Introduction

John Fowles The French Lieutenants Woman is regarded as a compelling historiographic metafiction in contemporary British literature. The interweaving of This

historical and literary sources of Victorian Era is characteristic of the novel.

intertextuality reinforces the historical verisimilitudinous connection with Victorian Age, and simultaneously it materializes Fowless constant conversation with other forms of literature and the Victorian world. Nevertheless, with self-consciousness about the form of fiction and the intrusion of modern novelist-surrogate that interrupts the coherence of narrative, the illusion of Victorian historical reality is disrupted. Such paradoxes of fictionality/reality and

the present/the past in the novel demonstrate Fowles breakthrough in the traditional literary narrative. Moreover, within the historiographic metafictional structure, Fowles employs the parody of Victorian romance an imitation with critical difference to reconstruct the Victorian world, to subvert the traditional fixed denouement and to create a unique woman of emancipation. By employing the historical works in Victorian women studies as my methodology, this thesis is an attempt to discuss John Fowles critique of Victorian sexual hypocrisy and female sexual oppression as well as the process of Sarah Woodruffs pursuit of subjectivity within the narrative of historiographic metafiction. In the first chapter, I analyze the structure of the novel in terms of metafictional theory and Linda Hutcheons concepts of historiographic metafiction. The focus of my discussion is on the function of this experimental narrative.

Within the frame of historiographic metafiction, I draw forth the Victorian problematics on female sexuality. Chapter two examines the Victorian concepts of female hysteria and its

relation to insanity. I employ the Victorian psychological theory of associationism to elaborate Dr. Grogans interpretations of Sarah as a cunning schemer. In terms of Michel

Foucaults discourse on the development of medicine in The Birth of Clinic, Dr. Grogans
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diagnosis of Sarah shows the influence of sexual morality.

His dogmatic interpretation

manifests the fallacy of patriarchal version on female hysteria and phallocentric demonization of female sexuality. Chapter three explores the cultural legacy of virgin fetishism. From

the cult of virgin, I examine the powers disciplining the virginal body with Michel Foucaults discourse in The Docile Body in Discipline and Punishment and Kate Milletts concepts in Theory of Sexual Politics. Moreover, in order to expose Victorian sexual hypocrisy, the

history of Victorian prostitution is introduced. From feminist perspectives, Sarah, as an impenetratable enigma to Victorian patriarchal society, struggles from the stringent sexual regulations and successfully shatters the dichotomy of virgin and whore. Her achievement

of subjectivity in the final second ending by refusing the imprisonment of marriage is the significant element that I consider her as a New Woman. In The French Lieutenants Woman, the dual epigraphs in each chapter, the footnotes and the Victorian medical and sociological documents are the instrument that Fowles employs to respond to the Victorian past. Through the play of intertextuality of Victorian social and

literary sources that are applied to make Victorian historical connection with the Victorian social milieu, the illusion of verisimilitudinous historical reality is produced. However, the

intrusion of novelist-narrator with the perceptions of the twentieth century disrupts this illusion of historical reality. Through the perspectives of modern novelist-surrogate, the present is blended into the Victorian historical past. Such an experimental and complex

narrative of paradoxes functions to foreground Fowles critique of social and sexual rigidity in Victorian society. The paradoxes of fictionality/reality and the present/the past constitute not only the structure of novel but also the appearance of Sarah Woodruff. well as appears in the real life. Sarah exists in the novel as

According to John Fowles Notes on an Unfinished Novel,

the writing of The French Lieutenants Woman arises from the fact that he was haunted by a recurring image of a mysterious woman, standing motionlessly on the end of a quay and
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starring out to the sea (161-2).

Sarah in 1867 England is thus the materialization of Being Fowless Muse in this

Fowless haunting mysterious woman of the twentieth century.

novel, she can be seen as another presentation of his interweaving of the present into the Victorian past. The characterization of Sarah accentuates the theme of emancipation in The French Lieutenants Woman. The purpose to criticize to Victorian sexual inequality is accompanied In this parodic writing

with the employment of parody of Victorian literary conventions.

form, Fowles expresses his belief in freedom through characterizing Sarah as a fallen woman, contrary to a virtuous heroine in Victorian traditional novel. The miserable endings of impure heroine, such as death or insanity, are modified. Far from being the victim of

patriarchal sexual regulations and the suffer of female hysteria, Sarah reappears in 1869, the year of John Stuart Mills publication of The Subjection of Woman, in a complete different image as a New Woman. She asserts the finding of her true happiness and the achievement

of her selfhood in the house of Pre-Raphaelites. Moreover, Fowles discards the Victorian literary convention of a fixed consummate ending in a romance. The three denouements are

presented by narrators interruption to the reader who has the freedom to choose. However, critics like Gwen Raaberg tend to see Sarah as only a catalyst of Charless transformation throughout the novel (524). Thomas C. Foster points out that Sarah

functions to push other characters to action and Magali Cornier Michael views Sarah as an object in Fowless narrative (69, 226). She exists without subjectivity. I argue for Sarahs subjecthood, since she is the activator of all actions in the novel and the creator of her fabrication. She creates her story with self-conscious determination and likewise destroys her creation in the end. Through the process of fabricating, Sarah can claim her subjectivity and secure her identity. From the perspectives of Margaret Bozenna Goscilo, the achievement of Sarahs subjectivity disperses in the closing chapters as a model in the household of Dante Rossetti,
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because it is the representation of inveterate patriarchal gender dichotomy of male artist and female object (64). His critique of Sarah falling into the trap of being gazed ignores her progress of struggling for social and sexual emancipation. Though Goscilos perspective is partially true, I claim Sarahs ending placement in Re-Raphaelite circle has the epochal significance. She ultimately liberates herself from the patriarchal sexual and social

dominance over Victorian women who are fettered by the duty of sexual purity, the doctrines for being a feminine ideal and the virgin/whore dichotomy. Hence, from the feminist perspectives, the debate as to whether Sarah eventually liberates herself from phallocentric controls and whether she achieves her subjectivity is the objective in this thesis. I combine the discussion of two final endings with Fowless belief in existentialism excerpted from Thomas C. Fosters Understanding John Fowles. Fowless

freedom given to Sarah is elucidated in Sarahs employment of a strategy to be stigmatized as a fallen woman in terms of her loss of virginity. Chapter One examines the structure of novel: the historiographic metafiction and the parody of Victorian romance. In The French Lieutenants Woman, Fowles shows his

innovation in narrative: the intrusion of modern novelist-surrogate to criticize the omniscient role of Victorian novelist, the play of intertextuality by interweaving the past texts to construct his new Victorian world and his rewriting of Victorian fallen womans ending to respond to his faith in human sexual emancipation. I argue that these features show

Fowless breakthrough in writing a novel and at the same time reveals his critique of Victorian sexual suffocation on the emancipation and autonomy of female sexuality. Metafiction is a type of fiction about fiction itself. It self-consciously addresses the

devices of constructing fictions and points out the paradoxical relationship of fictionality to reality. Patricia Waugh in Metafiction specifically defines metafiction as a literary term

given to the fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between the fiction and reality
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(2).

In John Fowles The French Lieutenants Woman, the self-consciousness is reflected in

the process of writing the novel. The God-like image of Victorian writers is criticized through the novelist-surrogates meditation on the freedom of characters and the freedom outside the fiction. In the process of writing, writers omniscient role is deconstructed by the declaration of freedom in the novel: There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedom to exist (The French Lieutenants Woman 99). This is the principle that the Characters are not fully

novelist-surrogate or Fowles conforms to in writing this novel.

under the novelists control and the novelist-surrogate in the novel cant do whatever he likes. He no longer stands in an all-knowing position to command the characters. Characters possess the freedom of choice and autonomy. The self-consciousness shown in the writing process also responds to the blending of fictionality and reality in the novel. The demarcation between fictionality and reality is

blurred by the intrusion of self-conscious novelist-narrator. He appears in Chapter Thirteen to elaborate that the blurring of fictionality and reality exists in the fiction the interspersion of Victorian historical events and literary texts in the novel and possibly outside the literary fictional text. The human realistic life is composed of fictionality, since Fiction is woven As Sarah fabricates her story, the

into all (The French Lieutenants Woman 99).

novelist-narrator claims that the modern readers constantly fictionalize their life, blending the reality and the fictionality. human life. Deploying the texts of Victorian past characterizes The French Lieutenants Woman as a historiographic metafiction, a literary term coined by Linda Hutcheon. Hutcheon defines The paradoxical fictionality of reality can be explored in the

that the works of historiographic metafiction arethose well-known and popular novels which are both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages (A Poetics 5). In The French Lieutenants Woman, Fowless employment of
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Victorian historical texts is shown in the play of intertextuality.

The dual epigraphs in the

beginning of each chapter, one form of intertextuality, not only function as reinforcement for the Victorian milieu but also present Fowless constant conversations with Victorian Age. Through the intertextuality of Victorian texts, the themes of freedom and female sexual emancipation are accentuated. From an overview, the dual epigraph can be classified into categories: the medical documentaries, sociological studies/statistics, and contemporary poems and prose of Victorian Age. The social and sexual problematics of Victorian era are extensively laid bare

through the epigraphs. In Chapter Thirteen-Five and Thirteen-Nine, the sociological studies display the Victorian social problem of prostitution and sexual double standard. Fourteen, A. H. Cloughs poem Duty shows the dogma of duty. In Chapter

The doctrine of duty

fundamentally constitutes and encompasses the Victorian social and sexual regulations. Moreover, among the epigraphs throughout the novel, the epigraph quoted from Karl Marxs Zur Judenfrage not only begins the novel, but also highlights the theme of the novel Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationship to man himself. Fowles significantly employs this epigraph to reveal his faith in existential freedom and human emancipation. Fowles represents the Victorian world in a postmodern way by means of the play of intertextuality. He open[s] it [Victorian world] up to the present (A Poetics 110).

Tagging along with the novelist-surrogate back and forth between the nineteenth and twentieth-century, Fowles rewrites the Victorian world to criticize the most tyrannical part of Victorian society the severe constraints over personal sexuality. Although the Victorian

lived with the theory of evolution, sexual liberty remains stagnant. As Michel Foucault argues in We other Victorians in History of Sexuality, the attitude of frankness and openness toward sexual matters at the beginning of the seventeenth century did not last to the nineteenth century. On the contrary, the Victorian prudish and hypocritical standpoints of
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sexuality still dominates us even today (3). Since Fowles is aware of Victorian opaque description of sexuality in the literary conventions, he self-consciously challenges it during the act of writing the fiction. The

descriptions of the male debauched behaviors in London brothels show Fowless critique of sexual hypocrisy. At the same time, he argues that the Victorians are highly sexed as us of It is unlikely to completely

the twentieth century, despite the stringent sexual regulations. deter the spontaneity of human sexual desire.

His belief in the spontaneity of human

sexuality is presented in the direct delineation of the scenes when Charles and Sarah have sex. Among the characters throughout the novel, Sarah is the only one who doesnt let herself be confined to the sexual regulations. Employing the strategy of being stigmatized as a French Lieutenants whore, she can be on the journey to pursue her subjectivity. Through Fowless characterization of Sarah Woodruff as a sexual rebel and social outcast, the Victorian sexual problematics are uncovered: inhuman sexual repression, sexual hypocrisy, and the fetishism of virginity. The Victorian patriarchal sexual dominance over female

sexuality is exposed to the readers and should be questioned. Chapter Two briefly sketches the history of hysteria from the ancient time to Victorian Age and explores the psychological theory of associationism by which Dr. Grogan employs to diagnose Sarah. This chapter mainly investigates the patriarchal demonization of female Sarahs

hysteria and moral dominance in the history of Victorian medical development.

resistance to the medical control over female sexuality dismantles Fowless critique of Victorian phallocentric medical dogmatism. The word hysteria derives from the Greek word for uterus hystera (Micale 19). This etymology shows the fact that the hysteria has been linked to woman since the ancient time. On the Egyptian medical papyrus, the movement of the uterus in adult women causes

a series of behavioral disturbance. Ancient Roman physicians associate hysteria exclusively

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with the female generative system and believe that the cause of the hysterical disorder is the disease of the womb. Moreover, the association of hysteria with the sexual repression has Greeks embroider upon the connections, only implicit in

been hypothesized ever since.

Egyptian texts, between hysteria and unsatisfactory sexual life (Micale 19). The Victorian understanding of hysteria and pathological diagnosis therefore is grounded in these medical legacies. Victorian women suffering hysteria are blamed for their inability to properly restrict the sexual desire. The discourse that the hysterical woman is sexually abnormal and insane is thus developed. Such cognition strengthens the patriarchal domination over female sexual disciplines. However, the Victorian medical perspectives

that impute sexual repression to the main cause of female hysteria expose stringent sexual regulations of female sexuality. Sexual repression is the doctrine for a feminine ideal but

simultaneously it increases the amounts of hysterical women. Accordingly, the patriarchal sexual morality should be subsumed in the discussion of the causes of the aggravation of female hysteria. Victorian physicians elaborate the relationship between female hysteria and mental disorder. The Victorian medical theory assumes that female sexual repression leads to The extravagant emotional

female hysteria which then causes the mental instability. behaviors results in the insanity of female hysterics.

Besides, the medical perspectives that

female hysteria leads to excessive emotional behaviors are combined with contemporary psychological analysis: associationism the study of the working of human disturbed mind. Grogans analysis of Sarahs malicious intrigue to draw Charless sympathy manifests the theory of associationism. He diagnoses that Sarahs mental disorder generates her eccentric

behaviors and results in her insanity. Female insanity is regarded as an unknown darkness of humanity. It has the

destructive and threatening power for the Victorian patriarchal order. The common destiny of insane women in Victorian literary works is death or the commitment of lunatic asylum.
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From the Victorian medical perspectives and psychological associationism on female hysteria, Sarahs sexual transgression and her addiction to obscure melancholia are the result of imbalance between her mind and body. also categorized as a madwoman. treatment for her. However, Dr. Grogans perspectives and diagnosis should be queried. By examining Dr. Grogans interpretations of Sarah hysterical symptoms, the diagnosis of hysterical women shows the patriarchal dogmatic version and female sexual predicaments. The intertextuality She is not only stigmatized as a fallen woman but

Hence, the lunatic asylum is prescribed as the best

of Victorian medical perspectives on female hysteria the trial of Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere exposes the demonization of female hysteria and sexuality. In the footnote The

Fowles indicates the truth is that Marie de Morell is not the only person blamed for. event does not merely result from Morells hysterical symptoms.

Instead, it is the

patriarchal medical domination that arbitrarily attributes the hysteria to Morells revenge and that concludes her hysterical perturbations forcing her to bring an accusation against Emile de La Ronciere. Ironically, Dr. Grogan, as an intellectual of medical specialty, seems to ignore

the truth of this trial on purpose. His patriarchal dogmatism leads him to make such an improper association between Sarah and Marie de Morell. From Dr. Grogans diagnosis of Sarah, the moral domination in the history of Victorian medical development can be perceived. In the Birth of Clinic, As Michael Foucault argues, the medicine developed its history towards the pursuit of truth of illness and disease (Smart 29). The Victorian medicine does not shut itself from the moral influence. On the contrary,

it conspires with sexual morality.

The patriarchal sexual ethics and prejudices against

female sexuality construct the theory of female hysteria and mental illness. That Sarah is medically misunderstood as a hysterical woman is Fowless strategy to expose the limitation of Victorian medical knowledge of female hysteria. Sarahs

reappearance with a new image as a New Woman at the end of the novel discredits Dr.
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Grogans medical authority.

As being stigmatized as a French Lieutenants Whore and

being medically misconceived as a hysteric, Sarah possesses the freedom in choosing her identifies, the materialization of Fowless faith in freedom. In Chapter Three, I explore the cultural legacy of virgin fetishism and the powers that manipulate the formation of virginal body the manifestation of body politics. Contrastive

to the feminine icon of virgin, the history of Victorian prostitution is introduced and at the same time discloses the Victorian sexual hypocrisy. Predicated on the feminist perspectives,

this chapter examines Sarahs struggle from the Victorian social and sexual constraints in terms of open denouements. Appearing as a fallen woman, a sexual rebel, in the beginning

of the novel and reappearing as a New Woman at the end, Sarah shatters the dichotomy of virgin and whore. The legacy of virginity, traced back to Queen Elizabeth as a virgin Queen, is highly intensified when young Queen Victoria came to the throne. innocent and graceful. At that time, she was young,

The image of her girlhood combined with her queenly person

strengthens the social value of female chastity and reinforces the sociosymbolic image of virgin. Queen Victorias natural body consequently is transformed into the body politic. By virtue of

Her virginity exerts great influence on the formation of female sexual purity.

following Queen Victoria as a sexually pure icon, the maintenance of virginity thus becomes the prominent duty in the sexual regulations of Victorian women. Victorian women are educated that the virginity is the duty, though in fact virginal body is socially constructed as a cultural icon, not a natural attribute to female. In terms of This

Foucaults discourse in A Docile Body, the body is under strict control of powers. power system contains the obligations and prohibitions (137).

Victorian sexual regulations

stringently demand female virginal body, whereas the loss of virginity is deemed as the grave transgression of female sexual morality. In this respect, female body thus is trained and Moreover, the obligation of

manipulated to be a docile one to obey the sexual regulations.

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virginity reduces female sexuality into the only procreative function. The discourses that women dont have any sexual desire and virginity is obligatory are constructed in this patriarchal power system of obligations and prohibitions. The contrastive figure to virgin is whore. Victorians attach great importance to

virginity, but the business of prostitution ironically flourishes. The historical statistics show that the prostitutes had increased sharply in number in Victorian Age. The essential reason that the prostitution had been growing is voracious demand. The discourse that male active

sexual nature needs a duct to be vented prompts the flourishing of prostitution, whereas woman is educated that sexual intercourse is not pleasurable and only has the procreative function. Such a phallocentric doctrine rationalizes male demand for prostitutes and

uncovers the sexual hypocrisy. Kate Millett argues that symbols described to woman are not created by woman but man (46). The dichotomy of virgin and whore is an instrument employed by patriarchal society

to classify women, and the image of whore is applied to a woman who is condemned for her sexual transgression in Victorian Age. sexual politics. This pattern hence manifests Milletts concepts of Sarah

It restrains female pursuit of sexual emancipation and autonomy.

