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3.3 The Awarenenss of Feminism Aroused in The French Lieutenant’s Woman ..8 IV. Analysis of The Heroine Sarah From the Perspective of Feminism Literary Criticism. ..8
4.1 Analysis of Sarah’s Identity9
4.2 Interpretation of Sarah as a New Pioneering Woman10
4.3 Sarah’s Subversion to Traditional Woman’s Images13
Ⅴ. Conclusion14
Bibliography.16
Acknowledgements.......17
Ⅰ.Introduction
John Fowles is generally regarded as one of the best English novelists in the twentieth century. His reputation as an important contemporary novelists relies on novels that combine mystery and existentialism. John Fowles was born in Essex, England, the son of Glads May Richard and Robert John Fowles. Fowles spent his early adult life as a teacher whose first year after Oxford was spent at the University of Poitiers. In 1951, Fowles became an English master at one normal school on the Peloponnesian island of Spetses. This opened a critical period in his life, as the island was where he met his future wife Elizabeth Christy, née Whitton, wife of fellow teacher Roy Christy. Inspired by his experiences and feelings there, he used it as the setting of his novel, The Magus (1968). In 1965 Fowles left London, moving to Underhill, a farm in Dorset. The isolated farm house became the model for The Dairy in the book Fowles was writing: The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). Finding the farm too remote, as "total solitude gets a bit monotonous," Fowles remarked, in 1968 he and his wife moved to Lyme Regis in Dorset. They lived much of the time in Belmont House〝formerly owned by Eleanor Coade〞, which Fowles used as a setting for parts of The French Lieutenant's Woman.
The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. It was his third published novel, after The Collector (1963) and The Magus (1965). The novel explores the fraught relationship of a gentleman and an amateur naturalist, Charles Smithson, and the former governess and independent woman, Sarah Woodruff. The novel builds on Fowles' authority in Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels. The fiction’s plot summary is as followed. Set in the mid-nineteenth century, the narrator identifies the novel’s protagonist as Sarah Woodruff, the woman of the title, also known as〝tragedy〞 and as〝The French Lieutenant’s whore〞. She lives in the costal town of the Lyme Regis, as a disgraced woman, supposed abandoned by a French naval officer named Varguennes.
One day, Charles Smithson, a gentleman, and Ernestina Freeman, his financee and a daughter of a wealthy tradesman, see Sarah walking along the cliffside. Ernestina tells Charles something of Sarah’s story, and he becomes curious about her. Though continuing to court Ernestina, Charles has several more encounters with Sarah, meeting her three times. During these meetings, Sarah tells Charles of her story, and asks for his emotional and social support. During the same period, he learns of the possible loss of place and as heir to his elderly uncle, who has engaged to a woman young enough to bear him a kid. Meanwhile, Charles’s servant Sam falls in love with Ernestina’s maid Mary.
Meanwhile, Charles falls in love with Sarah and asks her to go with him to Exeter. Returning from a journey to consult with Ernestina’s father about his uncertain inheritance, Charles stops in Exeter to visit Sarah. From there, the narrator, who intervenes throughout the novel and becomes a prominent character at the end, offers three different moments where the novel could end. Considering the text of these endings are too long, merely one of them is listed on this paper and it is as follows: Charles does not visit Sarah, but immediately returns to Lyme Regis to reaffirm his love for Ernestina; they marry and the marriage never becomes extremely happy. Charles enters trade with Ernestina’s father, Mr Freeman’s help. The narrator pointedly notes the lack of knowledge about Sarah’s fate. Charles tells Ernestina about an encounter which he implies is with the French lieutenant’s whore, but elides the sordid details, and the matter is ended. The narrator dismisses this ending as a daydream by Charles, before the alternative events of the subsequent meeting with Ernestina are described. Critic Buchherger describes this first ending as a semblance of verisimiltude in the traditional happy ending found in actual Victorian novels. Before the second and third endings, the narrator appears as a minor character sharing a railway compartment with Charles.