Fiction

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) by John Fowles & the Saving Grace of Art

“He seemed as he stood there to see all his age, its tumultuous life, its iron certainties and rigid conventions, its repressed emotion and facetious humor, its cautious science and incautious religion, its corrupt politics and immutable castes, as the great hidden enemy of all his deepest yearnings."

cg fewstonThe French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The French Lieutenants Woman (1969) by John Fowles is a book I keep coming back to with a fondness that overwhelms me upon opening the first page and overflows to the last line written.

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The language Fowles creates haunts me on sunny days beside an ocean where I know the world to be anything but ordinary.

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John Fowles, British Novelist (1926-2005)

I am not sure why this book holds such an impression on me (though I do attempt to explain it here), because books should not be so powerful… should they?

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The French Lieutenants Woman is a love story between a wealthy scientist named Charles (no doubt after Charles Darwin which is referenced a few times throughout the book) and Sarah, a woman without home or family in the 1860s.

The two are an unlikely match: Charles is engaged to be married to Ernestina, daughter to a successful businessman—a class below Charles’s stature as gentleman—and Sarah, a commoner, is overshadowed by town rumors as the whore who belonged to a Frenchman who abandoned her.

But if appearances and perceptions, as in life, should be questioned, then nothing is ever as it seems in this Victorian romance that, unlike a majority of books, has two endings for the reader to choose from—but written in such a way that the reader believes both endings are as real as the beginning and both endings deserve a place in the imagination.

So where should I begin to introduce you, or reintroduce you, to Sarah and Charles? I shall go to the first passages I underlined in the book, and the first time Charles sees Sarah standing on the edge of a cliff looking out to sea as if she were a bird left behind by her flock.

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John Fowles, British Novelist (1926-2005)

“So they went closer to the figure by the cannon bollard. She had taken off her bonnet and held it in her hand; her hair was pulled tight back inside the collar of the black coat—which was bizarre, more like a man’s riding coat than any woman’s coat that had been in fashion those past forty years. She too was a stranger to the crinoline; but it was equally plain that that was out of oblivion, not knowledge of the latest London taste. Charles made some trite and loud remark, to warn her that she was no longer alone, but she did not turn. The couple moved to where they could see her face in profile; and how her stare was aimed like a rifle at the farthest horizon…

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“It was not a pretty face, like Ernestina’s. It was certainly not a beautiful face, by any period’s standard or taste. But it was as an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely, naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. There was no artifice there, no hypocrisy, no hysteria, no mask: and above all, no sign of madness. The madness was in the empty sea, the empty horizon, the lack of reason for such sorrow; as if the spring was natural in itself, but unnatural in welling from a desert” (p 9-10).

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Hong Kong Skyline (2016)

By the end of Chapter Two Fowles has the reader hooked and there’s little doubt in mind that Sarah exists and Charles will, must, come to her one day—if not for his sake then for the reader’s.

Since Time (Fowles once called it a room) is relative—especially by this book’s end—let us skip to the last passage I underlined and see the transformation of the young hero who has broken his engagement, lost his reputation and found a powerful love in the eyes of another.

“At last she looked up at him. Her eyes were full of tears, and her look unbearably naked. Such looks we have all once or twice in our lives received and shared; they are those in which worlds melt, pasts dissolve, moments when we know, in the resolution of profoundest need, that the rock of ages can never be anything else but love, here, now, in these two hands’ joining, in this blind silence in which one head comes to rest beneath the other; and which Charles, after a compressed eternity, breaks, though the question is more breathed than spoken.

“‘Shall I ever understand your parables?’

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John Fowles, British Novelist (1926-2005)

The language, as illustrated, I hope you find as breathtaking as I do, and the above selected passages, albeit a few, do quickly map out the journey—if it is one you wish to take—of two lovers who must overcome not only their torn hearts but their conflicting status in society.

But before I go, let me offer a momentary insight into Fowles’s symbolism: which often has a hand in religion (as it did in Daniel Martin) and the images most often associated with Christianity (as in the particular reference to “parables”)—let us look closely, then, at one last passage, which is as relevant today as it might have been in 1867:

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“For a moment he could not seize it—and then it came.

“To uncrucify!

“In a sudden flash of illumination Charles saw the right purpose of Christianity; it was not to celebrate this barbarous image, not to maintain it on high because there was a useful profit—the redemption of sins—to be derived from so doing, but to bring about a world in which the hanging man could descended, could be seen not with the rictus of agony on his face, but the smiling peace of a victory brought about by, and in, living men and women.

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“He seemed as he stood there to see all his age, its tumultuous life, its iron certainties and rigid conventions, its repressed emotion and facetious humor, its cautious science and incautious religion, its corrupt politics and immutable castes, as the great hidden enemy of all his deepest yearnings. That was what had deceived him: and it was totally without love or freedom…but also without thought, without intention, without malice, because the deception was in its very nature; and it was not human, but a machine. That was the vicious circle that haunted him; that was the failure, the weakness, the cancer, the vital flaw that had brought him to what he was: more an indecision than a reality, more a dream than a man, more a silence than a word, a bone than an action. And fossils!

“He had become, while still alive, as if dead.

“It was like coming to a bottomless brink” (p 363).

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So this is where I’ve decided to leave you—upon the brink.

The French Lieutenants Woman by John Fowles is a true work of art and a testament to what a mind can create if given the chance in a machine-world filled with machine-minds.

Let us hold onto love and beauty, despite the raw brutality and cruelty most often found in religions and politics. Art is what will save us in the end.

