| The French Lieutenant's Woman |
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PLOT SUMMARY The novel's central character is Sarah Woodruff, the Woman of the book's title, also known by the nickname Tragedy and by the unfortunate nickname "The French Lieutenant's Whore." She lives in the town of Lyme Regis as a disgraced woman, ill-used by a French sailor who returned to France and married another woman. Sarah spends her limited time off from her domestic work on a cliff, staring at the sea. One day, she is seen there by the gentleman Charles Smithson and his fiancée, Ernestina Freeman, the shallow but wealthy daughter of a tradesman. Ernestina tells Charles something of Sarah's story, and he develops a strong curiosity about her story. They end up having several clandestine meetings where Sarah tells Charles her history and asks for his aid, mostly emotionally. Although Charles tries to remain distant, he ends up saving Sarah from commitment to an asylum and follows her to London. At the same time, Charles learns his projected inheritance from an older uncle is in jeopardy, as the uncle is now engaged to a woman young enough to bear him an heir. From there, Fowles - who appears briefly as a character in the book - offers three different endings.
Along the way, Fowles discourses on the difficulties of controlling the characters one has created, and offers tangents on Victorian customs and class differences, the theories of Charles Darwin , and the poetry of Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy . EXTERNAL LINKS
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