| By appropriating traditional romance forms to his major fiction--The Collector, The Magus, The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Daniel Martin--and playing those forms against realistic techniques, John Fowles creates a framework within which his central character typically learns to disengage himself from a profoundly pervasive romantic idealism in order to achieve the more positive, natural vision of life which constitutes Fowles's new realism.; While the Gothic dominates the fiction, all of the traditional romance forms that he exploits share the essential quest motif, which is usually expressed in sexual terms as the hero's adventure in search of a bride. Fowles, however, transforms this classic narrative quest into a highly sophisticated fictional form by penetrating inwardly to probe the psychological depth of the hero's quest and by projecting outwardly to explore its universal, timeless dimension.; A mysteriously compelling female serves as the central catalyst in the contemporary hero's struggle to liberate himself from an imprisonment that is caused by an exaggerated conception of self as well as by a culture in which a romantic idealism informs many of its fundamental myths. By pursuing her, he may hope to achieve the ideal world in which he has placed her. Appropriately, his obsessive quest takes him away from an ordinary, conventional world to an extraordinary world--a magical greenwood or domaine, which mirrors the romantic qualities of the enchanting female--and then returns him to the ordinary world again. However, the playing off of these romance conventions and realistic techniques, such as several authorial voices, historical and factual commentary, ironic contrasts, and multiple endings, results in a fundamental transformation in the hero's consciousness. Back in the ordinary, conventional world the hero no longer romanticizes the female. The enchanting princess emerges as a more ordinary human being, who now attracts the hero for her natural mysteries, independence, and imaginative qualities.; Thus, Fowles achieves his affirmation in contemporary man's existence by undercutting traditional romance conventions with realistic techniques to compel the hero to come to terms with an indealizing self. |
