Voyeurism and other visual pleasures in the works of John Fowles

This project interrogates the most problematic characteristics of John Fowles's fiction for both women readers and feminist critics, identifying and investigating voyeuristic practices that alienate or otherwise circumscribe women characters and readers. Establishing both a methodology for a literary practice of feminist standpoint theory and a resistant feminist reading practice that outlines alternative pleasures for feminist critics, teachers, and readers attempting to find value in Fowles's work, this study traces the development of Fowles's visual practices from his early, fragmentary and coercive formulations to later, more promising, complicated and multiple perspectives.; Fowles has consistently advocated a more balanced society that values women's ways of knowing and being; this advocacy develops from his manipulative exploitation and obfuscation of women's perspectives in The Collector and The Magus, through his experimental explorations of women's creative authorship in The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Ebony Tower, and Mantissa, and finally to his reverence for the evocative insights that proceed from the specific situations of the women in Daniel Martin and A Maggot. As this respect for women's alternative approaches to self-awareness, interpersonal relationships, and social reform has developed, Fowles has become more self-reflexive, less manipulative, and more interested in entertaining multiple perspectives in his work. Simultaneously, his fiction has become less alienating and at times even inspiring for feminist readers.; Despite his persistent essentialism, his consistently problematic understanding of feminism, and his often reprehensible treatment of the women in his life, Fowles thus demonstrates an intriguing standpoint as a man who advocates feminism and employs a traitorous identity in his later fiction, offering avenues for feminist critics and women readers to anchor their investigations in authentic and situated perspectives that generate feminist knowledge. In providing such avenues of investigation, Fowles encourages feminist readers in their efforts to envision a more---balanced society that values women's ways of knowing and being---and to find visual and other pleasures in his practice of authority.