Science

It is rare that novels deal with science as a major theme - art and artistic creation tend to be
much more popular themes, for obvious reasons. But Fowles has built science into the fabric
of The French Lieutenant's Woman, so much so that to not address science would be to give
an incomplete analysis of the work. This novel engages with quotations from Darwin’s works
in some of the epigraphs and is a reprisal of the debate on Victorian evolutionary theories.

In this novel Dr. Grogan represents science and the theories of evolution that permeate the
book. Grogan attends church only to keep up appearances, and his faith in science has
replaced any faith he ever had in God—at one point, he swears on On the Origin of Species
as one would swear on the Bible. Whereas Mrs. Poulteney judges Sarah as a sinner based on
religious principles, Grogan judges her mentally unsound based on earlier medical cases and
his own scientific appraisal of her. Even though these two characters seem ideologically
opposed, it’s noteworthy that they essentially come to a similar conclusion, that there’s
something fundamentally wrong with Sarah that makes her unfit for general society.

Charles, on the other hand, can’t entirely accept either of these frames for Sarah. He has little
difficulty rejecting Mrs. Poulteney’s moralistic view, and although Dr. Grogan’s medical
literature temporarily convinces him, he ultimately can’t reconcile his experience of Sarah
with the scientific view that she is insane. Similarly, Charles vacillates between religion and
science in his own life. He once wanted to become a priest, and he’s now become an amateur
paleontologist. Despite that he seems more aligned with science than religion, he still finds
some spiritual comfort in the church in Exeter after he has sex with Sarah. However, Charles
does subscribe wholeheartedly to the idea of evolution. In fact, he shares a first name with
Darwin, and he studies fossils, which present the clearest evidence of Darwin’s theories. He
often applies principles of evolution to his daily life and that of other characters, thinking of
himself, for example, as either “the fittest” or, in moments of fear, as “a fossil.” But in spite
of his supposedly scientific viewpoint, Charles can’t help but cling to convention, and he
often fails to evaluate his behavior or choices in strictly secular or scientific terms. For
example, when he thinks of himself as “the fittest,” he applies a scientific concept to his life,
but his application of it rests on aristocratic assumptions that fitness is determined by birth
rather than by ability or effort. Even as Fowles rejects religion, he points out that science can
be just as ideological as religion if not applied critically—a trap into which Charles often falls

Darwinism is a famous scientific theory by Charles Darwin, who is writing and publishing a
little before the characters of the novel are experiencing their personal dramas, claiming that
species evolve over time by a process of natural selection: the individuals in a species who
are best adapted to their environment's changing conditions survive and reproduce, and
eventually their genes become dominant in the species' gene pool. This was a very
controversial theory at the time (as we are told from Chapter 1, when Ernestina's father and
Charles quarrel about whether humans can really be descended from monkeys).

Darwinism is controversial partly for the reason that its implications are huge, and extend
beyond the realm of biology. Thanks to Darwin's ideas, the Victorians are beginning to
realize that everything "is in reality a continuous flux," and species that we recognize have
changed and will continue to change over time (45). Nothing is stable, and soon nothing will
be quite as it was. Of course, the Victorians do not like this idea, since they are very attached
to their traditions, and are very conservative in many ways. There are many huge social
changes taking place during this era: changes in the position of women, in the traditional
class system structure, and in people's attitudes toward religion, sex, and a host of other
things. It seems that the shift to the Darwinian perspective precipitates and mirrors other
shifts in the Victorian consciousness.

In different interviews, Fowles has expressed various views on scientific progress. In a Paris
Review interview, he highlights the importance of Darwinian thought in the Victorian age:
this was when "rational science began at last to cast off the shackles of obscurantist religion,
when reason began to triumph over myth." This seems to be a positive portrayal as science as
a force for enlightenment and social good. However, Fowles mitigates this by claiming that
"[o]ur present scientific world...has its faults and problems, of course, and perhaps the
pendulum has swung too far." Seemingly, Fowles is suggesting that there is a limit to what
science can achieve, and that more science isn't always the answer to society's problems, even
though it did a lot of good for the backward Victorians.

In a BBC interview in 1977, Fowles casts doubt on the ability of science to answer all our
questions, saying that to think that science "has solved all our problems" is just an "illusion,"
and that science will never be able to explain everything. What is left, when science has
explained all it can, must be tackled by something else - maybe spirituality; maybe art.
Science isn't as joyful as an unscientific appreciation of nature - when overwhelmed by the
beauty of nature in Chapter 10, Charles is "forced...into anti-science" (60). Only art can truly
capture the perfect loveliness of scenes like this, the narrator comments, and in particular
only the art of the Renaissance era. Furthermore, in Chapter 29, science seems to deny the
secret that Nature clearly conveys to Charles: that all life is equal.