Fowles & Stoppard — Two Tales of Modernity
A modern investigation into The French Lieutenant's Woman & Arcadia
Both Arcadia and The French Lieutenant’s Woman present an audience with a modernistic interpretation of Georgian-Victorian (including Regent) standards, creating commentary on the modern and past world through the exploration of the general conventions and behaviours of the characters. Stoppard and Fowles, respectively, also create this sense of currency through their manipulation of the fiction itself through unique employment of postmodern authorial interpretations and techniques.
But what is modernity? What makes a person so different in the past to humanity as it is now in its current form?
Hierarchies divided civilisation based on class levels and socioeconomic wealth, nineteenth century conventions subjugated men and women differently such that the difference and rift created between the two sexes consumed societies.
Men were always viewed as the breadwinners of the family. They were the ones that would go to work. They were the ones who would be active in the social and public hemisphere. They were the ones with the power and the ones who could decide on things for other people. They were given opportunities, abilities, and rights that no women were ever allowed, whether she was the Queen or a lowly child, the divide was clearly evident in this society. They possessed specific jobs, specific personalities, and specific lives, dictated by the constant compounding of English masculinity.
Women, however, were, more or less, discriminated against, when accorded to modern standards. The female gender was subjected to limited rights and living within a patriarchy where they were usually seen as nothing more than wives and mothers. They were often committed to the house and seen as prizes, possessions and even representations of alliances. They were often disallowed from formal education and expected to remain silent and do nothing more than listen. “Women in Victorian society had one main role in life which was to marry and take part in their husbands’ interests and business. Before marriage, they would learn skills [pertinent to the life of a housewife]… her place was in the home, on a veritable pedestal if one could be afforded, and emphatically not in the world of affairs.” (Appell, n.d.)
This, when compared to the progressivism we have seen in the few centuries from these ideals, is massively different where divisions have lessened. Gender conventions have increasingly become more equal as respect for the female gender to the same degree as males grows due to the large pushes of feminism in history. Women have been given the ability to vote, free speech, be themselves and be independent from men.
The toxic culture of masculinity has also subsequently decreased as humanity enters this new age of equality. The progressivism behind these constructs has advanced so far, that they have become almost irrelevant. Society has become more understanding and accepting regarding the now perceived fluidity of gender and sexuality.
Although there are still some remnants of the past world where femineity is depreciated, the modern world has greatly prospered in this regard, creating a modern person. We biologically and anatomically met this understanding of the modern human thousands of years ago, but the mindset we see in the current youth generations is something that has been fought for, for years. The modern outlook on the world, personally, occurred when progressivism swept the globe. There has been more openness and acceptance in gender, sexuality and relationships. Rigidity in social and class structures has loosened and the placing of specific beliefs and hope into certain people and ideas defining identities. But we, as a generation now, are defined by our progressive values. These will continue to progress throughout eternity, but as of now, views on the gender conventions of past-day England have progressed to the world we see today. A world generally more accepting and understanding, but a world unrecognisable to versions of the past.
Feminism: Tipping it’s hat to Modernity
Fowles and Stoppard show through their texts, Arcadia, and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, challenging of the gender norms and conventions constructed at the time, by more prominently women in both novels, through the testing of boundaries and bending/breaking of societal rules. Modern women are much freer and more independent and can be defined as more than from what they are when with their husbands, fathers, brothers, etc. They are met with equal rights (in most cases…) and given the opportunity to be themselves. And as previously illustrated, they care little about the social conventions and gender norms which restricted people of the past, creating a more liberated generation across the world. And despite the era’s constriction concerning especially the feminine gender role, both authors demonstrate characters subverting all expectations set upon them by the patriarchy where female characters rebel from the standards expressing feminist ideologies which are occurrent in modern society. For instance, Arcadia’s Mrs Chater, a married woman yet a woman who does not remain monogamous.
Thomasina: Mrs Chater was discovered in carnal embrace in the gazebo… Mr’s Chater in the gazebo in carnal embrace.
Septimus: She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere.
