French Lieutenant’s Woman

The new(a) begins with articulatio of Thomas Hardys The Riddle which is quoted by the author. This quotation is an apt description for The French Lieutenants woman which portrays a singular figure, alone against a desolate landscape. The novel portrays dainty characters living in 1867, save the author, writing in 1967, intervenes with wry, ironic exposition on straight-laced conventions. In fact, it is parody of nice novel with blabby narrator and memorial juggling.The most striking fact just about the novel is the use of different authorial voices. Voice of the narrator has a doubly vision The novel starts off with an intrusive wise, typically Victorian, voice I exaggerate? Perhaps, but I can be put to the test, for the Cobb has changed really little since the year of which I write (Fowles, p.10).In chapter 1 we identify an extensive, detailed description of Lyme Bay. The narrator makes it a point to insist t eyelid very little has changed in Lyme Regis since the ni neteenth century to the present day. The narrator deftly moves amidst the two centuries and comments on the present day events in the kindred tone in which he comments on the Victorian period. We hear the voice of narrator as a formal, stiff Victorian tone time narrating the events in the novel yet the content of what he says is contemporary.The phantasy of a Victorian novel is soon broken by a narrator, who introduces his modern font 20 century point of view. For exemplification, in Chapter 3, he alludes to devices totally secret to Victorian corporation and the illusion of the typically Victorian novel is broken. Charles would in all probability non have been too surprised had news reached him out of the future day of the air plane, the jet engine, television, radar (Fowles, p.16). In Chapter 13 he at gigantic last reveals himself as a modern narrator when he admits to live in the age of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes (Fowles, p. 80).Voices of the novel seem to belong to John Fowles, the author. The narrator not only comments the whole narrative but he excessively intrudes in mold to make comments on the characters. His authorial intrusions are very pointed and sometimes biased. The narrators voice plays the role of both participant and observer.The runner person voice occurs in different roles. It seems to be an artist, a novelist, a teacher, a historian and a critic who surveying the scene with a modern and ironic eye, constantly reminding the contributor this is not a typically Victorian novel. The third person voice, on the other hand, represents all features associated with an omniscient narrator.It misleads the reader and sometimes even ridicules characters He would have made you smile, for he was carefully equipped for his role. He wore stout nailed boots and canvas gaiters that rose to the inclose Norfolk breeches of heavy flannel. There was a tight and absurdly long coat to match a canvas wide awake hat of an indeterminat e beige a massive ash-plant, which he had bought on his substance to the Cobb and a voluminous rucksack, from which you might have shaken out an already heavy array of hammers, wrappings, notebooks, pillboxes, adzes and heaven knows what else. (Fowles, p. 43)In Chapter 13 the initiatory person narrator suggests to stand out against the third person narrator when he admits not to be able to control the thoughts and movements of his characters. He denies having all the god-like qualities associated with the continent role of a narrator who knows all the moves of his characters beforehand and he gives a definition of his status The novelist is still a god, since he creates what has changed is that we are no longer the gods of the Victorian image, omniscient and decreeing but in the new theological image, with thawdom our basic principle not authority. (Fowles, p.82). What the narrator does is to break the illusion of being the authoritative voice by providing the further illusion of not being it, insisting on the fact that the characters are allowed their freedom.The narrator seems to bring forth just another character of the story, and first and third person recital overlaps. This illusion of the narrator being a fictional character in the stop over dissolves when he appears in person first as a fissure passenger in the train in Chapter 55 and a plunk for time in the last chapter. This technique of hearing different voices in a narration is called heteroglossia. The narrator guides the reader through the novel.In summary, the narratives voice works on different levels firstly there is protagonist, Charles, and his struggle to overcome his Victorian mind, secondly the narrator claims his characters to be free of authorial supervision. In fact, the narrator is only concealing his real authority. For example in Chapter 55 when he flips a coin in order to decide how to end his narrative and at last there is the reader whom the narrator allows to break f ree from the narrative illusion.Character Analysis Charles and Sarah The first picture we get of Charles is that he is a Victorian gentleman who is in all respects at the height of his time. He has a correspondent outside and inside. He is dominated by the social conventions of his time, particularly in his attitude towards women, and the only thing he lacks is mystery.He seems to be a flat character that only has inner struggling. His character is developed little by little through the novel. Actually his first meeting with Sarah, is his first step of instruction which leads him from complacency to doubt, from the known to the undiscovered, and from safety to danger when he realizes that there is an alternate to the puritan world of Ernestina which is the free and spontaneous world of Sarah. In short, his first meetings with Sarah sharpen his awareness of that existentialist freedom she embodies and throughout the novel he is torn between the conventional Victorian ideas and th is proposal of personal freedom.It stretches as far as Chapter 44. Throughout all these chapters Charles is torn in between behaving the normal, Victorian way, rating his short relationship with Sarah as a minor, piffling incident or accepting the full consequences of not behaving in an allow for Victorian manner. He is fascinated by the enigma which Sarah represents and wants to solve it but on the other hand he is caught in his Victorian ensample of thought.When he decides to visit Sarah in Exeter we are dealing with his second development. He is prepared to accept the consequences of not behaving like a Victorian in order to fulfill his personal ideas. further he is still caught in this particular pattern of thought maybe this is best expressed by his intention to marry Sarah. He has yet not fully silent the ideas of existential freedom. Charles enters the third stage of development when he realizes that Sarah has left without release any trace for him to follow. It is then when he settles to follow the path he had decided to take, whether he will be able to find her or not. The months he searches for Sarah are the final stage of his development in which he is able to get the taste of freedom he once essay to gain. His meeting with Sarah at the end of the novel is the final test he has to go through.On the other hand, from the very beginning, Sarah seems to be a lag character. She has different inside and outside. Sarah acts as a counter to Tina, the model of Victorian womanhood. Sarah does not match with the time she lives in especially in her behavior. But her strangeness should be considered in the light of the Victorian age. Her actions are governed by her refusal to follow tradition and by her quest for freedom. She rejects the subservient role which her society tries to force on her, determined to get what she wants and express her desires freely.Although some conflicts about Sarah resolved when she told her story to Charles but some of them h as still remained till the end of the novel. In the two ceases, Sarahs need for freedom conflicts with her love for Charles. One ending suggests that Sarah will be able to remain outside the confines of Victorian society while still being able to establish a family with Charles and marriage will exact its own conventions which will be hard-fought to escape. Another ending focuses on her total freedom but also her estrangement from the man she loves. This conflict never resolved