Female Liberation in John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman

La liberación femenina en La mujer del teniente francés de John Fowles

Hasti Soltani1 ; Ali Salami2 * .

1. Ph.D. Candidate of English Literature, Department of Literature and Foreign Language, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran.

2. Associate Professor of English Literature, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. salami.a@ut.ac.ir

*Corresponding author: Ali Salami, email: salami.a@ut.ac.ir

Información del artículo:

Artículo original

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33975/riuq.vol35n1.1176

Recibido: 11 marzo 2023; Aceptado: 8 mayo 2023

ISSN: 1794-631X e-ISSN: 2500-5782

Esta obra está bajo una licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 4.0 Internacional.

Cómo citar: Soltani, Hasti., & Salami, Ali. (2023). Female Liberation in John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Revista de Investigaciones Universidad del Quindío, 35(1), 391-403. https://doi.org/10.33975/riuq.vol35n1.1176

ABSTRACT

The researchers intend to analyze John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman to depict how the female protagonists reject the notion of being eunuchs and experience liberation and revolution within the social context. To carry out this study, the researchers analyze the female characters. This masterpiece revolves around the notions of love and sexuality. The French Lieutenant’s Woman has been analyzed from different aspects of feminism. However, in this research, the purpose is to depict how Victorian women are able to break the phallocentric discourse by negating sexual differences and becoming eunuch subjects. The beginning of the novel shows Charles’ engagement with Ernestina mostly based on the social doctrines of the Victorian era. In fact, there is no love between them and what binds them together is social expectation. Ernestina is the symbol of a woman who desires to be a female eunuch and obey the principles of the nuclear family. On the other hand, Sarah is a rebellious character who selects love over the social doctrines of Victorian society. The present research is conducted based on Luce Irigaray and Germaine Greer’s theories in which the role of Victorian women is analyzed.

Keywords: Female Liberation; Sexual Difference; Eunuch; Phallocentrism; Victorian Era; Male Discourse.

RESUMEN

Los investigadores tienen la intención de analizar La mujer del teniente francés de John Fowles para describir cómo las protagonistas femeninas rechazan la noción de ser eunucos y experimentan la liberación y la revolución dentro del contexto social. Para llevar a cabo este estudio, los investigadores analizan los personajes femeninos. Esta obra maestra gira en torno a las nociones de amor y sexualidad. La Mujer del teniente francés ha sido analizada desde diferentes vertientes del feminismo. Sin embargo, en esta investigación, el propósito es mostrar cómo las mujeres victorianas son capaces de romper el discurso falocéntrico al negar las diferencias sexuales y convertirse en sujetos eunucos. El comienzo de la novela muestra el compromiso de Charles con Ernestina basado principalmente en las doctrinas sociales de la época victoriana. De hecho, no hay amor entre ellos y lo que los une es la expectativa social. Ernestina es el símbolo de una mujer que desea ser eunuca y obedecer los principios de la familia nuclear. Por otro lado, Sarah es un personaje rebelde que elige el amor por encima de las doctrinas sociales de la sociedad victoriana. La presente investigación se realiza con base en las teorías de Luce Irigaray y Germaine Greer en las cuales se analiza el rol de la mujer victoriana.

Palabras clave: liberación femenina; diferencia sexual; eunuco; falocentrismo; época victoriana; discurso masculino.

INTRODUCTION

The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles’ magnum opus, centers on love and sexuality. John Fowles was born at Leighton-on-Sea, Essex in 1926, where he resided until the flare-up of the Second World War. His most popular fiction incorporates his first novel, The Collector (1963), the narrative of a youthful agent, a butterfly gatherer, who captures a young lady; The Magus (1966), is set on a Greek island where a teacher goes up against a progression of upsetting occasions; and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), tells the story of a Victorian scientist Charles Smithson and his association with the infamous and confounding Sarah Woodruff. The French Lieutenant’s Woman won the Silver Pen Award and the WH Smith Literary Award and was adapted to a film in 1981, with the screenplay composed by Harold Pinter.

Fowles’ career began with a unique suspenseful thrill ride, The Collector (1963), yet his prominence as a writer was established by The Magus (1966), and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), with the latter being a striking pastiche of Victorian fiction. Fowles’ oeuvre is arguably characterized by the presence of the writer as a figure inside his own books, who at specific moments remarks on the activity, the characters’ thought processes, and potential outcomes, and clarifies how things may have been unique. At the outset, the novel shows Charles’ engagement to Ernestina which is presumably based on social doctrines of the Victorian era. Regrettably, what binds them together is social expectation, not mutual love. Charles’ fiancée, Ernestina, is the symbol of woman committed to the principles of the nuclear family, preoccupied with marrying properly and becoming both a wife and a mother.

