"The French Lieutenant's Woman": An Analysis of John Fowles's Postmodern Novel and Karel Reisz's Cinematic Adaptation.

Abstract

John Fowles’s "The French Lieutenant’s Woman" (1969) is a very complex novel not only for its intricate story line, but also for its narratological and thematic structure. The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze this work as well as Karel Reisz and Harold Pinter’s eponymous cinematic adaptation (1981). While chapter one centers upon the author’s life and literary production with a special emphasis upon his close relationship with the natural world, the content of the ensuing chapter will focus upon the strategies deployed by the novelist to make "The French Lieutenant’s Woman" a postmodern work, a historiographic metafiction as well as a Victorian novel. As far as the third chapter is concerned, it will examine the main protagonists’ characterization, highlighting Sarah Woodruff’s status as a social outcast, Charles Smithson’s journey towards existential freedom and Ernestina Freeman’s embodiment of a conventional Victorian woman. Furthermore, particular attention will be devoted to the three alternative endings and their conflicting interpretations. In chapter four, Karel Reisz and Harold Pinter’s movie will be taken into consideration, foregrounding the filmic solutions adopted for an unfilmable novel. With an attentive eye upon the similarities and the differences between the novel and the film, this chapter will also mark its amplifications, its cuttings and its double finale. "The French Lieutenant’s Woman" functions as a critique of the Victorian society and, through the plurality of its endings, provides the reader with the freedom to choose among the most suitable for him. In cinematic terms, Reisz and Pinter opt to translate the metafictional component into a movie within a movie.