The story of the creation of the novel by the woman of a French lieutenant.

"The French Lieutenant's Woman"(eng. The French Lieutenant's Woman) - a film directed by Karel Reisz, released in 1981. An adaptation of the novel of the same name by John Fowles.

Plot

This story took place in Britain during the Victorian era.

A young and fairly wealthy Londoner, Charles Smithson (Jeremy Irons), is engaged to Ernestina Freeman, the daughter of a successful businessman. Charles considers himself a paleontologist and a fan of Darwin. He avoided marriage, but after meeting Ernestina, he changed his beliefs. Ernestine is visiting her aunt in Lyme, where Charles now often visits.

Sarah Woodruff (Meryl Streep) is a fallen woman, rejected by everyone. She serves as a companion to old Mrs. Poultney. The girl is called the unfortunate Tragedy or the French Lieutenant's Woman. Two years ago, a ship crashed during a storm, and the officer, washed ashore with a terrible wound on his leg, was picked up by local residents. Sarah, a French teacher at the time, looked after him devotedly. The lieutenant recovered and left for Weymouth, promising to return and marry Sarah. Since then, she goes to the pier and waits. When Charles and Ernestine pass by, they are struck by her unforgettably tragic face. Her blade-like gaze pierces Charles, and he suddenly feels interested in the mysterious person.

Charles enthusiastically begins searching for the fossils for which the area around Lyme is famous, and on the heath he accidentally meets Sarah, lonely and suffering. Another time he finds her sleeping and admires her.

One day, Sarah takes him to a secluded corner on the hillside and tells the story of her misfortune, remembering how handsome the rescued lieutenant was and how bitterly deceived she was when she arrived and gave herself to him in a completely indecent hotel. The confession shocks Charles. The girl admits that she no longer hopes for the return of the French lieutenant, because she knows about his marriage. Descending into the ravine, they suddenly notice Sam and Mary (Charles and Ernestine's servants) hugging and hide.

Sarah is kicked out of the house by Mrs. Poultney, who is unable to bear the willfulness and bad reputation of her companion. Sarah hides in the barn, where Charles finds her again. Unfortunately, as soon as they kissed, Sam and Mary appeared on the threshold. Smithson makes them promise to remain silent and, without admitting anything to Ernestine, hastily goes to London. Sarah is hiding in Exeter. She has fifty pounds left as a parting gift from Charles, which gives her a little freedom.

Charles, tormented by doubts and passion, still goes to Exeter. The lovers are no longer able to resist the surging feelings. Sarah turns out to be a virgin, which Charles did not expect. He reproaches her, but promises to return to her the next day. Having broken off his engagement to Ernestine, he hurries to Exeter, but Sarah disappears. Charles searches for her to no avail. Finally, three years later, he receives the long-awaited news from her. Smithson finds Sarah in the house of the artist Rosetti, where she looks after the children and feels completely free. She also realizes herself as an artist. Sarah asks Charles for forgiveness for all these years of searching. The last shots show us how they are happily floating along the river on a boat.

At the same time, another story is developing. Anna and Mike, the young actors playing Sarah and Charles, become so comfortable with their roles that they begin an affair. But they, like their characters, are not free.

Cast

• Meryl Streep - Sarah Woodruff / Anna
• Jeremy Irons - Charles Smithson / Mike
• Hilton McRae - Sam
• Emily Morgan - Mary
• Charlotte Mitchell - Mrs Tranter
• Lynsey Baxter - Ernestine Freeman
• Peter Vaughn - Mr Freeman
• Leo McKern - Dr. Grogan
• David Warner - Murphy
• Penelope Wilton - Sonya
• Alan Armstrong - Grimes

Awards and nominations

• 1982 - 5 Oscar nominations: Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Adapted Screenplay (Harold Pinter), Editing (John Bloom), Design and Set Design (Asheton Gorton, Anne Mollo), Costume Design (Tom Rand).
• 1982 - 3 BAFTA Awards: Anthony Asquith Award for best music(Carl Davis), Best Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Sound (Don Sharp, Ivan Sharrock, Bill Rowe). In addition, the film was nominated in 8 more categories: best movie, directing (Karel Reisch), male role(Jeremy Irons), script (Harold Pinter), editing (John Bloom), cinematography (Freddie Francis), art and set design (Asheton Gorton), costume design (Tom Rand).
• 1982 - Golden Globe Award for Best female role in a drama film (Meryl Streep), as well as nominations for best film-drama and for best scenario(Harold Pinter).
• 1982 - Bodil Award for Best European Film (Karel Reisz).
• 1982 - David di Donatello Award for Best Foreign Screenplay (Harold Pinter).
• 1983 - nomination for the Cesar Award for Best Foreign Film (Karel Reisz).
• 1983 - Grammy nomination for Best Album original music for film or television (Carl Davis).

