The French Lieutenant's Woman Author:John Fowles This story is an intricate portrait of Victorian relationships and love. In the story, Charles Smithson is engaged to a wealthy woman, but breaks off the engagement over his secret affair with the beautiful, mysterious Sarah Woodruff, a woman known locally as the forsaken lover of a French lieutenant. The novel offers three different endings to ... more »encourage you to reach your own conclusions.« less
This is not what you think it is! ...but go ahead and let the book blindside you for the full effect.
People would ask me what I was reading, and I respond with a typical "oh, it's about a young gentleman who begins to reconsider approaching marriage when he notices a forlorn young woman who wanders the beach, pining for her lost lover..." And person who had posed the question would say "how nice." NO! This book has nothing to do the gentle, romantic, Victorian plot, setting, and mood that the author so carefully crafts before...well...you'll just have to read it to get the full effect, as I said. I suspect i was lulled into an unsuspecting state by trying to focus on the plot of the story, and I honestly still haven't sorted the ending out. If there's an answer to the mystery of the French Lieutenant's woman, I completely missed it. A mind-blowing, if frustrating reading experience.
This was written in 1969 of an era about 100 years earlier in good ole Victorian England in all its glorious bigotry. The prose makes a unique contrast of yesteryear to today. The author goes to extreme length to describe the wild rural setting, the prejudices of the era, and to develop his characters. Also somewhat different is his way of introducing his ideas, characters, and events. All this makes him slow to bring the reader to the point of realization that this is yet another tale of the eternal triangle. In Chapter 13 he confesses that he knows not where the plot will take him; he will follow the lead of his characters. Yet, while he tells us that his characters are in control, he often hints that he is well aware of their future. Periodically he will digress to comment upon, or to parody other writers: to wit his burlesque of Cleland (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure better known as Fanny Hill) in which he narrates a pornographic scene without the use of profanity, or even a direct description of the acts being performed by the participantsit is all left to the readers interpolation. Time and again he brings his protagonist to the brink of the abyss. Or is the protagonist bringing the author to the brink? Who is the protagonist? My impression was certainly different from that finally expressed by the author. He abruptly brings the novel to denouement, then reneges. April fool! Again, he considers ending the novel, but wait! First the author must weigh the options of his characters. Which should it be: deductive or inductive reasoning? At times I wish that he would put the options to a vote by his readers, but then I realize that the author has become of his own characters. Well he has finally done what he threatened; he has forced upon us a double ending. That should satisfy everyone. Pick that which suits your interpretation of the novel.
Copyright 1969 W4479 $1.50
"A love story told with passion and delicacy...A deeply satisfying, original and strongly talented work...Brilliant, ambitious and compelling"--Literary Guild News
"Filled with enchanting mysteries and magically erotic possibilities...A remarkable novelist"--The N.Y. Times
"Richer and more accomplished than either THE MAGUS or THE COLLECTOR, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN is the kind of work that gives success a good name"--Time
Fowles' contemporary Victorian romance isn't a far stretch from novels written long ago. The novel is also leaps and bounds better than the movie, which I found to be quite a bore. The detail in the novel seems to be unmatched and no substitute for Fowles' writing can be found.
This was a best-seller in its day (1969) and became a great movie starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. Set in 1867 in Lyme, England, an engaged paleontologist (Irons) meets Streep, the scorned mistress of the title. Their relationship, the social rules of the day, and the characters' development drive the plot.
"A love story told with passions and delicacy....A deeply satisfying, original and strongly talented work....Brilliant, ambitious and compelling: -- Literary Guild News
This is a classic by one of my favorite authors of the 70s. This novel is lyrical, multilayered, filled with compelling and fascinating characters. I highly recommend all of Fowles work, but this is one of his best and most enduring.
