The French Lieutenants Woman

John Fowles

Victorian Ways

Victorian novel from modern perspective

parody
1860s

of 19th century fiction

(Mill, Marx, Darwin)

Influenced

by Hardy, Thackery, D.H. Lawrence,

George Elliot, Dickens

novel

of transgression

Why Victorian Age?

"I

saw this woman standing on the end of a

quay looking out to sea.

At

its elementary level historical novel

his

return to Victorian narrative is partly a

mockery of their [modern novelists]
transmitting novels almost entirely through
sensory perceptions of their chaaracters

Style & Narrator

The

intrusive author
Old omniscient and intrusive point of view
used with grand style
I am writing in a convention universally
accepted at the time of my story that the
novelist stands next to God. He may not
know all, yet he does pretend that he does.
(Ch.13)

Style & Narrator (cont.)

Victorian

devices:
- brief authorial comments
- footnotes
- essay materials
- epigraphs

1st chapter delineates spatio-temporal setting,

introduces main characters and hints at a
possible love relationship
Language
twisting language to try to make it sound
Victorian

Victorian characteristics:
Morality
Strong emphasis on duty
Restraint
Social class distinction
The status of women
Religion
Economic Prosperity

Victorian ideas about:

Feminism
Social class
Evolution

Morality

A strict code of ethics, morality and values

Notion of sin
Outcast from the society
I am a serious, deeply, principled man.
Inauthentic way of life
You stay in prison, what your time calls duty,
honor, self-respect, and you are comfortably
safe.
Mrs. Poulteney -a stereotype, old villainesses
who have appeared in numerous Victorian
novels

Strong emphasis on duty

Noblesse oblige responsibility towards the

less fit (Charles & Sarah)

Charles duty to Ernestina

Restraint:

Ernestina embodiment of a Victorian lady

(I must not prohibits even the thought of
sex)
sexual morality and regulations constitute
the
social background of the novel
the restrained sexual attitudes and the
system of sexual regulations exclusively
belong to the bourgeois and upper class

Social class distinction:

Lower classes uninhibited sexuality (Sam & Mary)

Charles feels trapped by conventions of rank
The terms 'lady' and 'gentleman' had enormous significance,
particularly to those aspiring to those ranks and to those in
danger of slipping out of them." ("Victorian Ladies and
Gentleman," Longman, p.1886)
Charles & Ernestina: follow upper-class conventions and get
married by the consideration of money. They hide and conceal
their inner selves without communication. The quality of their
communication is symbolic of the lack of genuineness in their
relationship.
Sam & Mary: can be direct, honest, open with one another.
There is communication that grows into a love based on
respect and that is innocent and sincere.

The status of women:

The reader is forced to identify with the
position of the observer that is traditionally
given to males
Domestic role Ernestina
Ideal of chastity
Sarah fallen woman

Religion:

Hypocritically religious
Mrs. Poultney []she reflected on the terrible
mathematical doubt that increasingly haunted her:
whether the Lord calculated charity by what one
had given or by what one could have afforded to
give.
Vicar - was a comparatively emancipated man
theologically, but he also knew very well which side
his pastoral bread was buttered) and that he is
taking money from the rich
Charles-religion of freedom

Feminism
Sarah faintly masculinized Victorian
female
Sarah New Woman emancipated,
liberated, but considered an outcast from
Victorian point of view

Darwinism
calls into question Christian beliefs and
Victorian values
Survival of the fittest and natural selection
We must evolve to survive
Sarah-cultural missing link between the
centuries
Fowles compares Darwinism to modern
worry over nuclear destruction

Marxism
Social evolution
The path of liberation to Sam- his
determination to break free from Charles
and create the space necessary for
personal fulfillment, for emancipation.

First ending
Thoroughly Victorian ending (married pair
blessed with children, Charlesbusinessman)
Charles succumbs to Victorian conventions

This the fact that every Victorian had two minds-is the one
peace of equipment we must always take with us on our travels
back to the nineteenth century. It is a schizophrenia seen at its
clearest, its most notorious, in the poets I have quoted from so
oftenin Tennyson, Clough, Arnold, Hardy; but scarcely less
clearly in the extraordinary political veerings from Right to Left
and back again of men like the younger Mill and Gladstone; in
the ubiquitous neuroses and psychosomatic illnesses of
intellectuals otherwise as different as Charles Kingsley and
Darwin; in the execration at first poured on the Pre-Raphaelites,
who triedor seemed to be tryingto be one-minded about
both art and life; in the endless tug-of-war between Liberty and
Restraint, Excess and Moderation, Propriety and Conviction,
between the principled mans cry for Universal Education and
his terror of Universal Suffrage