Brief Biography of John Fowles

Fowles was born into a conventional family of middle-class tobacco importers. At thirteen, he
began attending boarding school, where he was successful in athletic pursuits. After spending
two years in the Royal Marines, Fowles earned his bachelor’s degree at New College, Oxford,
in French and German. During this time he was influenced by existentialist writings. He then
taught English for two years at a school in Greece. While there, he fell in love with Elizabeth
Christy, who was married to one of his colleagues. Soon after returning to England, Elizabeth
separated from her husband and married Fowles. Fowles spent the next ten years teaching
English to foreign students at a girls’ school in London. He published his first book, The
Collector, in 1963. Its success made it possible for Fowles to quit teaching and focus entirely
on his writing. In 1965, Fowles and his wife moved to a farm in Dorset, though they found it
too isolated and soon moved to Lyme Regis instead, where Fowles would live for the rest of
his life. He worked for a decade as the curator of the Lyme Regis Museum. The
Magus and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, along with The Collector, became his most
popular works, though he published a number of others, as well.
Download it!

Historical Context of The French Lieutenant’s Woman

In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles explores many of the new ideas that transformed
British society during the Victorian Era. Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural
selection were increasingly coming to the public attention during this time, which led to major
conflicts between science and religion, as well as a general reappraisal of the meaning of
being human. The Victorian Era was also a time of political reform movements. In 1867 (the
year in which most of the novel is set) the right to vote was significantly expanded to British
working class men, which began to spell the decline in the power of the aristocracy. Women’s
rights were also becoming a political issue around this time. Victorian women were expected
to adhere to the “cult of domesticity,” which envisioned them as the pure and pious centers of
the home, obedient to their husbands and dedicated to nurturing their children. However,
women were fighting for increased rights in marriage as well as the right to vote. In 1867,
John Stuart Mill proposed in Parliament that the Second Reform Act should give women the
right to vote, but he was laughed down and the motion defeated. His famous essay “The
Subjection of Women” argued for women’s equality with men.

Other Books Related to The French Lieutenant’s Woman

The French Lieutenant’s Woman contains references to a number of literary and scientific
books, including On the Origin of Species (Darwin’s 1859 book proposing evolutionary
theory), and the poetry of Tennyson (particularly In Memoriam and Maud) and Matthew
Arnold (particularly “To Marguerite”). Fowles consciously writes in the shadow of Thomas
Hardy, who is famous for writing about Dorset, where The French Lieutenant’s Woman takes
place. Fowles also follows Hardy in dealing directly with issues of gender and sexuality and
employing evocative descriptions of nature.
Key Facts about The French Lieutenant’s Woman
 Full Title: The French Lieutenant’s Woman
 When Written: 1967
  Where Written: Lyme Regis, Dorset, England
 When Published: 1969
 Literary Period: Postmodernism
 Genre: historiographic metafiction
 Setting: Lyme Regis, Exeter, and London, England between 1867 and 1869
 Climax: Charles and Sarah having sex in Endicott’s Family Hotel
 Antagonist: Mrs. Poulteney, Sam, Mr. Freeman, Victorian society
 Point of View: third person, with interjections from a first person narrator

About The French Lieutenant's Woman

Bookmark this page

This novel is based on the nineteenth-century romantic or gothic novel, a literary genre which
can trace its origins back to the eighteenth century. Although Fowles perfectly reproduces
typical characters, situations, and even dialogue, the reader should always be aware of the
irony inherent in Fowles' perception; for his perspective, however cleverly disguised, is that
of the twentieth century. We see this both in the authorial intrusions, which comment on the
mores of people in Victorian England, and in his choice of opening quotations, which are
drawn from the writings of people whose observations belie the assumptions that most
Victorians held about their world.