At the other end of spectrum, Sarah is a rebellious character who prefers love to the social doctrines of the Victorian society. She is a young woman, a goal-oriented rancher’s little girl with a sensible instruction which leaves her fluctuating between two extremes: the lower class, into which she was born, and the working class, to which her schooling pushes her. The primary thing we find out about Sarah - and it is practically all we learn in the initial sections - is that she has an infamous reputation as purportedly she has had early sexual affair with a French mariner. After having a sexual relation with Charles and losing her virginity, Sarah does not expect marriage from Charles, which is diametrically opposed to the Victorian morality. Sarah runs away from Charles and Charles who is after her to marry her cannot find her. It is several years later that both meet and Sarah is changed into a modern and rich woman. She tells Charles that she does not want to marry him or any other men, feeling completely happy with her life and job. Unlike Germaine’s theory, Sarah rejects being a female eunuch. This seems that the achievement of liberty has been Sarah’s objective, which is secured by being independent. The researchers challenge Irigaray’s theories regarding phallocentric discourse and sexual difference, and posits that female characters can reach liberation within the same culture, discourse, and language, that men use.

LITERATURE REVIEW

In “Freedom in The French Lieutenant’s Woman” Qiming Ji and Ming Li examine the significance of freedom. Freedom is a central theme to John Fowles’ career, one of his methodologies, the significant message that he wishes to convey to the readers. As a postmodernist author, John Fowles’ works mix another current for both English and American writing. This essay attempts to create a link between existential strategies and the component of freedom in Fowles’ stories.

Samet Güven pinpoints the ironic War between Victorian and Modern Values in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The book can be regarded as a metafictional novel since the author makes the readers mindful of the fictive essence of his work through his authorial comments on the novel. To put it more specifically, he deviates from traditional mode of storytelling by deploying metafiction—a sort of fiction to show the disputable relationship of fictionality versus reality. Fowles penned his work under the shadow of a Victorian tale which gives him the opportunity to reprimand the pretense and sexual restraint of the age. Likewise, the characters are allowed a space to pick their methodologies, and consequently they are not compelled to be heavily influenced by the creator.

“Postmodern Themes and Strategies in The French Lieutenant’s Woman” by Dana Valentová centers around postmodern subjects and techniques utilized in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The aim of this work is to identify the postmodern subjects and techniques, break down these components in the novel, and show what establishes The French Lieutenant’s Woman as a work of historiographical metafiction.

Ásta Karen Helgadóttir in “The Leading Ladies of The French Lieutenant’s Woman” delves into the role of women in the novel. It claims that Ernestina’s and Sarah’s personalities were considerably shaped by their childhood, encounters economic health, instead of having been foreordained by their female nature. In certainty, a large number of the alleged “female characteristics” come unnaturally to them. Notwithstanding, their distinctive childhood and possibilities shape them since early on and compelled them to build up some unique, socially satisfactory, attributes. Ernestina has consistently been pushed to become the spouse of a rich man, and subsequently has been educated, as long as she can remember, to carry on appropriately in the public community, to check her mind and tenacity, and to take great consideration of her appearance.

Finally, in Gülrah Moramollu “The French Lieutenant’s Woman: The Strong Chains of Victorian Society” analyses different dimensions of identity. What occurs in the novel can be taken as a journey and Charles’ mission lies in his loss of Sarah. Fowles believes that beginning of all art lies in the quest for the irrecoverable, what the item relations investigator presently calls representative fix. In that sense, French Lieutenant’s Woman can be viewed as a bildungsroman especially like Great Expectations: the schooling of the central character, his search for personality and breaking fantasies individually, and at last coming to the reality: the genuine worth originates from inside.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Luce Irigaray’s theory presents a reiteration of psycho-sexual terms, which some have understood as a sexual reification of female life systems that reduces female subjectivity to a fixed meaning. Irigaray, like Kristeva, is graphically seating her way of thinking inside the psychoanalytic practice—and heralds the passing of the covered maternal, and the mother-girl relationship that undergirds, and her theory is a casualty to the male-centric vision of the Oedipal destiny. While digging the psychoanalytic practice for its knowledge into human subjectivity and sexuality, she simultaneously resists its ordinances and doctrines by regularly surpassing the theories of both Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. For Freud, ladylike sexuality is the confounding ‘dim landmass’ and he really analogized it to the mainland of Africa; fruitful, obscure, and hanging tight for colonization from authority (Freud, p. 130).

