Character and John Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman"

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1973
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Abstract
This thesis demonstrates that Fowles's traditional view of the nature and function of characters in the novel, as revealed through his creation of characters in The French Lieutenant's Woman, results in a novel in which the reader's emotional response and his aesthetic response are united in his response to the characters. He responds emotionally because the characters are interesting in their variety and their representativeness of their age while several of the major figures are also individualized and revealed through emotionally intense situations. He responds aesthetically because the interactions of these characters constitute a basis of the form of the novel. Both responses are united in the reaction to the narrator as a character who shares several of his qualities with the other personages but who also gives form and substance to the others and to the novel. Although it is beyond the scope of this thesis to argue that Fowles's success in creating characters through traditional methods marks a return to belief in the significance of the individual character generally upheld in nineteenth century fiction, it is suggested that because of Fowles's success it is not possible to regard the expunging of the individual as one of the inexorable tendencies of modem fiction.
Description
Bibliography: p. 110-114.
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Citation
Hoeppner, K. (1973). Character and John Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/20098