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chalkletters's review
challenging
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I first read The French Lieutenant’s Woman as part of my first year of an English Literature degree. My most vivid memory is reading it while isolating in my room the day after my new ‘friends’ had ditched me at a nightclub for the first time. And despite that, the book still made a positive impression! Thanks to The Tin Drum, I already knew I liked metafiction, but The French Lieutenant’s Woman was all that and more. Particularly, I want more books with a narrator who is explicitly from a different historical period than the main action of the novel!
The distance between the narrative voice and the characters allows John Fowles to write a completely different kind of historical fiction. The narrator comments on the Victorian era, drawing comparisons between it and the age in which the novel was written. As well as being informative and thought-provoking, this is often amusing, and definitely makes the novel stand out. John Fowles’ prose has moments of absolute beauty, without losing the transparency which makes The French Lieutenant’s Woman a fairly easy read.
Another metafictional element which is the choice not to give the reader access to Sarah Woodruff’s thoughts. Though most of the novel is told from Charles’ perspective, we do get to glimpse the inner lives of Ernestina, Sam and even Mary, but not Sarah. At times, this feels frustrating, but it’s effective at making Sarah by far the most interesting and most sympathetic character in the novel. It’s unusual to experience this much character development from the outside, which is just another thing which makes this novel extra special.
Like a lot of great novels, a reader can return to The French Lieutenant’s Woman over and over again, finding different things each time. It’s definitely one I’ll be keeping on my shelf.
Content Warnings
Minor: Classism, Pregnancy, Blood, Infidelity, and Suicidal thoughts
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