Unsurprisingly, Irigaray challenges Freud’s decisions that the moxie is fundamentally male, and that there is just a single drive (the manly charisma), and that ladies are the inactive receptors of functioning male sexuality, experiencing perpetual ‘phallus envy’; nonetheless, she claims that Freud was mindful, so as to make no case to have perceived the puzzler that Freud portrays as the sexual improvement of women (This Sex, p. 48). Lacan is fundamental to Irigaray’s work for a few reasons as Elizabeth Grosz diagrams, “These three key areas in Lacan’s work – the interlocking domains of subjectivity, sexuality, and language define broad interests shared by many French feminists” (32).

Carolyn Burke proposes that the composition of Lacan may be viewed as a greater amount of an intertextual weaving as opposed to an immediate position in Irigaray’s work; Lacan is the founder of the psychoanalytic family who will not recognize the autonomous insight of his girls, like Irigaray, resistant in her defiance. Lacan’s precepts addresses for Irigaray the Law of the Father, “le Maître” (the Master), and the phallocratic order that opposes female sexuality free of the phallus’ economy. Moreover, Irigaray accordingly starts a re-examination of phallocentrism, discovering it in arrangement with logocentrism, placing itself as ‘truth,’ and pushing the idea of ‘lady’ back in the reasonable machine of phallogocentrism. Demanding that she is certainly not a vindictive girl of therapy, Irigaray in I Love to You asserts the psychoanalytic custom to uncover its agreement with a way of thinking of sexual lack of concern (64).

Germaine Greer, an Australian author and a public thinker, is considered as one of the significant figure of the radical feminist movement in the 20th century. She believes that the families and societies have compelled the female characters to act their femininity and practice womanhood. However, women can assert themselves in case they could free their minds. This means that their bodies can be free and they revolutionize the dogmatic social and cultural codes in the society. The female body is normally accepted to be encompassed in protecting fat, just so she is all the cuddlier, Nature and Hugh Hefner being indistinguishable bawds in this rush hour gridlock. The facts confirm that ladies wear a lot less and lighter garments than men do, however, it is not so natural to decide regardless of whether the layer of fat outcomes from the need to protect such uncovered bits or originates before it.

METHODS AND TECHNIQUES

While Lacan set up phallomorphism as the ruling extraordinary signifier, Irigaray undermines and dislodges his phallocratic economy with what Diana Fuss calls isomorphism. As indicated by Fuss, all through Speculum and This Sex, Irigaray really opposes the rationale of the look with the rationale of the touch, keeping the lady in contact with herself, and moving the concentration from the sight to touch. Irigaray challenges Freud’s Gaze, calling it, “in question from the outset” (Speculum, p. 53). The young lady, the lady, evidently has “nothing you can see” which drives her to problematize Freud’s phallus-sight economy and sexual void left to lady as “Nothing to be seen is identical to have nothing. No being and no truth” (Speculum, pp. 47-48).

In To Speak Is Never Neutral, Irigaray proposes that the letter set is comparable to a non-connection between the equivalent and the other. The rambling/semantic order establishes and asserts detachment. The symbolic order becomes conceivable when the Father restricts both the mother and kid from fulfilling their longings completely, confining them to the need of language, the symbolization of want which capitulates to demand (This Sex, p. 61). The female is hence symbolically unimportant. Irigaray starts to speculate the Phallus of addressing a contemporary god, envious of his rights.

The symbolic arguably avows male sexual craving and edges the male discourse that is legitimized in the society. For the mother, the phallus signifies deprivation and the mother’s desire for what the father own, to which he constantly refers. Hence, the phallus indicates both female and male longing. The phallus, delegate of the phallus, implies the fundamental motivation behind language – to stop up the opening at the focal point of all being.

Nineteenth-century beauties even went to the limit of having their least ribs eliminated, so they could bind their girdles tighter. One local clan of New Guinea utilizes tight supports for the two people, and the substance will, in general, grow above also, underneath the ligature, with the goal that men have hourglass bends as well. In the event that we may take the burden of tight bodices on ‘O’ as any guide, the readers might expect that the little midsection is predominantly esteemed as a state of frangibility for the female edge, with the goal that it satisfies savage dreams. Greer notes, “There is a kind of class distinction in sexual preferences. The darling of the working class is still curvy and chubby, but the fashionable middle class are paying their respects to slenderness, and even thinness. For women, there is one aspect which is common to both situations” (41).

The French Lieutenant’s Woman, published in 1969, looks like a Victorian epic in structure and detail while pushing the customary limits of the story in a cutting-edge way. Charles, a 30-year-old freely well-off Londoner with a beginner’s enthusiasm for fossil science, is engaged with the upscale socialite Ernestina. Both are remaining in Lyme Regis: Ernestina stays in Lyme Regis since her parents asked her to stay so that she recovers from her illness. However, after a while, the relationship between the couple becomes affected by a variety of factors, and the female roles become pronounced which deviates from Victorian conception of femininity, and they reach liberation in the Victorian context.