Woodruff, however, doesnt have herself subjected to the dichotomy of virgin and whore. Having herself stigmatized as The French Lieutenants Whore, Sarah is empowered the freedom to initiate the journey of quest for subjectivity by herself. She is a virgin but disguises herself as a whore. Shattering the dichotomy of virgin and whore and revolting

the sexual burdens constructed by Victorian patriarchal society, she transforms herself from a fallen woman to a New Woman. From the feminist perspectives, the final second ending is tenable for Sarahs rebirth as a New Woman. Being a model in the house of Pre-Raphaelites and her refusal of the bondage She breaks

of marriage are the significant factors that make Sarah a veritable New Woman.

away from patriarchal dominant ideology that the domesticity is womans nature and the
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roles as a mother and wife are the natural duty they should fulfill. More importantly, in this ending she is no longer the woman who marries shame, but a unique emancipator possessing her selfhood. Through the play of intertextuality within the narrative of historiographic metafiction, the issues related to female sexuality are extensively drawn forth and the historical Victorian world is presented to readers of the twentieth century. Fowless innovative narrative lies in

his creation of a modern novelist-surrogate. With the appearance of the novelist-surrogate in the novel, Fowles responds to Victorian past with the twentieth-century perceptions and at the same time reveals his critique of Victorian sexual rigidity that obstructs the pursuit of existential self. Throughout the novel, Fowles creates Sarah as an active role in the process of her pursuit of selfhood. Instead of being pinned down in patriarchal frame of Victorian sexual As

regulations, she is the leading role that initiates all the actions of other characters.

Fowles empowers the reader the freedom to choose the ending, Sarah realizes her autonomy on the process of creation. She constructs her life with the blending of impurity and purity,

fictionality and reality. Her fabrication of losing virginity proves the fictionality of every reality. Being a woman of unpredictability and contradiction, she dissolves the dichotomy Her quest for the achievement of subjectivity underscores Fowless

of virgin and whore.

faith in emancipation, the main theme in The French Lieutenants Woman.

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Chapter One The Critique of Victorian sexuality

In The French Lieutenants Woman, John Fowles makes an innovation in narrative: the intertextuality of Victorian texts from the historical and literary sources, the shift of narrative perspectives between the nineteenth and the twentieth century, the subversion of Victorian literary conventions and the open endings. of novel. These features constitute the narrative structure

The play of intertextuality creates the illusion of historical reality of Victorian Age

and responds to the concepts of historiographic metafiction, a literary term coined by Linda Hutcheon a postmodern self-reflective and paradoxical work with its claim to historical reality. Readers, therefore, engage themselves in the verisimilitudinous account of Victorian

romance. However, the shift of viewpoints from the nineteenth to the twentieth century shows the blurring of present and past and simultaneously causes the destruction of illusion of historical reality. When the twentieth-century novelist-surrogate appears as a character to

express his discourse, the frame of Victorian historical reality is shattered. This disruption of historical reality reveals the comments of the twentieth century upon the Victorian Age. Moreover, throughout the novel, the intertextuality functions as not only the connection with the Victorian history but also the device that Fowles employs to have conversations with Victorian world. The play of intertextuality exposes Victorian patriarchal ideology of

female sexuality as well as Victorian sexual inequality and thereby produces room to criticize and question it. The novel discloses the paradox of fictionality and reality in terms of Sarahs fabrication of losing virginity. in human life. The novelist-surrogate claims that such paradoxical fictionality prevails

As the life of humans in the real world contains the element of fictionality, The

Sarah possesses the same freedom to fictionalize and create the life of her own.

creation of Sarahs fictional story displays the paradoxical pattern: the fictionality of reality.
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Through such a creation, she not only asserts her autonomy but also deconstructs the omniscience of Victorian novelists. Moreover, this novel is likewise a response to the realization of the paradox a fictional world with reliance on documentary realism and social realities. Within this narrative structure, Fowles construct a fictional reality to reveal his critique of Victorian sexual inequality between sexes. Human emancipation is Fowles main concern within the narrative of historiographic metafiction. Fowles criticizes the problematics of Victorian sexuality, particularly the

sexual hypocrisy and patriarchal domination over female quest for sexual autonomy through the intertextuality of Victorian sociological and literary sources. With the parody of

Victorian romance and his characterization of Sarah Woodruff as a social outcast as well as a unique female emancipator, he achieves a narrative breakthrough in rewriting the Victorian novel. Historiographical Metafictional Structure Metafiction is a type of fiction about fiction itself that prevails in 1960s. In Patricia

Waughs Metafiction, metafiction is a postmodern work with self-consciousness about its language, literary form and the act of writing fictions in order to pose questions about the relationship between the fiction and reality (2). It self-consciously addresses the devices of constructing fictions and points out the paradoxical relationship of fiction to reality. Throughout The French Lieutenants Woman, the novelist-surrogate shows his keen self-awareness during the writing process. In Chapter Thirteen, the novelist-surrogate

suddenly appears and interrupts the storyline to express his belief in writing: freedom given to all his characters. He self-consciously questions the demand of omniscient novelist role

and a closed ending in traditional Victorian novels. Fowless employment of a self-conscious novelist-narrator is a response to what Waugh defines The French Lieutenants Woman as a metafiction for not only its self-reflexivity in the writing process but also the use of omniscient author in traditional Victorian literary
14

conventions (4).

The role of an omniscient novelist in The French Lieutenants Woman The novel imitates the omniscient role of

contrasts with the traditional Victorian one.

Victorian novelist to cause the effect of parody, and self-reflectively criticizes the Victorian novelists infinite awareness of his character, since the authors in Victorian literary works always stand omniscient to decree the actions of characters and analyze the minds of their characters. Contrarily, in this novel the God-like image of Victorian writers is criticized with novelist-surrogates self-critical tendency. The novelist-surrogate claims that he does not write the novel by stand[ing] next to God, or pretend to know the minds and the innermost thoughts of his characters in order to create a fictional world conventionally accepted at the time of novel. For the novelist-narrator, the role of author is no longer Instead, freedom becomes the essential principle in

omniscient in metafictive narrative. writing.

True freedom is the freedom that allows other freedom to exist (The French In this regard, the characters are not entirely under the

Lieutenants Woman 97, 99).

novelists control and therefore are given the freedom to choose their ways and decide their own destinies. The novelist-surrogate does not request a thorough analysis of characters motives and intentions, since possibility is not permissibility. their refusal of creators domination. The freedom of his characters lies in

Through the awareness of freedom, a number of

possible situations can be arisen. One given freedom is manifested in the scene when Charles left Sarah on Ware Commons, I [novelist-surrogate] ordered him [Charles] to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. But he did not; he gratuitously turned and went down to the As the novelist-surrogate declares, authors do

Dairy (The French Lieutenants Woman 98).

not have authority to completely manipulate characters volition. If he wishes his characters to be real, he must give them freedom and respect their autonomy. Accordingly, the novelist-surrogate realizes that in the content of his books reality, Sarah is not a character who obeys authors manipulation. That is the reason why he
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discards his original intention to entitle Chapter Thirteen unfolding of Sarahs true state of mind (The French Lieutenants Woman 97). thoughts be revealed. He follows Sarahs rejection to let her

If Sarah showed her obedience to what the novelist-surrogate plans

and her true intentions were disclosed, it would not only violate his faith in freedom but also the autonomy that characters possess. Only when the characters begin to disobey authors do they begin to live. Characters freedom is associated with novelist-surrogates self-conscious writing. For the novelist-surrogate, the purpose of writing is to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. A world fully revealing its planning is a dead world (The French If characters follow the strings that creators manipulate, the world

Lieutenants Woman 98).

that characters exist is not the real world. This world would fall into the domination of the omniscient author and be in conflict with the novelist-surrogates faith in writing. Since the

world of reality is an organism, it is a live world of any possibility. Hence, the closed denouement in Victorian literary conventions is manifestation of a dead plan. On the

contrary, the multiple endings in The French Lieutenants Woman reveal the fact that the real world is full of possibilities and fluctuations. The world that the novelist-surrogate attempts to create is contradictory to the one that Charles resides in: the rigid Victorian society. Even though the novelist-surrogate claims his respect for Charless freedom to disobey his plots, Charles is still caught in a stagnant world before his achievement of selfhood that is stimulated by Sarah. huge constraints from the Victorian patriarchal system. He is impotent to resist the

As a Victorian baron, there are

duties he must fulfill. Marriage is the most important one. He decides to choose a wife, not because he has higher yearnings about marriage. Instead it is time to associate a

woman with his life. His surrender to the Victorian duty, the fulfillment of marriage with Ernestina, is conformity to the Victorian status quo. As his imagination of getting married

with Ernestina comes into her mind, he felt himself coming to the end of a story (The
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French Lieutenants Woman 327). In contrast to Charless yielding to the rigid society, Sarah refuses to be disciplined by Victorian patriarchal policing system of sexual regulations. She struggles to liberate herself with the image of whore. Her freedom consists in her choosing to resist the Victorian By the means of fabricating the loss of

constraints on female pursuit of sexual autonomy.

virginity to Vagueness, Sarah rebels the Victorian ideal femininity and refuses to be marginalized as a fallen woman. Sarahs fabrication of losing virginity manifests the paradox of fictionality and reality in human life. As the novelist-surrogate argues, the blending of fictionality and reality exists This paradox fictionality/

not only in the fiction, but also possibly outside the fictional text.

reality shows in the modern life: You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it fictionalize it. The human

realistic life is composed of fictionality, since Fiction is woven into all (The French Lieutenants Woman 99). Novelist-narrators statement explicitly discloses the paradox that

Fowles explores in the novel: the blending of fictionality and reality. He creates a fiction within a narrative of Victorian historical reality. This historical reality is established by its interweaving of Victorian historical and literary sources. Inside this historical reality and the fictional world does include fictionality: Sarahs fabrication of her sexual stigma. Moreover, in the novel, Sarah is a character that Fowles presents in the form of disguise, namely, the fallen woman. Because of Sarahs role-playing of a stigmatized woman, the In the process of role

fictionality of reality in human life is simultaneously achieved.

playing, Sarah is aware of her fiction-making acts, as modern people is conscious of the fictionality of their life. However, the public at Lyme Regis and Dr. Grogan have believed

that Sarahs tragic past is a reality and so do Charles before the closing chapters. They are not aware of this paradox. Only Sarah knows that paradoxically her loss of virginity is a fictional reality. Thus, Sarahs fictional story manifests the blurring of fictionality and
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reality and materializes the paradoxical pattern: fictionality of reality in real life. The fictionalization of Sarahs sexual predicaments shows another significant metafictive device in the novel: a work of fiction within a fiction. Sarahs fabrication of Her

losing virginity is a work of fiction within a fictional framework of Victorian romance.

fictional story draws forth Linda Hutcheons analysis of novel structure. Hutcheon argues that the novel presents a Chinese-box narrative structure. The core world is the novelist universe of characters. Outside and including it is the world where the narrator-persona exists and enters the core at times. The third is the diegetic world of narrator-surrogate.

Beyond that stands John Fowles who creates this Chinese-box and deploys the interactions of these worlds (Narcissistic Narrative 57). Inside the core world of Chinese-box structure Her fiction not only has the

does contain Sarahs fictionalization of her sexual misery.

function to complicate the main plot and the Chinese-box structure narrative, but also draws forth the plight that Victorian women strive for sexual emancipation. structure shows the multiple frames in the novel. The Chinese-box

As the novelist-surrogate appears as a The novelist-surrogate

character in the core world, the effect of frame-breaking is produced.

becomes the teller of the novel. Likewise, Sarah creates a fiction of her disgraceful past and thus is the inventor. Sarahs story is contained in the fictional world of characters. Reader

can explore each layer of the Chinese-box structure in the novel. The deployment of intertextuality from Victorian past texts encompassed in the diegetic world of narrator-surrogate is a technique that characterizes The French Lieutenants Woman as a historiographic metafiction. In terms of Linda Hutcheons concepts of historiographic metafiction in A Poetics of Postmodernism, the historiographic metafiction is a novel which is intensely self-reflective and paradoxical. Such novels install and then blur the line

between fiction and history and claim to historical events and personages (113). Paradoxically, since history can be fictional and fiction can be veracity, there is no definite line between history and fiction. In The French Lieutenants Woman, the distinction
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between history and fiction is blurred through Fowless play of intertextuality of past texts and thus a verisimilitude of Victorian historical reality is created. When the

novelist-surrogate intrudes into the storyline to claim the paradoxical pattern imaginary/real in his novel, the fictiveness of Victorian historical reality is exposed. Although readers are aware of the paradoxical blending of fictive/real, they are willing to make themselves immersed in verisimilitudinous Victorian history with suspension of disbelief. Moreover, deploying the texts of the past within their own complex textuality is the implied teaching of historiographic metafiction (Historiographic Metafiction 105). In The French Lieutenants Woman, the novelist-surrogate self-consciously accentuates the crucial historical events and the historical background of the novel within the metafictive narrative. The linking with the historical past is significantly presented in the historical year 1867 of the novel. 1867, eight years after the publication of Charles Darwins The Origin of Species, is the date we can trace the beginning of feminine emancipation in England. Simultaneously, The

1867 is the year of publication of the first volume of Karl Marxs Kapital in Hamburg.

book suggests the inkling of internal intension between classes. Two years after 1867, the publication of John Stuart Mills The Subjection of Woman and the first residential college for woman, Girton College, show readers that the collapse of social inequality between sexes is quietly occurring. Female inferiority in social and sexual aspects begins to draw the public

attention. These remarkable social progresses are an affront to the Victorian conventional views on the social status of men and women and are in favor of equality between sexes. The references to these historical events and personages in the novel imply the instabilities latent in Victorian society. gradually begin to collapse. The seeming stabilities in social and political aspects

Briefly appearing as a character in the novel, the

novelist-surrogate attempts to shift the reader back and forth between the nineteenth and the twentieth century to disclose the revolutionary possibilities in the last decades of Victorian Age. As Charles Scruggs argues, on the surface the society remains stable, but contains
19

within it new energies and ideas that will tear it apart.

Much as the sea erodes the inbite

of Lyme Bay, the Victorian world is being eaten away from within (98). Darwins explanation of human evolution shakes the dominant position that the theology has ever taken and becomes a leading scientific theory at that time. Darwins concepts of natural selection

are underscored, when Fowles concerns the evolution of social class and the species of gentleman. The most significant social progress, as the narrator-surrogate indicates, is that In

gentleman becomes a dying species in 1867 when Charles is pessimistic about his life.

addition, the Victorian collapsed social hierarchy is revealed by relating the histories of the characters subsequent lives: Mary, Mrs. Tranters maid, has a celebrated

great-great-granddaughter who is an English film actress known over the entire world when Fowles is writing the novel. The Dual Epigraph The concern with the historical past underlies the social context of the novel. By means of intertextuality, not only Fowless critique of Victorian repression with respect to female sexuality is dismantled but his responses to literary conventions are shown. Fowles

imitates a Victorian romance, but characterizes his heroine as a fallen woman to produce the effect of parody. Thus, readers receive and revise his/her preconceptions based on Victorian

literary conventions. In addition to the historical year of the novel, Fowless innovative strategy of dual epigraphs strengthens the narrative involvement with the Victorian milieu. The

contemporary milieu of Victorian world, such as the sexual repression and the doctrine of duty, is unfolded before readers eyes through epigraphs. Through deploying the text of past

within this metafictional narrative, Fowles re-writes and re-presents the Victorian world in a postmodern context. He open[s] it up to the present, to the reader demanded both Tagging along with the

detachment and involvement in the story (Hutcheon 110).

novelist-surrogate back and forth between the nineteenth and the twentieth-century, the new
20

context is likewise established. Historiographic metafiction is a postmodern art form with a reliance on textual play, parody and historical reconceptualization. Through the use of Victorian parody and the dual epigraph, constructed as the framework of this postmodern novel, the Victorian issues related to female sexuality are drawn forth. As Fred Kaplan comments, the novel imitate[s] the

Victorian proclivity for incorporating historical and sociological generalization into the fabric of fictions, amplifying the dimensions of the novelists interests, creating a fiction that is almost encyclopedic in its absorption of all aspects of culture, including the follies of clothing styles, the stringent sexual codes and the contemporary scientific knowledge of Darwinism (qtd. in Holmes 210). The epigraphs can be generally classified into categories: the medical documentaries, sociological studies and contemporary works of literature in Victorian age. Among the

epigraphs throughout the novel, the significant epigraph quoted from Karl Marxs Zur Judenfrage discloses the main theme of existential freedom and human emancipation that Fowles concerns with: Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to man himself. Owing to the industrialization, Victorian period is a So One

time of improvement, transformation and progress. It was such an age of change. many orders beginning to melt and dissolve (The French Lieutenants Woman 317).

dramatic change is that the social stratification encounters the fracture, resulting in the social mobility. The social mobility presents one form of emancipation from the hierarchy of social class. By means of the engagement in commerce, the elevation to the position of the bourgeoisie and being rich become achievable. The connection with the nobility is

consequently possible. Ernestina Freeman, a daughter of a wealthy draper and engaged with Charles Smithson, a baron, demonstrates the social mobility. Similarly, Charless butler

Sam has been trying any means to get rising in Victorian social class. Sams betrayal is portended by the epigraph of this chapter: I keep but a man and a maid, ever ready to slander
21

and steal (The French Lieutenants Woman 353).

He has his dream come true in the end of

story by betraying Charles and then engages in commerce in Mr. Freemans drapery. Though this epigraph has the implication of sarcasm, Sams attempt to reach a higher social class obviously manifests a social change in the last decades of Victorian Age. However, although the social hierarchy of rigid Victorian system has been changed because of the flourishing commerce, it is still tyrannical concerning most fundamental part of human life the strict constraints over personal sexuality (The French Lieutenants Woman 259). Fowles indicates that Victorian Age is a time of contradictions: an age that

regards woman as sacred and spiritual, but a girl can be purchased at low price; that the sensual description of the literary productions never goes beyond a kiss, but the output of pornography has never been exceeded. Against such a period of contradiction and transition,

Fowles concern with human emancipation and the Victorian sexual hypocrisy are accentuated. Some epigraphs in dual form function to disclose the issues related to Victorian society. Fowles employ A.H. Cloughs pomes in the novel. A.H. Clough is regarded as one of the

most forward-looking poets of the 19th century, due to his frank attitudes towards sexuality. His poetry exhibits his opposition to the contemporary social decorum. In this regard, some

of his poems cited as epigraphs can reflect Fowles critique of Victorian social rigidity and sexual restraints over female sexuality. In Chapter Eleven, his poem Duty shows the

dogma of duty: With the form conforming duly/ Senseless what it meaneth truly /Go to church the world require you /To balls the world require you too /And marry papa and mama desire you /And your sisters and schoolfellows do. This epigraph responds to the one in Chapter Forty-four: Duty thats to say complying /With whaters expected here / With the form conforming duly, /Senseless what it meaneth truly (The French Lieutenants Woman 76, 322). The doctrine of duty fundamentally constitutes the Victorian Duty, like a shackle, encompasses and monitors the
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social decorum and sexual regulations.

daily life of Victorians. The first consummate ending between Charles and Ernestina which obeys the Victorian literary convention is such a practice of marriage duty. However,

through these two epigraphs, Fowles criticizes the stringent sexual and social constraints under the domain of duty. Consequently, he discards the first thoroughly traditional ending.

