In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Sarah is portrayed as a mysterious woman who does not easily succumb to the “norm” of the Victorian ladylike image. In this passage, Fowles surrounds Sarah with desolate images, such as “shadows” and “dark figure,” and contrasts Sarah’s bleak associations with the vibrant, colorful, “brilliant” imagery of nature. The nature symbolizes Sarah’s inner feelings towards Charles. As Charles steps into the woods to meet Sarah again, he seems to illuminate the darkness in Sarah and fill it with life and color: “orange-tips and green-veined whites.” As Charles is nearing Sarah, the readers can sense their nervousness, as Fowles describes the “swarms of spring butterflies,” which can be a metaphor to butterflies in their stomachs. As Fowles is narrating and describing this scene, he carries a peaceful, serene tone to paint the readers the picture of the placid nature, which symbolizes Sarah’s transformation from a “dark figure” to one with vibrancy and color, much like the nature. However, although Sarah and Charles’s intimacy and affair makes Sarah and Charles’ feel elevated, their relationship may also be dangerous, “so poisoned almost to extinction.” Fowles incorporates imagery, description, narration, metaphors, and symbols in order to give readers a taste of the drama between Sarah and Charles so the readers can yearn for more, as well as to give readers an insight on what may happen in the future.

Fowles sets the scene: “one foggy night in London,” Charles finds himself “in carnal possession of a naked girl.” Upon immediate inspection, Fowles’ tone appears to be almost sensationalistic, as if he were creating his own “dark and stormy night.” However, Fowles is English. He must know that a foggy night in London is by no means a rare occurrence. He also must know that a university student would gladly warp space and time-and otherwise go out of his way-to eschew sleep in favor of “carnal possession” by a naked girl on more foggy nights in London than there are foggy nights in London. Thus, his apparent tone contradicts the triviality of his statement. Why would he even describe an occurrence which tells the reader nothing? He must be trying to make a point!

From here, my mind concluded that Charles’ “carnal possession” was not the common sort of possession that husbands exercise over their automobiles (or stagecoaches(?)) and wives over their husbands but rather the sort that requires an exorcism. Charles came to a similar conclusion: his body had already been “taken,” but his mind and spirit could be freed of her influence. Charles accordingly “rushed from her plump, [bestial] Cockney arms” into the fold of the Church.

Unfortunately, Charles soon discovered that the Holy Orders “take” as much as they are taken. Behind the “seductive appeal” of the Church stood only Roman Catholicism “propia terra” (rough translation: own land). The Church threatened to dominate Charles’ “comfortable English soul” through its “Orders” and “papal infallibility” as much as the “naked girl” had dominated his body. It had corrupted a process (religion) originally intended to comfort and to create. The onset of Charles’ health coincided with his “derivation” of God from “Nature” and, presumably, his run-in with a fitter female.

There is a life lesson to be “derived” from this. According to Fowles, some of our most important institutions, in exchange for meaning, may possess either our souls or our bodies. It is healthier to reject this possession and create our own meaning.

Also, Fowles implies that life can be expressed as a mathematical function, presumably over time, and that meaning is its derivative. He does not specify which derivative. Still, he does support Leibniz’s nomenclature. I take back what I said about Fowles being an Englishman, born and true. No Englishman supports Leibniz over Newton-even if his notation is better!

~Q.E.D.~

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Chapter 3, paragraph 8

He had had graver faults than these, however. At Cambridge, having duly crammed his classics and subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles, he had (unlike most young men of his time) actually begun to learn something. But in his second year there he had drifted into a bad set and ended up, one foggy night in London, in carnal possession of a naked girl. He rushed from her plump Cockney arms into those of the Church horrifying is father one day shortly afterwards by announcing that he wished to take Holy Orders. There was only one answer to a crisis of this magnitude: the wicked youth was dispatched to Paris. There his tarnished virginity was soon blackened out of recognition; but so, as his father had hoped, was his intended marriage with the Church. Charles saw what stood behind the seductive appeal of the Oxford Movement – Roman Catholicism propria terra.  He declined to fritter his negative but comfortable English soul – one part irony to one part convention – on incense and papal infallibility. When he returned to London he fingered and skimmed his way through a dozen religious theories of the time, but emerged in the clear (voyant trop pour nier, et trop peu pour s’assurer) a healthy agnostic. What little God he managed to derive from existence, he found in Nature, not the Bible; a hundred years earlier he would have been a deist, perhaps even a pantheist. In company he would go to morning service of a Sunday; but on his own, he rarely did.

“And the Evenings! Those gaslit hours that had to be filled, and without benefit of cinema or television! For those who had a living to earn this was hardly a great problem: when you have worked a twelve-hour day, the problem of what to do after your supper is easily solved. But pity the unfortunate rich; for what-ever license was given them to be solitary before the evening hours, convention demanded that then they must be bored in company. So let us see how Charles and Ernestina are crossing one such particular desert. Aunt Tranter, at least, they are spared, as the good lady has gone to take tea with an invalid spinster neighbor; an exact facsimile, in everything but looks and history, of herself.”