DISCUSSION

Rejection of Sexual Difference

It should likewise be conceded that Irigaray’s idea has changed significantly after some time, and does not unvaryingly uphold a pragmatist interpretation. Maybe, as Irigaray notes, the readers observe her move from political to pragmatist essentialism. She passes from her initial venture of reconsidering the symbolically female to an expanding acknowledgment that this rethinking must, at the same time, include revaluing the body. Additionally, she perceives that this revaluation requires the elaboration of another cosmology where bodies are dynamic, self-expressive, and have normally determinate elements which exist freely from any cycle of social development. Irigaray lay outs such a metaphysics of dynamic and self-expressive bodies in An Ethics of Sexual Difference (1984) – the content of which signposts the change to her later confidence in genuine, normally existing, sexual distinction. In subsequent works, she sees that her thought of self-expressive bodies involves a refashioned investigation of social constructions and organizations as communicating, pretty much well, our genuine, dynamic, and physically various bodies.

The whole novel upholds the concept of marriage as a sacred institution which corroborates Güven’s argument that “Victorian society favored a proper and stable family structure based on heterogeneous relationship because the patriarchy considered such a family as the milestone of stable society, progress, and regeneration” (345). Men were answerable for bringing in cash and carrying bread to their homes while ladies were at risk for homegrown obligations like childbearing, cooking, or sewing. This was an overall thought that ladies should not have some other social exercises rather than the ones performed at home as homemaking was acknowledged to be the main essential capacity of ladies in Victorian period.

It’s undeniably true that Victorian ladies were heavily influenced by the patriarchal society. Moreover, ladies were tamely reduced to a state of inadequacy under the severe guidelines of the public and with the dividers of marriage. All in all, “[e]quality has consistently been dismissed” (Edman, p. 249) by male-controlled society in this period. Creating a knowledgeable persona like Sarah, John Fowles opposes and challenges the standards of the nineteenth since she is depicted as a prostitute shunning marriage forced by the general public.

In the novel, when characterizing Charles, , the novelist narrates that “However Charles jumped at the chance to consider himself a logical young fellow and would most likely not have been too astounded had news contacted him out of things to come of the plane, the stream motor, TV, radar” (Fowles, p.80). Charles may not be amazed, yet the readers are stunned by such sacrilegious articulation the twentieth century. After Charles met Sarah at Ware Commons, he did not return straightly to Lyme Regis but went to the Dairy and met Sarah again. The narrator continues, “I requested him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. In any case, he needlessly turned and went down to the Dairy” (Fowles, p. 81). Moreover, the reader even gives his own justification fizzling in controlling Charles’ conduct: yet I “… that it very well may be more sharp to have him pause and milk… and meet Sarah once more. That is positively one clarification of what occurred; yet I can just report—and I am the most dependable observer—that the thought appeared to me to come plainly from Charles, not myself” (Fowles, p. 81) Here, Charles turned into the leader and has his own opportunity of decisions. The story pushed ahead somewhat relying upon the person’s decision rather than the arrangement of the creator.

In the novel John Fowles makes a staggering yet splendid story in technical terms for Victorian authenticity. His language, style and detailed depictions like authentic occasions, clothing, stylistic theme, and furniture, hint at a Victorian work of art. The author effectively utilizes the Victorian style and language from the stature of an advanced essayist in the 1960s. The use of such style shows that a Victorian writer like John Fowles interfaces the past and the present. He draws on the Victorian ear to show the backwardness and pietism of the previous era. Moreover, Fowles deliberately mirrors the customary practical account, and then again, he penetrates and criticizes the wrongness of this strategy. Fowles delves into different layers of the Victorian time through two female characters. One is an ordinary lady and the other disregarded the shows. The main contribution of this research is to depict this sexual distinction.