Film and book

The ending in the text and in the film

Just as Sarah plays with Charles, testing him and pushing him to realize freedom, so the author of the work, J. Fowles, plays with his readers, asking them to make their choice. For this purpose, he includes three options for the ending in the text of the novel - “Victorian”, “fictional” and “existential”. It gives the right to both the reader and the hero of the novel to choose one of three endings, and therefore the plots of the novel. Fowles prepares his first trap in Chapter XLIV. He proposes a "Victorian" ending to the novel, in which Charles marries Ernestine and lives to be 114 years old. After a few pages, it turns out that the reader has been fooled - the author openly laughs at those who did not notice the parody in this chapter. The situation is more complicated with the two remaining options for the novel's ending. The author is disingenuous, trying to assure the reader that the endings are equal and their sequence in the text is determined by lot. The second trap is in Chapter LX. This is a “sentimental” ending in which Charles, as if in a fairy tale, remains with the woman he loves and learns that he has a child. Such a happy ending smacks of literary convention, and therefore cannot be considered true.

“If the novel really ended in this way,” writes A. Dolinin, “then the hero’s pilgrimage would have acquired achievable goal, would turn into a search for someone sacred symbol, with the acquisition of which the wanderer completes his journey. For Fowles, the formation of a person does not stop until death, and the only real, not illusory goal of life’s journey is the path itself, the continuous self-development of the individual, its movement from one free choice to another” (Dolinin A. Charles Smithson’s Pilgrimage // Fowles. J. Girlfriend of the French lieutenant - L.: Fiction, 1985. - P. 15.)

In this regard, the only “suitable” option for the ending becomes the last chapter LXI. This is the “existential” ending of the novel: the version in which main character chooses freedom, a piece of faith in himself, understands that “life must be endlessly endured, and again go out into the blind, salty, dark ocean.” We can say that in this version of the ending the author turns the entire situation of the novel upside down. He kind of puts Charles in Sarah's position. Only when he finds himself in her place does the hero begin to understand this woman. Sarah had something that others could not understand - freedom. In this version of the ending, the the last illusion hero - the illusion of saving love. Charles loses Sarah so that he can continue his hard way through a hostile world in which you will not find shelter, to continue the path of a person who has lost all the support provided to him by the “world of others.” In return, Charles gains “a piece of faith in himself.”

Looking from a different angle, Charles's choice of one of the alternative life paths can also be imagined as a choice between one of two women: Sarah or Ernestine, as a choice between duty and feeling. The most prosaic and predictable ending is the marriage of Charles to Ernestine. The hero follows this word, chooses debt. He leads gray life a person who is not fit for anything. Charles loses his inheritance and baronial title. The ending, in which the hero remains with Sarah (a fictional ending), contradicts the views of the author, for whom it was important to convey to the reader that the process of personal development does not stop until death, it is continuous, a person constantly makes a free choice. Having lost Sarah, according to the existential ending, the hero continues his difficult path.

The film adaptation made a successful move ( love story, which begins during the filming of the film between the actors playing the roles of Sarah and Charles), allowing us to imagine two times (modern and Victorian era) and one concept of human existence. The film's "sentimental" ending is given to the Victorians, and the actors play out the existential drama of free will. The book had three endings for the reader to choose from - the authors of the film offer two: one from the life of Sarah and Charles, the other from the separation of Anna and Michael. And if the screenwriter leaves the novel's heroes together: the last scene of the film is the heroes sailing together in a boat between the rocks towards the light; then the last scene from the life of the actors is Michael’s attempt to return Anna and his symbolic cry: “Sarah!” The film omits the scene of Charles meeting Lalage's daughter, it is not even mentioned, and all attention is concentrated on the complexity of the relationships between the characters.

Characters

An important similarity between the book and the film is the postmodern “vision” of the characters. Throughout the book, Fowles reminds the reader that these are not real people, but heroes of a fictional story:

“Everything I talk about here is complete fiction. The characters I create have never existed outside of my imagination. If until now I have pretended to know their innermost thoughts and feelings, it is only because, having assimilated to some extent the language and “voice” of the era in which my story takes place, I similarly adhere to the then generally accepted convention : the novelist comes in second place after the Lord God. Even if he doesn't know everything, he tries to pretend that he does. But I live in a century Alena Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes, and therefore if this is a novel, then it is in no way a novel in modern sense words" (Chapter 13)

The author deliberately draws the reader's attention to the fact that his characters act “independently” and may turn out to be not what they seem or whose “role” they try on (mainly this concerns main character). This is also the polemic with Victorian times, with completely rationed social roles and behavior, and the postmodern poetics of the “death of the author.”