Fowles is concerned in this novel with the effects of society on the individual's awareness of
himself or herself and how that awareness dominates and distorts his or her entire life,
including relationships with other people. All the main characters in this novel are molded by
what they believe to be true about themselves and others. In this case, their lives are governed
by what the Victorian Age thought was true about the nature of men and women and their
relationships to each other. The French Lieutenant's Woman of the title, for example, is the
dark, mysterious woman of the typical Victorian romantic novel.

Sometimes the villainess, sometimes the heroine, such a woman was a symbol of what was
forbidden. It is this aura of strangeness about Sarah Woodruff that first attracts Charles
Smithson's attention. The story that develops around this pair echoes other romantic novels of
a similar type, wherein a man falls in love with a strange and sometimes evil woman.

Charles' relationship with Ernestina Freeman creates another sort of romantic story, one that
formed the basis of many Victorian novels. In the present story, the romantic situation which
develops around the pair of aristocratic young people is not allowed to prevail over the forces,
including the dark lady, that would normally keep Charles and Ernestina apart. Thus Fowles
uses the popularity of the comedy of manners and combines it with the drama and
sensationalism of the gothic novel and, using several stylistic conventions, creates a masterful,
many-layered mystery that is one of the finest pieces of modern literature.

Sarah Woodruff She is an educated but impoverished young woman. She is called "the
French Lieutenant's Woman" or "Tragedy" or the "French lieutenant's whore" because it is
believed that she had an affair with a shipwrecked French sailor. It is also believed that she is
half-mad with grief and that she stares out to sea, vainly hoping for the day he will return to
her. Because of her reputation she can no longer gain any employment until Mrs. Poulteney
hires her as a paid companion. Sarah is a mysterious figure. No one knows much about her,
and later we find that much of what people believe about her is untrue.

Charles Smithson He is a wealthy gentleman and is heir to a minor title. His hobby is
collecting fossils and he considers himself to be something of a naturalist. He is an admirer of
the controversial Darwin and he is rather pleased with himself that he is one of a minority in
the 1860s to hold scientifically advanced ideas, such as the theories espoused by Darwin and
others. He is both sensitive and intelligent, but he is unsure of himself. He is bored and
dissatisfied with the course his life is taking. His fiancée is Ernestina Freeman, but that
relationship is changed when he meets Sarah Woodruff.

Ernestina Freeman Ernestina is Charles' fiancée. She is attractive and clever but also very
young and naive. Although she considers herself to be a modern young woman, her attitudes
are similar, for the most part, to those of most proper young ladies. She is vacationing in
Lyme when the story opens, staying with Aunt Tranter.

Aunt Tranter Ernestina's aunt is a kindly woman whose temperament contrasts greatly with
that of the sharp-tongued Mrs. Poulteney. Aunt Tranter's honesty and lack of hypocrisy seem
to present a welcome bright spot in the small town governed by the malicious gossip of less
charitable souls.

Mrs. Poulteney The vicar convinces the wealthy widow to take in Sarah Woodruff and give
her employment. Mrs. Poulteney's main motive in doing so is to show how charitable she is,
and it does not stem from any real feelings of compassion for Sarah. Mrs. Poulteney is a
stereotype, a conglomerate of all the malicious old villainesses who have appeared in
numerous Victorian novels.

Dr. Grogan He is a friendly man whom Charles finds to be a sympathetic listener. Although
he feels sorry for Sarah Woodruff, unlike Charles, he cannot take her seriously. He tries to
convince Charles that she really is ill. Dr. Grogan, like Aunt Tranter, represents a type of
Victorian character who seems more understanding and less hampered by convention than
most people. Part of the reason for this is that both of the older people actually belong to the
generation before Victoria's, an era somewhat less repressive in certain respects.

Captain and Mrs. Talbot Sarah was the governess for the Talbot's children when she met the
French lieutenant. Even after she told them of her experience with him, they did not condemn
her for it.

Lieutenant Varguennes Caught in a shipwreck, his leg was injured, and Varguennes was
nursed at the home of the Talbots, mostly by Sarah. Although he flirted with Sarah, and
wished to seduce her, he was married, as she later found out.

