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,单击此处编辑母版标题样式,单击此处编辑母版文本样式,第二级,第三级,第四级,第五级,2020/1/6,#,The French Lieutenants Woman,By,郭耀霞 方士英,2025/1/12 周日,1,About the author,John,Fowles(1926 2005),,,a famous British author in the literary world,born in a small town not far from,London in,1926.It is believed that John Fowles not only represents the turning point of English novels but also the transition of western literary criticism,His,father,was,a tobacco,businessman and his mother,was,a teacher.To escape the bombing of Nazi Germany during World War II,his family moved to Devon,a village on the south of,TeMoer,.Britains countryside,was,charming and,young Fowles had a strong interest in the mystery and beauty of nature here.This endless mystery and,beauty became,the source of his inspiration.,2,Other main works,The Collector,收藏家,The Magus,巫术师,The Ebony Tower,埃伯尼塔楼,Daniel Martin,丹尼尔,马丁,Mantissa,曼蒂莎,A,Maggot,想入非非,2025/1/12 周日,3,The French Lieutenants Woman,John,Fowles,Set in Victorian age,it concerns a love,affair between,a young gentleman and a woman who is called The French lieutenants woman.The main character,Charles,,,lived on inheritance left by his father.He is engaged to Emestina,a typical Victorian wealthy lady,but he cancels the engagement after meeting with the beautiful,,,mysterious Sarah Woodruff,a social outcast known locally as the so-called whore of a French lieutenant.The narrator notoriously intrudes in the narration continuously,presenting different endings and encouraging his readers to reach their own conclusions,,,which makes this novel a,“,labyrinth without an,exit”,4,CONTENTS,ABSTRACT(ENGLISH).i,ABSTRACT(CHINESE).ii,CHAPTERI ONE,INTRODUCTION,1.A Brief Introduction to John Fowles and The French Lieutenants Woman.1,1.1.An Introduction to John Fowles,.,1,1.2.An Introduction to The French Lieutenants Woman,.,2,1.3.Previous studies on The French Lieutenants Woman.,.4,2.A Brief Introduction to Existentialism.,.,8,CHAPTER TWO THE FREEDOM OF CHARACTERS CHOICES,1The Choices of the Sarah.,.,.,.,.,11,2 The,Choices of the Charles.,.,.,.14,CHAPTER,THREE THE,FREEDOM VIEWS EMBODIED IN REBELLING AGAINST VICTORIAN CONVENTIONALITY,1 The rebelling behaviors of Sarah.,.,.,.18,2 The rebelling behaviors of Charles.20,CHAPTER,FOUR.,THE IMPACT OF THE,FREEDOM,VIEWS ON THE,NARRITION,1 The Authors Free Choices of the Narrative Structure,.,.,.,24,2 The Readers Free Choices of the Ending,.,.,.,.,.25,V.CONCLUSION,.,29,2025/1/12 周日,5,Literature review,According,to the materials available,,,the present researches of this novel mainly center on the following aspects,:,1 Studies,on the social and historical significance of the novel.Researches have been carried out to show the turmoil and movements of that time,,,to analyze the character of each figure in the novel and what they,signify.,2,Narrative devices,The,French Lieutenants Woman attracts the largest amounts of interest and criticism mainly because of its writing skills,.,3 The analysis of Sarah the protagonist,:,Mainly analysis of her characters,,,her behaviors and the social significance.Different critics view her from different aspects such as feminist point of,view.,2025/1/12 周日,6,The research of the novel abroad and at home is fully developed.Among these are interpretation based on feminism,anti-feminism,new-historicism,realism,postmodernism,and existentialism and so on.The followings are the brief introduction,.,Feminism:Deborah,Byrd,who calls this novel“an almost ideal feminist fictional work”and Sarah“a positive model”in her essay“The Evolution and Emancipation of Sarah Woodruff”in 1984 because of the development of a feminine consciousness in Sarah Woodruff.,2025/1/12 周日,7,An-ti feminism:,Magali Cornier Michael,who responds to Byrd in Who is Sarah?A Critique of The French Lieutenants Womans Feminism”declares that this novel has been inappropriately evaluated for its feminism because the texts perspective is male and asserts that the novel fails as a feminism statement because the figure of Sarah is never able to break the boundaries of male fantasy,.,New-Historicism:Robert,Huffaker in his book John Fowles(1980)says that the novel is of historical,quality.,Linda Hutchcon classifies the novel as historiographic metafiction about Victorianism,in which“its theoretical self-awareness of history and fiction as human constructs is made the grounds for its rethinking and reworking of the forms and contents of the past,2025/1/12 周日,8,Realism:Loveday,Simon argues that it is true that his works are well supplied with the kind of documentary and historical material to which such realistic judgments Can be applied,;,They contain in,equally substantial,measure examples exactly those kinds of commentary and judgment,”,,but he also argues that“most of,this essentially,didactic material has no genuine connection with the fiction which surrounds rather than incorporates