Charles and Sarah evade communication on their first gathering because of the long term antagonism between them, though Sarah somewhat shows the qualities of a Victorian femininity. While Sarah symbolizes “the prohibited lady of various Victorian books, Charles is a model Victorian legend” (Alexander, p. 128). This justifies why Fowles purposely confuses his readers by portraying of Sarah “as a fictional and independent figure who goes beyond the social codes of her age” (Güven, p. 346). After Charles encounters Sarah and has relation with her at Ware Commons, he does not return straightly to Lyme Regis. All things considered, he goes to the Dairy and meets Sarah again. The storyteller says as hence “I requested him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. In any case, he needlessly turned and went down to the Dairy” (Fowles, p. 81). Moreover, the reader even gives his own justification in controlling Charles’ conduct yet, “that it very well may be sharper to have him pause and milk… and meet Sarah once more. That is positively one clarification of what occurred; yet I can just report—and I am the most dependable observer—that the thought appeared to me to come plainly from Charles, not myself” (Fowles, p. 81). Here, Charles turns into the leader and has his own opportunity of decisions. The story pushes ahead somewhat relying upon the person’s decision rather than the arrangement of the creator. This is how he becomes the dominant and the phallus of the dominant culture. However, Sarah does not succumb to the domination of the Victorian era as Azerêdo notes that, “in fact, although belonging to the Victorian era, Sarah does not reflect the attributes associated with the age, as seen through Charles above. In other words, Sarah is not semi-static, timid, or incapable of sustained physical effort. Because she embodies a subjectivity characterized by freedom, sensuality and mystery” (5).

After taking part in an extramarital relationship with Sarah who then, at that point vanished, Charles chose to discover Sarah and boarded on a train. He ran over the hidden storyteller in their common train compartment. “The tenderfoot mumbled a “Excuse me, sir” and advanced toward the furthest finish of the compartment. He sat, a man of forty of thus, his formal hat immovably square, concealed hands in his knees recapturing his breath” (Fowles, p. 317). There is little doubt that this moderately aged man is John Fowles himself. The creator out of nowhere appears in the story becoming one of its characters, an incredible change from a storyteller to a taking part character. The assumed writer then didn’t how to manage Charles complaining “what Satan am I going to do with you?” (Fowles, p.317). Toward the end of this part, Fowles informs his readers how the story proceeded: he took a florin from his satchel and flicked it, which has ended Charles’ destiny.

Monique’s Witting claims that for Irigaray the “ladylike quintessence […] must be found outside of the severe social system…in the body of the woman” (13) Irigaray’s professed natural essentialism in This Sex appears to be firmly connected to organic determinism – the view that substantial properties, not friendly plans, produce focal components of ladies’ condition like their sexuality furthermore, talking style. The public is declining and individuals’ strict conviction is losing. Typically, they do not have faith in God, yet would turn to God when they carry the weight of transgression and wrongdoing. Mrs. Poulteney is a particular instance. On one hand, she is an exceptionally rich widow who trusts God could never track down her misleading conduct and favors her to go to heaven after her death. Moreover, she is severe about everything, incredibly severe and unfeeling to her staff: “If the special lady was inadequate in the more unremarkable issue where her staff was concerned, she took incredibly great consideration of their otherworldly government assistance. There was required twofold visit to chapel on Sundays; and there was additionally a modern morning administration” (Fowles, pp. 50-51). It appears to be that she takes on Sarah out of benevolence and compassion. Nevertheless, she does that for purpose of making up for herself from the transgression and wrongdoing that she has perpetrated on poor people. Moreover, she is energetically anxious to administer and control Sarah’s conduct just as her considerations.

In Victorian England, a lady ought to be a shy rich woman who is expected to be a future decent mother just as a decent spouse. Accordingly, they choke out sexual instinct and will not ever discuss it at a formal and public event. They are “the female injured in the fight for general manly virtue”. In any case, they would envision the touch of the male or subtly have intercourse with their darlings. Ernestina even subtly appreciates her nakedness in the mirror in her room. There are numerous sporting where fixed young ladies normally go to. Furthermore, young ladies like Mary, albeit just nineteen years of age, think a lot about sexual relations: “The hard—I would prefer to call it delicate, however regardless—the reality of Victorian country England was that what a more straightforward age called “tasting before you buy”(premarital intercourse, in our present language) was the standard, not the special case” (Fowles, p. 214). The Victorian ladies respected sensitive, delicate, curved eyebrows. In case they are complimented by certain honorable men or stunned by some news, they will fake to black out.

Liberation and Eunuch Subjects

From the outset of the novel, one can observe a detailed investigation of Ernestina. She is a woman of Victorian, of declining Victorian, a product of that age, a ruined little girl of a rich family. She is an ideal, overpowering young lady for a refined man: young, wonderful, agreeable, dutiful, and sensitive. Ernestina’s frosty mentality and disposition pulled in Charles at the party where they meet interestingly. Charles imagines that he tracks down the right young lady and drew with her inside a brief time frame. Ernestina makes an honest effort to be an exquisite woman; nonetheless, she seems to be a self-centered, shallow, and usual young lady.

