It was Harold Pinter’s brilliant film that led me to read The French Lieutenant’s Wife. The haunting image of the mythical, motionless figure dressed in black, gazing out to sea at the edge of The Cobb, sets the stage for an incredibly beautiful film.
I first read the book in 1981. The copy was old, from the local book exchange, with a torn cover. He was twenty-one years old, a medical student, and had not read much contemporary literature. In the most masterful way, the author takes us back to the 19th century, a time about which he knew little. The reader can listen, speak both among the well-born and among the plebs.
What follows is an intriguing, philosophical, and even humorous narrative. It is full of mystery and full of memorable words and verses.
“But where the telescopist would have been in the sea was with the other figure in that dark, curved mole. It was right at the far seaward end, seemingly leaning against an old cannon barrel tip-up like a bollard. The clothes were black … The wind moved them, but the figure remained motionless, looking or towards the sea, more like a living memory of the drowned, a figure of myth, than any fragment of the small provincial day “.
Seeing the “desolate” figure, Sarah Woodruff, dressed in black, are the doomed lovers: Charles Smithson, one of London’s most handsome and eligible bachelors, and his fiancee, Ernestina Freeman. Sarah is an enigmatic character who is believed to be insane and ostracized for her affair with a French officer, who later abandoned her. But when Charles first saw her at the Cobb, there was no madness on her face for him: no mask or hysteria. If there was any madness, it was in society because of its lack of empathy for the pain of women.
Even when Sarah turned to look at him: “It was not so much the positive in that face that remained with him after that first meeting, but everything that was not as he had expected; because theirs was an age in which the The favored feminine look was the demure, the obedient, the shy “.
Although Sarah’s “gaze” lasted no more than a few seconds, it lit a fire in Charles, leading him to reject the values that were the foundation of his Victorian society.
Like Ryabovich, in Chekov’s story “The Kiss,” driven to despair by a kiss from a strange woman, Sarah’s “gaze” provokes insane glee in Charles. It is the most crucial moment in the book. The “look” of the woman destroys Charles. He loses control and an obsession with Sarah takes over his heart.
The book is mainly about the apocalyptic convergence of their ways. One day, like a poodle, Charles follows Sarah into the woods:
“I have come because I have convinced myself that you really need help. And although I still do not understand why you should have honored me by taking an interest in your …” he hesitated here, because he was about to say “case”, which would have given away that he was playing doctor besides the gentleman: “… I have come prepared to listen to what you wanted me to hear.”
“I know a secluded place nearby. Can we go there?” she said.
In an act of madness, Charles joins her. From the beginning of the book, the reader can almost smell the fate that awaits him. We accompany Charles on his doomed journey, with sadness and pity. We wonder: why does a man abandon his position for a woman he hardly knows? Perhaps there was a part of his fickle soul that would not allow society to rule. To Sarah, Charles was the dupe of all ages, a tool used to drive a dagger, metaphorically, into the very heart of high society.
The French Lieutenant’s Wife, a book with two endings, is a delightful tale and meticulously written. John Fowles populates his story with many interesting characters. The reader is equally captivated by the beginning and end of the book. The writer is largely the craftsman, with almost all the phrases perfect.
More than half a century after its first publication, its subject is still fresh as modern societies still preserve the double paradigm of the rich, destined for a life of privilege, and the miserable destiny of the poor. Interestingly, many of our lives have a presence in the book, evoked less literally than philosophically. A novel that felt so strange in my youth contained a map of my future and the reckless decisions I had to make with my life.
