7/28/2019 The French Lieutenant

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-french-lieutenant 1/5

The French Lieutenant's Woman By John

Fowles About The French Lieutenant's

Woman 

 Next

This novel is based on the nineteenth-century romantic or gothic novel, a literary genre whichcan trace its origins back to the eighteenth century. Although Fowles perfectly reproduces typicalcharacters, situations, and even dialogue, the reader should always be aware of the irony inherent

in Fowles' perception; for his perspective, however cleverly disguised, is that of the twentieth

century. We see this both in the authorial intrusions, which comment on the mores of people in

Victorian England, and in his choice of opening quotations, which are drawn from the writings

of people whose observations belie the assumptions that most Victorians held about their world.

Fowles is concerned in this novel with the effects of society on the individual's awareness of himself or herself and how that awareness dominates and distorts his or her entire life, including

relationships with other people. All the main characters in this novel are molded by what they

 believe to be true about themselves and others. In this case, their lives are governed by what theVictorian Age thought was true about the nature of men and women and their relationships to

each other. The French Lieutenant's Woman of the title, for example, is the dark, mysterious

woman of the typical Victorian romantic novel.

Sometimes the villainess, sometimes the heroine, such a woman was a symbol of what was

forbidden. It is this aura of strangeness about Sarah Woodruff that first attracts CharlesSmithson's attention. The story that develops around this pair echoes other romantic novels of asimilar type, wherein a man falls in love with a strange and sometimes evil woman.

Charles' relationship with Ernestina Freeman creates another sort of romantic story, one that

formed the basis of many Victorian novels. In the present story, the romantic situation which

develops around the pair of aristocratic young people is not allowed to prevail over the forces,including the dark lady, that would normally keep Charles and Ernestina apart. Thus Fowles uses

the popularity of the comedy of manners and combines it with the drama and sensationalism of 

the gothic novel and, using several stylistic conventions, creates a masterful, many-layered

mystery that is one of the finest pieces of modern literature.

The French Lieutenant's Woman By John

Fowles Character List

Previous

7/28/2019 The French Lieutenant

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-french-lieutenant 2/5

 Next

Sarah Woodruff She is an educated but impoverished young woman. She is called "the French

Lieutenant's Woman" or "Tragedy" or the "French lieutenant's whore" because it is believed that

she had an affair with a shipwrecked French sailor. It is also believed that she is half-mad withgrief and that she stares out to sea, vainly hoping for the day he will return to her. Because of her 

reputation she can no longer gain any employment until Mrs. Poulteney hires her as a paid

companion. Sarah is a mysterious figure. No one knows much about her, and later we find thatmuch of what people believe about her is untrue.

Charles Smithson He is a wealthy gentleman and is heir to a minor title. His hobby is collectingfossils and he considers himself to be something of a naturalist. He is an admirer of the

controversial Darwin and he is rather pleased with himself that he is one of a minority in the

1860s to hold scientifically advanced ideas, such as the theories espoused by Darwin and others.

He is both sensitive and intelligent, but he is unsure of himself. He is bored and dissatisfied with

the course his life is taking. His fiancée is Ernestina Freeman, but that relationship is changedwhen he meets Sarah Woodruff.

Ernestina Freeman Ernestina is Charles' fiancée. She is attractive and clever but also very

young and naive. Although she considers herself to be a modern young woman, her attitudes are

similar, for the most part, to those of most proper young ladies. She is vacationing in Lyme whenthe story opens, staying with Aunt Tranter.

Aunt Tranter Ernestina's aunt is a kindly woman whose temperament contrasts greatly with thatof the sharp-tongued Mrs. Poulteney. Aunt Tranter's honesty and lack of hypocrisy seem to

 present a welcome bright spot in the small town governed by the malicious gossip of less

charitable souls.

