Essay Example on The main character of the novel Sarah fights against the oppressive Ideology

The French Lieutenant's Woman treats the past as a problematic notion which cannot be known except through its traces which are textually constructed Sarah is not part of her age Her capacities or her appearance do not belong to the time she lives she was born with a computer in her heart Fowles 52 she had read far more fiction and far more poetry those two sanctuaries of the lonely than most of her kind 53 To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry to those of the one she aspired to she remained too banal 53 It was certainly not a beautiful face by any period s standard or taste But it was an unforgettable face and a tragic face Fowles 10 Also Charles saw her different from a women of her age 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 Fowles 10 Charles looking at Sarah while she was sleeping thought of the way she was different from the standards of attitude of her time He could not imagine what besides despair could drive her in an age where women were semi static timid incapable of sustained physical effort to this wild place 

71 Also Sarah decodes the past and the present giving them a credible fictive structure In novel sing her present and her past she tries to pass them both through her authority as a writer furthermore she revolts against them by adding fictionality to them Having been dispossessed of her free life by the brutal authorities of her father and society Sarah being well educated Fowles 53 profits by her passion and imagination to create a fictional world with which she can win against her time She unites the fictional past and present for revealing the textually constructed structure of them Instead of showing her past as a real author she expresses it in a tragic and ironic way she also uses the same method to structure the present 

For her historiographical past Sarah creates her own identity and her own story which make her to be introduced as poor Tragedy or The French Lieutenant's Woman In order to form her liberal principles she engages her past in tragism and creates her present life ironically She gives for the story of her fall some tragic aspects Her wish to awake sympathy in Charles is misrepresented by Dr Grogan as a part of hysteria For her tragic plot she presented herself as a tragic heroine who accepts her punishment since she has blindly surrendered to the French Lieutenant Fowles 174 She tried for her ironic imagine to show and demonstrate her detached guilt by escaping refusing or altering many principles and norms she refuses to answer Mrs Poulteney s questions about the French Lieutenant Fowles 37 she repeatedly intended to go to Charles Fowles 99 138 Moreover she creates a totally fake image of herself she do not tell the truth about her sinful relationship with the lieutenant to Charles Fowles 173 she says that she is jealous of Ernestina and Mrs Talbot 142 179 As a historiographer of the present Sarah inspects the trace of the Victorian age She wants to put in evidence the textual nature of these traces Searching the proper referent she selects Mrs Poulteney and Charles because of the former s claims of ethical examination and the altruistic gestures She is sure that this kind of gestures are the appearance for the textualized oppression McHale 1991 168 Accordingly Mrs Poulteney s devotion becomes the methods of subjugation of people and Charles human compassion seems to be at the base of his possessive wish Ironically she contradicts the religious ability of Mrs Poulteney and Charles by being open to them She takes the image of the protector of Mrs Poulteney s soul Fowles 55 and the object of desire of Charles body to show the oppressive nature of them Sarah judges the past in a bad manner for textualizing today s power forms at the same time she blames the present world for hypocrisy