John Fowles is a postmodern writer who was born March 31, 1926 in Leigh-on-Sea and who died in Lyme Regis, England in 2005. He was greatly inspired by the works of the French existentialists Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, which is often mirrored in his narrations. Fowles is one of the most well-known authors of Postwar British Fiction and has published his famous book (a pastiche of the Victorian novel) The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which has won several awards, in 1969. Due to its popularity the book has been made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons in 1981.
The novel takes place in Lyme Regis, England during the Victorian era in 1867 and is about the young gentleman Charles Smithson who, already engaged to a successful haberdasher’s daughter, falls in love with Sarah Woodruff, who is disdained by the society of Lyme Regis for her alleged affair with a French lieutenant.
John Fowles uses a postmodern narrator to tell a story that visibly has a very conventional Victorian framework. This narrator presents the love story of Charles and Sarah through a mixture of plot and personal comments by playing with the features of postmodern literature in order to deceive the reader and to challenge him into finding his own reality in the narration. The way the story is told shows a great interplay between the information the narrator gives to the reader and the information that is left out in order to mislead him. This technique therefore raises the question of how the reader is to understand the wholeness of John Fowles’s novel when he is deceived throughout its plot.
In this paper I am going to answer the question of how the reader is to understand the meaning of the book first, by giving a brief overview on Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theory and its importance in the reading experience of The French Lieutenant’s Woman and second, by analyzing the different appearances of the narrator by using postmodern features like the creation of suspense, deception and illusion that Fowles used to manipulate the reader.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Wolfgang Iser’s aesthetic-response criticism
3. Deliberate deception and the narrator’s appearance in The French Lieutenant’s Woman
4. Conclusion
Research Objective and Key Themes
The primary objective of this paper is to examine how John Fowles employs a postmodern, unreliable narrator in his novel "The French Lieutenant’s Woman" to manipulate the reader's experience, ultimately challenging the audience to move beyond passive consumption and actively construct meaning within the narrative structure.
- Application of Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theory to postmodern fiction.
- The deliberate use of narrative "blanks" and "gaps" to create suspense and ambiguity.
- Analysis of the narrator’s interventionist role and the breaking of Victorian literary conventions.
- The unreliability of the author and the significance of multiple, competing endings.
- The shift in reader perception from passive observer to active co-creator of textual reality.
Excerpt from the Book
3. Deliberate deception and the narrator’s appearance in The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Although Fowles uses a lot of different features and devices to deceive his audience, one of the most striking is probably the several appearances of the narrator. The love story of Charles and Sarah takes a dramatic course that creates suspense and leads the audience and their expectations towards the end into a certain direction. However, these expectations are being disappointed or put on hold for a few times in the narration (Behrens 23). The development of the plot is delayed, which consequently triggers frustration or even hostility towards the author. During the novel, the narrator appears several times in different ways in order to interrupt the plot or change its course. With this strategy he intentionally “violates the illusion of reality” (Foster 83). For example, his comments like “the Cobb has changed very little since the year of which I write” (Fowles 4), or “Laziness was, I am afraid, Charles’s distinguishing trait” (Fowles 17) and others that are visible throughout the narration, do not interfere so much in the progression of the novel. Nevertheless, his appearance as the ‘author’ in chapter 13 is an intentional interruption of the plot. As I have already mentioned in the previous section of my paper, Fowles uses this distinct feature of postmodern writing to break his Victorian framework.
In chapter 13, he reveals himself wholly as a 20th century ‘author’ who breaks the created illusion and says that he has no control over his characters since they derive from his imagination and are free characters. “These characters … never existed outside my own mind … [and] begin to disobey” (Fowles 96), instead of being controlled by the will of the omniscient narrator of the Victorian novel. Therefore, he reminds his audience “of the artifice of his creation” (Foster 83) and explains that he does not intend to write a Victorian novel because its conventions do not correlate with his modern views of reality.
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: This chapter introduces John Fowles as a postmodern author and sets the stage for the analysis by outlining the novel's Victorian framework and the central problem of reader deception.
2. Wolfgang Iser’s aesthetic-response criticism: This section provides a theoretical foundation by explaining Iser’s concepts of the "implied reader" and the role of "blanks" in generating meaning within fictional texts.
3. Deliberate deception and the narrator’s appearance in The French Lieutenant’s Woman: This chapter analyzes specific instances where the narrator interrupts the plot to expose the artifice of the novel, thereby forcing the reader to abandon passive expectations.
4. Conclusion: The concluding chapter synthesizes the previous arguments, affirming that the author’s interventions are essential for the reader to transition into an active participant who must construct the novel's ultimate meaning.
Keywords
John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, reader-response theory, Wolfgang Iser, postmodernism, narrator, deception, Victorian novel, unreliable narrator, gaps, blanks, active participation, literary criticism, fiction, narrative structure
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core subject of this academic paper?
The paper explores how John Fowles uses postmodern narrative techniques, specifically the interference of the narrator, to deceive the reader in "The French Lieutenant’s Woman."
What are the primary thematic areas addressed?
The main themes include the interplay between the narrator and the reader, the deconstruction of Victorian literary conventions, and the creative role of the reader in producing meaning.
What is the main research question or goal?
The goal is to determine how the reader is meant to perceive the "wholeness" of the novel despite being systematically deceived by the narrator throughout the plot.
Which scientific framework is utilized?
The paper primarily employs Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theory, focusing on the concepts of "gaps" and the dynamic interaction between the text and the reader's imagination.
What content is covered in the main section of the paper?
The main section investigates the narrator’s recurring appearances as an interventionist figure, his disruption of the Victorian framework, and his direct address to the reader regarding the "unreal" nature of the characters.
Which keywords best characterize this work?
Key terms include postmodernism, reader-response, narration, deception, unreliable narrator, and active participation.
How does the narrator influence the reader's view on the novel's ending?
By offering multiple versions of the ending and admitting his lack of control over the characters, the narrator strips away the illusion of a single truth, forcing the reader to choose an ending that aligns with their own subjective reality.
Why does Fowles choose to break the "illusion of reality"?
The narrator breaks the illusion to expose the artifice of the novel, reminding the audience that they are witnessing a constructed reality rather than a traditional, god-like omniscient narrative.
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- Alexandra Baum (Autor:in), 2014, The Deception of the Reader in "The French Lieutenant’s Woman" by John Fowles, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/286152