it,”,Postmodernism:Barry,N.Olshen finds the style of the novel is a“curious amalgam of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”,with a modern,cinematic panorama,which is of“long-shots of the three major participants in the story,Some critics explore the novels,from existentialist,thought.For instance,Richard P.Lynch has pointed out that the novel is the best of Fowles works to examine closely on the general issue of human,freedom.,2025/1/12 周日,9,A Brief Introduction to Existentialism,In 1895,Origins of species destroyed all the traditional thoughts,demonstrating that humans evolved from apes,not created by the God,.,Therefore,mans value and status became the first thing to concern,.,Moreover,the Second World War had a greater influence on human consciousness,which made people think about the meaning of existence.The term of existence brought into use in the 1940s.,John Fowles gave his definition to existential freedom:“a way of looking at,and utilizing,other philosophies.It is a theory of relativity among theories of absolute truth.”,2025/1/12 周日,10,2025/1/12 周日,11,2 Freedom,of characters choice,2.1The,choice of,Sarah,As the saying goes,“where there is repression,there is rebellion”.Sarah,the protagonist,has clear intention:that is to get rid of the constraints of her life.In the novel,Sarah confronts with three different choices.,The first choice is to be a“fallen woman”,although people in the Lyme considered Sarah as a“fallen woman”,she,chooses not to care about what other people think about her.,We can prove it in her words to Charles.She expresses herself in this:,“I am a doubly dishonored woman by circumstances,and by choice.I did it so that I should never be the same again.I could not marry that man.So I married shame,If I had left that room,and returned to Mrs.Talbots,and resumed my former existence,I know that by now I should be truly deadand be my own hand.What has kept me alive is my shame,my knowing that I am truly not like other women,I think I have a freedom they cannot understand.No insult,no blame,can touch me,because I have set myself beyond the pale.I am nothing,I am hardly human any more,and I am the French Lieutenants Whore.”,As we cited in the novel,Sarah,herself choose to be shame so that she can get freedom others can not understand.Because what she seeks to is the absolute freedom.,2025/1/12 周日,12,Sarahs second choice,the most important one,is that,she chooses Charles,.,Before meeting with Charles,Sarah gets involved in many rumors.Actually,Sarah is waiting,searching for something unconventional.After meeting with Charles,Sarah is enlightened.In her eyes,Charles is different from others.Sarah chooses to approach Charles actively rather than waiting for him,and she creates opportunities to meet Charles again and again,trying to seduce him.Sarah is confronted with her last choice in the last ending.,When Charles finds Sarah in London,she chooses to reject him,.She tells him there was a“falsehood”in their relationship from the beginning.Sarah rejects Charless proposal for two reasons.The first one is that she has long for“loneliness”more than she has previously imagined.“Marriage is perhaps the greatest institution of holding,and enjoying among human being”(Tony E.Jackson,1997:12).But Sarah does not want marriage,because“the way that it holds would ruin the pleasure that it seeks to guarantee”(12).Sarah tells Charles:,“I do not want to share my life,I wish to be what I am,not want a husband.must expect me to become in marriage,”(Fowles,1969:353).The second reason is that she is satisfied with her present life.,Her choices are the best explanation of an old saying“Life is precious and love more valuable;yet for the sake of freedom both can be sacrificed”.,2025/1/12 周日,13,2.2 The choice of Charles,In the novel,there occur several important occasions in the story for Charles to make a choice,each choice made by Charles in the development of the story is out of his own free will.It is his self-determining choices that put him to the road to existential freedom.,At first,already engaged to Ernestina,Charles is intrigued and attracted by this mysterious woman,Sarah.And then,he chooses to approach Sarah,to help her,to get in her trap willingly.,Another important choice in the story is that,he decides to break his engagement to Ernestina and goes for Sarah,.Following his meeting with Sarah and Charles realizes that Sarah is the only real thing in his life.Then Charles break his engagement to Ernestina.Charles accepts this and goes on searching for Sarah.,In the last ending,when Charles finds Sarah and asks Sarah to marry him,Sarah declares that she will never marry and resist his pleading.But Charles also rejects Sarahs suggestion of an unmarried friendship.This is his last choice on his road to freedom.It is his choice to end their relationship forever.Charles leaves alone,outcast,but