The ‘Real World(s)’ of Fiction: The French Lieutenant’s Woman

International Journal of Languages' Education, 2018

John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman can be labeled as a metafictional novel since the writer makes readers aware of the fictional nature of his work through his comments in the novel. As a matter of fact, he detaches himself from the realistic novels by using metafiction-a type of fiction to demonstrate the controversial relationship of fictionality versus reality. Fowles produced his work under the guise of a Victorian novel which provides him to criticize cruel hypocrisy and sexual repression of the age. Also, the characters are given an opportunity to choose their ways, and thus they are not forced to be under the control of the author. For this reason, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how Fowles as a writer brings an ironical approach to the norms of the Victorian society and novel through deconstructing the so-called Victorian values by focusing on the representation of metafiction, which is one of the key elements of postmodernism.

International Journal of Language Academy, 2019

In British literature, many eminent authors and works of literature emerged in the nineteenth century. The Victorian era constituted a tradition about how the novel genre must be, and, for several years, it set a pattern for forging fiction. But, with the alterations which are made in progress of time, the focus and perception of novel have shifted. It is clear that the conventional style of realist fiction has gone through different phases, at which it was mimicked or reproduced. In particular, an ironic approach towards the convention was adopted by postmodernism, a period in which the past tradition was both demolished and then rebuilt under the impact of contemporary and novel inclinations. In this context, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) by John Fowles could be regarded as a landmark that shows the boundaries between the past form and the novel experimental initiatives. Being one of the most significant and powerful novels of the British literature during the 1960s, The French Lieutenant's Woman highlights the shifts initiated by postmodern art philosophy. Therefore, this study aims to examine the novel by illustrating certain codes and concepts, which make The French Lieutenant's Woman a good example of postmodernist fiction.

PG and Research Department of English, Lady Doak College, 2019

This paper discusses John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman as a postmodern narrative by also bringing its experimental nature into the forefront. Postmodernism foregrounds irony, experimentation and intertextual notions. Characterized by irreverent wit and a startling clarity of vision, the narration seeks to parody Victorian conventions and mores, including their way of life, with special reference to femininity, masculinity, religion, sex and patriarchy. Fowles subtly criticizes their hypocrisy by projecting a Darwinian palaeontologist as the protagonist, thereby mocking its very foundation that was religion. The novel also parodies its own nature as fiction by giving a narrator who appears omniscient but does not even know how it ends. Thus, it acquires three endings, thereby reminding the readers of the nature of its fictionality. The paper will analyse how Fowles has created a postmodern masterpiece by incorporating elements of metafiction, non-linearity, anachronism, intertextuality and parody into this brilliant narrative. Experimentation and Postmodernism in The French Lieutenant's Woman Postmodernism is a literary theory that developed around the latter half of the twentieth century. The 1960s could be said to mark the dying out of modernism and the advent of postmodernism. It would be hard to define what postmodernism is without studying it in relation to its precursor, modernism. In a lot of ways, it is similar to modernism but it celebrates the very thing that the latter bemoans, chiefly, fragmentation. It is a groundbreaking literary theory that is characterized by, apart from many other things, Christy 1

John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman can be labeled as a metafictional novel since the writer makes readers aware of the fictional nature of his work through his comments in the novel. As a matter of fact, he detaches himself from the realistic novels by using metafiction-a type of fiction to demonstrate the controversial relationship of fictionality versus reality. Fowles produced his work under the guise of a Victorian novel which provides him to criticize cruel hypocrisy and sexual repression of the age. Also, the characters are given an opportunity to choose their ways, and thus they are not forced to be under the control of the author. For this reason, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how Fowles as a writer brings an ironical approach to the norms of the Victorian society and novel through deconstructing the so-called Victorian values by focusing on the representation of metafiction, which is one of the key elements of postmodernism.