Throughout The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles has an amusing habit of interrupting the fictional reality that he has created with comments to remind us that the novel is, in fact, a depiction of the nineteenth century written in a twentieth century context. In doing so, the author allows himself to include commentary on the differences between modern society and that in which his characters would have lived had they been real. In this passage, Fowles compares the way the upper class spent their evenings with that of the lower class and the people of his own time.

In the opening sentence, Fowles pokes fun at modern society’s dependence on TV shows and movies for entertainment with a wry, facetious tone. He exclaims, in sarcastic disbelief, “Those gaslit hours that had to be filled, and without benefit of cinema or television!” Obviously, people in nineteenth century England could not have known what future innovations in entertainment they were being deprived of; but, from a twentieth-century perspective, Fowles shows us how fortunate we are to have such luxuries as television sets and movie theatres, and moreover, how pathetic we sound when we complain that “there’s nothing good on TV.”

Fowles’ sarcasm continues in his discussion of the upper and lower classes. He implies that the poor’s dilemma of what do to after dinner was “easily solved” because after a twelve-hour workday they would simply fall asleep, and that, because the rich had no such luxury of exhaustion, they should be “pit[ied].” His diction in portraying the upper class—calling them “unfortunate” for having so much free time and describing Charles’ and Ernestina’s boring evening as a “desert”—highlights his contempt for the great disparity in lifestyle that existed between England’s rich and poor.

We are left having not only gained further insight into the private lives of Charles and Ernestina, but also having learned about some of the author’s intentions in writing the French Lieutenant’s Woman. It is no mere work of fiction, but a series of observations from the author’s point of view of the change in social norms in a century’s time.

She had, of course, earlier visited Winsyatt, accompanied by her parents; and she had not falled for Sir Robert. Perhaps it was because she felt herself under inspection; or because the uncle had suffiecient generations of squirearchy behind him to possess, by middle class London standards, really rather bad manners- though a kinder critic might have said agreeably eccentric ones; perhaps becuase she considered the house such an old barm, so dreadfully old fashioned in its furnishing and hangings and pictures; becuase the said uncle so doted on Charles and Charles so provokingly newfewish in return that Ernestina began to feel positively jealous; but above all becuase she was frightened.

Neighboring ladies had been summoned to meet her. It wasvery well knowing her father could buy all their respective father and husbands lock, stock and barrel; she felt herself looked down on (though she simply was envied) and snubbed in various subtle ways. Nor did she much relish the prospect of eventually living at Winsyatt, though it allowed her to dream of one way at least in which part of her vast marriage portion should be spent exactly as she insisted- in a comprehensive replacement of all those absurd scroll wooden chairs (Carolean and almost priceless), gloomy cupboards (Tutor), moth-eaten tapestries (Gobelins), and dull paintings (including two Claudes and a Tintoretto) that did not meet her approval.   

By using imagry, Fowle increases the snobbishness of Ernestina herself. Since the people she meets and the things she sees are described in such a boring and almost arrogant way, it makes her seem much more of a snob than anything else. By saying that her father could “buy all their respective fathers and husbands,” she is placing herself above everyone else and unknowlingly waking those around her distant because of the connotation of how much money she has. Although there are touches of her wishfulness to escape Winsyatt, she does not try to make a big deal of going there because she is only visiting. She starts to take control of the novel from this point on and Fowles starts to allow this to happen because  of the sutbborness and snobbishness of the character. But she is not only a character, but a living person who can not be controlled by the author, but only by herself. She is willing to be controlled at this point, but is starting to break free from the chains that bind her. Her snobbishness and stubborness makes it even more likely that Fowles has simply given up on trying to control be and she is now returning to her natural state.

Ernestina, by all means one of Fowles’s more eccentric characters, is here seamlessly juxtaposed with the jovial Mary. This simple passage serves to detail (and foreshadow) the relationship between the two women.

“Ernestina allowed dignity to control her for precisely one and a half minutes” personifies the otherwise respectable quality of dignity in order to characterize Ernestina. Back in the nineteenth century, dignity, especially for women, was a trait of paramount importance. It is not surprising that Ernestina, who comes from a wealthy family, possesses it in great amounts. However, it is extremely important to note that this dignity is not being controlled by Ernestina. Rather, it controls her – it is the puppeteer, the mistress. Ernestina is not the one in charge of her life, even in something as simple as turning on the water faucet; she is completely dominated by the outside forces that surround her, and she has become a bitter person as a result – a fact Fowles wished to impart on the reader.