Keep reading and smiling…

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cg fewston

CG FEWSTON

cg fewston

The American novelist CG FEWSTON has been a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome (Italy), a Visiting Fellow at Hong Kong’s CityU, & he’s a been member of the Hemingway Society, Americans for the Arts, PEN America, Club Med, & the Royal Society of Literature. He’s also a been Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) based in London.

He’s the author of several short stories and novels. His works include A Fathers Son (2005), The New America: A Collection (2007), The Mystics Smile ~ A Play in 3 Acts (2007), Vanity of Vanities (2011), A Time to Love in Tehran (2015), Little Hometown, America (2020); A Time to Forget in East Berlin (2022), and Conquergood & the Center of the Intelligible Mystery of Being (2023).

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He has a B.A. in English, an M.Ed. in Higher Education Leadership (honors), an M.A. in Literature (honors), and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Fiction. He was born in Texas in 1979.

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A TIME TO FORGET IN EAST BERLIN 

BREW Book Excellence Award Winner

BREW Readers’ Choice Award Winner

“A spellbinding tale of love and espionage set under the looming shadow of the Berlin Wall in 1975… A mesmerising read full of charged eroticism.”

Ian Skewis, Associate Editor for Bloodhound Books, & author of best-selling novel A Murder of Crows (2017)  

“An engrossing story of clandestine espionage… a testament to the lifestyle encountered in East Berlin at the height of the Cold War.”

~ Lone Star Literary Life Magazine

“There is no better way for readers interested in Germany’s history and the dilemma and cultures of the two Berlins to absorb this information than in a novel such as this, which captures the microcosm of two individuals’ love, relationship, and options and expands them against the blossoming dilemmas of a nation divided.”

~ D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

A Time to Forget in East Berlin is a dream-like interlude of love and passion in the paranoid and violent life of a Cold War spy. The meticulous research is evident on every page, and Fewston’s elegant prose, reminiscent of novels from a bygone era, enhances the sensation that this is a book firmly rooted in another time.”

~ Matthew Harffy, prolific writer & best-selling historical fiction author of the “Bernicia Chronicles” series

“Vivid, nuanced, and poetic…”

“Fewston avoids familiar plot elements of espionage fiction, and he is excellent when it comes to emotional precision and form while crafting his varied cast of characters.”

“There’s a lot to absorb in this book of hefty psychological and philosophical observations and insights, but the reader who stays committed will be greatly rewarded.”

~ The Prairies Book Review

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LITTLE HOMETOWN, AMERICA

“Readers of The Catcher in the Rye and similar stories will relish the astute, critical inspection of life that makes Little Hometown, America a compelling snapshot of contemporary American life and culture.”

“Fewston employs a literary device called a ‘frame narrative’ which may be less familiar to some, but allows for a picture-in-picture result (to use a photographic term). Snapshots of stories appear as parts of other stories, with the introductory story serving as a backdrop for a series of shorter stories that lead readers into each, dovetailing and connecting in intricate ways.”

~ D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“The American novelist CG FEWSTON tells a satisfying tale, bolstered by psychology and far-ranging philosophy, calling upon Joseph Campbell, J. D. Salinger, the King James Bible, and Othello.”

“In this way, the author lends intellectual heft to a family story, exploring the ‘purity’ of art, the ‘corrupting’ influences of publishing, the solitary artist, and the messy interconnectedness of human relationships.”

~ Lone Star Literary Life Magazine

GOLD Winner in the 2020 Human Relations Indie Book Awards for Contemporary Realistic Fiction

FINALIST in the SOUTHWEST REGIONAL FICTION category of the 14th Annual National Indie Excellence 2020 Awards (NIEA)

“Fewston’s lyrical, nostalgia-steeped story is told from the perspective of a 40-year-old man gazing back on events from his 1980s Texas childhood…. the narrator movingly conveys and interprets the greater meanings behind childhood memories.”

“The novel’s focus on formative childhood moments is familiar… the narrator’s lived experiences come across as wholly personal, deeply felt, and visceral.”

~ The BookLife Prize

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cg fewston

American Novelist CG FEWSTON

 

cg fewston

This is my good friend, Nicolasa (Nico) Murillo, CRC, who is a professional chef & a wellness mentor. I’ve known her since childhood & I’m honored to share her story with you. In life, we all have ups & downs, some far more extreme than others. Much like in Canada, in America, the legalization of marijuana has become a national movement, which includes safe & legal access to cannabis (marijuana) for therapeutic use & research for all.

“This is a wellness movement,” Nico explains. The wellness movement is focused on three specific areas: information, encouragement, & accountability.

In these stressful & unprecedented times, it makes good sense to promote & encourage the state or condition of being in good physical & mental health.

To learn more you can visit: Americans For Safe Access & Texans for Safe Access, ASA (if you are in Texas).

The mission of Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is to ensure safe and legal access to cannabis (marijuana) for therapeutic use and research.

Link: https://www.safeaccessnow.org/

TEXANS FOR SAFE ACCESS ~ share the mission of their national organization, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), which is to ensure safe and legal access to cannabis (marijuana) for therapeutic use and research, for all Texans.

Link: https://txsafeaccess.org/about-1

Stay safe & stay happy. God bless.

 

Nico Murillo Bio ~ Americans & Texans for Safe Access ~ Medical Cannabis

 

 

cg fewston

1 comment on “The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) by John Fowles & the Saving Grace of Art

  1. Pingback: London Fields (1989) by Martin Amis - CG FEWSTON

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