French lieutenants woman

cut lieutenants cleaning lady The French lieutenants wo composition The setting throughout the novel is predominantly Victorian. Most of the novels swear out takes back offside at Lyme Regis, Dorset and England. Lyme Regis was one of many small vill advances in southwestward England scattered along the coast. It consisted largely of small houses surrounded by hills on one side and the sea on the early(a). The Cobb was built along the brim and it is a promenade where people could enjoy the sea air maculation taking a walk. A section of the hills, known as the expend Commons, was a meeting ground for most young couples and where Charles and Sarah met separately other clandestinely. Lymes community was close-knit and provincial. Un like the larger metropolitan beas such as capital of the United Kingdom, here people upheld the prevailing societal norms. Un unoriginal look is seen as an aberration and often times a sign of mental illness. The inhibitory norms and the people s insensitive attitude towards Sarah succeed in driving her to Exeter. In the nineteenth carbon, Exeter served the same purpose as London does today. Exeter was nonorious for providing all sorts of terrible entertainment. Brothels, dance halls and gin palaces thrived there. It served as a haven for shamed girls and women, that is to say un married mothers and mistresses who were victims of sexual abuse or social rejects. Due to its s dissolvedalous reputation, many upstanding English kept their distance from such like these places. Social norms were virtually non-existent. For a brief moment the carry out shifts to London where Charles signs his statement of guilt. It is also here that Charles and Sarah meet, after a cardinal-year separation, at the Rossetti residence. The action tends to move back and forth between the Victorian and the late age as Fowles tends to make intrusive comments close the past and the present. He has deliberately recreated a Victorian world so tha t he provoke criticize those aspects of the Victorian era that would seem alien to a innovational reader. It is inte recumbing to note the distinguishable social conditions prevalent in these places and their personal effects on psyches. In this novel, Fowles is interested in the literary genre of the nineteenth-century amorousist or gothic novel and succeeds in reproducing typical Victorian characters, situations and dialogue. only Fowles perception of the genre is touched with typical twentieth-century irony. His thematic concerns range from the blood between life and art and the artist and his creation to the isolation that results from an individual struggling for selfhood. Fowles aim is to bring to light those aspects of Victorian golf-club that would come forward most foreign to present-day(a) readers. Victorian attitudes towards women, economics, science and philosophy ar tackled as minor themes within the main plot. Both women and the working-class are two groups that are revealed as being oppressed two economically and socially in a society that inhibits mobility for anyone who is not middle or upper-class and mannish. These are the social issues that Fowles explores within the guise of a tralatitious romance. The general fancy throughout the novel is somber and turbulent. From the initial chapter, the mood is set. A strong easterly wind is blowing and a storm is plan of attack in. It is in such a setting that Charles and Sarah meet. The atmosphere suits Sarahs enigmatic personality. end-to-end the novel, she is presented as a dark, obscure and intriguing figure. The reader are unconsciously aware that the revelrs, Charles and Sarah, are doomed from the beginning. In several sections, the mood smorgasbords to one of irony and realistic recording of details. Fowles tends to comment on several occult aspects of the Victorian era (e.g. harlotry) in an ironically realistic manner. Until today, the Victorian maturate was seen to be a Golden Age where Reason and Rationality were proclaim as dogma and faith. People were beginning to question the claims that religion do close the existence of God and the beginning of man. Anything that could not be proved through experimentation and science was immediately treated with suspicion. With Charles Darwins The Origin of Species (1859) the scriptural myth of Adam and Eve and the origins of man were shattered. Darwins work created quite an tumultuousness as it succeeded it in shattering the Victorian peoples unquestioning religious faith. The fabricator opens the The French Lieutenants Woman with background information on Lyme Regis, where the story is ab initio set. later that he introduces Charles Smithson, a thirty-two-year-old gentleman and his young fiancee, Ernestina freewoman. Charles Smithson is a male protagonist of the novel. He is a wealthy Victorian gentlemen and heir to a title. He is interested in Darwin and paleontology and considers himself to be intellectually ranking(a) to other Victorian men, as he is one