Owing to Cloughs frankness towards sexuality, again Fowles cites Cloughs poem to show the ultimate explosion of affection and sexual desire between Charles and Sarah in Chapter Forty-six, Ah yet, when all is thought and said, /The heart still overrules the head (The French Lieutenants Woman 331). This epigraph predicts in the later scenes

when Sarah and Charles cant suppress their affections for each other. The outcome that Sarah and Chares transgress Victorian sexual code can be surmised through this epigraph. Charless reason is less relied on than his emotions when he contacts Sarah again in Endicotts Family Hotel. inhuman sexual manacles. Not only are the social and sexual subjects of Victorian era, but Thomas Hardys influence upon Fowles writing of The French Lieutenants Woman is laid bare through the epigraphs. Peter J. Casagrande points out that in 1969, while working on The French Lieutenants Woman, Fowles acknowledged Hardys influence and observed Hardys later novels stand out among nineteenth-century English novels for their candour of human sexuality (150). Fowles never refuses to admit Hardys shadow while writing this novel: Human natural affections eventually prevail over Victorian

The shadow of Thomas Hardy, the heart of whose country I can see in the distance from my workroom window, I cannot avoid I dont mind the shadow. It seems best to use it (Afterwords 171). Hardys challenge of sexual mores and his subtitling Tess of the d'Urbervilles a pure woman faithfully presented respond to Fowless aim of characterizing Sarah Woodruff as a stigmatized fallen woman and a sexual rebel. The dramatization of heroine is likewise under Hardys shadow. In Afterwords

Novelists on Their Novels, Fowles states a female visual image recurring in his mind, A
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woman stands at the end of deserted quay and stares out to the sea. I ignored this image; but it recurred (161-2). This haunting image echoes the epigraph in Chapter One of the novel: Hardys poem The Riddle. Fowles connects his recurring image to Hardys poem

and introduces the mysterious protagonist Sarah Woodruff, Stretching eyes west /Over the sea, /Wind foul or fair, /Always stood she /Prospect-impressed; /Solely out there /Did her gaze rest, /Never elsewhere /Seemed charm to be (9). Through Fowless characterization

of Sarah Woodruff, Hardys imaginary woman comes into being. Sarahs sexual predicament resembles Hardys Tess in Tess of dUrbervilles. Sarah and

Tess are sexually exploited and condemned for their sexual impurity by Victorian patriarchal society. However, Sarah has a discrepant destiny from Tess. As Fowles argues, this

mysterious woman represented a reproach on the Victorian Age. An outcast. I dont know her crime, but I wished to protect her (Afterwords 162). Victorian parody, Fowles rejects the conventional plot. convention of a fallen womans fate. Accordingly, within the

He subverts Victorian literary

Like Tess, Sarah is sexually exploited by the society, Fowles does not follow the

but the ending placement differentiates Sarah from Tess. storyline of Hardys Tess. destiny: decline and death.

He breaks the Victorian literary convention of fallen womans Instead, Sarah appears again at the end of novel as a New Her sexual

Woman, refusing the bondage of marriage as her final destination with Charles.

transgression thus has herself stand out above the Victorian women and breaks through sexual shackles. As Hutcheon argues, to parody is both to enshrine the past and to question it, and this is the postmodern paradox (Intertextuality, Parody, and the Discourse of History, 126). Fowles employs Hardys tragic Tess, but he transforms her passive role into a pivotal The characterization of

heroine to subvert the stability of Victorian chauvinist society.

Sarah Woodruff as an emancipated woman in a rigid society thus shows Fowless attempt to question his Victorian Age and to create his fictional world. Combining Victorian parody with narrative structure of historiographic metafiction, Fowles brings forth and criticizes
24

Victorian problematics of sexuality: the moral manacles on womans pursuit of sexual autonomy. There are epigraphs employed to reveal social issues of Victorian society. epigraph in Chapter Thirteen-Nine shows the Victorian social problem of prostitution. The It is

also employed to explain the gist of the chapter: the libertines debauched behaviors in a London brothel and the critique of sexual hypocrisy. The dual epigraph in Chapter

Twenty-eight is deployed to attack male-dominated medical analysis of womans mental illness. The issue of prostitution and Victorian patriarchal version of womans hysteria will

be discussed in detail in Chapter Two and Three in this thesis. Victorian Sexual Morality It is obvious that the ideology and formation of Victorian bourgeois sexual morality and regulations constitute the social background of the novel. The word Victorian is not only referred to Queen Victoria or to her reign but defined as an adjective, pertaining to or characteristics of ideals and standards of morality and taste prevalent during the reign of Queen Victoria; prudish; conventional; narrow (Goldfarb 20). Yet it convey[s] the idea of

moral restrictiveness, a restrictiveness which necessarily and even primarily applies to sex (Mason 3). Michel Foucault indicated that the attitude of frankness and openness toward sexual matters at the beginning of the seventeenth century did not last; instead the Victorian prudish and hypocritical standpoint of sexuality still dominates us even today. Sexuality

was carefully confined; it moved into the home, and the purpose of sexuality is reduced to the serious function of reproduction (We other Victorians 3). In Victorian era, the restrained sexual attitudes and the system of sexual regulations exclusively belong to the bourgeois and upper class. The Victorian bourgeoisie is demanded

and regulated to espouse a set of sexual moral values: sexual repression, non-premarital intercourse, and the strong social decorum between two sexes. marriage is reduced to the function of procreation.
25

The purpose of sexuality in

Any sexual transgression, such as

prostitution, adultery, or extramarital intercourse, over the procreative delimitation means the sexual impurity and immorality. Sexual indulgence, for the bourgeois class, is considered to degrade personal morality and threaten the social order. The sexual sanction for the Victorian bourgeoisie evolves from the areas in religious, legal, political, economic and domestic. encompass the Victorian life. The powers that serve to repress sexuality

Religion is the supreme power to regulate bourgeois sexual

morality and to deter sexual permissiveness. The stern religious attitudes towards English morality have been established by low Church Evangelicals and the groups of Methodists. They left the legacy of strong repressive forces which overwhelmed the nineteenth century. Although they had been expelled from the State church in the reign of George III, the Evangelical movement is a fountainhead of repressive forces which swamped the nineteenth century. Yet John Wesley, the leader of Methodist movement, had advised his followers to avoid all manners of passions, and this lead in the nineteenth century to the inhibition of spontaneity and the suspicion of all emotional expression which was not explicitly directed to church service. (Goldfarb 22-4). Any of the traditional forms of sexual expression was not tolerated at all The moralizing zeal, the teachings with regard to the sinfulness of

sexuality and permissible conjugal intercourse only for the purpose of procreation become an established part of Victorian middle-class culture (Nead 156). In The French Lieutenants Woman, Mrs. Poulteney is such an archetype of monitoring system of religious morality. This Poulteneyism, as Charles Scruggs argues, prevails over

the Victorian society of morality tight-laced, supervises middle-class everyday life, and precludes any ideas of sexual and moral laxity from infiltrating (99). with the frequency of church attendance. more pious he/she is for God. She evaluates a person

The more frequently he/she attends the church, the

From Mrs. Poulteneys perspectives, Failure to be seen at

church, both at matins and at evensong, on Sunday was tantamount to proof of the worst moral laxity (The French Lieutenants Woman 26).
26

She is the guard of morality in Regis

Lyme and the very representative of male-dominated moral surveillance, devoting her whole attention to eliminate anything sinful and immoral. redeemed because of her sexual incautiousness. redeem Sarah from her sexual sin on behalf of God. Therefore, Sarah is the one needed to be Only such a pious person like her can However, that Mrs. Poulteney takes in

Sarah as her maid in fact shows not only her hypocritical benevolent deed in religious practice but her desire to be a candidate for heaven. The Evangelical and Utilitarian ideas of purity, morality, wholesomeness and utility strengthen Victorian cultural system of sexuality. powerful ethical force at Victorian period. Like Evangelicals, Utilitarianism is a

Its doctrines observe on sexual repression:

Sexual expression was impractical because it diverted men to work, it appealed to emotion rather than to reason, and it did nothing to further the progress of society. Procreation was

meaningful; all other forms of sexuality were, practically speaking, merely a waste of precious time (Goldfarb 29). With respect of Utilitarianism, personal sexual repression is Moreover, the

fundamental and prerequisite for the social progress and social healthy.

imaginative literature is likewise impractical, because it does not beneficially produce any contributions to the nation. The useful literature has the topics such as progress and

self-improvement without any tinge of sexual expression. The Lady of La Garaye, the best-seller of 1860s, is the example of utilitarian literature. The novel has the utilitarian function of self-improvement for Ernestina to conform to a feminine ideal, since she felt elevated and purified, a better young woman while reading it. The Edinburgh Review commends this book for that the poem is a pure, tender, touching tale of pain, sorrow, love, duty, piety and death. This book reviews, Fowles comments, is surely as pretty a string of key mid-Victorian adjectives and nouns as one could ever hope to light on (The French Lieutenants Woman 114). Purity, piety and duty are the most significant key words that

characterize Victorian female sexual morality. Due to the legislation enactment, bourgeois women confront shackles in the face of
27

pursuit of sexual autonomy and equality.

On the legal ground, The Matrimonial Causes of A wife requests

Act of 1857 bestows upon a husband, but not a wife, a right to get divorced.

a divorce only if in cases of incest, criminal prosecution, desertion, bigamy or extreme cruelty (Fernando 13). This unfair divorce bill shows that adultery alone is not sufficient for

a wife to request a divorce from her husband. Even Caroline Norton, the victim of her husbands adultery and the significant role for campaigning for improved legal rights for married women and for their right to petition for divorce on the grounds of adultery alone, admitted that on the question of adultery men and women should be treated equally, but the womans adultery was more serious (Nead 54). Nortons assertions reveal that Victorian

women are submissively reduced to the status of inferiority in resignation under the regulation of sexual morality and within the imprisonment of marriage. In addition to the religious morality and the legal restraints, the discourses on female sexual nature confine women to the domestic sphere and hence are constrained by the duty of sexual purity. The dominant sexual tones for Victorian women originate from the following

related ideologies: the domestic theory, the interior-of-nature and the pedestal or pinnacle theory. According to Lloyd Fernandos arguments, the domestic theory

supports the view that womans place is in the home; the interior-of-nature argues that nature intended woman to be chiefly, even exclusively, a mother and the pedestal or pinnacle theory regarded woman as a minor goddess to be worshipped (2-4). The former

two constitute female roles as mother and wife and establish the notion of ideal femininity. Her fulfillment of domestic duties and maternal missions indicate if she can be defined in the category of feminine ideal. The third ideology reinforces the former two. Goddess

intrinsic qualities suggest purity and chastity, the prerequisites of femininity. In order to be enough worshipped, woman is deprived of the opportunities to enter to any practical and industrial fields, or even any political activity. Similarly, the worship of female delicacy and

vulnerability is the result of patriarchal domination over female sexuality. Nevertheless, the
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ideological double-blind shows that the bourgeois women are separated from the public domain of work, but at the same time they are fiercely criticized for her debilitating idleness (Shuttleworth 34). The hidden contradiction is that the Victorian male-dominated society

preached the need for female education to be based on domestic usefulness, but we find at the centre of phallocentric idealization of women a celebration of feminine fragility and helplessness (Trudgill 251). Besides, the feminine ideal is defined in terms of the characteristics of femininity: dependency, delicacy and fragility. The most essential, among these characteristics, is Here

dependency, since independency signifies boldness and sexual deviancy (Nead 28).

the notion of dependency is inseparably associated with sexual purity. Prostitutes are sinful because they take sexuality beyond the function of reproduction. The prostitutes are

economically independent and thus they are the illustration of sexual transgression and degeneration. Moreover, counter to the prostitutes who employ their body as an instrument

to earn a living, the middle-class women are still legally confined to be economically dependent on the family or husbands. They submit themselves to the predominant beliefs:

being economically dependent on men, sexually restrained, and ignorant of sexuality. The Critique of Victorian Sexuality As the discourses and theories of female sexuality are mentioned above, the inequality between two sexes derives from the patriarchal concepts of female biological differences and the ideologies of female sexuality. Through examining Victorian sexual disciplines, the inequality of treatment in female sexuality is revealed. Although, from the religious

perspective, both men and women are required to adhere to their sexual codes, the double standard exists in the practice of sexual regulations between men and women. victim of sexual inequality. Sarah is the

She is discriminated as a social outcast and stigmatized as a Contrarily, that Charless

fallen woman because of her rebellion against the sexual codes.

college fellows and he enjoy themselves debauchedly at Terpsichore brothel in London is

29

viewed as a presentation of male active sexuality and unequally can be forgivable. The Victorian patriarchal society has the Victorian bourgeois woman internalized this sexual inequality and hence womans sexual oppression continues. do not have any sexual desires. feel the lust of their body. Women believe that they

It is the doctrine that they could not and are not allowed to This imperative instruction of repressed sexuality and the She has been educated It is her duty to

confinement of sexual pleasure are presented in Ernestina Freeman.

that sexual intercourse is a duty as well as for the procreative purpose.

gratify her husbands passion and sexual desire, but her enjoyment of sexual pleasure is out of the question. Any sexual desire is proscribed, let alone the pursuit of sexual autonomy.

This sexual repression is strengthened with the instillation of the belief that the intercourse is beastly: She [Ernestina] had once or twice seen animals couple; the violence haunted her mind and it was the aura of pain and brutality that the act seemed to require. She

sometimes wondered why God had permitted such a bestial version of Duty to spoil such an innocent longing (The French Lieutenants Woman 34-5). For Victorian women, sex

becomes duty and is subsumed under the discourse that sexual acts show the lack of human rationality. Such an idea of beastly sex has great influence on female education of sexual continence. All her sexual passions must be suppressed and should be shut out for the discreetness and decorum of femininity, whenever any sexual implications of her body try to burst into her consciousness. This received conviction of female asexuality, sexual ignorance and purity rationalizes the patriarchal sexual double standards. Since the belief of male active sexual nature is prevalent in Victorian patriarchal society and men need a vent to work off their carnal desire, the male unchastity becomes unavoidable and should be condoned. However, female

premarital intercourse and adultery suggest her sexual indulgence and licentiousness which violate the ideal femininity, and female sexual purity and passivity. Female adultery is illicit

and should be condemned, because the illegitimate offspring would endanger the inheritance.
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But males infidelity does not. Fowles argues that the stringent sexual regulations constructed by Victorian nobility and bourgeoisie are hypocritical and unequal. The Victorian male great public figures and the

media proclaim the sanctity of marriage and chastity before marriage, but they lead scandalous private lives. In art, the sculptors achievement is judged by his ability to carve

the naked woman, but female body has been disciplined to be hidden so much from the view. Moreover, the sexual hypocrisy is exposed in the statistics: there was one brothel among sixty houses in London in Victorian age, but the modern ratio is one over six thousand (The French Lieutenants Woman 258). Fowles employs this statistic data to expose that despite the

stringent sexual regulations, the Victorians are highly sexed as us at the twentieth century. That is why Victorian Age is an era that regards woman as sacred and spiritual, but the problem of prostitution seriously exists. Through these examples of sexual hypocrisy, He argues that it is impossible to

Fowles criticizes the Victorian sexual inequality. completely deter the existence of sexual desire.

Likewise, it is inhuman to prohibit the

freedom of its spontaneous flow even with the serious and discrepant sexual regulations. Yet, he believes that the human sexual desire is natural and its nature of spontaneity has existed as the constant and universal fact throughout human history. Only the Victorians forbid it inhumanly. While Fowles was engaging in the writing of The French Lieutenants Woman, he criticizes Victorian inhuman sexual suffocation by observing its literature absurdness: Magnificent though the Victorian novelist were, they almost all (an exception, of course, is later Hardy) failed miserably in one respect; nowhere in respect Victorian literature (and most of the pornography was based on the brothel or eighteen century accounts) does one see a man and a woman described together in bed. We do not know how they made love, what they said to each other in

their most intimate moments, what they felt then. (Afterwords 166)
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The rigid ideology of sexuality, including the strict etiquette and the restriction of sexual codes are not only practiced in daily conducts, but also presented in the literary productions. For Victorians, the safe literature means neither to demoralize nor to corrupt the readers by dealing with the immoral situations. Any slightest tinge of sexual tendency is prohibited. But Fowles does in a diametrically opposite way in his novel. The direct delineation of the

scene in Chapter Forty-six when Charles and Sarah have sex violates the Victorian literary traditions of presenting sex in opaque, obscure way. It is startling to the Victorian readers,

since what safe literature supports is the conventions, the beliefs and morality with which Victorians and the respectability concern. Consequently, the characterization of heroine Sarah as a fallen woman at the beginning of the novel is a challenge, a rebel to the Victorian literary convention, for the heroines of the traditional novels must function to maintain and propagate the Victorian espoused values and mores. The subjects concerning with sexuality

and heroines as a fallen woman, seducer, or unmarried mother certainly result in critique and reproach. At the beginning of the novel, Fowles employs Thomas Hardys poem to introduce his heroine. This deployment of past texts is a response to Linda Hutcheons concept of Within this narrative, the connection with Victorian history is

historiographic metafiction. produced.