Mrs Chater was involved with multiple men throughout the course of the novel. Namely, Septimus Hodge, Captain Brice and Lord Byron, of what we know through the text as she does this so freely and indiscreetly, engorging in this polyamorous lifestyle, disloyal to her husband, Ezra Chater, who from what we see in the play, is a quite unmanly and cowardly man. He continues to remain with Mrs Chater despite knowing of her rather clear unchasteness, depicting his clear fear and Mrs Chater’s power over him, a subversion of roles in marriages. From Septimus’ testimonies, it can be understood that it isn’t actually he who initiates this affair, it is Mrs Chater who expresses herself and her sexuality so freely which is quite unlike Victorian women and he is easily able to play off the full impact of the blame through his manipulation of Chater through a supposed good review of his new literary piece. Firstly, having these kinds of relations would label you as __. It would also often never be the women initiating this conduct but men who force this upon victims without consent. In a time where women and most men were quite conservative and sex was considered a sinful and malign act, Mrs Chater so openly engages in it with little consequence from her counterpart, showing that not only does she hold a lot of power within her matrimony but also freedom in her sexuality and expressing it.
Chater: You would drag down a lady’s reputation to make a refuge for your cowardice.
In this society, it would be is expected that something to occur like this would denigrates and destroy a woman’s image, reputation, and place in society, marking her as a “fallen woman,” characterised by Mr Chater’s comment. Yet Mrs Chater continues to involve herself in these demoralising relations and likewise with The French Lieutenant’s Woman’s Sarah.
Fowles mirrors this subversion of the female character through Sarah Woodruff, a woman who self-fabricated an affair with a French Lieutenant and not being married, labelling her as disgraced and a “whore” in society. This was not seen as major of a problem for men as for women. Whilst men were usually glorified for their Despite not even partaking in this act, she did this so she could create a difference between herself and society to fit in. “[She] did it so that [she] should never be the same again. [She] did it so that people should point at [her], should say, there walks the French Lieutenant’s Whore.” There was always a feeling of sorrow and yet some disgust for her by the wider Lyme community, but she was content with being different. She wanted to break away from the norms. She wanted everyone to know that she had an affair despite it being something women were almost forsaken from doing. She “sacrificed a woman’s most precious possession [in the times of the nineteenth century],” and yet she is completely fine with this. Sarah is an outcast in this vast world but would rather live this life in solitude than what lie she was living in prior to “Tragedy.”
Throughout TFLW, we see Sarah’s journey as she meets Charles Smithson, a young English bachelor, but after so much as both characters fall into this adulterous love, Sarah runes away from her life into a new world.
“But against this shock — what was she now, what had she become! — there rushed a surge of relief. Those eyes, that mouth, that always implicit air of defiance … it was all still there. She was the remarkable creature of his happier memories — but blossomed, realized, winged from the black pupa.”
But after all this time away from Charles, the audience rediscover Sarah as a person who has found herself and her identity. Most women would accept and remain dejected from society after what she had done, however Sarah is different. She continues this nonconformism to the general gender norms when we are reintroduced to her (much later into the book) being “someone in the full uniform of the New Woman, flagrantly rejecting all formal contemporary notions of female fashion.” The audience can also understand from this that Sarah and women, in general, are not defined by male counterparts. They are themselves and can find true meaning and passion elsewhere.
Thomasina: Tell me more about sexual congress…Is it the same as love?
Brice: As her tutor you have a duty to keep [Thomasina] in ignorance.
Thomasina is seen as inquisitive, especially about things which shouldn’t concern herself and aren’t generally discussed by people of her age in this current era. Acts with a nature that of “sexual congress” were usually in an intent of malice and kept taboo to uphold innocence in children by keeping them “in ignorance.” And this was very of the times in the nineteenth century where desire and carnality were ostracized and unworldly. But, throughout the years, freeness in expression of one’s sexuality has increased into a place where it can be done without judgement and without any resentment, tested and show by characters such as Mrs Chater and Sarah, show that they can explore their sexuality freely and do what they will with their own lives. And they do so with little care of the world around them. Fowles and Stoppard both present Mrs Chater and Sarah as examples showing modernness in the sense that they can break away from societal norms and truly express and be themselves.
