A Study On John Fowles’ Patriarchal Ideas

John Fowles is one of the most excellent novelists of contemporary literature in England.Most critics of feminism regard him as a feminist,However because of the limitation of his gender and the influence of the patriarchal society,Fowles can never be a true feminist.And it’s easy for us to find his patriarchal idea in his novels.Although some of the scholars have already doubted whether Fowles is a feminist or not,most of them still consider Fowles as a feminist.In addition,the study on Fowles’ patriarchal idea just focus’ on The French Lieutenant’s Woman.The Collector and The Magus are seldom mentioned.The introduction makes clear of Fowles’ biography,creating background and his works,then summarizes the important study achievements on Fowles’works domestic and abroad.And then mentions that this paper will analyze Fowles’ patriarchal idea through his three novels:The French Lieutenant’s Woman,The Collector and The Magus.The first chapter analyzes the theme and two kinds of roles in Fowles’novels.His three novels,The French Lieutenant’s Woman,The Collector and The Magus,have the same theme that is the maturity of the heroes.The females who help the males to become mature in these novels are only the subordinates of them.In conclusion,the females in these three novels can be classified to two kinds:the holy virgin and the slut.They all come from Fowles’ imagination,therefore they are all projection of men’s thought.The second chapter discusses the females and males in Fowles’ works.Although the females resist the patriarchal society and the hegemony of the male resolutely,their resistance still has limitation.Most of the males in Fowles’novels are dictators who materialize the woman and regard them as a tool to satisfy their sexual desires.Moreover,all of them have scopophilia.The main characters in his three novels as stated above are always surrounded by flirting women,and they enjoyed it as well as they criticized it from the pick of ethics.Fowles’ deeply-rooted patriarchal idea can easily be seen from the perspective of three heroes even though it is under the mask of feminist.The third chapter analyses the marginalisation of woman’s discourse in Fowles’ works based on Foucault’s theory on discourse.In The French Lieutenant’s Woman,Sarah whose image is formed by man’s perspective never has the chance to express her own ideas.The collector takes the form of polyphone that gives Miranda the opportunity to express her thought through her diary.However,Miranda’s diary is surrounded by Clerk’s statement,which symbolizes that Miranda’s discourse is marginalised.Besides,there is always a lot of unreliability in Miranda’s statements,which marginalises her discourse further.