Among the techniques to create Victorian historical reality, the play of

intertextuality in the form of dual epigraphs is Fowless innovation. Fowless critique of Victorian sexual shackles is shaped by his deployment of Victorian past texts. The dual

epigraphs in each chapter from Victorian literary and sociological sources complicate the intertextuality of the novel and at the same strengthen the relevancy with Victorian milieu. However, by the intrusion of novelist-surrogate, the illusion of historical reality is created. The dichotomy of past and present is blended with the perceptions of the twentieth century and in this way Fowles rewrites his Victorian world with new perspectives. to re-create a Victorian world other than the real one that exists in history.
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His intention is Thus, Sarah, a

social and sexual rebel different from the Victorian traditional type of heroine, significantly becomes the leading character of this creative process. Sarah in this novel is the materialization of the recurring image in Fowless mind in the twentieth century and also is realization of Hardys poem in the nineteenth century. The

characterization of Sarah is thus a combination across two centuries and consequently disrupts the definite demarcation between present and past. Moreover, Sarahs

fictionalization of losing virginity is the manifestation of the paradoxical pattern: fictionality of any reality. As Sarah is the inventor of her story, we human beings should be aware the The paradoxical pattern

way that our life, our values and our world are constructed.

fictionality of reality prevails in human life. Reality in modern human life is as construct. By means of Sarahs fabrication of tragic past, novelist-surrogate attempts to arouse readers attention to the problematics of the reality in our real world. Sarah, like modern people,

possesses the freedom to fabricate her sexual predicaments as the strategy to rebel the Victorian sexual regulations and has the liberty to realize her fictional story in order to achieve her sexual emancipation. Freedom is the theme with which Fowles composes this novel. No longer like the omniscient Victorian novelist, the narrator-surrogate in The French Lieutenants Woman claims the freedom that is allowed to the characters. The characters in the novel, like the

modern human beings, have the freedom to be the master of their life. This is the reason why Sarah is given the freedom to fabricate her story. Similarly, the three open endings are

provided for Sarah, Charles and readers, as the people in real world have the complex ways of thinking. Even when facing the same situation, people make different decisions on the basis of their free will and their complicated humanity. Possessing the freedom of choice to be stigmatized as a French Lieutenants whore, Sarah is beyond the pale of Victorian sexual morality and on the way to pursue her selfhood. She is the one who does not confine herself to sexual constraints.
33

Instead, she carries out

Fowles idea of existentialism to revolt the social and sexual pressures on her subjectivity. In the journey of her pursuing emancipation, the character Sarah raises diverse reactions and interpretations in the public of Lyme Regis. Dr. Grogan views her as the medical puzzle, waiting to be diagnosed. Charles agonizes himself with the struggle between selfhood and social duty, when Sarah walks into the world of his idle and ossified class. By

characterizing Sarah as a fallen woman, Fowles brings about the issues associated with female sexuality. Through Sarahs fictional story and subverting the Victorian conventional

ending, Fowles criticizes the most tyrannical part of Victorian stringent sexual ethics and attempts to liberate Victorian women from the shackles of sexual morality. Not only issues

related to Victorian sexuality and human emancipation but Victorian patriarchal medical dogmatism of female mental malady caused from sexual repression are exposed to the readers.

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Chapter Two Medical History Mans Version of Female Hysteria

Throughout the novel, the narrative of the core world attempts to engage the reader to read Sarah Woodruff from the Victorian patriarchal perspectives. who elicit different readings. licentious behaviors. of sexual morality. There are different Sarahs

The public of Lyme Regis has the antipathy towards her

Mrs. Poulteney is on behalf of Victorian patriarchal monitoring system Owing to her disobedience to sexual regulations, Sarah has the alias On the basis of

The French Lieutenants Whore and is marginalized as a social outcast.

sexual ethics, it is Sarahs transgression of sexual regulations that consequently reduces herself to the miserable sufferings and a degenerate position. Another patriarchal figure is Dr. Grogan, though he declares himself as an elite educated by scientific training and the advocator of Charles Darwins theory. Examining Sarah from

pathological standpoint, he concludes that Sarahs deviant behaviors result from the suffering of hysteria, caused by sexual repression. In addition to his medical perspectives of female

hysteria, he employs the Victorian psychological theory of associationism the study of the working of mental processes and the relationship between ideas and behaviors to interpret Sarahs malicious intention to arouse Charles sympathy. Sarah thus becomes a cunning Dr. Grogans

schemer, like the female hysterics in medical literatures cited by Dr. Grogan.

medical theories and arguments for Sarahs mental disorder epitomize the Victorian medical system. He unconsciously falls into the ideology of patriarchal sexual morality and

phallocentric dogmatism about female sexuality. Sarah, an enigma to Dr. Grogan, resists this man-dominated diagnosis. In the context of phallocentric society, she shows us the limitation of Victorian medical perspectives of female hysteria. medicine. She is not an insane female hysteric labeled by the law of patriarchal

Rather, it is Fowless strategy to let Sarah be diagnosed as a hysteric, showing

35

her non-conformity and unpredictability for the purpose of rebelling Victorian demonization of female sexuality and oppression over female pursuit of sexual liberation. She achieves

her freedom through this artifice. Her reappearance with a fresh image as a New Woman contradicts the patriarchal analysis. This chapter explores the history of hysteria and discusses the interrelationship between the cultural powers gender roles and sexual regulations and female hysteria. Fowles employs the intertextuality of Victorian medical literatures as his writing strategy to criticize the Victorian phallocentric arrogant assertions of female sexuality. The History of Female Hysteria The history of hysteria can be traced back to the ancient times. From the etymological

fact and the ancient medical literatures, hysteria has been diagnosed as a disease of reproductive biology and exclusively concluded as female attribute before Sigmund Freud. It is a disease whose meaning was culturally and historically specific as that of femininity itself (Small 17). Through investigating the history of hysteria, these medical legacies

from the ancient times to the eighteenth century are the fundamentals to establish the Victorian understanding of hysteria and pathological diagnosis. Hysteria is exclusively defined to female in terms of its nature and origin. Through

examining the etymology and the following medical literatures, the patholgoical conclusion that womb is the root of hysteria is dogmatically generalized. The word hysteria derives from the Greek word for uterus hystera (Micale 19). womb. It is formed of [sic]

Based on the 1797-1801 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, HYSTERIC

AFFECTION, or Passion is a disease in women, called also suffocation of the womb, and vulgarly fits of the women proceeding from the womb (qtd. in Small 16). The Egyptian Ancient

medical papyrus records a series of behavioral disturbances in adult women.

Egyptians further point out that the cause of these behavioral abnormalities is the movement of the uterus, which gives rise to a set of physical and mental symptoms.
36

Classical Greek

medical theories of hysteria are developed based on such a notion of migratory uterus.

Yet,

ancient Roman physicians associate hysteria exclusively with the female generative system and are convinced that the cause of the hysterical disorders is the disease of the womb (Micale 19-20). The association of hysteria with female sexuality has been hypothesized ever since. The Greeks embroider upon the connections, only implicit in Egyptian texts, between hysteria and unsatisfactory sexual life. This diagnosis is based on the medical perspectives

that the deprivation of sexual relations in women, including virgins, nuns, widows and occasionally married women, would cause the womb to move upward in search of gratification. The migratory uterus produces not only physical illness but extravagant

emotional behaviors (Micale 19). The most effective therapy, suggested by ancient Greek doctors, is the immediate marriage for a single lady, or the sexual intercourse for a married woman. By the same token, the French physician Philippe Pinel in the early nineteenth

century recommends as a cure marriage and family, a return to the sexual fix that was itself often an instigating factor in the etiology of the illness (Kahane 11). The marked transformation in the history of hysteria occurs in the seventeenth century. Early in this century, the womb is no longer considered as the seat of hysterical pathology, but the head. The theory of perturbations of the mind and passion as causative agent of The hysteria results from the imbalance between body and mind

disorder is emphasized.

and is caused most often by sudden violent emotions, such as anger, fear, love and grief (Micale 21-2). Thomas Sydenham, a physician in the seventeenth century, liberates hysteria However, his theory that hysteria is the result He indicates that this disease attacks They lead a softer life

from the biological basis as female disorder.

of mind maldistribution shows the gender prejudice.

women more than men, since women are less firm constitution. and are not accustomed to suffering (qtd. in Kahane 10).

Although the intellectual

development in the seventeenth century loosens the age-old linkage of hysteria to female
37

reproductive system, hysteria explained in this sexually prejudiced medical perception still casts a shadow over women. Sydenhams discourses that there is a correlation between

fragile femininity and hysteria reinforce the ideology of patriarchal superiority in mentality and the cultural definitions of a denigrated femininity (Kahane 10). considered as the deeply flawed condition (Oppenheim 232). In Victorian Age, not only is hysteria associated with female uterus but female hysterics are demonized in medical literatures. Hysteria in Victorias sovereignty becomes the According to Jane Usshers Femininity is thus

archetypal feminine functional disorder (qtd. in Micale 104).

research, in Victorian era the womb itself was deemed to wander throughout the body, acting as an enormous sponge which sucked the life-energy or intellect from vulnerable women. Thus, women became synonymous with madness, as they were deemed to be emotional and unstable (74). hysteria. Insanity and nervous breakdown are the pathological sequela resulting from

These women suffering from the wondering womb and hysterical symptoms need

to receive a series of cures, including the isolation from the society in the houses and in the lunatic asylum if they become insane. On the basis of Oppenheims description, the serious symptoms of hysterical women are full-scale paroxysm, motor and sensory impairments, respiratory obstruction, speech disorders, and sudden fits of weeping and so on. A nervous temperament, unstable emotions, depression, disturbed intellect, deficient judgment, dependency and egocentricity are the slight characteristics categorized under hysteria (181). To a certain extent, Sarahs

behaviors resemble some of these hysterical symptoms and characteristics, since she is sometimes weeping without reason, not talking, a look about the eyes, suffers chronic depression and views the world from her mind (The French Lieutenants Woman 151). Therefore, Dr. Grogan confidently diagnoses that Sarah suffers from hysterical pang and she is inclined to be melancholic. As long as she leaves Lyme of Regis, she would recover.

In addition to reintroducing the concept of wondering womb as the cause of female

38

hysteria, Victorian medicine generalizes the hysterical temperament from the women suffering from hysteria. These characteristics of hysterical temperament include eccentricity, impulsiveness, emotionality, deceitfulness and hypersexuality and so on and so forth (Micale 23-4). As Sydenhams discourse on females less firm constitution in the seventeenth

century, the negative hysterical temperament has the same implication of denigrating femininity. These negative hysterical traits of female hysterics are specifically highlighted to accentuate the Victorian patriarchal ideology that femininity is unstable and to blame female for their unconstrained passions. beyond the mental and physical normal. When women sexually lose control, they go Becoming hysterical is an inevitable consequence.

But this diagnosis of labeling female is a patriarchal defense to maintain male social and sexual domination. However, the diagnosis of female hysteria should be changed from the realm of physiology to psychological disorder. In fact, the repression of female sexuality and the

gender roles are cultural burdens that produce pressure on Victorian female psychology and cause this female mental disease. As Oppenheim argues, the system of values, ethical codes, religious belief and all manner of preconceived opinion exert great influence on the formation of female mental malady. The burden of sexual stereotyping bore down even more heavily on Victorian women whose lives were plagued with nervous illness (5, 181). Micale

discovers that female hysteria can be regarded as a pathological by-product of Victorian gender roles, to be found especially in idealized young middle-and upper-class womanhood (qtd. in Small 17). In Victorian Age, the social role assigned to a woman is the image of serving: a daughter, mother and wife. their liberation. These domestic roles become the duty that restricts

The patriarchal ideology of binary gender distinctions control female social

decorum as well as sexual regulations and define woman as the symbol of domestic virtue. The significant figure An Angel in the House oppresses women with the principles of self-sacrifice and self-discipline. Such a social code dominates in their lifetime.
39

In the

face of stringent social and sexual decency, what women can do is obey. If they rebel, they are diagnosed to suffer from hysteria and are classified into the community of insanity. Sarah is labeled as a mad hysteric, because partly her behaviors reveal the rejection of sexual-role stereotypes. Patriarchal Psychological Analysis: Associationism On the basis of Micales investigation, another characteristic that makes Victorian Era distinctive is its great multiplication of texts, theories and therapies (24). Against this social and historical background, Dr. Grogan employs multiple texts from medical literatures and psychological theory in order to elaborate and validate his diagnosis of Sarahs hysterical conducts. Since the hysteria has been hypothesized as the integrated result of mental and physical malady, he subsumes the human psyche under the hysterical pathology. One of the psychological theories employed by Dr. Grogan to explain Sarahs deviancy is associationism. Associationism examines the relationship between the working of mind

and behavior. According to Athena Vrettoss Victorian Psychology, the psychological associationism presumes that the mind works through a series of association of ideas, combing simple ideas increasingly in intricate ways to form complicated ideas: Beginning as a blank slate, or tabula rasa, the mind received sensations, conceived ideas of sensation, and eventually associated those ideas on the basis of resemblance, contiguity, and causation. That is, ideas and events that

resembled each other, that were continuous with each other in time and space or that seemed linked through cause and effect, became associated with each other in mind. (70) The associationism in Victorian psychology is to study the working of human mental processes. It reveals how the mind functions in human behaviors. From the perspective of

Victorian associationism, the ideas or memory and events associate with each other in time and space. Gradually and eventually they form the causality of human actions.
40

Dr. Grogans interpretation of Sarahs resentment at her environment and her sexual transgression are therefore grounded on the Victorian conception of associationism. According to Dr. Grogans examinations, the cause of Sarahs deviant behaviors consists in not simply the sexual predicament with the French lieutenant Vagueness, but more significantly is her interactions with the Victorian society. In the second scene in which Charles and Dr. Grogan discuss Sarah, Dr. Grogan pretends that he is Sarah. I [Sarah] am a young woman of superior intelligence and some education. I think the world has done badly by me. emotions. I am not in full command of my

I do foolish things, such as throwing myself at the head of the first What is worse, I have fallen in love

handsome rascal who is put in my path. with being a victim of fate. looking melancholy.

I put out a very professional line in the way of I weep without explanation . (The

I have tragic eyes.

French Lieutenants Woman 216) In this admission that Dr. Grogan makes on behalf of Sarah, he argues that Sarahs melancholia basically stems from her dissatisfactions with Victorian social injustice. society treats her unfairly and brutally. The

Dr. Grogan further indicates that Sarahs discontent

with her surroundings primarily results from her education. Her education and intelligence compel her to become an in-between in Victorian rigid social class. She is too well educated Consequently, her

to marry into her own class but too poor to marry up into higher.

dissatisfied feelings and revolting ideas operate in her mind and then influence her interactions with society. It is her resentments at social injustice that evoke her desire to Her

rebel the most stringent part of Victorian culture the female sexual regulations.

sexual transgression, a distinct taint, is the result of her rebellion against the social rules, even though it almost destroys her life. Through analyzing the association between Sarahs mind and behaviors, Dr. Grogan condemns her sexual transgression to revolt the society and her morbid feeling of being a victim of patriarchal social class. He likewise draws a conclusion
41

that Sarah has been possessed by her dark sadness and falls into the obscure melancholia (The French Lieutenants Woman 151) From the usage of I in the beginning of every sentence, Dr. Grogans interpretations cited above present the tone of subjective and imperative. Gwen Raaberg argues, When Charles, uncertain of his perceptions and feelings regarding Sarah, turns to Dr. Grogan, the reader hears the patriarchal voice of reason, science, and the law speak (532). Grogans speaking in the name of Sarah exposes the fact that throughout the history, men has reduced women to the status of silent and subordinate subject. Silence implies oppression and

repression of a womans capacity to speak for herself, and to develop her own discourse. Thus, Dr. Grogans interpretations expose Victorian patriarchal oppression of Sarahs speaking subjectivity. Besides, such a usage of emphasis fully demonstrates the patriarchal reading on female psyche. It shows Dr. Grogans dogmatism and Victorian ideology of female mentality. The phallocentric binary argues that men are superior to women in mentality. Women are In

inclined to be emotional rather than men; they are the weak sex in opposition to male.

addition, Dr. Grogans analysis of Sarahs psyche expresses the injustice of Victorian social codes. When the male-dominated society confronts with female deviation, there is no other

alternative for these women but only ostracism from society and being degraded as a fallen eccentric woman. When Charles faces a dilemma of having an appointment with Sarah or not, looking for Dr. Grogans opinion, Dr. Grogan once again makes a conjecture of Sarahs intention: And now enter a young god. Intelligence. Good-looking. A perfect I see he is

specimen of that class my education has taught me to admire.

interested in me. The sadder I am, the more interested he appears to be. I kneel before him, he raises me to my feet. He treats me like a lady. Nay, more than

that. In a spirit of Christian brotherhood he offers to help me escape from my

42

unhappy lot So what can I do? I must make him pity my present. (The French Lieutenants Woman 216) This time Sarah becomes a shrewd schemer, trying any means to intrigue Charles. In Dr. Grogans analysis, Sarah must size the great chance to struggle from her social predicaments when Charles shows his sympathy for her. Charles now is like driftwood that can carry her

up into a better situation. Therefore, she reveals her miserable past and behaves as a victim exploited by society. She is deliberately noticed on Ware Common, a place where she is Her

forbidden to go by Mrs. Poulteney and then disappears with leaving a message to him. actions are the plot to attract Charless attention and arouse his sympathy.

Through

analyzing Sarahs deranged mind, Dr. Grogan attempts to warn Charles not to be trapped in her intrigue. Though Dr. Grogan declares it is only his hypothesis, his specific accusation is imperceptibly implied in his analysis of Sarahs malicious intention. On the surface, Dr. Grogans interpretation of Sarahs mind is logical, since his diagnosis is grounded on the scientific theory of associationism, the understandings of intricate relation between the working of human minds and their behaviors. Being a typical representative of medical authority and analyzing Sarah from scientific discourses, Dr. Grogan views Sarah as a medical case needed to be mentally and physically remedied. Though Dr. Grogan

considers that the fossils on the beach are less mysterious than Sarahs mind, he still is confident in his analysis that she is addicted to depression. Yet, he concludes that Sarahs imbalance between body and mind and her eccentric behaviors derive from her violent emotions: anger, love and grief. Being abandoned by Vagueness is attributed to Sarahs hysteria and insanity. Her tragic past event, namely Vaguenesss betrayal, is the inducement that Sarah falls into hysteria and insanity. her warped mind. Dr. Grogans diagnosis shows the phallocentric fantasy and prejudice of female psyche. During the discussion of Sarah, Dr. Grogan endeavors to convince Charles that Sarah is inane
43

These uncontrolled sentiments are the cause of

and should be sent to the lunatic asylum.

