The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)
French Lieutenant’s Woman Plot?
In September I will be starting AS Level Literature and French Lieutenant’s Woman is the novel we read for coursework. I was wondering if anyone knew the basic plot to it.
All i found out was that it was made into a film in 1981 with Jeremy Irons, and has three alternative endings.
Many Thanks.
Otter is quite right in his summary.
I would like to take one of his points a little further. Otter says, correctly:
“He questions the role of the author, such as the time he speaks of how Charles “disobeys” his orders, implying that the characters have a life of their own within the novel. The idea of Existentialism is mentioned at several points in the novel, and in particular detail at the end, after the portrayal of the two, apparently equally possible, endings.”
Now this questioning of the author’s role is dishonest and manipulative. Fowles is in control throughout: it is by his will and no-one else’s that alternative endings are presented. If the characters develop a “life of their own”, that life begins and ends in the author’s brain. He, and no-one else, has shaped them.
Notably, in all the ambiguities of the novel (and they reach back into the fictional past as well; they are not confined to the ending) we are presented with an authorial voice, an authorial attitude towards the society his novel is set in, which are designed to limit and guide the reader’s responses.
We are accustomed to this in the traditional novel, where it is avowedly part of the genre. It is hard, for instance, to feel much sympathy for Mr. Collins. In a novel which (implicitly throughout, explicitly in places) disclaims the writer’s authority, it will not do. It is simply annoying – like a schoolteacher who says “Present your own opinions, and say this and this and this in your essay.”
I have not mentioned the inaccuracies, inconsistencies and simple historical mistakes (clearly accidental and not deliberate) which pepper the text. The book, I believe, is sloppily written and constructed: a bad novel which had a certain trendy vogue but is now almost unread. Why it should be set at ‘A’ level when there are so many better novels to read is beyond me.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) – Trailer