“He thought of her not, of course, as an alternative to Ernestina; nor as someone he might, had he chosen, have married instead. That would never have been possible. Indeed, it was hardly Sarah he now thought of- she was merely the symbol around which had accreted all his lost possibilities, his extinct freedoms, his never-to-be-taken journeys. He had to say farewell to something; she was merely and conveniently close and receding.”
Book recommendations from friends are a mixed bag. They say at once a great deal about yourself (since, we can assume, you are recommending a book that you enjoyed (or at the very least found interesting)), and the person you’re recommending the book to (seeing either something that reminds you of them, something you think they’d find interesting, or something you feel they need.). Sometimes the recommendations are more general or impersonal, no different than sending a news article over text. Sometimes they’re shockingly personal, a shot across the bow of a friendship or an arrow in the heart so well-aimed one cannot help but feel, if not deeply touched, then a little offended.
This was how I came by The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and I was both deeply touched and a little offended by it. This book is the most recent addition to my favorite book list, and high enough on it to earn a place on my Top Ten. The reasons are diverse, disquieting, and downright fascinating. The extent to which each of these things are going to be discussed depends on the mood that I’m writing this blog post in, although many of the things I would wish to avoid mentioning are themselves an open secret. If the above line does not allude to the sentiments, for those in the know, then perhaps we have to be a bit more open.
While The French Lieutenant’s Woman is not the first book I’ve thrown across a room, it’s certainly one I’ve thrown the hardest. Aforementioned friend who recommended it to me received an irate phone call shortly after, to the basic tone of “how could you do this to me?” They knew, of course, exactly what they had done and why it had to be done. The main plot of the novel revolves around a Victorian gentleman and his deep, difficult love with the titular, independent character. The main character himself? Well…
“You will see Charles set his sights high. Intelligent idlers always have, in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence. He had, in short, all the Byronic ennui with neither of the Byronic outlets: genius and adultery.”
I’ve mentioned before my general appetite in life for melodrama and romanticism, right?
Sarah, our dear French Lieutenant’s Woman, does not fare much better, earning, at one point: “Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry, those two sanctuaries of the lonely, than most of her kind. They served as a substitute for experience. Without realizing it, she judged people as much by the standards of Walter Scott and Jane Austen as by any empirically arrived at; seeing those around her as fictional characters, and making poetic judgments on them.”
That quote actually brings our discussion towards the downright fascinating point of why I adore this book (as much as the offense, the touched, and the throwing remains). It’s similar, in a way, to the videogame Bioshock (my favorite) as an exploration of the nature of fiction (and why books are thrown across rooms). The novel admits this, fully, with a quote I’ve put on Instagram before as an example of how instructive the book has been for writers creating worlds, characters, and plots. There’s a real sense of its story as alive, as driven by the characters almost more than the writer, and then, cuttingly, an acknowledgement of the conceit we all engage in when engaging with media. A metanalysis within the form itself.
In Bioshock, the question circled around the nature of choice in videogames.
For The French Lieutenant’s Woman, it’s about the fundamental nature of storytelling. It’s an overarching trope in fiction, perhaps the foundational trope itself, the knowledge that, of course, this story isn’t real, its characters are figments of the imagination, and what’s happening, of course, couldn’t possibly change the real world.
But, still, we sit there, glued to the page, the screen, the stage, the speaker, and we wait. We read, we listen, and we watch. Something about a well-crafted story, the way it can be told once or over and over, experienced for the first time or the hundredth, and still cut, or heal, console or destroy. And it’s real, for however long we choose to experience it, however much we want it to be (or not to be). Real for whatever part of ourselves we find in it, expressed outside of ourselves in a way we can digest what we’re experiencing by witnessing a life that at once never was and yet will be forever.
“Fiction usually pretends to conform to reality: the writer puts the conflicting wants in the ring and then describes the fight- but in fact fixes the fight, letting that want he himself favors win. And we judge writers of fiction both by the skill they show in fixing the fights (in other words, in persuading us they were not fixed) and by the kind of fighter they fix in favor of: the good one, the tragic one, the evil one, the funny one, and so on.”
As an aspiring writer, one whose only real experience currently is self-published fantasy novels for fun and occasional spurts of Instagram poetry, that kind of admission of the game we’re all playing cuts, and reveals. It’s throwing up the game board, then reading the rules after. The novel goes on to admit that how we, creators, fix our fights is related to our worldviews.
Optimism and pessimism.
Realism and romanticism.
It’s all there, in the way we chose to show others how we view the world based on what our creations do in the worlds we’ve created. But, naturally, we have to admit that even then it’s already happened. The fight’s been had the minute we’ve written it. It’s not new, it’s in the past, and that’s all there is to it. These words, right here, are done and gone now that I’ve written them. So has everything that’s happened in Telgora a hundred times over a hundred rewrites (it feels like hundreds, anyway). They warn you, a little, when you begin writing that by the end you’ll find our own work boring because you know how it ends.
I’m reminded, in the end, of my second favorite line of my favorite musical, Hadestown: “ 'Cause here’s the thing / To know how it ends / And still begin to sing it again / As if it might turn out this time / I learned that from a friend of mine.”
But maybe Fowles is incorrect in stating that it’s hopeless to show optimism and pessimism about what’s already happened. That’s part of the conceit of the story, along with the acknowledgement that the book’s and the author’s pasts are a part of the reader’s future. The disappointment, the excitement, the suspense, all stem from that contract. Important to acknowledge, sure, but as important to set aside as disbelief. Maybe, anyway.
But therein lies final cruel piece of The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
The real reason this book wound up across the floor from me.
Why it makes me think of this song.
Why, after it all, I almost dreaded coming back to it, that same excruciating admission and argument.
The things unspoken in my life that another has said in an immortal life that never was:
“You must say, ‘I was totally evil, I never saw in him other than an instrument I could use, a destruction I could encompass. For now I don’t care that he still loves me, that in all his travels he has not seen a woman to compare with me, that he is a ghost, a shadow, a half-being for as long as he remains separated from me.’”
Where else sits the power of a story, if not in manipulation?