of the few who holds scientifically advanced ideas. He is engaged to Ernestina Freeman moreover he is attracted to the mysterious Miss Woodruff. He is unhappy with the right smart his life is unfolding, yet he is extremely sensitive and intelligent. He is an insecure man constantly analyzing his life. Ernestina Freeman is Charles fiance. She is pretty, coy and intelligent, exactly at times she tends to reveal her youth and naivete. She likes to hypothesize of herself as a modern woman only her attitudes are similar to most of the young Victorian women who behaved in a proper manner. She is auntie Tranters niece and she is vacationing in Lyme when the story begins. auntie Tranter is Ernestinas mothers sister. She is a kind woman who is discernd by her domestic staff because she treats people with respect. She flings to second Sarah when the rest of the town rejects her. Aunt Tranter is an honest woman and lacks hypocrisy of any sort. The action begins in 1867, still the narrator often breaks into the record, noting that the story is being cerebrate in the twentieth century. He does this initially by comparing the Cobb to a contemporary Henry Moore sculpture. The novel jump-starts with Charles and Tinas walk, which is interrupted by the presence of a woman in a dark cape, standing alone at the end of the Cobb, staring out to sea. Tina explains to a curious Charles what she has heard about the woman, known as Tragedy and the French lieutenants woman, and her status as a social outcast. Rumors suggest that Sarah Woodruff was seduced and abandoned by a French naval officer who was shipwrecked off the coast. As she nursed him back to health, he reportedly made promises to her that he will return back to Lyme and marry her. Destitute and rejected by most of the Lyme Regis society, Sarah is taken in by the pious Mrs. Poulteney, who plans to save the young woman in order to master her own s tatus as a worthy Christian. Mrs. Poulteney is a a cruel old woman, who takes great delight in harassing her domestic staff. Her record is exactly opposite to that of Mrs. Tranters. She believes herself to be an upholder of Christian virtues yet in reality, she is a hypocrite who reluctantly helps people only out of a show of charity. Sarah in employed by her in the position of a companion. She succeeds in making Sarahs life miserable by constantly reminding her that she is an outcast. after(prenominal) that Charles has seen Sarah Woodruff at shores while he was walking with Ernestina, the next day, he, whose rocking horse is paleontology, walks through the Undercliff searching for fossils while Tina visits her Aunt Tranter. During his walk, Charles comes across Sarah sleeping in a clearing. She awakens with a start, and, after apologizing for disturbing her, Charles departs. In this moment he does not understand himself that why he was staring and watching at her. Those few sec onds appeared for him for a long time, and he did not want to go forward from that secret place. His departure was because of Sarahs awakening. In my conviction Charles was scared of himself, because he had a specific feeling when he was looking at Sarah. In this scene we brook feel that something has changed in Charles or just start changing inside his soul. The narrator notes Charless growing obsession with the mysterious Sarah. After stopping at a farmhouse to refresh himself, Charles again sees Sarah on the path. She rejects his offer to escort her ingleside and implores him to tell no one that she has been walking there, an exercise that Mrs. Poulteney has forbidden her. The next day, during a visit to Mrs. Poulteneys, Sarah silently observes Charles and Aunt Tranters relief of the relationship between Sam and bloody shame. Mary is the maid in Aunt Tranters house. She is a free-spirited, down-to-earth soul. Sam Farrow, Charles man-servant falls in love with her. He is not content with his present status and wants to climb the social ladder. He is ambitious and he is determined to secure his future with Mary point if he has to blackmail Charles. Charles assumes that he has made a connection with Sarah at the visiting, notwithstanding the next time their paths cross on the Undercliff, she rebuffs his efforts to help her take out Mrs. Poulteneys control. When she insists that she cannot leave the area, Charles assumes that her feelings for the French lieutenant are the cause. After she admits that the lieutenant has married, her conundrum deepens for Charles. Charless curiosity concerning Sarah causes him to ring about the comparatively one-dimensional Tina and his own inevitably and desires. During another walk, Sarah finds him, presents him with two fossils, and begs him to hear her story. After determining that listening to Sarah would be a kind act and a useful study of human nature, Charles agrees to meet with her. Sarah admits that Lieuten ant Varguennes proposed marriage and seduced her, even though she knew he was not an honorable man. The shame that she has embraced