Postmodern Feminism in John Fowles's the French Lieutenant's Woman: From Madness to Liberation

Abstract

Historically, women are associated with inferiority, weakness, passivity, and emotionality, while men are linked with superiority, power, activeness and rationality. These binary oppositions between the two genders are reflected in the social hierarchy. Whenever women have tried to reclaim authorship, feminine freedom, and control over their own lives, they have been labelled as hysteric or mad. Nonetheless, from the second part of the twentieth century, postmodern feminists set out to deconstruct these false man-made conceptualizations and definitions imposed on women by embracing hysteria and madness. Ironically, they celebrate madness and turn it against itself as a way to agency and liberation. This article will argue that John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman’s heroine, Sarah, represents the postmodern female author who deconstructs the patriarchal ideal of femininity or “the eternal feminine” and constructs a new feminine self in the Victorian era. Ultimately, it will demonstrate that Sarah deconstructs the myth of the eternal feminine by embracing madness and storytelling. Moreover, she creates and contracts her feminine identity and shows authorial control over her own life story which influences others, such as Charles.