Sarah: The Controversial Image Of Women

John Fowles is a famous English novelist since World War II. His masterpiece The French Lieutenant's Woman has drawn broad attention and acclaims from literary critics and readers because of its unique postmodernist narrative style, delicate image depiction and deep reflection of modern history of Britain.However, in the latter part of the Western Feminist Movement, questions were raised in the academia about the content of feminism reflected in the novel and in the depiction of heroine. Taking this as a starting point, while concerning about the postmodernist narrative style of the novel, the thesis aims to make a rational and effective explanation of the female image Sarah and feminism tendency reflected in the novel from gender perspective of Feminist Criticism and multiple perspectives such as Prototype Criticism and Humanistic Psychology, and make exploration on the subject of the novel and the philosophy hidden in the depths of text.In the thesis, Chapter I gives an overview of the critical contention about feminism tendency under the background of Western Feminist Movement, which reveals the necessity of reading the novel and understand the heroine image from multicultural perspectives. In Chapter II, prototype criticism adopted, through in-depth analysis of two narrative structure patterns and three prototype models related to the heroine, and in-depth excavation of the deep theme spirit of the novel and cultural connotation of the images, which reveals feminism thoughts such as female independence and pursuit of self value of women. In Chapter III, the writer applies gender perspective to view the novel and heroine image, makes in-depth analysis of deconstruction of male ideology with postmodernist narrative experience, and uses social theory of unconscious for further explanation of feminist tendency in the novel.