How is such a rather complex technique implemented on the screen? The film achieves something similar by introducing two parallel storylines - the story of the characters in the film adaptation and the story of the actors playing these characters. Despite all the differences in means, the goal set by both the writer and the director is the same - the heroes are no longer perceived as living people, these are just some kind of roles of actors. If Fowles touches on the problems of Victorian morality, then the filmmakers turn to another important problem (already modern): the actor and the role he plays are two completely different personalities. In the film we see how prim Victorian ladies, gentlemen and their servants turn out to be a completely uncomplicated group of actors, where the guy playing the servant actually plays the piano superbly, and the “old maid” smokes and dresses colorfully. However, both the main character and the main actor still make the same mistake - they mistake a fictional image for reality.

Multi-level organization

One of Fowles' constant and specific techniques is to play with fashionable schemes of mass literature. Fowles defends the idea of ​​free will in all of his works, including “The French Lieutenant’s Girlfriend.” The end of this novel represents a kind of game with readers.

Fowles plays with his readers in the novel, forcing them to make their own choices. To do this, he includes three options for the ending in the text - “Victorian”, “fiction” and “existential”.

This is not the only technique Fowles uses to play with reader expectations. Important feature The style of the novel is literary stylization.

Stylization seeks to retain character traits an object, imitates only its stylistics (and not its themes) and makes one feel the very act of imitation, that is, the gap (masked in “mimotexts”) between the stylizing and the stylized planes. As M. Bakhtin noted, “Stylization stylizes someone else’s style in the direction of his own tasks. She only makes these tasks conditional.” The installation of convention allows us to call stylization “active imitation,” although this activity is distinguished by delicacy: stylization loves soft pressure, slight sharpening, unobtrusive exaggeration, which create “a certain alienation from the author’s own style, as a result of which the reproduced style itself becomes an object of artistic representation" and a subject of aesthetic "game". Stylization creates “images” of other people’s styles.

In “The French Lieutenant's Girlfriend” the described type of stylization is used (general - under the “Victorian novel”) with elements of creating “mimotexts”, representing examples of imitation of the style of individual authors) and parody types. The novel constantly plays with literary subtexts, and the main place among them is occupied by the works of English writers of the era to which the novel is dedicated. Fowles, who knows and highly appreciates the realistic novels of Victorian prose writers, deliberately builds “The French Lieutenant's Girlfriend” as a kind of collage of quotations from texts by Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and other writers. Fowles's plot devices, situations, and characters usually have one or more easily recognizable literary prototypes: thus, the love plot of the novel should evoke an association with “The Mill on the Floss” by Eliot and “Blue Eyes” by Hardy; the story of the unexpected marriage of the old baronet Smithson, because of which the hero loses his inheritance and title, goes back to Pelham, or the Adventures of a Gentleman by Bulwer-Lytton; Sarah’s character is reminiscent of the heroines of the same Hardy - Tess (“Tess of the D’Urbervilles”) and Eustacia Vye (“Homecoming”); Charles is found to have common features with numerous characters from Dickens and Meredith; in Ernestine they usually see a double of Eliot's Rosamund ("Middlemarch"), in Charles's servant Sam - a clear echo of the "immortal Sam Weller" from "The Pickwick Papers", etc. Fowles's even minor characters are literary - the butler on the Smithsonian estate wears one Benson is the same name as the butler in Meredith's The Trial of Richard Feverel. There are also quotations at the style level in the novel. Remembering Henry James, the narrator immediately begins to construct a phrase in his florid manner.

An inexperienced viewer is unlikely to pay attention and delve into the essence of intertextual connections in this novel. IN in this case we can talk about a multi-level organization and a number of readings. It’s the same with a film that can be perceived as a melodrama without looking for hidden meanings, but you can pay attention to many themes and leitmotifs. Thus, the work touches on the theme of bourgeois and free love, happiness and sacrifice, the problem of freedom and choice, and the feminist motive, existence (semantic correlation) of human life.