Mrs. Poulteney The vicar convinces the wealthy widow to take in Sarah Woodruff and give her 

employment. Mrs. Poulteney's main motive in doing so is to show how charitable she is, and itdoes not stem from any real feelings of compassion for Sarah. Mrs. Poulteney is a stereotype, a

conglomerate of all the malicious old villainesses who have appeared in numerous Victorian

novels.

Dr. Grogan He is a friendly man whom Charles finds to be a sympathetic listener. Although he

feels sorry for Sarah Woodruff, unlike Charles, he cannot take her seriously. He tries to convince

Charles that she really is ill. Dr. Grogan, like Aunt Tranter, represents a type of Victoriancharacter who seems more understanding and less hampered by convention than most people.

Part of the reason for this is that both of the older people actually belong to the generation before

Victoria's, an era somewhat less repressive in certain respects.

Captain and Mrs. Talbot Sarah was the governess for the Talbot's children when she met the

French lieutenant. Even after she told them of her experience with him, they did not condemn her for it.

7/28/2019 The French Lieutenant

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-french-lieutenant 3/5

Lieutenant Varguennes Caught in a shipwreck, his leg was injured, and Varguennes was nursed

at the home of the Talbots, mostly by Sarah. Although he flirted with Sarah, and wished to

seduce her, he was married, as she later found out.

Mrs. Fairley She is Mrs. Poulteney's housekeeper and is as unkind as her mistress. She delights

in spying on Sarah and reporting her activities to Mrs. Poulteney.

Millie Mrs. Poulteney's young maid who is befriended by Sarah.

Mary Aunt Tranter's maid whose life is considerably more pleasant than Millie's. She eventually

marries Charles' man-servant, Sam Farrow.

Sam Farrow While Sam is often the object of Charles' teasing, he is not merely a humorous

figure as was Dickens' Sam Weller. He takes himself seriously and is an ambitious member of 

the working class. He is determined to wed Mary and make a good life for the two of them.

Sir Robert Charles Smithson's uncle. It is his title that Charles hopes to inherit, although that prospect is altered when Sir Robert marries Mrs. Tomkins, an attractive widow.

Lieutenant de la Roncière and Marie de Morell These are two individuals in a case historygiven to Charles by Dr. Grogan for him to read. The doctor hopes that reading about how the

neurotic young woman convinced the French courts that she had been assaulted and her family

sent poison-pen letters by the officer would convince Charles that Sarah possibly had similar intentions regarding him. While Charles conceded that the story might be true, he did not believe

it applied to Sarah.

Mr. Freeman He was a haberdasher who became very successful. One sign of his success was

that he, a member of the middle class, could have his daughter marry one of the nobility.

Gabriel and Christina Rosseti They were the founders of a school of art called the Pre-

Raphaelite school. In their day they were considered as radical as Mr. Freeman was conservative.

However, by the time Sarah came to stay with them, their work, while still shocking to some,

was coming to be more accepted.

John Fowles He is the bearded man who enters the novel several times as an observer andsometimes as a sort of theatrical director. He comments on the actions of his characters and

discusses the relationship between the art of the novel and life.

Critical Essay Structure, Style, andTechnique in The French Lieutenant's Woman 

Previous

7/28/2019 The French Lieutenant

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-french-lieutenant 4/5

 Next

In The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles does not merely recreate a Victorian novel;

neither does he parody one. He does a little of both, but also much more. The subject of this

novel is essentially the same as that of his other works: the relationship between life and art, theartist and his creation, and the isolation resulting from an individual's struggle for selfhood. He

works within the tradition of the Victorian novel and consciously uses its conventions to serve

his own design, all the while carefully informing the reader exactly what he is doing. His style purposely combines a flowing nineteenth-century prose style with an anachronistic twentieth-

century perspective.