Mary, on the other hand, is abundantly filled with life. Whereas he uses “fragile,” “filtered,” and “basement” to describe Ernestina and her situation, Fowles prefers “fountain,” “blossoms,” and “smiling” in describing Mary and hers. Because Mary’s radiance is in such diametric opposition to Ernestina’s core image, there exists, undeniably, a gaping chasm (which doubles as a source of hidden envy) between these characters. If this is not apparent enough, Fowles even goes so far as to place the reader into Ernestina’s shoes – “…who frowned sourly and reproachfully at this unwelcome vision of Flora.” The key word: unwelcome.

Charles and Sarah have just consummated their forbidden yet increasingly intimate relationship, a moment which Charles has been subconsciously (and eventually consciously) craving since his chance encounter with Sarah on the cliff in Ware Commons.  Immediately after the act, Charles feels despicable and wholly culpable, but this feeling soon gives way to utter horror when he realizes Sarah was in fact a virgin.  In trying to comprehend her deceptive conduct, his mind wanders to the horrifying and shocking, instantly altering his relationship with Sarah.  Charles equates Sarah to a succubus, the mythical female monster who feeds off the life forces of the men she entrances by “suck[ing]…prey[ing]…melt[ing].” Fowles’s allusion and satanic diction evoke a demonic image of Sarah, remorselessly seducing and consuming Charles.  As doubts surge up and inundate Charles’s mind, we too begin questioning Sarah’s motives.  Is she simply trying to ruin Charles and force him onto her plane of depravity and lowliness?  While we have sympathized with Sarah’s piteous situation thus far, we suddenly look at her with new and accusing eyes, as does Charles simultaneously.

As we begin to see Sarah in a new light, so too do we reexamine Charles.  In this instantaneous and “apocalyptic” thought, Charles’s scientific certainty and objectivity cease to exist.  Charles’s inner monologue focuses not on psychology or an explanation by Darwin, but on man’s “fat fears of a great feminine conspiracy to suck the virility from their veins.”  His alliterative verse flows with a lyrical cadence, negating our understanding of Charles as completely scientifically-minded and uninterested in poetic expression.  His thoughts are usually more syntactically simplistic and filled with scientific terms rather than stream-of-conscious-like reflections.  But in this moment of utter revulsion and distress, contemporary science and knowledge fail Charles, and he instead resorts to the medieval myth of the succubus for explanation.  With this subtle change in Charles’s thought process comes a less subtle change in his character.  After this encounter, Charles begins to act on whimsical emotion rather than conscientious analysis.

“If you had gone closer still, you would have seen that her face was wet with silent tears. She was not standing at her window as part of her mysterious vigil for Satan’s sails; but as a preliminary to jumping from it.
I will not make her teeter on the windowsill; or sway forward, and then collapse sobbing back onto the worn carpet of her room. We know she was alive a fortnight after this incident, and therefore she did not jump. Nor were hers the sobbing, hysterical sort of tears that presage violent action; but those produced by a profound conditional, rather than emotional, misery–slow-welling, unstoppable, creeping like blood through a bandage.
Who is Sarah?
Out of what shadows does she come?”

In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles uses rich language to delve deep into the psychological backgrounds of his characters. Sarah is the most mysterious, elusive character in the novel. In this passage, Fowles uses diction and vivid imagery to give the reader a glimpse of who Sarah is when she is not suppressed by the prejudices of the other people in the town. There is an overwhelming feeling of sadness that surrounds Sarah. “Her face was wet with silent tears,” “collapse sobbing,” “tears,” “misery” all serve to portray Sarah as a person who is drowning in misery because of her unfortunate past. The diction of “silent tears” also adds to the image of her sadness, because even when she is alone in the dark of the night, Sarah is still unable to cry openly and express the full extent of her sadness. Fowles reinforces the vivid image of Sarah by the window with the simile, “creeping like blood through a bandage.” This description compares Sarah’s sadness to a wound that is so great that a simple bandage cannot stop all the blood. Like the blood, Sarah’s misery overflows no matter how hard she tries to suppress it. The overall imagery of the passage instills a dark, gloomy mood that almost completely consumes Sarah. When Fowles asks, “Out of what shadows does she come?” the reader has already associated Sarah with the darkness.
While the diction of the passage reinforces the image of Sarah as a being of the darkness, it also gives her sense of vulnerability. The diction and synecdoche, “mysterious vigil for Satan’s sails,” emphasizes the dark, dreary mood that Fowles gives the whole passage. The diction reinforces the fact that Sarah is not a pure being and has already succumbed to the darkness. However, since she is “jumping from it,” the reader feels more sympathetic towards Sarah because she does not wish to belong to the darkness. In addition, although Fowles says, “I will not make her teeter on the windowsill; or sway forward, and then collapse sobbing back onto the worn carpet of her room,” the diction and imagery of “teeter,” “sway,” and “collapse sobbing” still enforce the idea that Sarah is not as strong as she tries to be. Just the idea that Sarah could have been so distraught if Fowles had chosen to describe her actions further imply that Sarah is a vulnerable human being who still has her humanity even if she is overwhelmed by the darkness.