『프랑스 중위의 여자』에 나타난 자유의 양상

Abstract

John Fowles's third novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman, is a work using the experimental writing technique of metafiction, and a response to the problem of modern fiction. Imitating Victorian stories and styles, this work narrows the gap between the Victorian age and the 20th century, which we have believed to be remarkably wide. This thesis deals with the aspects of freedom in The French Lieutenant's Woman(1969). Fowles clearly imitates the nineteenth century realistic novel referring to such real figures of the Victorian age as Marx and Darwin and to important happenings. He presents to the readers the illusion of the historic reality as he imitates it realistically. Male hero Charles Smithson, a wealthy amateur paleontologist engaged to the conventional Ernestina Freeman, falls under the spell of eccentric, sensual, apparently "fallen" Sarah Woodruff. Sho is believed to have been deserted by the French lover of the title. Charles' pursuit of Sarah destroys his engagement to Ernestina, but Sarah eludes him, and when he finds her again in the protection of D. G. Rossetti, she has become a new woman. Finally he realizes that he is free from its conventions of his age and becomes as "outcast" just like Sarah. Influenced by French existentialism, Fowles shows that the will to freedom had existed before existentialism; it is manifested through Charles' accomplishing his own freedom. The author explores not only the theme of the freedom of his characters, but also of the freedom of the novel form. He inserts his own intrusive commentary featuring self-reflection and the suggestion of multiple endings. The previous studies on The French Lieutenant's Woman have regarded it as a special kind of historical novel. Seemingly, it is a historical novel, but Fowles parodies the nineteenth century novel writing in the work. In The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles emancipates the Victorian novelistic conventions. He inserts his own intrusive narrator, not an omniscient narrator, to give his characters an autonomy and the maximum degree of freedom. The intrusive narrator questions are: "Who is Sarah? Out of what shadow does she come from?" in Chapter 12; and in Chapter 13 he answers "I do not know." It reminds us that The French Lieutenant's Woman is not a historical novel. Fowles as an intrusive narrator tells many things with his own voice about the hypocritical Victorian society and its convention including the cautious science and incautious religion, the corrupt politics and the immutable castes of Victorian age. Multiple ending is the device which ensures freedom from the traditional novel form. Fowles' use of the ending makes the reader, traditionally a passive spectator, participate in 'creating' the novel, interact with the story, and choose the ending which is desired by the free will of the reader.