Freedom,Equality And Diversity

The French Lieutenant’s Woman written by British novelist John Fowles is a postmodern novel with multiple ethical implications and distinctive narrative characteristics.Based on the nineteenth-century romantic novel,the author reproduces typical characters,situations and dialogues but adopts a twentieth-century perspective.The irony is inherent in the authorial intrusions,open quotations as well as the multiple endings.Through reforming and experimenting with fictional forms and narrative structures,Fowles is constantly concerned with the multiple ethical subjects including individual existence,the relationship between individual and society,and that between self and other.Taking narrative ethics as its theoretical perspective,this thesis is to delve into the ethics toward "the Other",the ethics of individual existence and the family ethics implied in the novel by its unusual employment of narrative perspective,narrative intrusion and narrative time.With these specific narrative strategies,the author means to subvert the Victorian tradition,thereby achieving postmodern ethics of diversity,freedom and equality.The thesis consists of three parts:the introduction,the main body and the conclusion.In the introduction,a short review of John Fowles and his works will be conducted first.Then previous studies of The French Lieutenant’s Woman will be summarized for more intensive and creative analysis of the novel.Lastly comes a brief introduction of.the theoretical framework of narrative ethics and the feasibility of analyzing the novel on the basis of the theory.The main body includes three chapters.The first chapter is devoted to the analysis of the ethical consideration for "the Other" behind the mix-use of first person,second person and third person narrative perspectives.The heroine Sarah was notorious among townspeople in Lymes for her unconfirmed affairs with a French lieutenant.Her humble family background,miserable experience,gloomy face,together with the fact that she always stayed aloof and meditative,in no way conform to the standards of an ideal woman in Victorian society.With her real intention known to none,she was a mystery both to Charles and readers.In the novel,Fowles parodies the third person omniscient narrator in 19th-century traditional novels by mostly using dialogues between characters.He makes different characters his focalizers and reveals their speculations and opinions of Sarah without acknowledging any of them.Moreover,Fowles combines third person narrative with his authorial intrusion as first person and refers to readers as "you",thereby inviting them to be actively engaged in the narrative and make their own judgments.As a consequence,Sarah’s deviation from and rebellion of Victorian morals and norms was highlighted,and the humanistic concern for characters and readers was made possible as well.The second chapter elaborates on the internal growth and the development of the character’s identity as an individual.John Fowles’s personal opinions of individual,choice and existence were exposed through the narrator’s comments and the authorial intrusion.The male protagonist Charles was a Victorian gentleman influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution.He was passionate about collecting fossils and pictured himself as a scientist.He had many ideas going on in his mind but did not put any of them in practice.He travelled a lot and saw a lot.He was also well aware of the flaws and rigidness in his fiancee Ernestina and Victorian social reality as a whole,but he lacked both the resoluteness and courage to leave comfort zone and did not know how to break apart with or deal with the surroundings Sarah’s eccentricity made him exceptionally uncomfortable:he could not understand the disgraceful and miserable woman but at the same time he was inexplicably fascinated by her pursuit of independence and freedom.His dissolution of engagement with Ernestina,a young and beautiful lady from middle class,is his efforts to walk out of the constraints of traditional Victorian society.He finally started to reflect on new life possibilities after being turned down by Sarah.Charles’s evolutionary thoughts on self-identity and the choices made against social expectations echoed existentialist ideals of individual freedom and authenticity.In the narrative,the narrator not only comments on the character’s inner struggles but speculates on Charles’s decisions but also rationalizes his actions and compares them with the twentieth-century thoughts of existentialism.At the end of the novel,John Fowles exposes his attitude toward life and the principles that guide Charles to move forward:life is not a riddle with only one solution;it is filled with numerous choices and possibilities.The free will and the choices one makes in life determines his existence as a human being,and in this regard,all men are equal.The third chapter explores the evolution of family ethics at the turn of centuries influenced by new attitudes toward love and marriage,and new ideas about sexual relationship through an analysis of story time and narrative time.In the novel,Fowles presents the breakdown of Victorian family ideal following the collapse of traditional civilization and the social changes from economy development to erosion of Christian belief,which leads to the awakening of self-consciousness.The entirely different attitudes of the Victori,an ideal woman(Ernestina)and the "New Woman"(Sarah)toward male character Charles,marriage and family,the rupture in the engagement between Charles and Emestina,and Sarah’s pursuit of freedom and acquisition of a career—all marked the failure of typical sexual relationship and expectations of female role in traditional Victorian family.The novel was set in England of 1960s,but its narrative time happens between nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The frequent interruptions of narrator and author,incidental flashbacks of events happening outside of story time together with the ellipsis and pauses break the traditional patterns of linear narrative,all makes the narrative transcend story time.In addition,frequent references to historical events makes it possible to feel the evolution of family ethics in Victorian society.Through the analysis of narrative perspective,narrative intrusion and narrative time,this thesis investigates how the narrative of The French Lieutenant’s Woman reveals the ethics toward "the Other",ethics of individual existence and ethics of family.Furthermore,the exploration of ethical implications embedded in the narrative techniques of The French Lieutenant’s Woman can contribute to a better understanding of this postmodern novel.