Books - The French Lieutenant's Woman

Home > Listing Index > Books > The French Lieutenant's Woman

	Books - The French Lieutenant's Woman

The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 novel by John Fowles. The book was inspired by the 1823 novel Ourika
by Claire de Duras, which Fowles translated to English in 1977 (and revised in 1994). In 1981, the novel was adapted as a feature film.

Plot summary

The novel's central character is Sarah Woodruff, the Woman of the book's title, also known by the nickname Tragedy and by the unfortunate nickname "The French Lieutenant's Whore." She lives in the town of Lyme Regis as a disgraced woman, ill-used by a French sailor who returned to France and married another woman.

Sarah spends her limited time off from her domestic work on a cliff, staring at the sea. One day, she is seen there by the gentleman Charles Smithson and his fiancée, Ernestina Freeman, the shallow but wealthy daughter of a tradesman. Ernestina tells Charles something of Sarah's story, and he develops a strong curiosity about her story. They end up having several clandestine meetings where Sarah tells Charles her history and asks for his aid, mostly emotionally. Although Charles tries to remain distant, he ends up saving Sarah from commitment to an asylum and follows her to London. At the same time, Charles learns his projected inheritance from an older uncle is in jeopardy, as the uncle is now engaged to a woman young enough to bear him an heir.

From there, Fowles - who appears briefly as a character in the book - offers three different endings.

In one, Charles marries Ernestina. Their marriage is not a happy one, and Sarah's fate is unknown.
In another, Charles has sex with Sarah and breaks his engagement to Ernestina, which brings unpleasant consequences of its own. Sarah flees to London without telling Charles, who looks for her for several years before finding her again. He then sees that he has a child. Their future as a family is left open.
In the third, Charles breaks his engagement again, but when he finds Sarah, their reunion is a sour one. He realizes he has been used, but sees some benefit in the journey towards self-knowledge.

Along the way, Fowles discourses on the difficulties of controlling the characters one has created, and offers tangents on Victorian customs and class differences, the theories of Charles Darwin, and the poetry of Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for The French Lieutenant's Woman ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article The French Lieutenant's Woman; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay