ABSTRACT
This quotation, from The French Lieutenant’s Woman, reflects a viewpoint which obtains in the majority of the novels studied. As has been noted, all of the novels deal with serious philosophical themes; with the anxiety created by ‘existential freedom’, with the concomitant crisis in the moral life heralded by that freedom. The epistemology through which both philosophers and society at large commonly understand the moral life – that of metaphysics, in its divine or secular form (and rendered intelligible for ‘the masses’ through the language of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ or elaborated for the moral ‘technician’) is called to account by all the texts. In addition, the texts give proper recognition to the inextricable connection between the relation of the individual to the world of moral values and the construction of individual identity. Simply, the credibility of the ‘inner world’ of the self must relate in some way to the ‘outer world’ of values (in the legal texts studied in tandem with the texts of each chapter, this is a latent theme, to which this discussion will return).