Under Dr. Grogans analysis is the patriarchal law

to subordinate and categorize Sarah as a difference in Victorian society. Kadish argues that Dr. Grogan rationalize[s] his patients [Sarahs] condition as if she were a runaway slave, since Sarah does not conform to the status quo (79). However, Sarahs reappearance as a New Woman in the final chapters contradicts Dr. Grogans way of reading Sarah and moreover dismantles the phallocentric explanations of the women labeled as moral degeneration or insanity. When Sarahs behaviors are in conflict with the stringent Victorian

social norms, Dr. Grogan and the public at Lyme Regis feel astounded rather than have a self-critical tendency to investigate the cultural discourse on female sexuality. is classify her as a severe sexual transgressor. Female Insanity and the Practice of Lunatic Asylum By virtue of examining the hysterical theory from ancient times to Victorian Age along with the concepts of associationism, hysteria, sexual repression and the disturbance of mind form the reciprocal relationships. The Victorians believe that sexual repression results in hysterical symptoms. Hysterical symptoms prompt extravagant emotionality. Female What they do

exaggerated sentiments destabilize the working of minds. female hysterics mind leads to the result of insanity.

Eventually the instability of

In Victorian Age, female insanity is interpreted as an unknown dark side of humanity. It has the destructive and threatening power for the stability of Victorian patriarchal society. The common destiny of insane woman in Victorian literary works is death, or they would be sent to the lunatic asylum. Bertha Manson in Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre manifests this

literary convention. In order to conform to the storyline in traditional Victorian novels, Bertha should be destined to die at the end of the story not only because of her dehumanized insanity but also she destroys what Edward Rochester, a representative of patriarchy, has. She symbolically functions as a woman with passion and is the archetype of

a woman who pays the price for her unrestrained affections: insanity and death, the loss of
44

self.

Her death is regarded as the inevitable result of gross sexuality, the crude sexual

behavior, and consequently leads to her destruction (Rigney 15-6, 24). As Victorian medical ideology inherits from Sydenhams discourse in the seventeenth century that women have fragile constitutions, women are still considered to be susceptible to emotional breakdowns and mental disturbance. They are not capable of controlling their sentiments as men and easily swayed by their emotions. The insane women are more often seen than mad men in the Victorian literary conventions. Most of time, the plot that a

woman suffers a radical change and becomes insane occurs often in a Victorian novel. Women of unstable mentality in real life are supposed to be isolated in lunatic asylum from the mainstream society for the purpose of national health and social stability. As

Bertha Mason is chained in the attic, the Victorians believe that the mentally ill women would receive a professional medical treatment in the lunatic asylum. However, the conditions

there are often extremely poor and serious treatment is not yet put into practice. In Janet Oppenheims accounts, hysteria is a key component in what she labels the nervous culture of Victorian England (qtd. in Micale 104). Mental illness, including

hysteria, depression and melancholia, prevails over the entire nation during Victorian Era. However, even though a large number of female suffering from nervous breakdown in Victorian Age, the treatments in lunatic asylum are still extremely terrible. mental illness in lunatic asylum is marked off by the year 1850. The treatment of

Before 1850, those who

suffer from mental malady are believed that they have a disease of the soul (Goldberg 24). Their madness must stem from a devil inside. In this regard, the patients in asylum are treated as animals. They are kept in cages, given small amounts of unclean food, have little

or no clothing and sleep in dirt. Under such poor conditions, the patients still could live well. For this reason, the custodians and caretaker are convinced that these humans are

really closer to animals and deserve such inhuman treatment (Ussher 65). After 1850, the care of mental-disordered patients in asylums undergoes a reform,
45

because the pathology of mental disorder changes. ascribed to the devil haunting any more. in the insanity. sick.

Those suffering from madness are not

Instead, it is the disease of their brain that results

The scientific development replaces the social myth that accumulates the The shackles

Consequently, the patients are fed well and given clothing and shoes.

are also removed for the humanitarian purpose. Since the treatment in lunatic asylum has a great improvement, Dr. Grogan claims that Sarah there can receive appropriate charge and remedies for her mental malady. Sarah does not follow Dr. Grogans prescription and resists to be cured, since in fact she does not suffer from hysteria. Her rejection of the medical therapy has Dr. Grogan view

Sarah as a mystery, an incomprehensible enigma, like a being in a mist (The French Lieutenants Woman 153). In the case study of Sarahs hysteria and her deviant behaviors,

Sarah has been treated as an unknown object, needing to be explored, whereas Dr. Grogan plays the active role of investigator. He unconsciously associates the mystery with Sarah is a response to the patriarchal mystification of women, of their psyche and sexuality. Throughout the novel, it is obvious that Dr. Grogan firmly believes that only he can solve this puzzle with his scientific knowledge. Critique of Mans Version of Female Hysteria: The Play of Intertextuality In the process that Dr. Grogan diagnoses Sarah as a hysterical woman, a large number of intertextuality is presented. The function of intertextuality not only is to disclose the

limitation of Victorian medical understanding of female hysteria, but also shows Fowless consistent conversations with Victorian world, to criticize the patriarchal mystification of hysteria and demonization of female sexuality. Dr. Grogan uses the diagnosis of hysteria as a convenient way of explaining Sarahs irrational and inexplicable behaviors. He ascertains that Sarahs deviant conducts results

from hysteria by circling a passage from Observations Medico-psychologiques by Dr. Karl Matthaei, a famous German physician of his time: the mental illness we today call
46

hysteria the assumption, that is, of symptoms of disease or disability in order to gain the attention and sympathy of others: a neurosis or psychosis almost invariably caused, as we now know, by sexual repression (The French Lieutenants Woman 226). Dr. Grogan

confidently makes his diagnosis that Sarah suffers from a complicate hysterical anguish and her mental illness mainly derives from her sexual repression, because he discerns her scheme to draw Charless attention and sympathy by all means. More significantly, his diagnosis is

on the basis of science the psychological associationism and is supported by the convincing medical literatures. In order to consolidate his diagnosis and to convince Charles of female subversive power to the patriarchal social stability, Dr. Grogan cites other medical cases of hysterical women in Matthaeis excerpts: a cavalry-generals daughter of sixteen-years age commits arson just for the purpose of removing from her country house; a girl of distinguished family pleases herself by sending the anonymous slanderous letters to break up the happy marriage of others; a woman of excellent education suffers herself from plunging needles into her body because she wants to be an object of intelligent mans admiration and astonishment; a daughter had her breast extirpated in order to draw a lucrative sympathy upon herself; a girl of no great age has introduced one hundred of stones into her bladder and enjoys deception (The French Lieutenants Woman 226-8). Dr. Grogan employs these medical cases of

female hysterics to validate his diagnosis of Sarahs hysteria and equally he attempts to associate Sarah with these mad hysterics in order to dismantle Sarahs hysterical temperament: egocentricity, deceitfulness and eccentricity. Like female hysterics in the medical cases, Sarah shows her eccentricity and deceitfulness in engaging Charless attention. He achieves

the purpose to warn Charles that the female psyche is evil in terms of these abnormal female hysterics. Women can be diabolically deceitful for their attempts to gain sympathetic

attention. They try to attain a desired end using any method possible, even inflicting pain upon themselves.
47

The purpose of citing the cases of these abnormal hysterical women is to subvert the Victorian ideology of passive femininity and meanwhile to warn Charles of Sarahs threatening power. In Oppenheims discoveries, there are two contradictory readings of

hysterical women in Victorian medical literatures: the willess hysteric who lacked the ability to control her emotional impulses and fell into childish and self-indulgent invalidism and the willful hysteric who insubordinately asserted her demands in the face of societal imperatives (qtd. in Micale 104). From Dr. Grogans medical perspectives, that Sarah shows her

fragility and helplessness before Charles is manifestation of a willess hysteric, whereas in fact she and the hysterical women in cases belong to the second category. They do not

subordinate themselves to the demands of sexual decency the repression of their sexuality. On the contrary, they have the intention to disobey and challenge the passivity of femininity accepted by Victorian society, instead of subordinately being confined to the female sexual disciplines under patriarchal domination. By examining Victorian historical social context, Dr. Grogans analysis is comprehensible. When Dr. Grogans analysis of Sarah is investigated, it is obvious that the As Robert J. G. Lange

pathology is closely associated with the stringent sexual morality.

observes, During the nineteenth century, it would have been considered mad for a man not to want to be a real man, and equally mad for a woman not to want to fulfill the traditional female role of wife and mother (1). In Victorian Age, women should obey the passive role in sexual and social obligations. Not demanding and submissively role is female duty. However, women in medical literatures and Sarah violate the sexual decency. They strongly

assert their individuality and autonomy by revolting not only the gender roles but also the submissive essence of femininity. Consequently, from Victorian patriarchal view, these

women should be labeled as insane women to ensure the social stability, since such a rebellion results in their mental breakdown. However, this discourse reveals the fear of

female sexual and social subversion, the key to the labeling the insane women.
48

Dr. Grogans employment of abnormal cases of hysterical women in Chapter Twenty-eight and citation of The trial of Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere reflect Micales observations about Victorian pathological diagnosis of female hysteria: Nineteenth-century Britons exhibited an extraordinary preoccupation with nervous and mental disease. Form the beginnings of Victorias reign to the First

World War, they generated a large and largely alarmist medical literature about nervousness, neurasthenia, hysteria, nerve prostration, nervous degeneration, and the like (104). The Trial of Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere is the alarmist medical literature that Dr. Grogan refers to explain Sarahs hysterical behaviors and her vicious intention. From his medical perspectives, Sarah resembles Marie de Morell, the seeming innocent but actually a hysterical girl in the trial. Sarahs behaviors can be pathologically explained in terms of Following on this trial, Charles is led to

Marie de Morells neurosis and psychosis disorder.

identify himself with Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere, the victim of Morells physical and mental disturbance. This non-literary juridical text has Dr. Grogan reach a subjective judgment on Sarahs deceptiveness, caused by hysteria. Le Ronciere is convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison, because Marie is defended by the social prestige, by the myth of the pure-minded virgin, by psychological innocence (The French Lieutenants Woman 226). H.B. Irving argues that the jury is presented with the choice of seeing Marie as an angel of purity and innocence, as a girl brought up in the strictest principles of religion and morality. However, in fact, the conviction of La Ronciere is a miscarriage of justice. The conviction

of Le Ronciere results from Maries misleading accusation. Her suffering from the mental malady has her believe herself the victim of a man who is pursing her, and throws her into the arms of the strange and marvellous. As W.H. Williamson disputes, although Marie has suffered from mental disorder, she still knows what she is doing. But she hadnt the moral
49

courage to confess then [at the trial] (qtd. in Shields 85-6, 88). Readers are cognizant of the Victorian ideologies and assumptions through Dr. Grogans citation of the Trial of Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere. Fowles exposes the Victorian self-contradictory phallocentric ideology of female sexuality. Victorian patriarchal society creates a myth that pure-minded is the natural attribute to femininity, but at the same time they blame women for taking advantage of this cognition to cover their grievance against the patriarchal sexual regulations. When women go beyond their control, the strategy of

demonizing female sexuality is put into practice. Therefore, Dr. Grogan attempts to enable Charles to perceive Sarah as a perfidious, lying woman, like Marie. At the same time, he admonishes Charles not to approach Sarah anymore and render his sympathy. Dr. Grogans

warning voice is explicitly expressed in his citation of this trial. Moreover, through the use of this medical intertextuality, Dr. Grogans intention to associate Sarah closely with the insane women is successfully achieved and at the same time produces the fear and shock in Charless mind. By exemplifying this trial, it is perceived that Victorian patriarchal society

attempts at penetrating the female sexuality and to disperse the mystery of femininity. The discourse on subversive power of female sexuality thus becomes the defense that the patriarchal society necessarily establishes the stringent female sexual regulations. Fowless footnote of the Trial of Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere has Dr. Grogans diagnosis under inquiry. The purpose that Dr. Grogan cites the trial is to lay bare Sarahs However, Fowles discloses in the footnote that Dr. Grogans diagnosis exposes his

hysterical insanity and her treacherousness.

La Ronciere deserves Marie de Morells revenge. ignorance of the whole truth.

In fact, this incident is not unilaterally caused by Morells La Ronciere is at

hysterical symptoms and Morell is not the only person to be blamed on.

least partially deserved the hysterical Mlle de Morells revenge on him (The French Lieutenants Woman 229). According to the book Les Erreurs Judiciaries Fowles cites in He confesses to

his footnote, the beginning of the event is Le Roncieres bet with his friend.
50

the presiding judge of the trial that he bets his friend he would make Marie his mistress, because he is too angry to be turned out of General de Morells house for the anonymous letters not written by him. He eventually succeeds in gaining Maries admission to enter her

room through the adjoining bedroom of Miss Allen, Maries governess and La Roncieres lover. It is he that is the originator of this immoral practice and thereby this charge is not a miscarriage anymore. La Ronciere committed a crime against the sexual morality

attempted rape (qtd. in Shields 89). On the other side, Fowless purpose of citing this 1835s psychiatric case in the novel of 1867 is to question Dr. Grogans medical authority. In 1867, Dr. Grogan should know the truth of this trial. Still he borrows this trial as a medical evidence to convince Charles of

Sarahs severe hysterical symptoms and malicious intentions. Through Fowless play of medical intertextuality and footnote of this trial, Dr. Grogans authority is discredited. D. Grogans medical authority is challenged through the epigraphs. In Chapter

Twenty-eight, one of epigraphs questions Dr. Grogans scientific interpretation and foreshadows his prejudiced analysis of Sarah: Assumption, hasty, crude, and vain, /Full oft to use will Science design (223). Assumption is something taken for granted as truth without

proof or investigation. If science is composed of unproven assumptions, scientific truth would not be convincing and easily fall into the pitfall of ideology. Dr. Grogan is trapped into his ideologically patriarchal diagnosis when he employs the Trial of Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere. He is unconsciously snared in his phallocentric diagnosis of Sarah. Instead

of having punctilious investigation, he hastily interprets Sarahs intention and regards her as a cunning schemer without valid evidence. When the patriarchal society confronts with female sexuality, the phallocentric fallacy is manifested in Dr. Grogans long twitched nose for deceit (The French Lieutenants Woman 213). Dr. Grogan, self-assured for being the representative of the scientific authority,

attempts to achieve the complete domination over Charless thinking of Sarah, just like a
51

priest who pretends as God to counsel his followers to obey His advice and to be away from the sin. As the priest dominates in religion, Victorian medicine has been under male control.

With Dr. Grogans authoritative acknowledgement in medicine and his confidence in his diagnosis, the cultural biased perspectives on female sexuality and of hysteria exist. The

patriarchal law to subordinate and stigmatize Sarah as a deviant and a malicious woman is observed, even though Dr. Grogan does not explicitly reveal in his examination. A Hysterical Woman: A Writing Strategy Being diagnosed as a hysterical woman is Fowles strategy to show us the deficiency of Victorian understanding of female hysteria and more significantly to liberate Sarah from the sexual burden on female and to dissolve the patriarchal demonization of female sexuality. Sarah seems to be on the edge of hysteria on the basis of medical literatures cited in the novel. Nevertheless, in fact the traits of hysterical personality deceitfulness, emotionality and eccentricity can not be applied to diagnose Sarah as a willful hysteric. Rather than being an eccentric hysteric, Sarah keeps a clear purpose of her actions and her behaviors are under a conscious control. The diagnosis of her eccentricity is the phallocentric tactics to accuse her

rebellion against the strictest regulation of Victorian patriarchal society female sexual purity. Ellen F. Shields argues that Fowless concept of female unconsciously incorporates numerous characteristics which over the years have been associated with supposedly hysterical women. Sarahs standing at the end of quay, staring out to sea to attract

everyones attention corresponds to the chief trait of hysterical personality: self-dramatization. She is seductive, manipulative and always attention-seeking (102-3). By fabricating the loss Her histrionics

of her virginity, she successfully draws Charless gallantry and sympathy. manipulates Charles from the beginning to the end.

However, Shields perspectives ignore As characterizing Sarah as a fallen

the theme of theme that Fowles composes this novel.

woman to criticize Victorian sexual regulations, Fowles employs the writing strategy to
52

portray Sarah as a female hysteric. Through the artifice of being a female hysteric, Sarah resists the patriarchal ideology that the abnormal and hysteria are the constitutive of quintessential femininity. Moreover, during the process of role playing, she possesses the autonomy of choice that enables her to have a freedom that people dont understand. opposing the Victorian social and sexual conventions, she pursues her selfhood. With the play of intertextuality in the narrative of historiographic metafiction, Fowles employs Victorian medical literatures to have conversations with the Victorian world from the perspectives of the twentieth century. Through these medical past texts, he criticizes the In

patriarchal ideology that associates mystery with femininity. Dr. Grogans dogmatic interpretation of Sarah presents a patriarchal version and the patriarchal demonization of female sexuality. His patriarchal reading of Sarah exposes the brutality and injustice of Victorian social and sexual oppression on women. Male anxiety

about the subversive power of female sexuality, if not being regulated properly, is prevalent in Victorian ideology. Becoming insane or stigmatized as a social outcast is the inevitable destiny for these women not being constrained by sexual regulations, John V. Hagopian argues that Dr. Grogan is eventually discredited as an eccentric rather than a Whig Darwinism, a man who ultimately functions in terms of Victorian morality (198). Dr. Grogan, declaring and priding himself as an advocator of science, hastily draws As a

conclusions of Sarahs behaviors rather than endeavor to seek the truth from doubts.

doctor with observing gaze, he views himself as a person who can be analytically wise to penetrate problems and provide solutions. Apparently, this concept concerns with a myth

that as long as the doctor acquires the ability to look things with his observing gaze, he could diagnose disease and find answers. Nevertheless, Dr. Grogan does not make a scientific and We can only perceive that Victorian

reasonable analysis of Sarah with his observing gaze.

medicine do not follow the progress towards the truth in terms of Michel Foucaults discourse on medicine. On the basis of Michel Foucaults In Birth of Clinic, Medicine has
53

constructed its history as one of a steady progress towards greater objectivity, understanding and precision, a pursuit of the truth of illness and disease (Smart 29). The Victorian

society is so morally tight-laced in its every aspect of life that the medical development cannot shun itself from the influence of sexual morality. Although Dr. Grogans

misconception and misjudgment of Sarah result from the insufficiency of Victorian medical and psychological knowledge of female sexuality, there is no denying that he conspires with the discipline of sexual codes. Though he tries to defend his position that he doesnt condemn Charles and diagnose Sarah from the perspectives of sexual morality, he still unconsciously serves himself as the surrogate of Victorian morality rather than as elite educated with scientific training. Throughout Dr. Grogans diagnosis, hysteria becomes a disease metaphor: being employed to stigmatize the sick persons as the Other, to separate the sane and healthy from the sick and to demarcate the normal from the pathological (qtd. in Micale 179-80). Hysteria hence becomes a stigma that the Victorians inscribe on women of abnormal mentality in order to preserve the stability of social order. patriarchal assertion I am cast out. Moreover, Dr. Grogans

But I should be revenged makes the stigmatized Women classified in the

women a fiend, a maenad (The French Lieutenants Woman 218).

category of mental illness are demonized, for they sexually threaten the hegemonic dominance or the status quo with the horror (Shires 148). Dr. Grogan likewise

imperceptibly reveals his belief that woman is weaker than man in rational thinking and is easily commanded by her emotions in this statement. Sarah possesses the supreme freedom in choosing her identifies. Though in Dr.

