An Existentialist Study Of The French Lieutenant's Woman

John Fowles enjoys a high reputation as a first-rate writer in English literature. His The French Lieutenant's Woman was published in 1969 and aroused great repercussion among western readers and critics. It introspects and renovates the Victorian society and its literary tradition in modernistic views through narrating a romantic story in Victorian age.Fowles discovered the writings of the French existentialists' when he was at Oxford. He admired Albert Camus and Jean- Paul Sartre very much. Sartre's existentialist philosophy mainly consists of three aspects: (1) outlook on objectivity he believes that the world is absurd and alienated, man is lonely and lives in anxiety. (2) outlook on subjectivity objective world and the reality cannot be changed as man wishes, man can do nothing to the objective world. But man has his individual wills; he can affirm and testify his own "existence" by choosing freely and continuously.(3) outlook on the relationships between the individual and other people. Only in the relationships with the world and other people, only in the attitude one chooses toward the world and other people can one realize his own existence.Fowles is an existentialist, so all the thoughts mentioned above are embodied in his works. This thesis takes these three basic views as the starting points and makes a thorough existentialist analysis of The French Lieutenant's Woman.