THE QUEST FOR EXISTENCE IN JOHN FOWLES’ THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN

This essay aims to analyse Twentieth-century English novelist John Fowles’ 1969 novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman in terms of French philosopher, playwright, and novelist Jean Paul Sartre’s Existentialist philosophy. Like Sartre, Fowles mainly shows concern about the question of human freedom and human beings’ struggle to exist despite the restrictions of the society they live in. In his The French Lieutenant’s Woman Fowles basically discusses the issue of personal freedom and existence through the characters Sarah and Charles, and through Charles’ relationship with Ernestina. The main questions Fowles raises in his novel are “is there free will?”, “can choose freely?”, “can we act freely?”, and “how can we do it?” (Neary, 1992: 20). This article proposes that in the conventional circumstances of the Victorian society, Sarah manages to create her freedom both socially and existentially in terms of Sartrean existentialist ideology. Charles, on the other hand, fails to act freely and create an independent life of his ow