ABSTRACT
The French Lieutenant's Woman tells the story of Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, throughout the novel, readers are positioned to share Charles's and the narrator's fascination with Sarah, rather than to identify with the heroine. Discussions of The French Lieutenant's Woman reveal an unspoken consensus about the significance and usefulness of this anecdote to Fowles's readers. The most important thing Fowles's essay does is to highlight the importance and the mutually constitutive force of romance, history and heterosexuality in The French Lieutenant's Woman. Sarah is the bearer of truth and morality before whom Charles feels shame. He experiences a sense of shame because he recognizes himself as a threat to her purity, to her integrity as the bearer of truth. In order to become "noble", Charles must abandon Ernestina for Sarah. Sarah's sexuality is the catalyst for Charles's liberation from the bounds of Victorian propriety by the end of the novel.