The authors of both books also depict in their respective novels, female main protagonist characters who subvert the role of the general format, acting more dominant, powerful, and intelligent, a juxtaposition of the nineteenth century. Although this isn’t necessarily reminiscent of the modern world, where there is still a sense of patriarchy but a more equal (per se) balance between gender, the role reversal depicts women are of power in this era when it was highly stereotyped as them not. This is characterised by a number of individuals with numerous qualities expressed in both Arcadia and The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
Thomasina was an extremely smart, intelligent and capable young woman. In Arcadia, Fowles juxtaposes her with a mirror, more modern version of her, Valentine. The one few key difference is that he is a male. But regardless of that, they are both equally and incredibly intelligent in namely, their mathematical and physical knowledge. But Thomasina, unlike Valentine, was seen to be thinking and devising formulae and theorems centuries ahead of her time and years beyond her age.
Thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?
Thomasina thought about concepts which transcend her teachings from her tutor and her tutor herself within the mere spur of the moment as if it was just a normal thought which occurred to any other person.
Thomasina: I, Thomasina Coverly, have found a truly wonderful method whereby all the forms of nature must give up their numerical secrets and draw themselves through number alone.
She had found the steppingstones anticipating the early works and creation of the Chaos theory, preceding it by almost 100 years. She was not only clever when it came to mathematics although. She was seen to have great interpersonal skills, study languages, speak in well-mannered and proper, courteous English and live a life which most young female teenagers would dream of in the nineteenth century. Her few and short-lived discoveries were far ahead of her time, entering a new age of mathematics which were ahead of the technology and crude understandings of known concepts, briefly touching on iteration and how all things in the Universe would co-exist and could be mapped by a simplistic algorithm of iteration, leading to her rudimentary, yet thorough comprehension and as later explored in the play, her attempt to disprove Newton’s theory of heat exchange as the theorised world slowly turns cold. However, most of such is quite undercut by Valentine’s interjections who believes that she didn’t really know what she was doing until finding definitive proof of such through her notes. The discovery of her works was also quite possibly lost and neglected due to the possible sexism engrained in society, leaving what she had worked on unvalued and forgotten, except by Septimus, who as the hermit of Sidley Park, continues to work and prove Thomasina’s theory and iterations for his life, nodding slightly to his alliance with feminism.
But throughout Arcadia, Fowles also presents us with different sides to Thomasina such as her independent, confident and strong-minded approach to marriage, where she states she is “going to marry Lord Byron.” Despite a fairly large age gap, she has her mind set and she knows what she wants and who that person is. She doesn’t need nor want to wait and yearns for Byron specifically. This is quite a modern property where women do have a say in their relationships and converse to what would generally be arranged secretly by the groom’s family in the Regent period of Britain.
Thomasina: I hate Cleopatra! Everything is turned to love with her. New love, absent love, lost love I never knew a heroine that makes such noodles of our sex. the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue.
Thomasina also depicts feminist qualities in this age where feminism was so set behind under the patriarchy which dominated Britain and much of the past world. It is made known in the opening of the play that she despises Cleopatra for what she had made feminists and women look like, their desires, their power and what they really were as well as hatred for those, including Cleopatra, who destroy knowledge of the past. Thomasina is clearly quite opinionated and holds these very highly, which are generally not so by the women generally of her time.
Sarah is seen to be intelligent in her cunningness and manipulations regarding her fabricated story of the French Lieutenant and how it had shaped her life. Prior to this, she lived as a governess. She was a woman of work and she was quite intelligent. But she uses this to create this consuming yet convincing fallacy, managing to get every single person in Lyme Regis and beyond to feel sorry for. Something which she preferred over her old life. A life she loved yet nonetheless was barred from enjoying due to her status in societal rankings, as if living in a paradise but locked away after briefly experiencing it. It was unlike of any person, even in the current era, to give up everything they had, their identity and pride but it is intrinsically modern that someone would uproot a life society expected from you to something you could actually enjoy and live with.
