*The French Lieutenant's Woman
*by John Fowles* ~ Nandakishore Varma
It's very rarely that a much-touted piece of literature lives up to its hype. And it's even rarer for it to exceed one's expectations.
But John Fowles managed it with this book.
Where do I even start? _The French Lieutenant's Woman_ is such a magnificent _tour-de-force_ that one is left speechless.
The story is very ordinary - your usual Victorian love triangle. The impoverished (not exactly - but definitely, not rich) aristocrat, enters into a marriage with the daughter of an upwardly mobile rich draper - only to realise later that his affections lie elsewhere; that too, with a "fallen" woman. Great recipe for a love tragedy.
But the author here decides to use this framework to make a broad commentary on the Victorian Age, on male-female relationships, on patriarchy, and on the human condition in general. He is the very antithesis of the "invisible narrator" in favour nowadays - he is not only visible, but omnipotent. He is telling you the tale, not showing it. Throughout the novel, you are listening to the voice of John Fowles.
The backdrop to the story is the Victorian age: an age of huge contrasts:
> What are we faced with in the nineteenth century? An age where woman was sacred; and where you could buy a thirteen-year-old girl for a few pounds - a few shillings, if you wanted her for only an hour or two. Where more churches were built than in the whole previous history of the country; and where one in sixty houses in London was a brothel (the modern ratio would be nearer one in six thousand). Where the sanctity of marriage (and chastity before marriage) was proclaimed from every pulpit, in every newspaper editorial and public utterance; and where never - or hardly ever - have so many great public figures, from the future king down, led scandalous private lives. Where the penal system was progressively humanized; and flagellation so rife that a Frenchman set out quite seriously to prove that the Marquis de Sade must have had English ancestry. Where the female body had never been so hidden from view; and where every sculptor was judged by his ability to carve naked women. Where there is not a single novel, play or poem of literary distinction that ever goes beyond the sensuality of a kiss, where Dr Bowdler (the date of whose death, 1825, reminds us that the Victorian ethos was in being long before the strict threshold of the age) was widely considered a public benefactor; and where the output of pornography has never been exceeded. Where the excretory functions were never referred to; and where the sanitation remained - the flushing lavatory came late in the age and remained a luxury well up to 1900-so primitive that there can have been few houses, and few streets, where one was not constantly reminded of them. Where it was universally maintained that women do not have orgasms; and yet every prostitute was taught to simulate them. Where there was an enormous progress and liberation in every other field of human activity; and nothing but tyranny in the most personal and fundamental.
This world is soon about to collapse, with the Representation of the People Act 1867 about to be introduced in Parliament, which will give suffrage to all males in the country and not just the gentry; Karl Marx is already at work on his revolutionary book; and Darwin has forever banished man from the position of the Lord of All Creation. He is now just a life-form descended from monkeys (well, not exactly, but that was how Victorians understood Darwin).
It is during this tumultuous period of history that Charles Smithson, the nephew of baronet, engaged to be married to the charming Ernestina (Tina) Freeman, meets Sarah Woodruff - known locally as "Tragedy" or "The French Lieutenant's Woman". She has apparently been jilted by a French soldier and spends her days scanning the sea, hoping for her lover's return. And in the tried-and-tested formula of romance novels since they were first conceived, he falls for the unsuitable, “fallen” woman.
Charles betrothal to Tina reeks of a marriage of convenience, even though he tries to convince himself that it’s a love match. His prospective father-in-law is a successful businessman, and is trying to push himself upon the social ladder. His daughter’s marriage to a prospective British Lord would do nicely to further his cause – and his wife’s money would help Charles, who is not too rich to begin with, to live a life of luxury. Note how Fowles marks the aftermath of Charles’ proposal:
> No words were needed. Ernestina ran into her mother's arms, and twice as many tears as before began to fall. Meanwhile the two men stood smiling at each other; the one as if he had just concluded an excellent business deal, the other as if he was not quite sure which planet he had just landed on, but sincerely hoped the natives were friendly.
By falling for the French lieutenant’s woman, Charles is risking his future: but Sarah is too attractive because she is different from the usual female in the highly stratified Victorian society.
> Given the veneer of a lady, she was made the perfect victim of a caste society. Her father had forced her out of her own class, but could not raise her to the next. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to, she remained too banal.
> ***
> She was too striking a girl not to have suitors, in spite of the lack of a dowry of any kind. But always then had her first and innate curse come into operation; she saw through the too confident pretendants. She saw their meanness, their condescensions, their charities, their stupidities. Thus she appeared inescapably doomed to the one fate nature had so clearly spent many millions of years in evolving her to avoid: spinsterhood.
Charles is “enlightened”: he believes in evolution and is an avid fossil collector. It is while he goes on these collecting expeditions on the limestone cliffs of the town that he meets Sarah, hears her strange tale, and falls for her.
But now, the Godlike novelist has to make an appearance.
> You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement: as skilled furniture-makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy's back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true of all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.
The story is getting away from him and he has to bring it back on track! So Fowles does the unthinkable: he inserts himself into the novel, and provides the reader with multiple endings. Take your pick…
***
If you are a fan of the conventional story with a beginning, middle and end, this book is not for you. It’s convoluted, verbose and disjointed. Some may feel that it is overlong. You need a lot of patience to plod through the story, taking all the detours and enduring all the stoppages that the author throws at you. But if you distance yourself from the tale (remember the Brechtian technique), you will suddenly start to find it enjoyable. Because this is a novel of ideas; and the idea includes the idea of the novel itself.
Sarah Woodruff, the woman who sets out to “spoil” herself so that she will have an identity, is a masterly creation. And the two possible endings that the author provides at the end allows the reader to appreciate her more. With Sarah’s choice, one could really say that the Victorian Age has ended.
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