The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
"The French Lieutenant's Woman" by John Fowles is a novel set in the Victorian era that explores themes of love, societal expectations, and personal freedom. The story follows Charles Smithson, a London gentleman on vacation, who becomes captivated by Sarah Woodruff, a woman shunned by society and labeled as the "French Lieutenant's Woman" due to her past involvement with a naval officer. Their encounters reveal Sarah's struggle against the constraints of Victorian norms, as she openly challenges the expectations placed upon women of her time.
As Charles’s fascination with Sarah grows, he grapples with his own engagement to Ernestina Freeman, who embodies the conventional values he is beginning to question. The narrative juxtaposes the characters' desires for both intimacy and autonomy, ultimately leading Charles to confront the limitations of his own life choices. The story unfolds with multiple endings, emphasizing the complexity of human relationships and the tension between societal pressure and personal desire. Through its rich character development and exploration of moral dilemmas, the novel invites readers to reflect on the nature of love and the quest for self-identity in a restrictive society.
The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
First published: 1969
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Symbolic realism
Time of plot: 1867
Locale: Lyme Regis, Dorset, England
Principal Characters
Sarah Woodruff , a mysterious seduced-and-abandoned governessCharles Smithson , a thirty-two-year-old London gentleman and amateur paleontologistErnestina Freeman , Charles Smithson's twenty-one-year-old fiancéAunt Tranter , a kindly spinster with whom Ernestina is stayingMary , Aunt Tranter’s maidSam , Charles’s manservantMrs. Poulteney , a self-righteous prude who takes Sarah in to demonstrate her charityDr. Grogan , a scholarly bachelor physicianThe Narrator , an unnamed and mysterious spy
The Story
Charles Smithson, a London gentleman on vacation in the south of England, goes for a walk with his fiancé, Ernestina Freeman, on the sea ramparts in Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast. They see a woman in a black coat and bonnet staring seaward from the very end of the quay, who, when warned of the danger, turns and gives Charles such a look of sadness that he never forgets it. He is further fascinated when Ernestina tells him the story of the woman, Sarah Woodruff, who, it is rumored, was seduced and abandoned by a shipwrecked naval officer she nursed back to health. Since then, she is called Tragedy or the French Lieutenant’s Woman, a euphemism for “whore.”
The next day, while Charles, an amateur paleontologist, is looking for fossils in an area known as the Undercliff, he sees Sarah sleeping on a ledge beneath the path where he walks, and he is struck by her appalling loneliness. When she suddenly awakens, he can only apologize for his intrusion. After she runs away, he follows her and offers to walk her to town, but she refuses. On the following day, Charles sees Sarah again when he visits Mrs. Poulteney’s, where Sarah was taken in as a kind of charity case. They share a look of understanding but do not indicate that they already met.
Later, Charles encounters Sarah on the Undercliff again and offers to help her get away from the self-righteous Mrs. Poulteney, but Sarah refuses, leaving Charles puzzled as to what keeps her in Lyme Regis. Charles talks to his physician and friend Dr. Grogan about his interest in Sarah, justifying it as only humanitarian, but Dr. Grogan thinks it is something more. The next time Charles meets with Sarah, she tells him that she was not seduced by the French Lieutenant but willingly gave herself to him in order to free herself from the restraints of Victorian expectations of women. Charles, disillusioned with Ernestina’s simplicity and conformity to Victorian conventions, finds Sarah puzzling and irresistible.
Sarah asks Charles to meet her one more time. She then purposely gets herself discharged by Mrs. Poulteney. When Charles meets with Dr. Grogan again and talks to him about Sarah, Dr. Grogan warns him that Sarah may be trying to entrap him. Although Charles agrees with Dr. Grogan’s advice that Dr. Grogan meet her instead of Charles, he leaves ahead of Grogan and finds Sarah in a barn. Interrupted by his manservant Sam and the maid Mary just as he is about to kiss Sarah, Charles gives her money on which to live. Sarah goes to Exeter, takes a hotel room, and sends Charles her address. Charles goes to London, gets drunk, and visits a prostitute, but he gets sick and vomits when she tells him her name is Sarah.
On the way back to Lyme Regis, Charles decides to forget Sarah and return to Ernestina. Charles and Ernestina get married, Charles becomes a businessman, the couple have children, and Sarah is never heard from again. The narrator says, however, that this is not the real ending of the story but the one that Charles imagines and the most conventional one according to Victorian standards. What really happens, the narrator says, is that Charles stops at Exeter and goes to Sarah’s hotel, where she is expecting him. Sarah subtly seduces Charles into her bed, and he discovers that she did not give herself sexually to the French Lieutenant but is a virgin. Sarah admits it, telling Charles it is part of her plan to exile herself from conventional expectations, and sends him away. Charles goes to a church and suddenly has an insight about Sarah as a real person, not as an ideal.
Charles writes a letter to Sarah telling her he wants to marry her, but his servant Sam does not deliver it. Charles breaks his engagement with Ernestina and goes back to the hotel, only to find Sarah gone. Barely escaping disastrous legal revenge by Ernestina’s father, Charles looks everywhere for Sarah, even going to America, which he discovers is more suitable to his new sense of freedom than England. After a few years of searching, he receives word from Sam (who marries Mary, works in a shop, and feels guilty for not having delivered Charles’s letter) that Sarah is living in London. Charles finds Sarah working as a secretary and model to the famous artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Sarah tells Charles that she will never marry him, but when he turns to leave, she introduces him to their daughter, Lalage, and they all embrace. The narrator of the novel, watching from across the way, sets his watch back fifteen minutes. The reader witnesses, for a second time, the meeting of Charles and Sarah. This time, there is no daughter to reunite them. Although Sarah offers Charles an unmarried relationship, he leaves her to start his life over again.
Bibliography
Acheson, James. John Fowles. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998. Print.
Aubrey, James R., ed. John Fowles and Nature: Fourteen Perspectives on Landscape. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1999. Print.
Bayer, Gerd. "On Filming Metafiction: John Fowles's Unpublished 'The Last Chapter' and the Road to Postmodern Cinema." English Studies 91.8 (2010): 893–906. Print.
Foster, Thomas C. Understanding John Fowles. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1994. Print.
Goulding, Christopher. "A Missing Epigraph from John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman." Notes and Queries 58.1 (2011): 138. Print.
Hamnett, Brian. Nineteenth-Century Europe: Representations of Reality in History and Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print
Huffaker, Robert. John Fowles. Boston: Twayne, 1980. Print.
Lenz, Brooke. John Fowles: Visionary and Voyeur. New York: Rodopi, 2008. Print.
Catherine Pesso-Miquel. "Apes and Grandfathers: Traumas of Apostasy and Exclusion in John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman and Graham Swift's Ever After." Neo-Victorian Tropes of Trauma: The Politics of Bearing After-Witness to Nineteenth-Century Suffering. Ed. Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian Gutleben. New York: Rodopi, 2010. Print.
Olshen, Barry N. John Fowles. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1984. Print.
Reynolds, Margaret, and Jonathan Noakes. John Fowles: The Essential Guide. New York: Vintage, 2003. Print.
Stephenson, William. Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. New York: Continuum, 2007. Print.
Warburton, Eileen. John Fowles: A Life in Two Worlds. New York: Viking, 2004. Print.
Wolfe, Peter. John Fowles: Magus and Moralist. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1980. Print.