Grogans analysis in which she is the representative of the danger of female sexuality, a seductive enchantress, she achieves the emancipation from the gender burdens by performing a role of hysterical woman. Being stigmatized and being sexually demonized as a hysteric

is her tactics to expose the patriarchal dogmatic and limited medical knowledge of female
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hysteria.

Such a conscious performance is a strategy of representation that Sarah uses to not

only express selfhood, but also have Victorian phallocentric ideology criticized. Female sexuality and body likewise become the agency that Sarah employs not only to resist the patriarchal sexual politics and the medical domination, but also to break out of the cultural imposition of madness on female. She successfully criticizes the Victorian patriarchal

definition of madness strongly associated with women.

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Chapter Three Beyond the Boundary: Virgin/Whore Dichotomy

Sarahs alias The French Lieutenants Whore discloses severe Victorian classification of women with the dichotomy of virgin and whore. This dichotomy is strictly put into

practice to regulate female sexuality and create moral boundary. When Queen Victoria came to the throne, her virginity exerts great influence on social and sexual dimension. Her

virginal image reinforces the fetishism of virgin and at the same time displays the aversion towards sexually degenerate women. That virginity becomes the duty for the Victorian Virginity hence is shaped as a natural Female virginal body in

women is emphasized by Victorias virginal image.

attribute to women instead of a patriarchal constructed product.

this respect is the manifestation of body politic, ensuring the sociosexual codes in male-dominated society. There are social powers that manipulate the dichotomy of virgin and whore. It is man

who creates the illusion that virginity is a natural characteristic and consequently women should maintain their body virginal. The symbol of whore likewise is the instrument that Victorian patriarchy has female sexuality under full control. In addition, against such a

society of highly-worshipped virginity, the flourishing business of prostitution exposes the Victorian sexual hypocrisy. The sexual inequality between the fetishism of virginity and the

blooming of prostitution in Victorian Age is perceived. Although Sarah is stigmatized as a whore, a social outcast, for transgressing the Victorian sexual codes, she does not have herself reduced to the plight of a sexual victim as other fallen women in Victorian traditional literary conventions. Instead of being an object

to be classified by patriarchal society and to be saved by Charles gallantry, she is a pivot who initiates different responses among other characters. Sarah, as an impenetratable enigma to From

Victorian patriarchy, eventually pursues her emancipation in the final second ending.
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feminist perspectives, she achieves her subjectivity as a New Woman by shattering the dichotomy of virgin and whore and refusing the bondage of marriage. Being a model in Pre-Raphaelites as a means for her economic independence manifests her liberation from being the property of husband. The Legacy of Virgin Fetishism In Victorian Age, virginity is a prior obligation for the women of middle-and upper-class. The virginal body has a cultural significance. It implies womans chastity, purity and her ignorance of sexual knowledge. Female sexual purity ensures her obedience to the sexual In this regard, the suitable woman

regulations and the future stability of family and society.

for marriage is the one who is virginal and sexually innocent, the characteristic of a feminine ideal. Such a value of exalting virginity has been invisibly inherited from Queen Elizabeth I as a Virgin Queen. throne. This legacy is more highly intensified when Queen Victoria came to the

At the year of her throne in 1837, Queen Victoria was young, innocent and graceful.

The social perception of Queen Victoria oscillates between the image of girlhood and her queenly persona. This oscillation strengthens the social value of female chastity and Queen Victorias originally natural

reinforces the sociosymbolic image of virgin (Davis 6).

body thus is transformed into the body politic. Like Queen Elizabeth as a female monarch, Queen Victorias body is not personal anymore but has the linkage with politics to manipulate female sexuality. Victorias virginity, as an effective means, exerts great influence on the formation of female sexual morality. The significant influence that Victorias accession and her queenly persona bring forth is the cultural emphasis on things virginal. Lloyd Davis argues that the expression queens you must be particularly functions to consolidate the female sexual regulations and morality as well as manifests that her accession endows virginity with a great impact on social dimension (8). In this historical context, Queen Victoria is not only
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presented as the ideal image of woman but accordingly employed to function as a sexually pure icon. In addition, the literary topos and traditions are included under the impact of virgin fetishism. The tragic life and death of fallen women are described as a dominant myth in Women of sexual impurity would inevitably face This myth is concerned with

Victorian traditional literary conventions.

the misfortunes and end their life in death, like Hardys Tess.

the warning that the deviation from the moral codes would unavoidably result in degeneration and death. With respect to the bourgeois sexual morality, such a woman would become the

social outcast and is ostracized as a fallen woman. Though Victorias accession intensifies the image of virgin, the powers regulating behind the fetishism of virginity and inculcation of virginal body show the patriarchal dominance over female sexuality. For Victorian bourgeois women, virginity is viewed as a natural and moral fact of life (qtd. in Davis 3-4). Through education, they believe that the formation of virginity is not contrived by any force and the virginal body is a natural phenomenon. What is more, they internalize the duty of sexual purity the highlighted Under the illusion that virginity is an ideally pure attribute

value of patriarchal society.

rather than a socially constructed one, women undergo the socialization to behave in a way that is acceptable in society. However, with this male-dominated sexual imprisonment, women are sexually immured and their consciousness of sexual autonomy is enslaved. The

belief of virginal body displays not only the obedience of sexual morality, but also the manipulation of the cultural system on female body which is invisibly effaced through such an illusion in patriarchal society. Nevertheless, the virginal body can not be contained under the discourse of the natural phenomenon. Rather, it is socially constructed as a cultural ideal icon and a symbol of In fact, the fetishism of virginity is contrived by the social force: a Virginal body becomes the target

female sexual innocence.

mans craving for the domination over female sexuality.

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for the exercise of powers.

In Foucaults discourses in A Docile Body, our body in society

is under strict control of powers. The prohibitions and obligations comprise the power system (137). This interrelationship of obligation and prohibition constitutes the fundamental part For Victorian women, prohibitions are interlaced

of Victorian female sexual regulations. with obligations.

The virginal body belongs to the social obligation whereas the loss of

virginity is regarded as a prohibition. Losing virginity is deemed as the grave transgression of female sexual regulations. Beneath this power system of obligation and prohibition, the

Victorian women thus submit themselves to the instruction of virginal body. Moreover, as Kate Millett argues, the female does not herself form the symbols by which she is described under patriarchal society. In the civilized worlds as well as the primitive, the ideas in regard to the female are of male design, and are shaped, created and fashioned to suit males needs. Otherness (46). The symbols and image all spring from the fear of womans

The virginal body as a sexual ideal symbol is the illusion which is created Through this fetishism of virginity,

and reinforced by Victorian male-dominated morality.

the Victorian females have been disciplined and imperceptibly deceived that their virginal body belongs to possession of their husbands who are the master of the body. Therefore, the

virginity becomes the product of sexual politics, since female body is put in political field. It is regulated with powers of obligations and prohibitions. That Victorian women

internalize the cultural virginal body is a manifestation of power strategy employed by patriarchal society to achieve social and sexual domination. Because women would receive the punishment of being ostracized as a social outcast for sexual impurity, the maintenance of virginal body is normalized as a natural attribute. With the fetishism of virginity and under the submission to the only procreative function, female virginal body obviously becomes the manipulable and docile one which is shaped and trained to obey and respond the social codes (Discipline and Punishment 136). The worship of virginal body and the reproductive function of female sexuality have female body under
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full control. The Victorian discourse of virginity reduces female sexual body to only the extent that it serves the marital obligation of procreation. This diminishment of female sexuality is for the purpose of subjection. A productive body and a subjected body thereby construct the female body in Victorian discourses on sexuality (qtd. in Davis 4). However, being analyzed from another perspective, the Victorian phallocentric cult of virginity and then their dominance over female virginal body manifests the fear of female sexuality. They dread that the subversive power brought by female sexual autonomy would shatter the social order and reverse the sexually predominant position that males have taken ever since. Charles shows such phallocentric fearfulness at the moment when he suddenly realizes that Sarahs loss of virginity to Varguennes is fictional and, what is worse, that he forces a virgin. He considers himself being snared in Sarahs fallen-woman plot. All of a With the

sudden, he is in a panic-stricken mood about the absurdity of Sarahs behaviors.

atrocious juridical case of La Ronciere suddenly flashing in his mind, the dubitation of Sarahs evil intention is recurring: she is going To put him [Charles] totally in her power (The French Lieutenants Woman 341). Like Marie in the trial cited by Dr. Grogan to

explain female hysteria, for Charles, Sarah presently becomes the embodiment of succubus. She is no longer the victim of her fate. Sarah is mad, devilish, enlacing him in the strangest of nets, and attempts to suck the virility from their [male] veins through having sexual intercourse (The French Lieutenants Woman 341). To Charles, Sarah at this moment seems to appear with the image of a female She is associated with the femme

vampire, a dangerous attraction with vicious intention.

fatale image, alluring and seductive but equally leading him to danger. Like the threatening Siren, she employs feminine wiles sexual allure and lying in order to achieve her hidden and villainous purpose that he does not perceive. as Eve causes the fall of man. Her malicious intent is to instigate his fall, Charless conjecture of

Now he has been mired thoroughly.

Sarahs evil purpose derives from his incomprehension that a woman dares to employ her
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chastity as a means to intrigue a man.

Sarahs behavior is unconventional and eccentric,

since for the Victorian woman the virginity exceeds everything and is the standard that values a woman if she is on the trajectory of sexual morality. It is female duty to maintain their Although

virginal body which is thought of as a most treasurable property before marriage. Charles tries to clam down, he still is unable to think logically.

Sarahs real purpose is

beyond Charless comprehension so that he is caught in the spin and confusion. He never thinks it is love and Sarahs pursuit of sexual emancipation that result in her rebellious behaviors. Despite being portrayed as a symbol of religious and moral corruption, Sarahs femme fatale image, from modern perspectives, implies her free will and unconstrained passion. She is the sexual counterpart to sexually restrained Ernestina. resistance to the feminine sexual ideal and myth of virginity. Sarahs freedom lies in her She struggles to liberate

herself from being the victim of patriarchal fetishism of virginal body. Following her free will, she breaks this illusion that virginity is natural. At the same time, by fictionalizing her

loss of virginity and being stigmatized as The French Lieutenants Whore, she proves that she is the only master of her body and sexuality, breaking away from the patriarchal surveillance of sexual disciplines on female body (The French Lieutenants Woman 171). Even though the alias presents the meaning of female sexual filthiness and social contempt, this stigma sets her beyond the pale of Victorian stringent sexual disciplines and the patriarchal cult of female virginal body. The Issue of Prostitution Sarahs alias The French Lieutenants Whore not only involves the Victorian demand of female sexual purity but also discloses the great social problem: prostitution. The

flourishing business of prostitution uncovers the sexual hypocrisy against the society of virgin fetishism. Though Victorian society advocates that both men and women are under

the sexual sanction, the problem of prostitution still exists and increasingly deteriorates.
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Consequently, the issue of prostitution has begun to draw much social attention. In 1857, the estimate of the number of prostitutes show that there were 8,600 prostitutes in London known to the police but the true number may have been near to 80,000. Statistically there were 9,000 prostitutes, of whom 1,500 were under fifteen years of age, 500 of these being under thirteen. Among these prostitutes, most of them are from the poor

families and are one-second orphans with one deceased parent (qtd. in Fernando 7). If I went to London, I know what I should become I should become what so many women who have lost their honour become in great cities (The French Lieutenants Woman 138). Sarahs confession to Charles exposes the tough condition of Victorian womens

economic predicaments and sexual exploitation. We can infer from this confession that the poverty is the main cause that forces women to prostitution. Women have been placed in In Victorian Age, they are

vulnerable economic and social position for thousands of years. more strictly disciplined by gender roles.

Since the sphere of domesticity is their most

important responsibility and being kept far away from the public sphere, economic dependence is out of the question and is considered as one form of boldness. prostitution thus becomes the means of survival for these poor women. Judith Walkowitz points out that the shorter hours and better pay of prostitution becomes the temporary solution to womans immediate economic difficulties (14). Many young girls from working class are sold by their parents to support family livelihood because of poverty. Young unwed mothers inevitably face this destiny because the government does not care for their life maintenance. This economical hardship is noticeably shown in a young prostitute whom Charles solicits in London. The namesake prostitute Sarah with a baby girl claims She does not have any alternatives As a result,

that she engages in prostitution since she was eighteen.

not only because she has fallen from virtue but also because of the pressure of economy. Prostitution thus becomes the only way to sustain livelihood of her baby and her. Women who engage in prostitution are compelled by poverty, but ironically the
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prostitution, the contrastive counterpart to the ideal virginity, is regarded as the most pernicious form of sexual transgression in terms of sexual morality. to the condemnable and degenerating community. the Great Social Evil (Walkowitz 32). The prostitute belongs

By 1850s the prostitutes have become

The reason is not simply that her loss of chastity is Moreover, what makes prostitutes

ascribed to the source of domestic and social disorder.

come into public notice as the social evil is the fear of venereal disease, defined as the most threatening danger to social order and army health. Prostitutes constant temptation to the

middle-class young men likewise renders themselves a menacing factor (Walkowitz 32). During the 1860s, there is a serious venereal disease problem among enlisted men and prostitutes who serve them. Such a result is inevitable, since the prostitutes provide an However, this high incidence of disease alters the

outlet for male sexual desire in the army.

attitudes of government and medical authorities towards the problem of common prostitutes. The venereal disease is assessed as the serious hazard for the British population, especially for the Home Army. It infects through the promiscuous sexual conducts with the diseased Against the social fear of

prostitutes. Hence there is a need for the preventive measures.

venereal disease, The Contagious Disease Acts in the 1860s is introduced as exceptional legislation to control the spread of venereal disease among enlisted men (Walkowitz 1). The Acts are adopted to allow the police to identify the diseased prostitutes on the streets. The police have right to require these suspected prostitutes to accept the mandatory medical examination and treatment. On the surface, the purpose of The Contagious Disease Acts proclaims for the concern of the public health through the surveillance of prostitutes, but in fact the Acts presents an official sanctioned double standard of sexual morality, one that upheld different standards of chastity for men and women (qtd. in Walkowitz 70). In the beginning, The Contagious

Disease Acts is enacted because of significantly high figures for venereal disease in the Home Army 260 cases per 1,000 men (Fernando 7). However, the intention behind assumes that
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prostitutes are permanent evil.

In this enactment, the sexual inequality consists in the fact

that only the prostitutes have been blamed for the primary infector for male venereal contagion and the social disorder, while men are condoned for solicitation. In The French

Lieutenants Woman, this sexual double standard is shown in Charless worry about that if the prostitute Sarah is infected with venereal disease, but the thought that he should take the same responsibility does not come into his mind. Such an unequal reproach manifests patriarchal If the prior

shirking for the responsibility of maintaining the social order and health.

purpose of Contagious Acts is to prevent venereal disease, the prostitutes clients should also be inspected. Moreover, it is obvious that the venereal disease touches upon the core of Victorian attitudes toward women and their sexuality. The British medical doctor William Acton attributes the venereal disease to the unnatural vice and sexual excess of prostitute. From Dr. Actons perspectives, the venereal disease is looked upon as the result of sin as well as the bodily imbalance and sexual excess. It is the by-product of prostitutes life. He deduces

from the great majority of case that it is simply the prostitutes licentious life mode that leads to the venereal diseases (Walkowitz 56). Like Dr. Grogan in The French Lieutenants

Woman who does not examine the female hysteria from the medical perceptions, Dr. Actons investigation of female venereal infection derives from Victorian perspectives of sexual morality and hence completely reveals the chauvinistic denunciations. On behalf of

Victorian phallocentric prejudice against female sexuality, Dr. Acton draws a conclusion that the venereal disease and the destiny of death are the deserved punishment for prostitutes sin in sexual licentiousness (qtd. in Walkowitz 55-6). In addition to the infection of venereal disease, another factor that prostitutes as the social evil results from her sexual temptation, viewed as potential threat to the sexual regulations of middle class. Since the Victorian middle and upper-class women are

admonished to be ignorant of sexual knowledge, being regulated to be sexually chaste and

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educated to take sexuality only as reproductive function, prostitutes are the women with whom most Victorian young men begin their first sexual experience. as sexually tempting as possible to pander to male customers. They dress themselves In Chapter Thirty-Nine,

Fowles realistically delineates the various fascinating dressing types of prostitutes in London Red District not being confined in the scope of social decency in order to catch male solicitors attention, such as exotic Parisian bargees, sailors, or the Victorian gentlemen in bowler and trousers (292). For Victorian men, prostitutes regard sexuality as an instrument

to earn a livelihood rather than as the function of procreation and more significantly they know how to please men. What is noticeably in this chapter is the realistic and direct narrative that Fowles delineates Charles and his libertines enjoyment of the sexual overtures: The Parts of the celebrated Posture Girl has something about them which attracted his [Camillos] Attention more then any things he had either felt or seen. The Throne of Love was thickly covered with jet-black Hair, at least a quarter of a Yard long, which she artfully spread asunder, to display the Entrance into the Magic Grotto They [posture girls] each filled a Glass of Wine, and laying themselves in an extended Posture placed their Glasses on the Mount of Venus (The French Lieutenants Woman 294) Fowles imitates the conventionally opaque way in Victorian literature about sexuality by using the metaphors of female body, but still there is something unusual in this description. This opaque portrayal of debauched life in the brothel exposes Victorian patriarchal sexual hypocrisy and sexual double standard. The Victorian society acquiesces in the sexual

inequality, whereas women are still confined to the surveillance of sexual morality. Moreover, this mimic narrative explicitly uncovers male pursuit for the sexual pleasure and at the same time responds to Fowless belief that the Victorians are highly as sexed as us. In this narrative, some noun phrases with the first letter capitalized, such as Parts, Throne of
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Love, Hair, Grotto, and Mount of Venus, function as metaphors for some parts of female body. related to sex. Specifically speaking, since this is a scene in a brothel, these metaphors are Parts, equal to Throne of Love with jet-black Hair, refers to female Mount of Venus is mound of Venus in human anatomy. It

external genital organ.

relates to mons pubis or mons veneris with the meaning that a rounded fleshy protuberance is situated over the pubic bones which become covered with hair during puberty. Male sexual debauched life is presented through Fowless stark-naked description of the profligate scenes in a London brothel. Not only can we see that the prostitutes have to

please the male libertines with any boldly sexual postures, but the younger son of a bishop, a baronet, and a pillar of House of Lords, including Charles, are also the visitors. Victorian

men claim that the brothels and Red Light District become the places where they can break away from the suffocated constraints of sexual ethics and hence bring out the tinge of temporary sexual release. But against the debauchery in brothels, the Victorian patriarchal

demand of the severe sexual regulations of female sexuality appears self-contradictory and ironical. The fact that prostitutes are ideologically condemned for being sexually

degenerate shows the sexual hypocrisy. In Chapter 39 Fowles employs a letter from The Times as an epigraph to accuse the phallocentric injustice to label prostitutes as the great social evil and shows their misery and helplessness: Now, what if I am a prostitute, what business has society to abuse me? Have I received any favours at the hands of society? If I am a hideous cancer in society, are not the causes of the disease to be sought in the rottenness of the carcass? Am I not its legitimate child; no bastard, Sir? (The French Lieutenants Woman 288). The prostitutes accusation of the social unfairness is foregrounded against the scenes of the patriarchal abandoned life for the pursuit of carnal desire in brothel in the same chapter.
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In

Victorian Age, prostitutes and fallen women do not gain much help from the government, since Victorian patriarchal society does not situate them in the site of acceptable sexuality. What is worse, the prostitutes are socially and sexually exploited, but simultaneously the Victorian society turns reproachful eyes towards them because of the visibility of their vice. Consequently, they are viewed as the threat to the hegemonic stability and the vicious wretched outcast rather than a social victim. The discourse on the release from stringent sexual morality that Victorian men address uncovers their sexual hypocrisy and inequality. Victorian men declare the need to be This

temporarily free from sexual constraints but women do not possess the same right. argument rationalizes male voracious demand.