Fowles is as concerned with the details of the setting as were his Victorian counterparts. But he

is also conscious that he is setting a scene and does not hesitate to intrude into the narrative

himself in order to show the reader how he manipulates reality through his art. Like Dickens,

Fowles uses dialogue to reveal the personalities of his characters and often he will satirize them

as well. For example, Charles' attitudes toward Sarah and Ernestina are revealed in the way hetalks to them. He is forever uncomfortable with Sarah because she won't accept the way in which

he categorizes the world, including his view of her. Sarah's responses to the world around her, asseen through her words and actions are consistent, for she is already aware of herself as an

individual who cannot be defined by conventional roles. However, Charles changes, depending

upon whom he talks to, because he really does not know who he is yet, and he sees himself as

 playing a series of roles. With his fiancée, he is indulgent and paternal; with his servant Sam, heis patronizing and humorous at Sam's expense, and with Sarah, he is stiff and uncomfortable.

When he attempts to respond to Sarah's honesty, he hears the hollowness of his own

conventional responses.

Fowles does not recreate his Victorian world uncritically. He focuses on those aspects of theVictorian era that would seem most alien to a modern reader. In particular, he is concerned withVictorian attitudes towards women, economics, science, and philosophy. In this romance, Fowles

examines the problems of two socially and economically oppressed groups in nineteenth-century

England: the poverty of the working and servant classes, and the economic and social entrapmentof women. While the plot traces a love story, or what seems to be a love story, the reader 

questions what sort of love existed in a society where many marriages were based as much on

economics as on love. This story is thus not really a romance at all, for Fowles' objective is not to

unite his two protagonists, Sarah and Charles, but to show what each human being must face inlife in order to be able to grow.

While Fowles has titled his book The French Lieutenant's Woman, Sarah Woodruff is not reallythe central character. She does not change greatly in the novel as it progresses, for she has

already arrived at an awareness that she must go beyond the definition of her individuality that

society has imposed upon her. Because her situation was intolerable, she was forced to see

through it and beyond it in order to find meaning and some sort of happiness in her life. In theearly chapters of the novel, she perhaps makes one last effort to establish a life within the norms

of Victorian society. She chooses the role of the outcast, the "French lieutenant's whore," and

also falls in love with Charles or causes him to fall in love with her. But even as she draws

7/28/2019 The French Lieutenant

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/the-french-lieutenant 5/5

Charles away from his unquestioning acceptance of his life, she finds that she does not want to

 be rescued from her plight. She has already rescued herself.

Charles, it seems, is the actual protagonist of this novel, for he must travel from ignorance to

understanding, by following the woman whom he thinks he is helping, but who in fact is his

mentor. He must discard each layer of the false Charles: Charles the naturalist, Charles thegentleman, Charles the rake, and perhaps even Charles the lover, in order to find Charles the

human being. The knowledge he arrives at is bitter, for he has lost all his illusions, as Sarah

discarded hers sometime before. But the result itself is not bitter. Although Charles and Sarah arenot reunited, for life's answers are never as simple and perfect as those of art, they both achieve a

maturity that enables them to control their lives as long as they remember to look for answers

nowhere but in themselves.

Fowles has taken two traditional romantic characters, a young hero and a mysterious woman, and

has transformed them into human beings.

There is no French lieutenant to pine after, and Sarah's life is not a tragedy that echoes her nickname in Lyme. Charles' gift of marriage is not a gift at all. While the novel could have ended

with the couple's reconciliation, as it might have had it been a traditional romance, Fowles doesnot end it there. In the second ending, Sarah rejects the familiar security that Charles offers and

 both are forced to go on alone. Fowles' novel echoes the doubts raised by such novelists as

Thomas Hardy, and by such poets as Matthew Arnold and Alfred Lord Tennyson, about thesolidity of the Victorian view of the world. The world was changing and old standards no longer 

applied, though they lingered on long after many had discarded them in their hearts. This theme

that was approached by writers in the nineteenth century is picked up again by Fowles and

carried to a logical conclusion. The novel is therefore actually a psychological study of anindividual rather than a romance. It is a novel of individual growth and the awareness of one's

 basic isolation which accompanies that growth.