The French Lieutenant's Woman Summary

TREATMENT OF PAST AND PRESENT IN JOHN FOWLES’S NOVELS Sree Karthika M S, Research Scholar, Sree Narayana Guru College, Coimbatore

Mrs. Kavitha, Assistant Professor, Sree Narayana Guru College, Coimbatore

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ABSTRACT

John Fowles, a great contributor to Twentieth Century literary scenario, takes past and present as two different entities and intermix in his fiction so as acknowledge the vitality of both. His novels dealt with past eras and characters with the shadows of the present time. The selection of narrative form and setting add to the tune of intermixing process. He does not merely intermix instead at points he separates both so as to bring the difference of the periods. The Twentieth century period

Moreover, the novel can be considered as historical metafiction. The novel finds to combine the literary devices of metafiction and historical fiction. It is a self –reflexive novel or something which contradicts with fictional quality of the writing. But another dimension to the same novel arises from re- introduction of historical context and makes an awful distinction between functionality and the historical knowledge. Fowles’s metafiction envisages the wonder and fascination for history or rather past events. The above quoted line of famous critic Malcolm Bradbury can be evidently taken for consideration as a support to this idea: “His text announces a return to the Victorian novel and therefore ‘to the site of that realism from which much modern fiction has been struggling to diverge.’(Bradbury2001:386) (Studies in John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s Woman 29)”. His realistic way of presenting narrative is arresting to any reader who fell for past

The whole novel is divided into small chapters similar to episodes in TV series. Each chapter commences with epigraph mostly providing the general idea of the coming chapter. It can be said it carries a double purpose in providing an epigraph which is Victorian in style. The lines in epigraph are taken from Victorian contemporaries and again by adopting a style for previous era re- examines the past in the present scenario. This re-examination if taken to modern critical level can be view Post modernism. He had gruesome interest in past events and historical incidents. He uses history and takes it up to reader to decide the fate of characters. History has always been a fascinating point to