Ernestina’s strong sexual instinct is observable in the episode where she respects her own body in the mirror. At whatever point, the actual female ramifications of her body, sexual, feminine, parturitional, attempted to constrain a passage into her awareness, she generally said to herself “I should not”. However, she would do it in her private room. “In her room that evening she unfastened her dress and remained before her mirror in her chemise and slips… she raised her arms and unloosed her hair, a thing she knew to be enigmatically evil, yet fundamental… she out of nowhere quit turning and respecting herself in profile” (Fowles, p. 29) As a centripetal young woman, she required a spouse like Charles. She felt there was a wolf of desire expressing her heart out. Through contact with Sarah, Charles discovered he did not care for Ernestina.

But then indeed it bore in upon him, as the show, that there was a shallow thing in her—that her intensity was generally established, mentally as one after another in order, by a simple adorableness. Was there not, underneath the bashful awareness, something of the robot about her, of one of those novel young lady machines from Hoffmann’s Tales? (Fowles, p. 122)

Ernestina’s intensity and insight spring from her charm and magnificence than intrinsic personality and contemplations. She seems to be the inflexible product of that age. She was unable to control her demeanor as a woman nor avoided being self-centered. After Charles revealed to her that his uncle would wed a widow adequately youthful to gift him a child as his beneficiary, which implied that Charles would be denied of the option to acquire the baronetcy title and the domain of Winsyatt, Ernestina turned very furious, and reviled Charles’ uncle. This was the behavior of unladylike, lacking the imperturbability that fine refined refusal to permit the misfortunes of life at any point to unsettle one’s style: “Ernestina and her like acted consistently as though habited in glass: limitlessly delicate, in any event, when they tossed books of verse. They empowered the veil, the protected distance” (Fowles, p. 119).

Although Sarah Woodruff is banished from ordinary Victorian culture, she epitomizes the developing type of ladies acquiring liberation during the late nineteenth century. She experiences male segregation, instruction disengagement from the local class. Her precursors were aristocrats, yet in her father’s age, they degenerated into the underworld. To acquire pride and honorability, her dad sends her to class in the hope of growing an informed reproductive woman. In any case, Sarah oscillates between the lower and the high society; she is hesitant to return to her previous social station, yet simultaneously is denied by the privileged as she could not afford elite education. After her father’s demise, she turns into a vagrant, accepting a work as a tutor. Yet, Sarah has her own capability and mindfulness. In this novel, she is characterized a modern character, which the author reinforces in different regards.

Sarah’s notoriety is revealed to the nearby individuals. It is rumored that she once breastfed a French lieutenant who survived a shipwreck and has affairs with a strange man. Heedless to such rumors, she continued wandering and hesitating close to the ocean. She is taken on by Mrs. Poulteney, the most customary and strictest, the most crafty and fraudulent paramour in the little town. Notwithstanding the threat of ostracism, Sarah goes to the woods “Product Commons”, which was the Eden for pursuing couples each mid-year: “It is adequate to say that among the better townsfolk one had uniquely to discuss a kid or a young lady as one of the Ware Commons kind to tar them forever. The kid should thereupon be a satyr; and the young lady, a support whore” (77). According to the others, Sarah is a vulgar and indecent lady. Indeed, she is a lady brought into the world with sharp knowledge, which is nourished by sonnets and books. In spite of the fact that she is glad for her own reserved quality, she maintains her virtuousness.

According to Zheng, “Sarah, a woman who is lived in Victorian age, suffers a lot from Patriarchy ideology and class system, but she pursues economic independence and selfhood bravely, seeks for freedom constantly, all her behaviors embody her desire for her own autonomy. Sarah is regarded as a seeker of selfhood and as a rebel against tradition Victorian social system” (280). Sarah falls in love with Charles at the first sight, and she starts her careful seek after adoration. At the earliest reference point, she introduces herself as a figure from the story, standing unmoving and gazing at the ocean. Charles found that “There was no guile there, no false reverence, no insanity, no veil; or more all, no indication of franticness”. In this way, she is, somewhat, alluring to Charles and she stirs his interest. Then, at that point, Sarah orchestrates cautiously every gathering with Charles. She discovers that Charles is a novice scientist, keen on gathering fossils. So, she meanders in the woods where Charles looks for his valuable fossils. Sarah relies upon her sexual attraction to attract Charles’ compassion. In their first experience, Charles “accidentally sees her resting under a bluff, and he becomes attracted to watching her. There was something seriously delicate but then sexual in the manner she lay; it stirred a faint reverberation of Charles of a second from his time in Paris” (Fowles, p. 61).

