uncle, he realizes that Charles won’t get anything from him as his legal heir.  Here he offers Charles partnership in his business, keeping in mind his only daughter’s attachment to him.  Marriage for his is a business deal and he prepared to pay the price for his daughter’s choice.  Here Charles who belong to the price for his daughter’s choice.  Here Charles who belongs to the landed gentry thinks that the offer fo partnership in business is something that’s against his grain as the member of the nobility.  But when Charles breaks off with his daughter Ernestina, Mr. Freeman accuses him of breach of trust and forces him to sign a document confessing his ‘ungentlemanly’ conduct.

            In order to facilitate her own entry into heaven, and to demonstrate to her rivals how compassionate she is to the fallen woman, Mrs. Poulteney decides to patronize Sarah.  She appoints Sarah as her Companion-Secretary.  But, Sarah’s popularity in Marlborough House arouses jealousy of the house keeper Mrs. Fairley.  On her seeing Sarah at the opening of Ware Commons, she meets Mrs. Poulteney and makes her dismiss Sarah.  Similarly, Ernestina Freeman, who is a pretty, intelligent woman of twenty one, represents a typical Victorian female.  Her reaction to sexual awareness is typical of her age.  She is jealous of Mary, her maid servant, who always tries to be cordial, not respectful to her betrothed Charles.  According to her in the game of courtship the respectable women should show their preferences only through hints.  Moreover, she spends long evenings reading sentimental poetry to Charles.  At the time of the broken engagement Ernestina and her parents worry more about their losing face among their friends.  These are the attitude of the trading classes and the nobility of the Victorian England.

            More than anything, Fowles criticizes the Victorian hypocrisy and double standards in the matters of sex in this novel.  They breed like rabbits but do not openly talk of sex.  Prostitution is rampant in urban as well as rural areas.  In London young girls of thirteen are available for a few shillings and rural young woman like Mary are no virgins.  The women of middle and upper classes were sexually ignorant before their marriage.  However, the lower orders were much more fortunate.  Mary, the servant girl is aware and sexually active with Sam.  They represent the typical Victorian servants in upper class households.  They are close to their masters and know all the house hold and family secrets and utilize them for their benefits.  But, when their own self-interest is threatened, they throw away the look of obedience and black mail their masters as Sam and Mary do in this novel.  The presence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti and their helping Sarah echoes how the Pre-Raphaelite movement supports the spirit of revolt in Victorian period.  Thus, the nature, manners and attitudes of Victorian age towards science, religion and sex are thoroughly discussed and criticized in this novel.

--------Thulasidharan V