as a result has enabled her to separate herself from a society that would not behave her, due to her common birth. Her education had alter her to the inequities of social class and gender, and thus her status as an outcast prevents her from having to conform to conventional roles. During their conversation, Sam and Mary appear, and Sarah and Charles hide themselves. As she watches Sam and Mary embrace, Sarah turns to Charles and smiles. Charles, noticeably disconcerted at Sarahs open expression of her interest in him, abruptly leaves. While I was reading this part of the novel, I did not understand that why Sarahs attitude has changed. At the beginning she rejected Charless help and did not want to talk to him. But everything has changed in this part. In my opinion it is because of Charles. Sarah observed him and realized that he is a real gentleman who has travelled a lot all over the Europe, he has seen several and different cultures, so he is not only a knowledgeable man, but also sensitive and smart. All these reasons lead to the Sarahs claim. She postulate a person who can not only help her but also understand and feel with her. In this case we can say that Sarah is innocent woman, who needs help and a considerate person, but also we may think that she only wants to exploit Charles and organize her life with his help. Charles happens that he is in peril of losing his inheritance and title, which causes tensions with Tina. He later asks his old friend Dr. Grogan to advise him about his relationship with Sarah, who has just been thrown out of Mrs. Poulteneys home for disobeying her orders. Dr. Grogan is an intelligent, friendly man who befriends Charles. The younger man finds him to be a sympathetic listener. Dr. Grogan empathizes with Sarah but finds her sort too outrageous to be taken seriously. He is refreshingly wron gful in his views for a Victorian although he belongs more to an earlier age that was more liberal in many ways. Dr. Grogan adjustly guesses that Sarah engineered this dismissal so that Charles would come to her rescue. Dr. Grogan sympathizes with her situation but believes that Sarah wants Charles constant attention. He diagnoses her condition as a mental illness called melancholia and wants to get her brassalized. Charles, however, chooses not to follow Grogans advice to hang on away from her and meets her the next day on the Undercliff. Charles breaks off an embrace and rushes off, but not before he stumbles upon Sam and Mary who have seen them together. The two servants promise not to tell anyone of the meeting. Meanwhile, Sarah has come to depend on Charles who is himself passing play through a change. He is beginning to question his ages conventions and questioning himself. He urges Sarah to leave Lyme and go to Exeter where she will have more freedom to cash in ones chip s an unconventional life. Sarah takes his advice but Charles cannot forget her. At the same time, he feels conscience-smitten for even thinking about her. He does not love Ernestina and is marrying her totally for her wealth. He thinks their relationship is nothing more than a facade. The Victorian society imposed a great deal of repressive conventions and norms on its people, specially women and the working class. Victorian women were socially conditioned to believe that their rightful place was at home with their maintains and children. A Victorian woman was expected to accept the patriarchal norm unhesitatingly. Her duty was to her husband and children. Only if she toed this social line would she be deemed a proper young Victorian lady. The institution of marriage was often a contract agreement. money often married into a titled family as in Charles and Ernestinas case, thereby reinforcing the dominant societys power. Money and nobility were often the main criteria for a Vict orian marriage. The practice of prostitution was a topic that Victorian archivists rarely touched upon. Most historians up until recently thought that the Victorian age was known for its virtuous and staring(a) qualities yet Fowles novel reveals that even during the Age of Propriety prostitution flourished and thence women were often victims of sexual abuse or social rejects. By large(p) prostitutes a mention in his novel, Fowles is attempting to be realistic about their situation. He is obviously concerned about the role of women in Victorian England and societys preaching of them. As is apparent women of all classes right from the aristocracy to the prostitutes were exploited by society which was largely patriarchal and this practice continues even today. Fowles constantly interrupts the tale by making authorial comments with a twentieth century perspective. The narrative action digresses back and forth from the Victorian Age to the twentieth century in time. Fowles is writin g a novel set in the nineteenth-century romantic literary genre but with a twentieth century perspective. Charles finds the conniption of living a life as a dutiful husband and son-in-law