Demand and supply is the key to the

flourishing business of Victorian prostitution. The increasing number of prostitutes comes from the Victorian males demand. Fowles argues that it is paradoxical that the men can buy

a thirteen-year old girl for a few pounds at the era where woman is sacred (The French Lieutenants Woman 258). Likewise, it is ironical that high percentage of prostitutes appears in an age which highly proclaims the virginity. Despite the moralistic attitudes prevalent during the Victorian Era, what is sexually hypocritical is that there are many prostitutes, ranging from streetwalkers to mistress. Men are willingly to pay price for sexual acts. In

brothels, or with prostitutes on the streets, sexuality is not confined in the scope of procreation; instead it is for carnal pleasure. There, men claim that they can enjoy sex and show their masculinity by sexual conquest. The riotous life in the brothel shows the conflict of social ethos between the fetishism of virgin and the vicious demand of prostitutes. As Fowles describes, Camillo begins to feel disgusted at the prodigious Impudence of the Women after a series of sensuous stimuli, but his desire comes back again when these prostitutes behave themselves as modest Virgins (The French Lieutenants Woman 295). The worship of virgin has been rooted in Victorian

patriarchal sexual ideology and still manipulates male psychology, even when they are in
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brothels. Sarah: the embodiment of virgin and whore Victorian typical virgin/whore spilt is the result of patriarchal dominance over female sexual autonomy. Like the fetishism of virginity, this dichotomy is the intrigue that

Victorian patriarchy employs to create the boundary between women and to absolutely classify women. Through this classification, Victorian men can achieve the end of sexual

superiority, whereas women are constrained without sexual liberation. Sarahs alias Poor Tragedy and The French Lieutenants Whore disclose not only this historical context of dichotomy virgin and whore but also Sarahs social and sexual predicaments. Sarah is not a real prostitute, but appears with the image of a whore. The

namesake prostitute Sarah whom Charles solicits is insinuated to misunderstand readers and Charles that Sarah is a real fallen woman. Nevertheless, Sarahs image as a whore not only means her sexual transgression but also connotes the powers given to revolt the patriarchal sexual dichotomy. She is outside of the patriarchal structure; namely, she rejects the Hence, her fictional story with Vagueness The

discourse that is defined by masculine meaning.

is one manifestation of her rebellion and her breakthrough in the virginal ideal.

moment as she realizes her fictional story with her free will by having sexual conduct with Charles is another one that shows her sexual emancipation. In contrast with Dr. Grogans pathological perspectives that take Sarah as a medical object, to Charles, Sarah is a mystery that attracts him to explore after the first-time encounter. She is a miserable figure that arouses his gallantry to save her, a desire to protect and to kneel besides her and comfort her. independent spirits. Sarah is as a fallen woman for the public of Lyme Regis and as a hysterical patient for Dr. Grogan. But she is the materialization of siren that has attempted to bewilder Charles. He is tranced by her fine and dark eyes with intelligent and

For Charles, Sarah presents herself as an unregulated woman with the exotic sexuality in her
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loose hairs with the hue of wildness and her sensual mouth.

She is like a whore, a tempter, Her

who does not confine herself within the constraints of masculine ideology of sexuality.

potential lure draws Charles to be gradually trapped in but at the same time he is aware that the forbidden danger is oncoming. Though Charles tries to wear his cryptic coloration to

refuse Sarahs appeal and resist her attraction, he still insensibly falls into contradictions. When Sarah confesses him that she gives herself to Varguennes, He [Charles] was at one and the same time Varguennes enjoying her and the man who sprang forward and struck him down (The French Lieutenants Woman 172). That not only Charles has the vision of being

Varguennes, but also he might have enjoyed Sarah if he were Varguennes discloses the fact that Charless sexual desire has been aroused imperceptibly by Sarahs image of innocent victim as well as of untamed and abandoned woman. When Sarah is sleeping in Ware

Commons, Charles feels attracted to her tender yet sexual way of lying which reminds him the girl in Paris. Even though Charles refuses to admit his adoration and lust towards Sarah, Sarah is a difference in the

he himself cant stop the passion as he begins to approach her. society of everything regulated. deviations.

He unconsciously is drawn to her social and sexual

The different feelings between Sarah and Ernestina that Charles has are significantly presented in the kiss. His kiss with Ernestina is as chastely asexual as childrens. On the contrary, he is drawn into Sarahs drowning eyes and has the strong desire to initiate the kiss on Sarahs soft lips with the feel of her tender body, regardless of any scruples and sexual morality. With the description that the whole Victorian age was lost and Charless

attraction for Sarah deepening by degrees, Fowles implies the threshold of Charless journey of pursuing his selfhood. The collapse of Victorian rigid structure of social class and the

shackle of human sexuality is likewise under way. Unlike traditional sexually tamed Victorian women, what makes Sarah a unique woman consists in her active role in sexuality. Katherine Tarbox argues, Sarah manipulates
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Charles into a position where he must begin to deconstruct his affiliation with official manhood (96). Most of time, Sarah plays the active role in the contact with Charles:

Charles is compelled to realize the history of Sarahs infamous behaviors; Sarah has her message sent to Charles after being banished from Mrs. Poultneys house. dominated role in sexuality is reversed by Sarahs initiative. at Endicotts Family Hotel in Exeter, they kiss each other. Similarly, male

When she meets Charles again But Charles is aware of his

sexual transgression and then he resists it. At this moment, Sarah actively draws Charles close to her again: He covered her cheeks, her eyes, with kisses. His hand at last touched that hair, caressed it, felt the small head through its softness, as the thin-clad body was felt against his arms and breast. Suddenly he buried his face in her neck. We must not we must not this is madness. But her arms came round him and pressed his head closer. (The French Lieutenants Woman 336) To Sarah, her body/sexuality is her powerful means to rebel the Victorian sexual constraints on women. As Stephen Best and Douglas Kellner claim, Sarahs body breaks free from its

socially articulated, disciplined, semiotized, and sujectified state and become disarticulated, dismantled and deterritorialized (qtd. in Tarbox 95). Virginal body is the product under the However, when realizing her

phallocentric articulation and discipline of obligation.

fictional story with Charles, her body/sexuality is liberated from anything that attempts to submit her to the patriarchal authority the surveillance of sexual morality. Freeing herself

from the patriarchal society, she can dynamically be an existentialist, a helpmate, and a seductress as well as the role of catalyst in Charles development of selfhood. By reversing

female restricted and passive role in sexuality, Sarah gradually breaks the nets of sexual constraints and eventually achieves her sexual autonomy. Throughout the novel, Sarah has been an enigma and a figure from myth that defies the
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chauvinist logics.

Such a mystification of Sarah shows how the Victorian patriarchal society In fact, Charles does not understand Sarah at all, As Dr. Grogan views Sarah from his phallocentric

dogmatically interprets and defines her. though Sarah refuses to be understood.

perspectives, what Charles understands Sarah is only the fact that she is a fallen woman and needs help to struggle from her misery. He has attempted to interpret Sarah as a riddle, a

forbidden, the strong fatal power of which Charles is afraid (The French Lieutenants Woman 144). But still he cant resist his desire to decipher the riddle. He always keeps

hesitated during his exploration of Sarah.

To him, Sarah represents the uncertainty in life.

If he rashly enters the unpredictable world, perhaps he would get hurt. I do not mean he has taken the wrong path, explains Fowles (The French Lieutenants Woman 75). Fowles implies that Charless continuous engagement in Sarah inspires the He feels so close with Sarah in mind and soul

consciousness of his existential self.

gradually in the process of keeping contacting with her. Her rebellion against Victorian constraints on human emancipation, to Charles, dismantles his desire to revolt, even though now all he can do is just suppress the desire of resistance and is resigned to his fossilized circumstances. However, when they meet again in Exeter, his sexual desire, his frustration

and all that he has are directed into Sarah. Sarah wields the most powerful influence on the other characters throughout the novel. She is the pivotal figure bringing forth different responses. In fact, it is Sarah that plays the controlling role during the game that Dr. Grogan has confidence in his medical authority and the game that Charles considers himself as a dominant figure and a savior of Sarahs misery. She has herself become the object of desire, and symbol of resistance. fictionalization of the loss of virginity generates Charless curiosity to investigate her. Her Her

sexual predicament and the role as a social outcast arouse Charless gallantry and his affection. She chooses to be identified as a whore, so that she becomes a forbiddance.

Owing to her stigma, she can roam outside the limits of the respectable community to resist
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the sexual restraints of masculine society and then to show her exotic and uncountable sexuality (Raaberg 529, 531). At the same time, by shattering the dichotomy of virgin and

whore, she demonstrates her subversive power to rebel the Victorian repression on female sexuality and everything that obstructs her pursuit of selfhood and emancipation. Characterizing Sarahs reappearance with the image of a New Woman in the final chapters, Fowles exposes the falsehood of Dr. Grogan and Charless patriarchal perspectives upon Sarahs deviant conducts. Sarah has been associated with Other, but in fact she is a

woman who rebels against patriarchal society by casting herself outside that society and thus outside masculine ideology (Michael 233). She has herself viewed as an object to be gazed, By virtue of taking advantage of being

to be diagnosed and to be given a disgraceful name.

a social outcast, she maintains her individuality to uncover the unfairness that the Victorian patriarchal society imposes on female sexual liberation. Sarah as a New Woman Sarah not only breaks away the virgin/whore dichotomy but more significantly reappears as a New Woman with her fresh dressing style. When Charles meets Sarah again in Rossettis house, the fashion of electric bohemian is presented in Sarahs dressing before Charless eyes. She rejects the contemporary cumbrous female clothing style. Her new

image contradictorily produces shocks in Charless mind: And her dress! It was so different that he thought for a moment she was someone else. He had always seen her in his mind in the former clothes, a haunted face rising from a widowed darkness. But this was someone in the full uniform of the New Woman, flagrantly rejecting all formal contemporary notions of female fashion. (The French Lieutenants Woman 423) Sarahs new clothing style predicts her emancipation from the Victorian social triteness and sexual constraints. According to Fowless descriptions, Sarahs New Woman dressing style

obeys her disposition and reinforces her frankness, directness and unaffectedness, like
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woman in United States. In Victorian Age, United States is the country where the woman emancipation has been twenty-years old, but in England the sprout of feminist movement is still invisible. From the perspectives of the phallocentric sexual ethics, Sarah has been categorized as the New Woman, the Odd Woman, the Wild Woman, since she chooses not to pursue the conventional bourgeois womans career of marriage and motherhood (Ardis 1). Gail

Cunningham indicates that in the fictions of 1890s, heroines who refused to conform to the traditional feminine role, challenged accepted ideals of marriage and maternity, choose to work for a living are identified by readers and reviewers as a New Women (3). The

delineation of Sarah as a New Woman and a sexual emancipator shows Fowless sensibility to not only human emancipation but also the topics associated with female sexual liberation. When we account for the social and sexual elevation of woman, the following two crucial factors should be concerned: the economic independence and the rejection of marriage. Therefore, that Sarah works by herself as a sensuous model in Pre-Raphaelites and rebels the role of feminine domestic ideal can exemplify the manifestation of a New Woman. Being the model of Pre-Raphaelites simulates Sarah to move on to a New Woman and likewise is the way that she controls her life. Sarah as a model in Pre-Raphaelites not only is a challenge for Victorian masculine ideology that the domesticity is womans nature, but also shows the fact she works by herself for being economically independent. Owing to be

caught in a patriarchal society which excludes women from public sphere, being a prostitute would become Sarahs only way to sustain her livelihood, if she does not work as model in Rossettis house. Sarahs image of a whore is associated with Pre-Raphaelites, since This choice of persona makes her an incarnation of a type that the Brotherhood often portrayed in their commitment to art with a social consciousness namely, the fallen woman (Goscilo 67). Sarahs role of a sexual outcast responds to Pre-Raphaelites advocacy of nature and
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spontaneity of sexuality. The environment of Pre-Raphaelites is contrastive to the Victorian sexually rigid society. These Pre-Raphaelites hold frank attitudes towards the sexual drive and human natural sexual relationship, not like Victorians whose minds are instructed to ban and keep the drives outside the door. In the house of Pre-Raphaelites, Sarah eventually

arrives at her own happiness and her desired end, Mr. Smithson, I am happy, I am at last arrived, or so it seems to me, where I belong (The French Lieutenants Woman 430). There

she does not bear the alias of the poor Tragedy or the taint The French Lieutenants Whore any more. She is no longer the woman who marries Shame. Not being a person

who has stigmatized identities any more, she finds her true subjectivity and asserts her autonomy. She can completely emancipate herself from the restriction of Victorian sexual

codes and simultaneously transforms into the fresh image of a New Woman. Fowless involvement with the Pre-Raphaelites functions to reinterpret the social perception of female plight in sexuality, namely, exposing the social unfairness of sexual treatment. Hae-In Kims claims that the works of the Pre-Raphaelites enclose not only the

women destroyed by love but also the question that if the nature of fallen womans destruction justifies her fate. The paintings or poems of the Pre-Raphaelites alter the

traditional view that the fallen women should bear the destruction alone their punishment for sexual transgression. Male presence is included to connote the social injustice often alluding to the fact that in every ruined womans story there lay a guilty man. The

Pre-Raphaelite artists attempt to connect the art with social history to arouse the consciousness that sexuality is less a taboo and womans falling results from the social inequality between sexes. Fallen women should not shoulder the blame unilaterally. They

are the victimized of patriarchal domination on female sexuality and thereby the condemnation should be shifted to the sexual double standard in the Victorian phallocentric society. The open denouements challenge Victorian familiar pattern of marriage plot as the
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inevitable end of the novel.

Sarahs transformation from a fallen woman to a New Woman

rejects Victorian polarization that fallen women should be rewarded by death since they dont live up to the standard of female purity. Charles Scruggs argues that [w]hen she accepts

[Sarah] Charles in the first [final] ending, it would be easy to define her within the context of a Victorian clich or a combination of several Victorian clichs: Fallen Woman redeemed by True Love or Woman finds True Self in marriage (102). Although Sarah escapes from the cult of virgin, she is still confined in the fate of Victorian feminine domesticity, the true womanhood. This ending follows Victorian convention that the heroine should fulfill her In The French

duty of mother and wife and eventually is saved by the hero of the novel.

Lieutenants Woman, if readers choose the first final ending as the denouement, this martial obligation would become the impediment to Sarahs eventual liberation and to Sarahs development of feminist consciousness. Sarahs refusal of Charless proposal is a serious whammy for Charles, a representative of patriarchal ideology. As a New Woman, the bondage of marriage should be abandoned. G. R. Drysdale, a Victorian writer, argues that the marriage is the chief instrument in the degradation of woman, because of the inveterate error that female sex is dependent on man and merely attends to household cares and rearing of children. This dependency and

domesticity would hinder the development of womans freedom (qtd. in Fernando 18). As Ann Ardis claims, a New Woman is sexually active outside of marriage (3). For Sarah,

the significant way to liberate herself from the social and sexual shackles is the extrication from marriage as well as from being a sexual property of the husband, namely refusing to be Mrs. Smithson, even though Charles promises that he would not force her to do any change. From the feminist perspective, the final second ending, in which Sarah truly emancipates herself from any sexual burden, is more feasible than the first one. The final second ending

attacks on domestic and social arrangement on which the Victorian morality and femininity are built. In this ending, Sarah, who continues to be a pariah and does not accept the role
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Victorian society assigns women in marriage, truly achieves her selfhood and the identity of Liberated Woman. Sarah wants to be what she is, not the one that a husband might expect

in marriage. As Cunningham argues, a New Woman would try to go her own way according to her own principles (10). Sarah follows her belief in freedom and she would rebel when

her principles are under challenge. Appearing with the image of New Woman, she resists the bondage of marriage. She rejects Charles to be her husband for the same reason that she has rejected a Victorian society that has classified her as a governess, a fallen woman, a whore, since either role, be it wife or governess, is a betrayal of self (The French Lieutenants Woman 108-9). unconstrained self. Liberating from any definite identity means her pursuit of

Choosing to have a child without the authority of marriage license, she She rather puts her

can demand complete freedom from patriarchal and legal control. energies into professional than matrimonial achievement.