Mrs. Fairley She is Mrs. Poulteney's housekeeper and is as unkind as her mistress. She
delights in spying on Sarah and reporting her activities to Mrs. Poulteney.

Millie Mrs. Poulteney's young maid who is befriended by Sarah.

Mary Aunt Tranter's maid whose life is considerably more pleasant than Millie's. She
eventually marries Charles' man-servant, Sam Farrow.

Sam Farrow While Sam is often the object of Charles' teasing, he is not merely a humorous
figure as was Dickens' Sam Weller. He takes himself seriously and is an ambitious member of
the working class. He is determined to wed Mary and make a good life for the two of them.

Sir Robert Charles Smithson's uncle. It is his title that Charles hopes to inherit, although that
prospect is altered when Sir Robert marries Mrs. Tomkins, an attractive widow.

Lieutenant de la Roncière and Marie de Morell These are two individuals in a case history
given to Charles by Dr. Grogan for him to read. The doctor hopes that reading about how the
neurotic young woman convinced the French courts that she had been assaulted and her
family sent poison-pen letters by the officer would convince Charles that Sarah possibly had
similar intentions regarding him. While Charles conceded that the story might be true, he did
not believe it applied to Sarah.

Mr. Freeman He was a haberdasher who became very successful. One sign of his success
was that he, a member of the middle class, could have his daughter marry one of the nobility.

Gabriel and Christina Rosseti They were the founders of a school of art called the Pre-
Raphaelite school. In their day they were considered as radical as Mr. Freeman was
conservative. However, by the time Sarah came to stay with them, their work, while still
shocking to some, was coming to be more accepted.

John Fowles He is the bearded man who enters the novel several times as an observer and
sometimes as a sort of theatrical director. He comments on the actions of his characters and
discusses the relationship between the art of the novel and life.

Critical Essay Structure, Style, and Technique in The French Lieutenant's Woman
Bookmark this page

In The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles does not merely recreate a Victorian novel;
neither does he parody one. He does a little of both, but also much more. The subject of this
novel is essentially the same as that of his other works: the relationship between life and art,
the artist and his creation, and the isolation resulting from an individual's struggle for
selfhood. He works within the tradition of the Victorian novel and consciously uses its
conventions to serve his own design, all the while carefully informing the reader exactly what
he is doing. His style purposely combines a flowing nineteenth-century prose style with an
anachronistic twentieth-century perspective.

Fowles is as concerned with the details of the setting as were his Victorian counterparts. But
he is also conscious that he is setting a scene and does not hesitate to intrude into the narrative
himself in order to show the reader how he manipulates reality through his art. Like Dickens,
Fowles uses dialogue to reveal the personalities of his characters and often he will satirize
them as well. For example, Charles' attitudes toward Sarah and Ernestina are revealed in the
way he talks to them. He is forever uncomfortable with Sarah because she won't accept the
way in which he categorizes the world, including his view of her. Sarah's responses to the
world around her, as seen through her words and actions are consistent, for she is already
aware of herself as an individual who cannot be defined by conventional roles. However,
Charles changes, depending upon whom he talks to, because he really does not know who he
is yet, and he sees himself as playing a series of roles. With his fiancée, he is indulgent and
paternal; with his servant Sam, he is patronizing and humorous at Sam's expense, and with
Sarah, he is stiff and uncomfortable. When he attempts to respond to Sarah's honesty, he hears
the hollowness of his own conventional responses.

Fowles does not recreate his Victorian world uncritically. He focuses on those aspects of the
Victorian era that would seem most alien to a modern reader. In particular, he is concerned
with Victorian attitudes towards women, economics, science, and philosophy. In this
romance, Fowles examines the problems of two socially and economically oppressed groups
in nineteenth-century England: the poverty of the working and servant classes, and the
economic and social entrapment of women. While the plot traces a love story, or what seems
to be a love story, the reader questions what sort of love existed in a society where many
marriages were based as much on economics as on love. This story is thus not really a
romance at all, for Fowles' objective is not to unite his two protagonists, Sarah and Charles,
but to show what each human being must face in life in order to be able to grow.

