French Lieutenant’s Woman Essay and Techniques Postmodernism

hit the books how FLW represents a post rawistist sort of intellection. Postmodernism encompasses a reinterpretation of classical ideas, ground levels and practices and reflects and rejects the ideologies of previous movements in the arts. The postmodern movement has made dash for unsanded ways of thinking and a clean theoretical base when criticising art, lit whileture, sex and history. besidest Fowles 1969 diachronic bricol fester, The French lieutenants Woman, utilises the ideas of postmodern theorists such as Foucault, Barthes and Sartre amongst otherwises to form a postmodern double-coded discourse which examines value inherent in the twee era from a twentieth century place setting. The leg demises use of intertextuality, meta illustration and its irreverent perspective can be seen as a postmodern parody of nice fiction and the historical impertinent.For the purpose of examining the set and ideologies of the Victorian era in comparison to the postmodern parad igm, Victorian conventions ar sh aver juxtaposed with postmodern techniques such as the causalityial aggression and alternative endings. Sarah Woodruff is different from other faces in The French Lieutenants Woman because she is epistemologically unique and because the narrator does non have access to her inner thoughts in chapter 13 the author directly addresses the referee and states that he gives his characters the open will to cast their solution in his falsehood.In a typical Victorian context, the protagonists inner conflict and motives would be receptive to the reader. Fowles denies his right as the author to see definition of characters and in this way recognises the age of Alain-Robbe Grillet and Roland Barthes in bringing about the stopping point of the author and the birth of the reader. The reader must interpret the text in ways (s)he views it and is forced to actively ask in the text. Fowles also introduces the author as a god-like figure (who turns back time) to business deal multiple endings. He (the author) allows Sarah to act in an existentialist way to determine her outcome in the novel.It allows her to exercise her individuality, making her last as a lone womens liberationist figure amongst the tides of Victorian conventionality. The novel rewrites Victorian sexuality and in this way is an theoretical account of the way the sexual revolution of the sixties is described in the historical novel of its time. Foucault described the Victorian point in time as the golden age of repression and he revises the depression that the Victorian era was silent on sexual matters in his works. Both Foucault and The French Lieutenants Woman asseverate that the forms of world power and resistance are historically conditioned.For example, Sarahs body is still charge at the end of the novel since she appears however as a minor character in Rosettis house. The fact that Sarah is an anachronous creation points to the idea that the novel i s non about the Victorian era but a critique of relative values in their context. The metafictional structure of the novel successfully elucidates that Sarah seems to be subordinated in the patriarchal power of the contemporary narrator- it also endeavours to show that evening the most emancipated groups during the Victorian period could not carry the liberation of women completely.This is a reflexion of what Fowles deems backward in the context of his society, and is apparent in Sarahs pent-up sexuality and the blatant disparity regarding notions of female sexuality Ernestina is always confined deep d stimulate the strict boundaries of patriarchal, societal convention- this is shown by the way she represses her sexual desire for Charles, macrocosm case with the most chaste of kisses. In this way the novel represents the truth as a form of pleasure in a Foucauldian sense.The institutionalisation of prostitutes, a somewhat clandestine cheer for Victorian gentlemen, is a situa tion that reflects the open hypocrisy of Victorian society when compared to Sarahs situation. She (Sarah) is labelled a fallen women (hence her nickname Tragedy) and is ostracised because of her free-will and feminine mis shell out. Charles finds her insolence rather intimidating as it goes against his beliefs that the kind stratification of society is a vital fixings of social stability. This enforces Charles Darwinian beliefs about the social hierarchy (in reference to Social Darwinism).Darwinian evolution finds its expression by creating a impudent way of thinking. Fowles novel represents the slap-up crisis of Darwinian Victorian England and traces its impact on society. Charles questions his religion in the Church, admitting he is agnostic, and the narrator himself labels Charles as having agnostic qualities. At the end of the novel Charles has become a modern man and Sarah the hopeful monster who feels disoriented in Victorian culture without being able to conceptualise C harles intuitive apprehension of her otherness and modernity.Darwinian evolution and ordinal century psychology are represent in The French Lieutenants Woman as providing a corrective culture dominated by settle minded Evangelicalism. Examples can be spy in Mrs Poulteneys fickle attempts at being charitable, her dismissive attitude towards her avocation to the church which is merely a usual pastime for her, and her decision to dismiss Sarah. consequently novels intertextuality is made up of its bricolage of history and fiction.Victorian epigraphs (and the irony utilise in them) serve to re build up the ethnical milieu of the age using commissions of facets of its literary world through the poetry of Hardy, Tennyson, Arnold and Clough. It provides a context within which the characters try to construct their subjectivities where they can emancipate themselves from the novels dominant ideology (this is an example of how Freuds ideas about publicationss subjectiveness are ut ilised).Also, the footnotes reinforce the authors presence and allude to the fact that the author is omnipresent (in the novel). The alternative endings represent both types of Victorian endings and the last, a more postmodern, existentialist one. Fowles plays with different endings to epitomise the early postmodern problem of artistic form and representation and this technique agrees with Umberto Ecos idea that literature has openness and can be interpreted in many ways.The postmodern modal value is successful in creating a strain between these endings within a superstar text. The last alternative ending in chapter 61 can be construed as the existentialist one. The existentialist newspaper dramatises the struggles of individuals to repair themselves and to make moral decisions about the conduct of their lives in worlds which deny them of freedom. Both Charles and Sarah are searching for themselves, trying to find their own existences by rebelling against the norms of traditio n Charles by cover Darwinism nd declaring himself agnostic (in line with the Nietzschean existentialist ideology) and Sarah by redefining herself (such as labelling herself Mrs) and avoiding the hypocrisy of Victorians towards sexuality and human relations. Like Charles and Sarah, the reader is free of manipulation (by the author) and we can manoeuvre our repose in the narrative to create our own meaning. The use of the existentialist theme in The French Lieutenants Woman makes the reader advised of Sartrean-style thinking which was not in existence in Victorian times but was conceptualised in Fowles era.It is successful in allowing the reader to knock and contrast the differing ideologies present at the individual times and, by highlighting the turn in values, Fowles effectively expounds a new way of thinking. Fowles successfully blends the Victorian novel with postmodern ideologies and twentieth century esthesia by applying paradigms which lead to the reader being allowed t o question previously held values, in position relative values which change harmonize to context, such as sexuality and religion. done his pastiche of traditional Victorian romance, and historical narrative Fowles deconstructs his novel and makes the reader aware of contextual codes and conventions through ironic, metafictional comments Perhaps it is totally a game. Perhaps you sound out the novelist has only to pull the right string section and his puppets will behave in a lifelike manner -The French Lieutenants Woman Chapter 13 *