Notes

Links

Year of writing:

1969

Reading time:

Description of the work:

"The French Lieutenant's Woman" is the most important novel in the bibliography English writer John Fowles, written in 1969. The work is considered one of the key in English literature 2nd part of the 20th century. It is written in the traditions of realism, but clearly expresses postmodernism. The heroes of the novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman" are placed by Fowles in the Victorian era - both their names, and characters, and storylines the works are inspired by the motifs of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and others.

A film adaptation of the novel was made in 1981, starring Meryl Streep as the main character, who received the title of best actress in this story. Read below for a summary of “The French Lieutenant’s Woman.”

Summary of the novel
French Lieutenant's Woman

On a windy March day in 1867, a young couple strolls along the pier of the ancient town of Lyme Regis in the southeast of England. The lady is dressed according to the latest London fashion in a tight red dress without a crinoline, which in this provincial outback will only begin to be worn next season. Her tall companion, in an immaculate gray coat, respectfully holds a top hat in his hand. They were Ernestine, the daughter of a wealthy merchant, and her fiancé Charles Smithson, from an aristocratic family. Their attention is drawn to a female figure in mourning on the edge of the pier, which resembles more a living monument to those who died in the depths of the sea than a real creature. She is called the unfortunate Tragedy or the French Lieutenant's Woman. Two years ago, a ship was lost during a storm, and an officer washed ashore with a broken leg was picked up by local residents. Sarah Woodruff, who served as a governess and knew French, helped him as best she could. The lieutenant recovered and left for Weymouth, promising to return and marry Sarah. Since then, she goes out to the pier, “elephant-like and graceful, like Henry Moore sculptures,” and waits. When young people pass by, they are struck by her unforgettably tragic face: “sorrow poured out of it as naturally, unclouded and endlessly, like water from a forest spring.” Her blade-like gaze pierces Charles, who suddenly feels like a defeated enemy of a mysterious person.

Charles is thirty-two years old. He considers himself a talented paleontologist, but has difficulty filling the “endless enfilades of leisure.” Simply put, like any smart Victorian slacker, he suffers from Byronic spleen. His father received a decent fortune, but lost at cards. The mother died very young along with her newborn sister. Charles tries to study at Cambridge, then decides to take holy orders, but then he is hastily sent to Paris to unwind. He spends time traveling, publishing travel notes - “rushing around with ideas becomes his main occupation in his thirties.” Three months after returning from Paris, his father dies, and Charles remains the only heir of his uncle, a wealthy bachelor, and a profitable groom. Not indifferent to pretty girls, he cleverly avoided marriage, but, having met Ernestina Freeman, he discovered in her an extraordinary mind and pleasant restraint. He is attracted to this “sugar Aphrodite”, he is sexually unsatisfied, but makes a vow “not to take random women into bed and keep healthy sexual instinct locked up.” He comes to the sea for the sake of Ernestina, to whom he has been engaged for two months.

Ernestine is visiting her Aunt Tranter in Lyme Regis because her parents have gotten it into their heads that she is prone to consumption. If only they knew that Tina would live to see Hitler attack Poland! The girl is counting the days until the wedding - there are almost ninety left... She knows nothing about copulation, suspecting gross violence in this, but she wants to have a husband and children. Charles feels that she is more in love with marriage than with him. However, their engagement is a mutually beneficial affair. Mr. Freeman, justifying his surname (a free man), directly communicates his desire to become related to an aristocrat, despite the fact that Charles, who is passionate about Darwinism, proves to him with pathos that he is descended from a monkey.

Bored, Charles begins searching for the fossils for which the area around the town is famous, and on the Vere Heath he accidentally sees the French Lieutenant's Woman, lonely and suffering. Old Mrs. Poultney, known for her tyranny, took Sarah Woodruff as her companion in order to outdo everyone else in charity. Charles, whose job it is to visit three times a week, meets Sarah at her home and is surprised at her independence.

The dull course of dinner is diversified only by the persistent courtship of blue-eyed Sam, Charles's servant, for Miss Tranter's maid Mary, the most beautiful, spontaneous, as if inundated girl.

The next day, Charles comes to the wasteland again and finds Sarah on the edge of a cliff, tear-stained, with a captivatingly gloomy face. Suddenly she takes two starfish out of her pocket and hands them to Charles. “A gentleman who values ​​his reputation should not be seen in the company of the whore of Babylon Lyme,” she says. Smithson understands that he should stay away from this strange person, but Sarah personifies desirable and inexhaustible possibilities, and Ernestina, no matter how much he persuades himself, sometimes looks like “a cunning wind-up doll from Hoffmann’s fairy tales.”

