| John Fowles's experiments with technique, which have become a hallmark of his style, develop from his audience perception. Just as an observer's presence in atomic physics alters an experiment's results, so Fowles considers the text to be co-created by the reader during the reading process. Instead of mere ostentation or decoration as some detractors have charged, these experiments represent instead the author's attempts to demonstrate rather than to tell the co-creative reader of the themes and concerns, enumerated in The Aristos, that underlie his fiction. For example, he illuminates not only the Few-Many dichotomy, which his protagonists initially misunderstand because they confuse talents with privileges and they substitute art, taxonomy, or pornography, for life, but also clarifies the corollary Adam-Eve confrontation that characterizes the heterosexual relationships of the novels when he encloses Miranda's narrative within Clegg's. In Fowles's fiction the female in her guise as Eve leads the willing male to fall into self-awareness. This integrating experience, usually consummated in the sexual act, as in The French Lieutenant's Woman or Daniel Martin precipitates a role reversal in which the male protagonist develops a more feminine outlook that perceives relationships rather than objects, whereas the female becomes an Adam-woman combining masculine will with feminine compassion. Fowles uses his experimentation, therefore, to lead the reader through the protagonist's choices and actions to appreciate the true meaning of being elect, that life is engagement in, not a retreat from, reality. Because Fowles's technical experimentation forms an integral part of his fiction, this study treats his works holistically to ascertain the effects his experimentation achieves and charts its progressive development in his first four novels. |