While Fowles has titled his book The French Lieutenant's Woman, Sarah Woodruff is not
really the central character. She does not change greatly in the novel as it progresses, for she
has already arrived at an awareness that she must go beyond the definition of her individuality
that society has imposed upon her. Because her situation was intolerable, she was forced to
see through it and beyond it in order to find meaning and some sort of happiness in her life. In
the early chapters of the novel, she perhaps makes one last effort to establish a life within the
norms of Victorian society. She chooses the role of the outcast, the "French lieutenant's
whore," and also falls in love with Charles or causes him to fall in love with her. But even as
she draws Charles away from his unquestioning acceptance of his life, she finds that she does
not want to be rescued from her plight. She has already rescued herself.

Charles, it seems, is the actual protagonist of this novel, for he must travel from ignorance to
understanding, by following the woman whom he thinks he is helping, but who in fact is his
mentor. He must discard each layer of the false Charles: Charles the naturalist, Charles the
gentleman, Charles the rake, and perhaps even Charles the lover, in order to find Charles the
human being. The knowledge he arrives at is bitter, for he has lost all his illusions, as Sarah
discarded hers sometime before. But the result itself is not bitter. Although Charles and Sarah
are not reunited, for life's answers are never as simple and perfect as those of art, they both
achieve a maturity that enables them to control their lives as long as they remember to look
for answers nowhere but in themselves.

Fowles has taken two traditional romantic characters, a young hero and a mysterious woman,
and has transformed them into human beings.

There is no French lieutenant to pine after, and Sarah's life is not a tragedy that echoes her
nickname in Lyme. Charles' gift of marriage is not a gift at all. While the novel could have
ended with the couple's reconciliation, as it might have had it been a traditional romance,
Fowles does not end it there. In the second ending, Sarah rejects the familiar security that
Charles offers and both are forced to go on alone. Fowles' novel echoes the doubts raised by
such novelists as Thomas Hardy, and by such poets as Matthew Arnold and Alfred Lord
Tennyson, about the solidity of the Victorian view of the world. The world was changing and
old standards no longer applied, though they lingered on long after many had discarded them
in their hearts. This theme that was approached by writers in the nineteenth century is picked
up again by Fowles and carried to a logical conclusion. The novel is therefore actually a
psychological study of an individual rather than a romance. It is a novel of individual growth
and the awareness of one's basic isolation which accompanies that growth.

The French Lieutenant's Woman as a Postmodern Novel

If the fundamental principles and assumptions about the nature of fiction is questioned and challenged,
postmodernist elements are supposed to exist. In The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles questioned
the fundamental Victorian principles and assumptions. In The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles
has made a contrast between Ernestine and Sarah Woodruff. Ernestine stands for a superficial womanhood.

John Fowles (1926-2005)