unappealing. He wants to have a more meaningful life, unrestricted by traditions. After that Sarah has moved to Exeter, aided by money Charles has given her, Charles tries to conduct his thoughts to his bout with Tina, but feels as if he is being trapped by her father who wants him to become his business partner. He is tempted to go to Sarah in Exeter but instead returns to Tina. The narrator provides the first of iii deaths here. Charles and Tina marry, along with Sam and Mary, and both couples prosper in a contrived Victorian conclusion. Immediately, however, the narrator insists that this ending is only what has taken place in Charless imagination. Charles does in fact go to Exeter to see Sarah, who seduces him. Charles discovers that she had not been intimate with the French lieutenant. Af ter returning to his hotel, he writes to Sarah of his plans to marry her, but Sam intercepts the letter. After breaking off his engagement with Tina the next day, Charles returns to Exeter but finds that Sarah has disappeared. Charles hires private investigators to find Sarah and departs for America. While he was touring America, he receives word that Sarah has been found. He hurries back to England and finds Sarah living with the Rossettis. She has changed drastically, and Charles finds this difficult to accept. Sarah greets Charles at Gabriel Rosettis home and explains that she has been working as the painters model and secretary. Charles is shocked at how easily Sarah has pass away into the scandalous Pre-Raphaelite group. After Sarah insists that she will never marry and Charles prepares to leave. When Sarah introduces him to their daughter, Lalage, however, the three embrace, suggesting that they will become a true family. It is a conventional ending, which ends happily, but t here is another one ending, which is unconventional. The narrator then reappears, sets his watch back fifteen minutes, and provides the last conclusion to the story. Sarah reasserts her decision not to marry but suggests the two might remain friends and lovers. Charles rejects her offer and leaves, devastated and alone. The first element that moldiness fade into the background is Charless love for Sarah, which has become quite unornamented by his actions in the novel and by the narrators statement in the first ending, nates all his rage stood the knowledge that he loved her still. When, however, in the contemporary ending, Charles recognizes the reality of the arrangement Sarah offers him, he chooses his freedom and dignity over his love for her, recognizing that if he stayed, he would become the secret butt of this corrupt house, the starched soupirant, the court donkey. As a result, he feels his own true superiority to her which was . . . an aptitude to give that was also an inability to compromise. She could give only to accept and to possess him. Although his decision to leave tosses him metaphorically out upon the unplumbd, salt, estranging sea, his experience has enabled him to discover a firm trust in his own character and abilities. Sarahs love for Charles, another element of the first ending, is not quite as evident in the text. Sarah admits, in her own words, that she is not to be understood, a sensible statement since neither Charles nor the reader is privy to her thoughts. Yet while the motivations for her behavior remain enigmatic, she ultimately cannot deny her feelings. When Charles entreats her to admit that she never had loved him, she replies, I could not say that. The reality of Sarahs love for Charles can be in all probability neglected in the second ending when Sarah realizes her give care that she had earlier evince to Charles. She explains, I do not want to share my life. I wish to be what I am, not what a husband, however kind , however indulgent, must expect me to become in marriage. Thus Sarah gains her freedom, but her final response to this condition is unclear from the narrators ironic vantage point, Sarah is too far away for him to see whether or not there are tears in her eyes. I believe that in every women there is a power, which they can use it in two ways in a right way and in a wrong way. Not all women can discover it inside their souls, it needs capacity and ability. In a conventional ending, I think Sarah employ it in a right way because everything ended happily. In the unconventional ending Sarah in my opinion used it in a wrong way because she trapped Charles and exploit him and ruin his life. If she had wanted to be with him, she would not have gone away from Exeter. I think she could wait for him and everything would be all right, but she did not do that. It explains everything her behavior, her thoughts and her uttered words. There are women, who uses their power to do good things, to change our world and make it better. By coming together to support each others goals and dreams, women not only enhance their own lives, they empower others. The true part of Women is that we have within us the power to change the world.