Mrs Poulteney, a prominent character Fowles portrays in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, rather acts as a point of comparison to what we’d expect to see from women in the nineteenth with her close-minded attitude, conservative, religious views and mild hypocrisy. But despite her quite un-feminist behaviours and way of life, she in herself portrays one of the many ideals of feminism.
“My man! Make way. I am she. Mrs. Poulteney of Lyme Regis.”
She commands power and authority with her tone and clear poise. She emanates power and power generally more than of any man expressed in either novel. Mrs Poulteney is strong, powerful, hypercritical and thus freely speaking of her mind, oppressive and arrogant. She is known to be cruel and ruthless to people, especially her servants and Sarah throughout the novel.
And this can similarly be seen with Lady Croom, an equally powerful figure, seen as the most over-arching power in Sidley park. With her husband absent from all affairs during the course of Arcadia, Lady Croom is met with this intense and awe-inspiring aura where she goes, demanding power just like Mrs Poulteney. They could both freely order other people as well as men and were often revered, whether they were liked or not (Lady Croom being generally more likeable).
Lady Croom: We must have you married before you are educated beyond eligibility.
Her word and judgements were final. There was no hesitation or distrust from any other characters who displayed any opposition to anything she would say, maintaining her image as powerful.
The inclusion of these characters do not detract from the femininity explored in the novel but rather convey how the capabilities of women in these stories and how they held power both in relationships and amongst society. They vary and strive from the generalised woman’s image of the nineteenth century, subverting it and upholding traditionally masculine roles, demanding the same authorities regardless of their gender creating a modern interpretation of the nineteenth century woman.
The characters in the texts that embody masculinity, adverse to what is expected, rather show qualities which do not match with what was seen at the time of these stories. Rather than the general degrading and objectifying of women, there is actual support and respect for female counterparts, embodied by Septimus. And specifically, his support towards Mrs Chater.
Septimus: Insulted her? That would deny my nature, my conduct, and the admiration in which I hold Mrs Chater.
Although he is accused of non-consensual rape by both Mr Chater and Captain Brice, his speech and general use of language suggests that he is more of a romantic. Whilst they believed that he made a fool of Mrs Chater, leading her on and forcing something onto her, he actually holds admiration for her and doing as they protest would “deny [his] nature.”
Septimus: I made love to your wife in the gazebo.
Septimus immediately shows honesty, not trying to cover the truth or lie to keep his pride intact. He seems not to care about his image unlike the men of the time who were very concerned of what they were to others and the people around them in both how they think and what they think of them. It is also expressed by him in the play that he holds a great amount of respect for both Lady Croom and Thomasina, the notable female characters of the play. He remains equally honest and sensitive with them as he does when approached by Chater.
In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, we are instead presented with Charles who strays away from what is considered the Victorian man as exemplified by his uncle, rather behaving much more gentleman-like with high respect for others. He tracked down and fought for love which is much more than what any average conservative man would do and something, apparently, modern.
“While the taller man, impeccably in a light gray, with his top hat held in his free hand, had severely reduced his dundrearies, which the arbiters of the best English male fashion had declared a shade vulgar — that is, risible to the foreigner — a year or two previously.”
As presented in the novel, Charles was generally different. He didn’t like to take advantage of women (most of the time), spending much of his time in the library, with fossils and considering a life of chastity with the Church. Charles despised hunting, something his uncle revelled in, which was considered a man’s activity, but something Charles chose not to do. He would entertain ideas and do things that were unlike what the men would do, although these notions of men’s and women’s things (such as sport, cooking or even just being respectful) are much looser in this present era.
Charles was also quite progressive in his views of the world, and in particular evolution of humanity as a Darwinist, uncommon and usually unaccepted in the era channeled through Ernestina’s father who would often challenge the beliefs of Charles.
There is a large disjunction between the male and female gender roles which are usually played quite differently in pre/Victorian society as seen in depictions of movies such as The Piano or written texts/ideals which portray the world of the 19th century as highly patriarchal and bounding, yet subverted by the characters of Arcadia and The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
Rediscovering the Past
The characters assumptions of the past add to their modernity in that they are rash and don’t think adequately before acting, creating and fabricating events which never took place.
