The main character of the novel Sarah fights against the oppressive ideology by writing her historiography shaping herself a tragic past and also insisting on creating a negative present image for herself She ironically puts Mrs Poulteney and Charles in the positions in which their ideology is destroyed in this way she humiliates the codes of behavior of her present time In her historiography of the present she analyses the development of the French Lieutenant's Woman not by the French Lieutenant but by the ideological and male viewpoint of the present society According to the idea of the written historiography and the revision of the past Patricia Hagen considers that the novel highlights the fact that we are seen as readers and writers of our destiny building our worlds on our own experiences knowledge and thoughts In addition to this we reread and revise our pasts in light of the present our presents in light of the past and owing to this fact the novel shows us that meaning is created not only by the writer's process but also by the reader s Hagen 1991 439 As a historiographic metafiction