That same evening, Charles gives a dinner in honor of Tina and her aunt. The lively Irishman Dr. Grogan, a bachelor who has been courting the old maid Miss Tranter for many years, is also invited. The Doctor does not share Charles's commitment to paleontology and sighs that we know less about living organisms than about fossils. Alone with him, Smithson asks about the strangeness of the French lieutenant's Woman. The doctor explains Sarah's condition as bouts of melancholy and psychosis, as a result of which grief becomes happiness for her. Now meetings with her seem full of philanthropic meaning to Charles.

One day, Sarah takes him to a secluded corner on the hillside and tells the story of her misfortune, remembering how handsome the rescued lieutenant was and how bitterly she was deceived when she followed him to Amus and gave herself to him in a completely indecent hotel:

“It was the devil in the guise of a sailor!” The confession shocks Charles. He discovers passion and imagination in Sarah - two qualities typical of the English, but completely suppressed by the era of general hypocrisy. The girl admits that she no longer hopes for the return of the French lieutenant, because she knows about his marriage. Descending into the ravine, they suddenly notice Sam and Mary hugging and hide. Sarah smiles as if she's taking off her clothes. She challenges Charles's noble manners, his scholarship, his habit of rational analysis.

At the hotel, another shock awaits the frightened Smithson: his elderly uncle, Sir Robert, announces his marriage to the “unpleasantly young” widow Mrs. Tomkins and, consequently, deprives his nephew of his title and inheritance. Ernestine is disappointed by this turn of events. Smithson also doubts the correctness of his choice, and a new passion flares up in him. Wanting to think things over, he plans to leave for London. They bring a note from Sarah, written in French, as if in memory of the lieutenant, asking him to come at dawn. Confused, Charles confesses to the doctor his secret meetings with the girl. Grogan tries to explain to him that Sarah is leading him by the nose, and as proof he gives him to read a report on the trial that took place in 1835 over one officer. He was accused of producing anonymous letters threatening the commander's family and abusing his sixteen-year-old daughter Marie. A duel, arrest, and ten years in prison followed. Later, an experienced lawyer guessed that the dates of the most obscene letters coincided with the days of Marie's menstruation, who had a psychosis of jealousy towards the young man's mistress... However, nothing can stop Charles, and with the first glimmer of dawn he goes on a date. Sarah is kicked out of the house by Mrs. Poultney, who is unable to bear the willfulness and bad reputation of her companion. Sarah hides in the barn, where her explanation with Charles takes place. Unfortunately, as soon as they kissed, Sam and Mary appeared on the threshold. Smithson makes them promise to remain silent and, without admitting anything to Ernestine, hastily goes to London. Sarah is hiding in Exeter. She has ten sovereigns left by Charles as a parting gift, and this gives her some freedom.

Smithson has to discuss the upcoming wedding with Ernestine's father. One day, seeing a prostitute on the street who looks like Sarah, he hires her, but feels suddenly nauseous. In addition, the whore is also named Sarah.

Soon Charles receives a letter from Exeter and goes there, but without seeing Sarah, he decides to go further to Lyme Regis, to see Ernestine. Their reunion ends with a wedding. Surrounded by seven children, they live happily ever after. Nothing has been heard from Sarah.

But this ending is not interesting. Let's get back to the letter. So Charles rushes to Exeter and finds Sarah there. In her eyes there is sadness of expectation. “We shouldn’t… this is crazy,” Charles repeats incoherently. He “presses his lips into her mouth, as if he was hungry not just for a woman, but for everything that had been taboo for so long.” Charles does not immediately understand that Sarah is a virgin, and all the stories about the lieutenant are lies. While he is in church begging for forgiveness, Sarah disappears. Smithson writes to her about his decision to marry and take her away. He experiences a surge of confidence and courage, breaks off his engagement to Tina, preparing to devote his whole life to Sarah, but cannot find her. Finally, two years later, in America, he receives the long-awaited news. Returning to London, Smithson finds Sarah in the Rosetti house, among the artists. Here his one-year-old daughter named Aalage-Rucheek is waiting for him.

No, and this path is not for Charles. He does not agree to be a toy in the hands of a woman who has achieved exclusive power over him. Previously, Sarah had called him the only hope, but when he arrived in Exeter, he realized that he had switched roles with her. She withholds him out of pity, and Charles rejects this sacrifice. He wants to return to America, where he discovered “a piece of faith in himself.” He understands that life must be endured to the best of one’s ability in order to again go out into the blind, salty, dark ocean.

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