Bernard Nightingale and Hannah Jarvis during the present time period of Arcadia begin a journey to rediscover the world of the past, the events which are occurring side-by-side in Arcadia. Despite how the audience knows what’s happening, creating some of the dramatic irony behind this play, we discover the past with Bernard and Hannah who reveal some aspects of nineteenth century Arcadia. A lot of what they discovered was assumed and had little factual evidence backing it, but they were able to decrypt a lot about the past and reveal some aspects such as who the hermit of Sidley Park was.
Hannah: Bernard, I don’t know why I’m bothering — you’re arrogant, greedy and reckless. You’ve gone from a glint in your eye to a sure thing in a hop, skip and a jump. You deserve what you get and I think you’re mad.
Bernard prominently makes presumptions of the events in Sidley park so it matches his vision, sticking with one main singular idea and not budging too far from it. He solely believes that it was Lord Byron who killed a man, Ezra Chater, in battle despite what we know in the actual story. There was absolutely no evidence to support his claims yet he refutes the small inconsistences pointed out to him by both Hannah and Valentine and continues to run with the perfect story he has concocted in his mind due to his stubbornness, a modern quality which has remained from the past and run well into the future, forbidding him to believe what was actually happening.
Valentine: Actually, Bernard, as a scientist, your theory is incomplete.
Bernard: But I’m not a scientist.
Valentine: (Patiently) No, as a scientist —
Bernard: (Beginning to shout) I have yet to hear a proper argument.
Trying to understand what has happened in the past world leads to the creation and fabrication of events and people with no real understanding of what or who these were. There is something so inherently modern about this. The rash judgements and conclusions Bernard quickly comes to adds to his modernity, creating flawed worlds where untrue events and concoctions of a fake reality occur. The past is manipulated to those in the past’s will as they are the ones who understand the past and try interpret it, but it is them who can also make it theirs, whether its false or not, people will have to believe it because they are so-called scholars. But it adds to this interpretation of modern where people are easily manipulated of a world they are presented with due to the quick judgements, another equally modern quality, present in the texts.
“But I can guess who it is. It must be poor Tragedy.”
“Tragedy?”
“A nickname. One of her nicknames.”
“And what are the others?”
“The fishermen have a gross name for her.”
“My dear Tina, you can surely — “
“They call her the French Lieutenant’s . . . Woman.”
Fowles similarly uses this misjudgment of a fabled world and the past through society’s belief of Sarah’s manipulation of her own life. She was indeed an educated governess who loved her life in the past but she decided to sacrifice all she knew and make this story about her confrontations with this French Lieutenant figure. People although quickly and freely assume her story to be true and believe it with little confirmation from her or others, showing that no one really knew her well enough to know this was a fallacy. She’s nicknamed “poor Tragedy,” and another “gross name…the French Lieutenant’s . . . Woman,” by the Lyme public and people, even not of her societal class know of this, exemplified by Ernestina. The whole world know of her story but not actually her.
Things like this have become increasingly occurrent in the modern world. With social media, information has never spread more quickly that it does now, and more worryingly, misinformation. It is because of our blind trust and belief without true backing or confirmation that we fall into these webs of lies and ignorantly believe what is presented to us.
Postmodern, Metafictional Ingenuity?
The texts themselves are modern in the way they allow the readers and audience to choose endings or particular emotions/feelings based on what is given to them in writing.
Stage: The lights come up on the same room, on the same sort of morning, in the present day, as is instantly clear from the appearance of Hannah Jarvis; and from nothing else. Something needs to be said about this. The action of the play shuttles back and forth between the early nineteenth century and the present day, always in this same room. Both periods must share the state of the room, without the additions and subtractions which would normally be expected. The general appearance of the room should offend neither period.
Arcadia, is modern, in that it uses different time settings and contrasts between them. It uses the same set and setting and the exact same world, with he only notable and significant difference Stoppard draws to is the characters and the time periods of how people acted. The juxtaposition and side-by-side worlds create this effect of an iterational equation, made familiar by Thomasina and Valentine, where one event in one timeline pushes the world of the other era. The estate of Sidley park remains absolutely the same, untouched after centuries, creating this sense of awe between the two worlds and the similarities between them. The shifts between the eras are a completely modern literary style which Stoppard has implemented, and this is seen most highly in the last scene of the play where the two worlds intersect. The stories are occurring simultaneously whereas in previous scenes when they were kept separate, dialogue is occurring in both worlds with all characters on stage, those of the present era in clothes matching that of the Regent era.
