Open Access
American Research Journal of English and Literature
ISSN (Online): 2378-9026
DOI: 10.46568/arjel
The Adios of Shackles in John Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman
Abstract
Following the consequences of the Second World War, the majority of authors wrote their literary works to respond to the
world’s massive destruction. The dominant idea that engaged authors’ minds during a time when there was a big need
to be free from all authorities that led man to encourage him blindly to kill his brothers and sisters in humanity and to
destroy the world. The writer John Fowles assumed man has to be free from following those rules and constraints. John
Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman was written in Neo-Victorian prose’s style but with Postmodernism per
spectives. This paper attempts to analyze and apply the theoretical perspectives of “The Death of the Author” by Roland
Barthes and “The Birth of the Reader” on the novel of John Fowles which is regarded to be a postmodern novel from mul
tiple perceptions. Firstly, the storyteller’s involvement to a variety of opinions as well as substitute endings. The second
point, considering this book as a historical text, by applying the method of Linda Hutcheon, Historiographic metafiction,
includes the meaning of rewriting history since postmodern writers do not believe in the originality of historical truths
or the existence of absolute truths. Fowles wanted to free people from those dogmas. Those entire methods in this text
disclose Fowles to reconstruct and deconstruct the Victorian culture through the main character Sarah woodruff that
makes Fowles’s novel a perfect example of Postmodernism.