independent.,2025/1/12 周日,14,3 Freedom in rebellion against Victorian conventionality,We see conservatism and hypocrisy feature the Victorian age,The story happened in Victorian golden period,It is an absurd,,,ugly and cold society,Under the heavy pressure of its hypocritical morality and conventionality,human being as individual is deprived of his own will and freedom.We find the theme of Existentialistic freedom in characters rebellion against Victorian conventionality.,2025/1/12 周日,15,3.1The rebellious behaviors of Sarah,Sarah is a symbol of what Was forbidden in the Victorian age,Sarah struggles for freedom and against social conventions,,,but what she really rises against is a deep-rooted male-dominated society,We know Victorian society is a male-dominated society,All the Victorian values are those of the male group,Lets first see how women are like in a male-dominant society,:,Women were often idealized as being pure,,,loving,,,kind and nurturing.They were also seen as being weak,,,childlike,,,and subject to all manners of illnesses.,Sarah condemns Victorian society before Charles like this:,I live among people the world tells me ale kind,,,pious,Christian people,And they seem to me crueler than the cruelest heaths,,,stupider than the stupidest animals.That life is without understanding,or compassion,That there are not spirits generous enough to understand what I have suffered and why I suffer-and that,,,whatever Sins I have committed,,,Sleep,When I wake,,,the nightmare right that I should suffer so much,My only happiness is when I island,,,begins,I feel cast on a desert it is not imprisoned,,,condemned,,,and I know not what crime it is for.”,2025/1/12 周日,16,3,.2The rebellious behaviors of Charles,While for Charles,,,he escapes from the puritanical atmosphere of Ernestina into the spontaneous world of Sarah,He changes his identity from a conformist to a rebel and gets the freedom that Sarah tries to promote to him,We see Victorians regards a happy marriage as all appropriate goals for all women.,Take Charles and Ernestina as an example,,,Charles marriage proposal to Ernestina is mainly connected with money,social convention and social status.He sees through the Victorian hypocritical concepts of marriage,He chooses to rebel against it in the way of being with the French Lieutenants Woman,,,who is a social outcast,,,and the embodiment of freedom,Thus Charles achieves his own love and freedom.Charles is unavoidably inclined to freedom,Indeed Charles decision to leave Ernestina and pursue Sarah is all indication of his understanding of freedom.He is finally abandoned by the society and becomes a deserted man.,2025/1/12 周日,17,4.1 The Authors Free Choices of the Narrative Structure,Existential views are embodied in the role of the author and narrator.Their freedoms are closely related to the narrative freedom of the novel.The Victorian novelists continue passing on the traditional narration by considering the author as the omniscient narrator who can arrange the characters fate according to his will.He creates a bearded man as an observer who invades into the novel.,1.The,Intrusive Narrator,In,the chapter 13,we can see the omniscient narration smashed:,“I do not know.The story I am telling is all imagination.These characters I create never exist out of my mind.We wish to create worlds as real as,but other than the world.”,.,2,The Independent Characters,He,believes that the authors responsibility is to free the characters from the text.,“,I would have you share my own sense that I do no fully control these creatures of my mind,any more than you control-however hard you try,.”,2025/1/12 周日,18,4.2The,Readers Free Choices of an Open Ending,It is said that The French Lieutenants woman is a novel that frees the readers and characters from the text.Whats more,the readers are entitled to take part in,the construction,of narrative.And the readers freedoms contribute to forming another kind of narrative,freedom.,In,the chapter 13,the narrator allows the protagonists to decide for their own subjectivities according to their personalities.He provides space for readers to select which ending they prefer,.,2025/1/12 周日,19,Conclusion,This paper,tries to analyze The French Lieutenants Woman from the perspective of existentialism and draw my findings:,First,of all,this novel tries to express Fowles“existential”views.For example,Fowles wants to show readers a kind of relative freedom,that is,when one pursues his freedom,he shall not affect others.,Secondly,the protagonists in the novel pursue different kinds of freedom.Sarah wants to get absolute freedom while Charles pursues relative freedom.,last but not least,Fowles puts the existential theories into the narrative structure by means of multiple endings and intrusive narrator.,2025/1/12 周日,20,Thank you!,2025/1/12 周日,21,2025/1/12 周日,22,
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