Concepts Of Feminism In The French Lieutenant's Woman

John Fowles is a British novelist who enjoys a popular fame in the contemporary literary arena. He makes pioneering efforts in combining psychology with social studies in the creation of his characters. He challenges and questions the traditional forms of novels. His The French Lieutenant's Woman is a love story set in 1867, written in the late 1960s in the form of a historical novel. It is classified as an"experimental" novel, a metafictional work, and is also called a postmodern novel by some critics. It implies the author's strong criticism of the Victorian values, but it bears clear realistic significance. Many scholars have ever tried to interpret the text from different kinds of literary theories, such as existentialism, naturalism, historicism, feminism, and Marxism. The author made unique efforts to explore the life values and social significance of the Victorian women in the novel. This thesis attempts to employ the theory of feminism to interpret the different identities of women in the Victorian Age from the author's viewpoints as a naturalist and a male feminist in the 20^th century. It also points out the author's limitations in his creation of The French Lieutenant's Woman.This thesis consists of six sections. The introduction part is to provide an overall view of the author and his works and the three feminist theories concerned in The French Lieutenant's Woman. The first part introduces John Fowles' scientific way to re-interpret the Victorian Age, which is the most important part of the novel reflecting directly his way of writing as a postmodernist. The second part gives a definition to the different identities of the women by Fowles. The third part showed the author's rejection of the traditional gender roles and his desire to release women from male oppression from his viewpoint as a naturalist. The fourth part analyzes the origins of the male objectification of the females and Fowles' limitations in his creation of The French Lieutenant's Woman. The conclusion part is a brief summary of the whole paper.