Stage: There is also an apple on the table now, the same apple from all appearances.
The mirroring of some characters, objects or qualities seen in some characters, such as the similarities between Valentine Coverly and Thomasina Coverly, showing us that the past and present are not too dissimilar as well as the appearance of certain props constant between the eras. The world remains constant, but it is purely the people and the mindsets of such which change. Modernity is not affected by pressures and factors imposed by the world but the living people which impacts the degree of humanity.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman is also equally, if not more modern in its writing style. John Fowles uses multiple post-modernistic literary techniques to depict the age of postmodernism which swept the world in the 1900’s, reflected in his authorial text. One of the novel’s main modernistic techniques is the narrator’s interjections into the story and the revelation that this story is fiction created by this omniscient author. The story, plot and character building throughout chapters one to twelve is completely undercut when we find out that the narrator is actually making up this story and controlling the characters, but then we also learn that these characters have their owns sense of sentience and autonomy, choosing their own paths as if this story was literal. The interjections by the author are something usually never seen in literature but something Fowles so easily uses. But it is mostly the conscience Fowles gives to both the narrator and the characters of the fiction that provides this sense of modernity within the story. Another aspect of modernity Fowles explored in his work was the completely unconventional alternative endings of the story (Stoppard does also provide two endings, however these are of the different time periods). Fowles offers us with three endings: the first ending is what we’d expect to see and what would be most likely at the time of the setting. Charles remains monogamous and stays with Ernestina, living a happy life with her, leaving Sarah alone, however we find that this is a dream. The second ending is less conventional in that he chooses to stray from Ernestina and chooses to live and make a life with Sarah. This shows something far more unexpected given the times of the Victorian era which would usually have forbidden and ending like this to occur, leaving someone he loved for a woman of a lower social ranking. The third and last ending Fowles offers the audience is most unconventional as it leaves Charles with no-one but himself, a contradiction of the whole story and the times when this book was set, leaving the man with no prize, nothing. The women of this ending were independent and allowed to live according to their lives, not fazed by man’s choice. These alternative endings provide the reader the ability to choose what they want to believe as well as offer different worlds which would probably not occur given the era Britain was entering, rejecting the general idea that the author was all-omniscient and knew everything, providing a sense of autonomy to the characters and the ability of choice for the reader, a completely postmodern and metafictional technique, testing the boundaries of the literary world.
Arcadia and The French Lieutenant’s Woman provide depictions of a world where, despite being years and centuries in the past, in eras where society was highly patriarchal and condescending on certain aspects of life, there were truly modern characters and characteristics which paved the way onto this definition of modern. A clear subversion of the set rules and an expression of one’s true self whether it was through character’s expressed feminism, subversion of gender, or purely the writing styles of the author which added to the modernity described in both texts. The world of the past is something that can never be truly uncovered due to the assumptions we have to make based on incomplete evidences but these texts show that there were key people pushing the boundaries in worlds which restricted all else, conveying the notion that the humanity will continue to strive for the equality that being modern provides us with and what change will allow us to do with our futures.
Bibliography:
Appell, F., n.d. Victorian Ideals: The Influence of Society’s Ideals on Victorian Relationships. [online] Mckendree.edu. Available at:
Appell, Felicia. “Victorian Ideals.” Www.mckendree.edu, www.mckendree.edu/academics/scholars/issue18/appell.htm#:~:text=Women%20in%20the%20Victorian%20society.
Stringer, Chris. “What Makes a Modern Human.” Nature, vol. 485, no. 7396, May 2012, pp. 33–35, 10.1038/485033a. https://www.nature.com/articles/485033a
Nash, Joy. “Gender Roles in Modern Society.” One World Education, 2016, www.oneworldeducation.org/our-students-writing/gender-roles-in-modern-society/.
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