The French Lieutenant's Woman - Charles
Roxana Mihaela DIN
Second year, Second term
Philology, English Major-Italian Minor
A passage from the Victorian to the Post-modern society
-Charles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman-
“Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to man himself”(MARX, Zur Judenfrage 1844). This is a citation from Marx which opens John Fowels’ novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, one of his most world-wide read and appreciated novels. John Fowels constructs his novel by deconstructing what have been previously said about the Victorian period, presenting a realistic image of the apparently perfect, but in fact highly conventional and false society of the nineteenth century.
I have chosen the paragraph from Marx because I think is serves very well the purpose of the present paper. In my opinion one of the most important characters in the novel, if not the most important, is Charles. I believe that he is the one who suffers the most because he is trapped between two women who, by the end of the novel, are part of two very different worlds: the Victorian and the Post-modern society. So I regard Marx’s words as an anticipation of Charles’s evolution throughout the novel. I call it an “evolution” because the character manages to escape the label of the Victorian gentleman, the one who has the duty to act in a certain manner, and to become the human being, who does not always know what he wants, but has the power to accept this and to decide for himself regardless outer obligations. So the purpose of my essay is to analyze the stages of this evolution and Charles’s thoughts and feelings about these changes.
But before, I also want to mention a very important theme present in the novel: Darwin’s book “The origin of species”. Although it is not a debated subject in this essay, it is significant in the economy of the novel because Charles is influenced by the ideas presented there. It can be seen as a starting point in Charles’s evolution
Second year, Second term
Philology, English Major-Italian Minor
A passage from the Victorian to the Post-modern society
-Charles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman-
“Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to man himself”(MARX, Zur Judenfrage 1844). This is a citation from Marx which opens John Fowels’ novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, one of his most world-wide read and appreciated novels. John Fowels constructs his novel by deconstructing what have been previously said about the Victorian period, presenting a realistic image of the apparently perfect, but in fact highly conventional and false society of the nineteenth century.
I have chosen the paragraph from Marx because I think is serves very well the purpose of the present paper. In my opinion one of the most important characters in the novel, if not the most important, is Charles. I believe that he is the one who suffers the most because he is trapped between two women who, by the end of the novel, are part of two very different worlds: the Victorian and the Post-modern society. So I regard Marx’s words as an anticipation of Charles’s evolution throughout the novel. I call it an “evolution” because the character manages to escape the label of the Victorian gentleman, the one who has the duty to act in a certain manner, and to become the human being, who does not always know what he wants, but has the power to accept this and to decide for himself regardless outer obligations. So the purpose of my essay is to analyze the stages of this evolution and Charles’s thoughts and feelings about these changes.
But before, I also want to mention a very important theme present in the novel: Darwin’s book “The origin of species”. Although it is not a debated subject in this essay, it is significant in the economy of the novel because Charles is influenced by the ideas presented there. It can be seen as a starting point in Charles’s evolution
Bibliography: 1. Primary bibliography John FOWELS, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, New York, Little, Brown and company, 1998 2. Secondary bibliography Daniela BROWN, course on Victorianism, Unit 1, unpublished course, 2012 Steve CONNOR, Postmodernist culture, London, Blackwell Publishing, 1997 -------------------------------------------- [ 1 ]. John FOWELS, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, New York, Little, Brown and company, 1998, first page [ 2 ]