In their subsequent meeting, she actually appears to be extremely cold, yet she slipped on her knees, showing her delicacy. “She is thoroughly similar to a wild creature, unfit to see him, shuddering, idiotic.” Charles currently is worried about her security and notoriety. Likewise, he appreciates her knowledge and freedom since he believes in Darwinism. He could not resist the urge to consider Sarah and show emotions, or give some chance she represents when he feels exhausted and baffled by Ernestina. At the third time, Sarah looks for Charles and got him into correspondence. She discloses a piece of her story and begged Charles another gathering to pay attention to her awful story. Charles guaranteed that.

Sarah’s third decision might frustrate those readers who anticipate a traditional storyline completion. She decides to decline Charles’ proposition to proceed with her condition of opportunity and freedom. Two years later, Charles’ affection to Sarah transforms into servitude. She is unable to bear the man’s everyday life in which Charles would support her and their little girl Lalage. Through their contact, Sarah assists Charles in understanding his own being, his inner-being, to seek after his adoration, to investigate the genuine importance of life and opportunity. From that point onward, she does not need Charles to meddle in her life, nor does she need to meddle with Charles’ life. Hence, she even does not uncover their girl Lalage in the desire for an all-out partition. Here, Sarah trained Charles to comprehend the significance and value of the opportunity.

Taking into consideration Sarah’s conduct and demeanor, it is reasonable to claim that freedom is essential for equality and unity of the community, grounded in dissenting and opposing the injustice and mistreatment. In a word, Sarah is a free contemporary woman with super understanding, acumen. She abides by the axiom that “I have this now, accordingly I am glad”. Consistently, for her is tallied; each choice for her is a decision at her own will; each progression for her is cheerful.

Male Discourse and Female Liberation

This novel can be viewed as a chronological one, but the author does not compose verifiable books per se. In short, it can be said that Fowles took advantage of Victorian writing mode for his own purposes, but not in a regular way. Charles Smithson, a decent individual from Victorian class-conscious society “begins the novel as a ‘man of his word’, however, we are promptly reminded he is a “Darwinist” also. Moreover, this is his situation to begin with” (Fawkner 79). Ultimately The French Lieutenant’s Woman is not such a tale of a man conflicted between the laws of his time and the physical allures of an uncommon “astounding” lady preoccupied with social and human liberation. “Maybe the tale of a man can pick, to be sure who needs to pick between two different ways of relating himself to time.” (79) The Darwinian hypothesis of endurance directs “the need to mix with the unchallenged presumptions of one’s age “ (79) in the event that one craving social endurance – which, requires Charles to wed Ernestina, who is the rich beneficiary of Freeman stores, and work in Mr. Freeman’s trade, in a way mixing his “fossilized “ honorability or squirearchy with the wealth of upper middle classes: a choice which sickened Charles or to remain for the ideas of individual decision and freedom of thought as prerequisites of human liberation which requires the agonizing and enduring job of the untouchable in the general public: that of the method of Sarah Woodruff named as “helpless misfortune “or “the French Lieutenant’s lady “by society, outside the laws or then again rules of society.

The children are instructed; stars approved; markets ensured. The situation of ladies endeavoring to make meaning foster a Symbolic structure inside these constructions. The art world necessitates its craftsmen produce work which can be represented inside the constructions of support mimesis, and simultaneously be seen as fostering a visual language extraordinary to the singular craftsman. It is this surface appearance of representative receptiveness that seems both tempting and frightening to the young ladies who are the greater part of craftsmanship understudies; it is the design of upkeep mimesis that guarantees them limited achievement, regardless of whether in genuine terms (acknowledgment) or in creating suitable symbolic punctuation: as Luce Irigaray says, she acquires signifiers yet cannot make her imprint, or re-mark upon them. (30)

All through the novel, genuine characters from the Victorian, in addition to the twentieth-century setting, are continually alluded to. A portion of the personages enter the universe of the fiction, some stay in the realm of the storyteller; some remain just characters’ subjects of conversations, some connect with them. The allusion to the works of genuine personages help to mirror the milieu of the Victorian period and to build up the legitimacy, believability, or the hallucination of the real world. The advanced storyteller frequently presents this form of reality in the domain of “dull regions”, where the “official” record would not be gone against. For instance, when Marx is presented in the novel, the storyteller says: “Obviously, Charles knew nothing of the beavered German Jew discreetly working, as it so occurred, that very evening in the British Museum library; and whose work in those grave dividers was to bear such radiant red natural product” (18).