Knowledge - International Journal, 2022

This paper will explore the importance of history and its relationship with fiction in the new-historical genre, with special reference to John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969). Although Fowles himself does not want to depict this novel as historical, the interpretation of the novel from the perspective of newhistoricism demonstrates that history and the possibility of knowing the past are very important concerns for Fowles. The French Lieutenant's Woman is generally viewed by critics as an exemplary historiographic metafiction. Still, we offer evidence that this novel represents a neo-Victorian (a subgenre of new-historical) novel which both follows the conventions of a classical historical novel and violates these conventions. Despite the fact that the novel suggests that the notion of history as a discipline based on facts becomes problematic, it at the same time implies that historical knowledge may be attained. As it follows from the novel, history should not be seen as linear, uninterrupted and certain, but as heterogeneous and unstable. The contemporary concept of history encompasses a number of versions and dimensions of the past, which is the very condition of historical knowledge. As a typical new-historical novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman emphasizes the link between history and fiction. The novel implies that they are based upon similar principles. According to Fowles, history has many various uses. This means that the author's intent is not only to illuminate similarities, differences or superiority of past and present, but to highlight certain concerns which permeate all historical and literary epochs, such as freedom, duty, sexuality, a misunderstanding between the sexes. In other words, this novel suggests that history for Fowles is horizontal rather than vertical. Moreover, Sarah and Charles may be interpreted as characters who attempt to transcend history. Their love story, choices and dilemmas are perceived as timeless, eternal, and their evolution consists of rejecting imposed roles, labels and molds in favor of reaching the state of existential awareness. In doing so, they become free from the constraints of history, not willing to shape their lives upon the principles of narrative, which determine both history and fiction. Reading The French Lieutenant's Woman proves to be a learning experience. Fowles's intention is to inspire the reader to abandon conventional reading and take part in the creation of the novel. This novel is an exemplary participatory fiction since the three possible endings invite the reader to assign his own meaning to the story and fill in the gaps that Fowles deliberately leaves.

ROSS, 2017

As an example of neo-Victorian fiction, John Fowles's novel The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) deviates from the classical historical novel by deploying different narrative notions destabilising the notion of 'history'. The slippery notion of the 'historical' (in terms of its being fictional/artificial and varied) especially in its construction of a presentist Victorian trope is its main neo-Victorian qualification. By involving a modern criticism of the Victorian ideology as well as the similarity of the problems, such as the hypocritical attitudes of middle class people and the exploitation of sexuality encountered in the twentieth and even twenty-first centuries, The French Lieutenant's Woman becomes a leading example of neo-Victorian fiction. The main aim of this article is to show how The French Lieutenant's Woman represents a retrospective view made possible by history by providing a current view about Victorian times. Through the novel's maintaining a two-dimensional historicity, the contemporary view mirrors the past.

The Foundationalist, 2021

{Rachelle Claire Strub, University of Basel} In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles uses metalepsis and metafiction as common devices of postmodern literature to create surprise and shock in the readers. These strategies connect his text to the genre of neo-sensation fiction. The aim of this paper is to outline how these instances of metalepsis and metafiction in both the novel and the film are connected to (neo)-sensation fiction.

Ilha do Desterro A Journal of English Language, Literatures in English and Cultural Studies, 2021

This essay aims at investigating the significance of Jane Austen in JohnFowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman. References to Austen’s Persuasionappear three times in Fowles’s novel, and the resonances of this intertextualdialogue substantially affect the politics of characterization and space(mainly the Cobb) in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. This discussionis theoretically based on the relationship between intertextuality,intermediality and parody, so as to consider the relevance of Persuasion(a pre-Victorian novel) in a work which has been generally considered bycritics as a parody of values and tenets of Victorian society and literature.What relationships are produced, in terms of both poetics and politics,when we think about the Austen-Fowles association?

Folia Linguistica et Litteraria: časopis za nauku o jeziku i književnosti, 2023

John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969) is generally acknowledged as a postmodernist neo-Victorian novel. Presumably, it parodies Victorian conventions and represents a critical comment on the Victorian age. However, the aim of this research is to problematize the claim that the relationship between the Victorian and the postmodern age in this novel is much more complex. Fowles attempts to link these two apparently very different periods. The nineteenth century represents the source of English identity and an undeniable influence on the present. Nonetheless, the present also influences the past. The events which took place during the course of the twentieth century changed the way we conceptualize the past. Fowles implies that the past does not existwhat does exist is our deconstruction of the past. Still, Fowles reaches beyond this deconstruction. He believes that a novel should introduce something new and authentic. One of the key postmodernist concepts is that parody and irony represent the only possible originality. Still, apart from parodying the conventions of both the nineteenth and the twentieth century, The French Lieutenant's Woman deals with existentialist dilemmas that might be applied to both periods.