The French Lieutenants Woman

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1973) – John Fowles
Panther Books | ISBN: 058603403X
Condition: Good | Sold by Crappy Old Books

Victorian England. An age of impeccable manners, rigid morality, enormous skirts and the reassuring conviction that almost everything enjoyable was either sinful, socially unacceptable or likely to result in a thoroughly unpleasant scandal. Respectable gentlemen wore respectable clothes, respectable ladies behaved respectably, and everybody pretended that human desire had been abolished by royal decree sometime during Queen Victoria’s reign.

Unfortunately, nobody appears to have informed John Fowles.

In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles transports readers to the windswept Dorset coast of the 1860s, where the respectable world of Victorian society is about to collide with something considerably more dangerous than bad weather: an independent woman with a mysterious past and absolutely no intention of behaving as expected.

At the centre of the story is Charles Smithson, a comfortably privileged gentleman, amateur naturalist and apparently sensible fellow engaged to Ernestina Freeman, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. His future seems pleasantly predictable, involving marriage, social advancement and the continued enjoyment of a lifestyle in which the greatest inconvenience might be an unsuitable dinner guest.

Then he encounters Sarah Woodruff.

Sarah is a mysterious, solitary woman whose supposed involvement with a French naval officer has earned her the scandalous reputation reflected in the novel’s title. She stands apart from respectable society, walking along the coast and attracting the sort of disapproving attention normally reserved for people who fail to attend church or express controversial opinions about the monarchy.

Charles becomes fascinated by her, beginning a relationship of emotional and psychological complexity that threatens everything he believes about duty, morality and his own carefully arranged future.

But Fowles isn’t content merely to write a Victorian romance involving forbidden attraction, social disgrace and the occasional dramatic encounter on a windswept cliff. Instead, he constructs an extraordinary literary experiment, combining nineteenth-century storytelling with modern philosophical questions about freedom, identity, authorial control and the possibility that fictional characters might possess ambitions of their own.

The narrator frequently interrupts proceedings to discuss history, social conventions and the mechanics of fiction itself, occasionally behaving like an author who has wandered into his own novel and decided to rearrange the furniture.

Originally published in 1969, The French Lieutenant’s Woman became one of the most celebrated British novels of its generation and was subsequently adapted into the acclaimed 1981 film starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons.

This 1973 Panther paperback, offered in Good condition by Crappy Old Books, is an appealing addition to the shelves of literary fiction enthusiasts, John Fowles collectors and readers who appreciate novels that challenge both social conventions and the traditional rules of storytelling.

A richly atmospheric, intelligent and frequently mischievous exploration of love, repression, freedom and the extraordinary difficulty of deciding what one actually wants from life.

And a reminder that Victorian respectability was a wonderfully impressive institution.

Provided nobody looked too closely at what was happening behind the curtains.

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