The French Lieutenant's Woman

Literature plays a prominent role in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The characters in the novel all read both poetry and prose, allowing them to reference literary figures, texts, and clichés in the course of their daily lives. Since many of the characters are in the upper or middle class, they have been educated in the British school system, and they have enough free time to indulge their literary habits. Even minor jokes take on a literary tone, such as in Chapter 2, when Ernestina points out a place where a character in Jane Austen’s Persuasion slipped and fell. That was a time, she jokes with Charles, when men were “romantic” (8). This small literary aside shows the way in which the characters’ awareness of literature serves to ratify their social ideals. Ernestina does not live in the same era as Jane Austen or her characters as Austen died two decades before the beginning of the Victorian age. Nevertheless, Ernestina views the romance of Austen’s characters as aspirational. Her literary choices symbolize her connection to the past and her desire to perpetuate these ideals in her own life. She seeks to make her own existence just like a romantic novel from the past, while Charles feels increasingly uncomfortable with this belief.

The narrator plays an important role in the novel’s relationship with literature. As someone who is keenly aware of Victorian literature and its tendencies, the narrator is able to take a step back from the literary conventions that dictate the lives of the characters. The narrator ironically explains how his characters’ actions are determined by their relationship to literature and the conventions of Victorian novels. For example, Charles cannot be with Ernestina because this would not provide a satisfying ending for a dishonored Victorian man, so the narrator abandons this conclusion. The narrator’s self-aware relationship with Victorian literature informs the novel’s postmodern desire to explore the subjectivity of existence. The characters live their lives as reflections of literature, purposefully adhering to the literary conventions that they prefer in an effort to give their lives purpose and structure. This is an impossible task, however, for anyone but the narrator.