Only in the second final ending is

Sarah a veritable New Woman and does she truly achieve freedom. Moreover, in this ending Sarah realizes Fowless faith of existentialism. As an

existentialist for emancipation, her sexual transgression and her resistance to social duty are the revolt of the individual against all the systems of thoughts and social and political pressures which attempt to deprive her of individuality (Foster 76). Sarah does not

compromise with the Victorian patriarchal ideology of gender roles. Instead, she declines to conform to the social obligations and sexual regulations with her revolutionary self. In

order to retain her individuality, she presents herself as an affront to the ossified society by not observing the codes of female sexuality and rejecting the ideology of womanliness. The

traditional concept of womanhood is absent in Sarah, only the continuous pursuit of individual self. In Victorian era, being a New Woman liberated from social duty of marriage and sexual shackles has the same meaning as being a social outcast. Sarah Woodruff is such a victim The demand of virginal

under sexual repression and monitoring system of sexual morality.

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body and the strict sexual regulations are the phallocentric attempt to survey and control a womans history of past life. Sarahs tainted past is disclosed by her loss of virginity that

causes the alias of The French Lieutenants Whore. This alias shows that she abandons the most significant attribute of a Victorian feminine ideal, namely, her chastity. Such a

licentious life convinces the public in Lyme Regis and Charles that she is really a fallen woman. She should be redeemed, since she is not on the normal and moral trajectory of

Victorian society. The forces of sanction against female body contain the Victorian social powers of obligations and forbiddance. trained into a docile one. With this power system, female body is disciplined and

The virginal body, therefore, is the sexual representation of the

docile body and the patriarchal fetishism of virgin reinforces womans social and sexual subjection. What is more, the virginal body is the product of body politics in Victorian The illusion that the virginal body is a natural attribute rather than a

patriarchal society.

socially constructed fact exposes the masculine dominance over female sexuality and hindrance from womans pursuit of sexual liberation. The contrastive symbol to virgin is whore, the image that Sarah firstly appears with. Prostitutes are labeled as great social evil in Victorian Age because of their sexual transgression, sexual temptation and infection of venereal disease. reduce prostitutes to the degenerate community. These negative attributes

The Victorian patriarchal society claims

that young males are easily seduced by prostitutes, but ironically prostitutes are the women whom men pay price to have their first sexual experiences. The sexuality with prostitutes goes beyond the procreative function. doctrines of sexuality. Prostitutes social position is more marginalized than the Victorian normal women. They belong to the class of social outcast and their economical predicaments are ignored by society. Sarah receives the social reproach and hence is ostracized since she is a fallen
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It is for carnal pleasure that rebels Victorian

woman.

However, playing the role of Otherness, she subverts the patriarchal dominance It is her fictional degraded past and stigmatized alias that she

over female sexuality.

employs to emancipate herself from the sexual constraints. Yet, her multiple images, along with her rejection of the bondage of marriage, signifies her progress to be a Liberated Woman and for her quest of her selfhood. She shows her varied images to different audiences: a Being a dynamical carrier

governess, a virgin, a fallen woman and also a hysterical patient.

of any identities given by Victorian patriarchal society, Sarah goes across over the dichotomous boundary of virgin and whore, pure and impure. Revolting from the socially marginalized status, Sarah turns the table undersurface to play the dominant role to be investigated, to be read, and even to be studied by different audiences. As Richard P. Lynch observes, Sarah, in effect, declares herself a fiction, a work of art, who fears understood entirely, even by herself. Being understood is the

equivalent of being planned, or dead (62). Through weaving her fictional story, she has the freedom to decide what she wants to be and to choose her own identities. She

fictionalizes herself to create her own world and to achieve the liberty for the future transformation. By reducing herself to the work of a riddle, of an enigma, the scarlet

woman of Lyme, a cursed outcast and victim, Sarah presents her complex personalities and fluidity of selfhood (Lin 207). Sarahs emancipation echoes back the historical year of 1867 in the novel. year when the feminine emancipation begins in England. This is the

Girton College, the first

residential college for woman, was established in 1869. 1869 is the year that responds to Sarahs reappearance with economical independence as the Pre-Raphaelite model. She

challenges Victorian sexual codes by means of her fabricated story. Her stigmatic past initiates her journey of pursuing subjectivity and her rejection of the confinement of marriage signifies her successful struggle from the social and sexual imprisonment. Sarah, as a New

Woman, does not submit to the social and political pressures on the individual to conform.
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Finally she realizes her desire of self-fulfillment, independence, and emancipation by destroying the sexual taboo. Sweeping aside the old clich and moral attitudes boots her

into sexual autonomy and sexual liberation.

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Conclusion

The critic Linda Hutcheon has called The French Lieutenants Woman a historiographic metafiction. Within this narrative, John Fowless play of intertextuality in the dimension of The diversity of

Victorian womans social and sexual emancipation is explored.

intertextuality and the intrusion of novelist-surrogate significantly presents Fowless breakthrough in the traditional literary narrative. Unlike the chronological and the realistic narrative in Victorian novels, the interweaving of the present/the past and the fictionality/the reality shows Fowless experimental narrative strategy. Through this creative narration, the

themes of this novel can be grouped under such headings: the critique of inhuman sexual constraints on women, the disclosure of phallocentric version of female hysteria and the importance of freedom. This novel claims to be authentic historical account of Victorian England and yet, paradoxically, shows how such accounts are made of words, metaphors and quotations. Fowles acknowledges that he has to cheat readers into believing that Victorian spoken speech is formal and archaic, since he finds that in fact the dialogues of 1867 are too close to our time to sound convincingly old and are not stiff enough, not euphemistic enough (Afterwords 164). Throughout the novel, commentaries on the status and language of novel, like Such a

Fowless acknowledgement above, manifest a consciousness of self-reflexivity.

paradox of texts fictionality likewise displays an intense self-awareness of novelist-surrogate in regard to the process of literary creation. At the same time, the autonomy of fiction itself is challenged by the intrusion of self-conscious novelist-surrogate. The novelist-surrogate fuses the critical point of view with his modernity, namely the perceptions back and forth between the nineteenth and the twentieth century, to continue the story of the novel. Though the plot and setting are Moreover, that reader

Victorian, the narrative of novel is self-referencing and metafictional.

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is invited to the process of artistic production and to the alternatives of open denouements is not only the challenge of texts autonomy but also the manifestation of questioning the omniscient role of Victorian novelists. The variety of intertextuality characterizes this novel as a unique historiographic metafiction and simultaneously has this novel a historical connection with the Victorian Age. Intertextuality in various forms is a device that Fowles employs frequently in the novel. Most appear in the form of dual epigraphs in the beginning of each chapter and others are interwoven in the footnote and in the text itself. The Victorian medical and sociological

studies and contemporary poetics and prose are interspersed in the novel as the sources of intertextuality. Such a strategy of narrative is Fowles innovation. Through this device,

not only is the association with Victorian history created, but Fowles also realizes his constant conversation with Victorian historical past. In addition, the function of intertextuality in the novel is to close the gap between past and present of the reader and for Fowles to rewrite the past from the viewpoints of the twentieth century. Within this narrative of historiographic metafiction, we reader can

recognize the blending of the paradoxical pattern the present/the past, and yet the connection between the literary and the Victorian historical past. History in the traditional novel is only

meant to authenticate the fiction and the demarcation between past and present in the novel is clearly defined. But historiographic metafiction situates itself among the worlds of

discourses on the past, the world of texts and of intertexts to blur the boundaries between past and present and meanwhile disclose the linkage. Accordingly, Fowles deploys these

worlds the play of intertextuality to represent and recreate his own Victorian history Moreover, it is not only the intertextuality but also the meditation on the traditional form of text that enables this novel to be attractive among the postmodern literary works. Intertextuality in the form of epigraph is one significant innovation in response to Victorian historical past. The Victorian parody is another form of intertextuality that Fowles uses to
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establish his new historical context. Through the parody of Victorian literary conventions, he can write something different. For Fowles, writing this novel is to write something new

and creative, something that Victorian novelists fail to write. Fowles imitates the Victorian romance and at the same time paradoxically deconstructs and ironizes it. The ironic playing of Victorian conventions is presented in the genre

romance and equally shows in the facts that his female protagonist is an orphan and she earns a living as a governess. Her miserable past and being sexually exploited by patriarchal

society likewise display the Victorian literary conventions. The male protagonists gallantry is therefore roused and then the traditional romance begins. However, that Fowles mocks the Victorian genre prominently consists in his examination and parody of the Victorian traditional literary conventions. He characterizes his female protagonist as a sexual

degenerate and a social outcast, not a Victorian archetype of heroine who functions to maintain the ideal femininity. Such a characterization of female protagonist is the Through the parody of Victorian characteristic

intersection of invention and critique.

literary style, Fowles brings forth the most stringent issue of Victorian culture and simultaneously criticizes it the human sexual emancipation. By analyzing the structure of The French Lieutenants Woman, it is perceived that parody is one way to create the contradictory stance on any statement of status quo. By the same token, parody is a means to have our connection with the past, to see how the present literary representation comes from the past. Through the ironic manipulation of Victorian traditional styles in literature, Fowles displays his creative expressions with critical commentaries on Victorian sexual imprisonment, especially on women. The function of

critique is exerted in Fowless mimicry of Victorian novels and the creativity consists in Fowles concerns of human liberation. The purpose of his creative representation of

traditional literary within the parody in a postmodern and self-reflexive way is to establish the difference at the heart of similarity. This creative difference is regarding a woman who
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rebels her social and sexual constraints with her intelligence. The theme of human freedom is conveyed in the novel, especially female sexual emancipation. Fowles draws forth this issue in his novel because women are classified with In

the dichotomy of virgin and whore and strictly constrained by sexual regulations. Victorian Age, women are forbidden to sexually express themselves.

Those who are brave

in voicing their sexual autonomy are often subject to negative images and consequently receive reproach. The negative repercussions come from not only the patriarchal society but

also sometimes the same sex women. Through discussing the issue of female sexuality, what Fowles wants to explore is the cultural control and repression during the nineteenth century. The established standards of

female sexual conducts are to ensure the purity of inherence. Form the viewpoints of feminism, the conformity of a Victorian woman to the socially accepted identity and the repression of taboos and sexual desire exposes the patriarchal cultural manipulation. addition, the fetishism of virginity is the product of male-dominated sexual morality. In The

virginal body connotes not only the qualification for fulfilling the social duty to be a wife and a mother but also most importantly signifies the body politics. not a natural attribute to a woman. phenomenon. In fact, the virginal body is

Instead, it is a socially and culturally constructed

Female body thus is transformed from a natural one into the one manipulated What is worse, the loss of virginity means the severe sexual

by the control of social powers.

deviant behaviors. Girls of sexual transgression are considered to become the object of males libido and are thought of as the main cause of the collapse of social order. Against the social context of virgin and whore dichotomy in The French Lieutenants Woman, Fowles characterizes two women with these two contrary images in the novel: Sarah Woodruff and Ernestina Freeman. Such an antithesis discloses the Victorian patriarchal But more importantly for Fowles,

definite polarization of women as virgin and whore.

choosing Sarah, a reproach, as a female protagonist reveals his espousal of postmodern

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plurality and recognition of difference.

Ernestina is the archetype with the ironical function

to expose the phallocentric ideology of female asexuality, whereas Sarah presents herself anything except Victorian proper types. she is liberated and passionate. Although Fowles creates a unique woman of emancipation from Victorian sexual restraints, the sexual repression still plays a crucial role for Victorian women. It is closely She is ex-centric and marginalized but at same time

related to every aspect of their life. In respect of the sexual oppression, Fowles deals with the Victorian serious problem of female hysteria, in addition to the issue of virgin and whore dichotomy. By tracing back to the history of hysteria and examining its etymological origin,

Victorian perspectives of female hysteria follows the medical legacies from ancient time to the seventeenth century and accordingly the diagnosis of female hysteria is a sexually-prejudiced result, not an outcome of scientific investigation. Fowles dispels the patriarchal prejudice that hysteria is exclusively a womans malady. The Victorian phallocentric diagnosis of female hysterical symptoms is likewise criticized when such a dogmatic conclusion derives from the employment of medical literatures without careful examinations. Moreover, such a patriarchal diagnosis made exclusively in women

results from the Victorian bias that women are susceptible to suffer from this physical and mental illness. disorder. In Victorian Age, female hysteria becomes a medium used for the purpose of sexual manipulation to warn the patriarchal society that female unrestrained sexuality is destructive. However, the history of hysteria and its etiology shows that female hysteria basically derives from the sexual repression. On the basis of this medical discourse, the irony is that the Hysterical women therefore are thought of having a tendency to cause social

Victorian patriarchy should take major responsibility for the high percent of female hysterical sufferers, since they demand the stringent sexual repression of female sexuality. But it seems that they are not aware of their accomplice.
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Therefore, female hysteria can not

unilaterally be viewed as the result of womans physical disease.

Rather, it is an illness of

mental malady because of social and sexual oppression the burden of gender roles. Besides, it cannot regarded as an exclusive attribute to woman, for the medical records show that it is likely for men to suffer from hysteria. What is more, virgin and whore complex brings forth the issue of prostitution. Fowles

exposes Victorian sexual hypocrisy by delineating how the libertines lead an immoral life and are interested in sexual pleasure. Even under an Age which worships womens sacredness, a Victorian prostitution discloses not only the double

large number of prostitutes still exist.

standard but also Victorian serious social problem. From the perspectives of Victorian sexual morality, prostitutes are perceived as the Great Social Evil, since they are seen as subversive system which likely destroys the stability of bourgeois society. As the dangers of disease and infection to society, prostitutes are

classified under the category of unacceptability and prostitution is a form of severe deviancy, defined as the most threatening presentation of moral degeneration. toward prostitutes originates in their seditious nature. The fear and antipathy

Unlike the clandestine form of With regard to Victorian

prostitution, prostitutes in the streets show the visibility of vice.

bourgeois morality, the streetwalkers are the manifestation of obvious threat to the social norm and decency. On the surface, Victorian Age is the time of innocence relating to sexuality. social class is contained under the social norms and sexual regulations. Every

However, the

flourishing business of prostitution displays the irony of patriarchal sexual hypocrisy. The cause that the number of prostitutes increases sharply consists in male voracious demand. But the patriarchal society is not self-critical about the law of supply and demand. They

enjoy themselves sexual pleasure with prostitutes, but paradoxically they condemn prostitutes from the perceptions of religion, sexual morality, filth and the discourse of disease infection. In fact, it is the poverty and social contempt that cause the fallen women and women of
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working class into prostitution.

Even though the industrial improvement is remarkable in

Victorian Era, Victorian women are still kept far away from the public sphere. Hence, prostitution becomes the only way to earn a livelihood, because hey dont have any alternative to support themselves and their illegitimate children. In terms of sex and class, prostitutes are the victim of society, the group sexually and economically exploited in the social class system. From Fowless perspectives on Victorian prostitution, prostitutes

should be viewed as a wretched outcast rather than an immoral degenerate sinner. They are forced to leave the security of home and to fall from virtue because of the economic difficulties. Nevertheless, Victorian patriarchal society does not attach great importance to the solution to prostitutes financial predicaments. group of sexually and socially unforgivable Choosing Victorian Age as the historical context of his novel and dealing with Victorian issues relating to womans sexuality, Fowles creates a woman of reproach on Victorian Age and then reverses her tragic role into a unique woman of emancipation. Appearing as Instead, they categorize prostitutes as a

Fowles haunting mysterious woman at quay, Sarah Woodruff functions herself as a Muse to inspire Fowles to compose the novel and to challenge the unreleased sexual fetters in Victorian male-dominated culture. At the beginning of the novel, Fowles resists the Victorian traditional literary convention that the female protagonist is a model of sexual purity and social decency. On the contrary, She

his female protagonist appears with the image of whore, an outcast rejected by society. employs a strategy to be stigmatized as a fallen woman based on her autonomy.

The image

of whore can be applied to any woman who rebels the constraints of bourgeois sexual morality to pursue sexual liberation, although from the standpoint of Victorian morality it manifests sexual immorality and danger and illicit sex. At the end of the novel, such a

woman originally stigmatized as a fallen woman reappears with a fresh image of a New Woman, a feminist ideal to challenge the conventional gender roles.
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Fowles gives a new powerful impression of fresh start through employing an image of heroine from a whore into a New Woman. At the transitional period of late Victorian, a

New Woman is an icon of assaulting on sexual morality and simultaneously presents her rejection of traditional gender roles as mother and wife. Less constrained by Victorian sexual regulations and domesticity, the New Woman has more freedom to pursue their career, their individuality and sexual autonomy. They are no longer confined by the discourse of

womans nature to be in the domestic surroundings with a man whom she is dependent on economically. Rather, they are more sexually aware and frank with sexuality, concerning The recognition of female sexuality becomes the central part

more with their subjectivity.

of a New Womans struggle from emancipation. Fowless heroine possesses the freedom to repudiate happy marriage as her end of life. That is why Fowles provides the alternatives of denouement. Marriage has been regarded as

the severe bondage for female social and sexual liberation. As a New Woman, she has right to decide themselves whether to marry or not. She is not forced to choose marriage as an end. Marriage does not become an obligation and is not a shackle that imprisons women It is an alternative in womans life. Domestic roles of mother and wife likewise

any more.

are no longer the social obligations controlling womans life and impeding the progress of her self-improvement. What is more, earning money and thus being economically independent

are the prominent characteristics of a New Woman. They have desires to participate in the public spheres which have been dominated by males. The increasing percentage of female The adequate

entrance into professional fields benefits from the adequate education.

education is a significant means to enable Victorian women in the last decades to broaden their views and simultaneously achieve their selfhood and autonomy. Women at this turning point of the nineteenth century are encouraged to liberate themselves from male dominance, to live on their own and to struggle from anything that would restrict their pursuit of selfhood and self-realization. Through analyzing the journey
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of Fowles heroines quest for achievement of subjectivity, we reader can perceive the progress that women have been struggling from the social constraints on their body and sexuality. Following this feminist movement, Fowles realizes his faith in freedom,

accentuating the essentiality of human emancipation, and simultaneously foregrounds female sexual awakening.

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