Marx is introduced inside the ontological universe of the characters, sometime before the arrival of his persuasive book: “… in just a half year from this March of 1867, the primary volume of Kapital was to show up in Hamburg” (18). As McHale says, on account of the “dull regions” (87) ever, storytellers are given a moderate free hand. We could not ascertain whether Marx really was in the exhibition hall library on that day and we presumably never will. Indeed, even the experience of the “genuine” in this community, ladies’ sexuality and desire were subjected to social service and conceptive working. Dismissing the singular component of sexuality, it was assumed that God or society would legitimize the presumptions of want and delight. Indeed, in Victorian culture, based on Martha Vicinus, “ladies were taught to accept that they were ethically better than men in their absence of sexual drive” (xiv). The kids, along these lines, are prepared to be “adoring and passionate, without sexuality” (xi). It was mandatory for Victorian woman to be chaste, and oblivious to instincts before marriage.

Ernestina has the typical sexual hang-ups of the time. However, totally unaware and scared of sex, she encounters periodic normal snapshots of enthusiasm and desires as depicted in part five. For instance, the uncommon snapshots of enlivening sexuality, “a thing she knows to be ambiguously evil, yet essential” (34). Trained to be ‘agamic’, she curbs dictatorially any snapshots of “the actual female ramifications of her body, sexual, feminine, parturitional… to drive a section into her cognizance” (34). Her mind does not permit itself to envision the wicked sexual minutes. She even does not let herself think whether her life partner has laid down with different ladies; “obviously Ernestina utter[s] the absolutist ‘I should not’ right when any such wicked theory cross[es] her brain” (77).

There are many events in the novel when Tina is portrayed as bashful, pure, physically uninformed, and as typifying other desired qualities, which a young lady should show before marriage in commitment to the Victorian guidelines. For instance, in part eleven, where Charles’ proposal of union with her is impending, Fowles informs us that “He was unable to continue, for she had turned, her eyes loaded with tears. Their hands met, and he attracted her to him. They didn’t kiss. They proved unable. How might you pitilessly detain all normal sexual intuition for a very long time and afterward not anticipate that the prisoner should be racked by cries when the entryways are opened up” (85). As examined before, Victorian ladies were ordained to reject enthusiasm and desire from their characters, “ladies themselves were the best masters of norms of moral conduct (characterized in absolutely sexual terms)” (Vicinus xiv). Thusly, being physically oblivious and honest is a standard that Ernestina conforms to during the time spent making her personality. The critical reality in this regard is that such prohibitions which have been addressed as the regular request of things are, truth be told, manufactured by the patriarchal aura of the period to make an administrative casing to oblige ladies’ sexual practices. Berg says that “Irigaray eschews dogmatic statement, or “univocity’, because she does not wish to displace Lacan’s phallus with the lips, which would be a phallocentric strategy” (68).

In such a public which sees marriage and generation as the sole capacity of ladies, accordingly, “an ordinary presence is to be a spouse and a mother” (Beauvoir 453). While it is accepted that ladies have minimal sexual sentiments by any means, family expressions of warmth and longing for parenthood are considered inborn by the prevalent philosophy of the age (Vicinus ix). When in the novel Charles warns Sarah that “you can’t dismiss the reason for which lady was brought into creation” (431), he is truth be told, supporting this belief system. In an ideal impersonation of the best model of gentility, marriage is respected to be excessively significant such that the unmarried lady is socially seen as “wastage” (Beauvoir 447) and is known as the “repetitive lady ladies not lucky enough to wed, who instead of finishing, improving and adorning the presence of others are constrained to lead a free and fragmented presence of their own” (Roberts, p. 57). In such a public a lady who is incapable of attracting a spouse or would lose him after marriage is excused and embarrassed, for there could have been no bigger disappointment than this for a lady. This mirrors the hardships of living in a socially significant sense outside of the set-up casing of sexual orientation rehearses.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, Ernestina and Sarah’s character and disposition have been incredibly affected by their survival, and that a large number of their practices are learned and not conceived. Their first encounters with individuals and Victorian society, during their adolescence, greatly affect both. Ernestina was ruined by her relatives with affection and material products and discovers that a “legitimate Victorian woman” hushes up, compliant, credulous, and wonderful. She endeavors to make her person fit into that “ideal” form too as she can by getting control over her hardheadedness, erotic nature, and mind, yet unmistakably she is battling to keep down her normal person. Sarah, on the other hand, has poor, cold adolescence, and turns out to be forlorn, free, and wise in her early stage of life. Ernestina and Sarah can, obviously, change nothing about their actual provisions; however, it is intriguing to look at their demeanor. Sarah, raised to turn into a tutor, dresses flawlessly, yet just wears dim, obsolete garments since she relies upon her mind to get by, not her magnificence.

Conflict of interest: The authors declared the non-existence of conflicts of interest.

Contribution by author: The authors are responsible for all components of this work.

Funding or funds: No financial support was provided.

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