She had interest only in a trivial and superficial things only. She is just a
pampered daughter of a rich middle class merchant. She had none of her own
independent cast of mind. For her father's craving for faded aristocracy,
Ernestine accepted an engagement with Charles Smithson. On the other hand,
John Fowles has included a very, very different sort of character, Sarah
Woodruff. Sarah has an existential view. She believes in the constant evolution
of human self and personality. She prefers freedom to happiness. She appears
profound and solemn in her act and belief. Her love for Charles was intended
from Charles evolution. Charles, at his mental level, puts Ernestine and Sarah
beside and Judges. In his act of judging between Ernestine and Sarah, Charles
finds Ernestine hollow and superficial. On the contrary, he finds Sarah
Woodruff very, very deep and profound. It is Sarah rather than Ernestina, who
helped Charles to achieve the existential level of maturity. John Fowles himself
appreciated the mysterious nature of Sarah. By putting Sarah (as an embodiment
of a postmodern cast of mind) against Ernestine (as representative of a Victorian
cast of mind) John Fowles is questioning and challenging a set of fundamental
Victorian principles and assumption.
The happy ending is the nature of Victorian text. The dominant nature of
Victorian text is a happy ending and the happy ending is the structural
requirement of the Victorian text. This structural nature of Victorian novel is
questioned here. Charles Smithson, the hero of the novel, is shown condemned
to live alone throughout his life.
A Victorian novelist claims to have written his/her novel from the throne of
literary omniscience. No character in any Victorian novel is unknown to the
writer of that fiction. Victorian authorship claims to have known his/her
character inside out. But this omniscient authorship is questioned by John
Fowles. John Fowles himself has said that my own creation Sarah is mysterious
to me. I don't know her completely. Victorian point of view is questioned. The
Victorian narrative structure is challenged. The Victorian trend of happy ending
is questioned. The traditional nature of the text is questioned. The moment
traditional nature of a text is questioned, elements of postmodernism get
introduced in the novel.
Postmodernism in fiction subverts the master-narrative. Master-narrative is a
narrative of emancipation. In The French Lieutenant's Woman had Sarah
accepted Charles the novel might have been a master-narrative. But Sarah
rejected Charles. Consequently, it became an existential narrative of the
protagonist's evolution of personality and progression of self. Any experimental
world anxious with elements of postmodernism subverts all traditional
components of the narrative. To achieve the purpose of subverting the following
devices are used: Parody, Irony, Distortions of narrative time, Discontinuity,
Anachronism, Blurring of genres and Ambivalence.
All these above-mentioned experimental devices are used by John Fowles in
'The French lieutenant's Woman'. The clearest example of parody can be seen if
we see Fowles's citation from Dr. Grogan's medical hypothesis on the head of
each chapter an epigraph is put. Each epigraph differs from the other. Some
epigraphs are from Darwin, some from Amold. Different rising Victorian voices
are mingled. Several choices are mingled. This mingling of voices, this fusions
of Victorian utterances are a brilliant example of pastiche. This technique of
pastiche is used by Fowles as a device to subvert the monolithic dominion of a
single dominant voice.
Irony is also a device practiced by John Fowles to subvert the traditional
assumptions and values. Dr. Grogan claims with countless instances of medical
melancholia that the Sarah Woodruff is prone to melancholic situation. But the
real fact is, she alone is that sort of girl who has an independent on the
evolutionary cast of mind. All other characters are somehow or other
hypocritical or immature. Sarah alone is that kind of girl who can sacrifice
everything for freedom. She sacrificed even her love for freedom. She took
delight in her lover's evolutionary progress via lifelong loneliness. Charles
Smithson sympathized her. But ironically, it is she who had to show pity to him.
Through the device of irony Fowles subverts Charles Smithson's shallow and
deflected interest in Darwinian evolution. Charles Smithson appears keenly
interested in Darwinian Theory of evolution. But ironically enough, he had to be
taught by Sarah in the line of existential evolution. By the agency of ironic
device John Fowles happens to achieve the experimental success of subverting
Victorian elitism thinly embodied in the paleontologist Charles Smithson.
The third important experimental device to achieve subversive goal is the
distortions of narrative time. In chapter thirteen Fowles interrupts into the line of
narrative progression. He interrogates the notion of literary omniscience. Fowles
asserts he is free to give whatever twists he likes to his characters. He adds that
he can freely walk in the universe of his fiction without being constrained by the
narrative conventions of the Victorian ages. Not only in chapter thirteenth
elsewhere in, The French Lieutenant's woman John Fowles enters into the
narratives and broods over the destiny of his characters. At the time of his
intrusion into the narrative structure Fowles talks about the power of authorship
to change the inevitable destiny of his characters. John Fowles's intrusion
(forcible entry) into the narrative structure of The French Lieutenant's
woman distorts the narrative. Since this distortion of narrative time has added
new crucial elements in the structure of The French Lieutenant’s woman, it is a
postmodern novel.
This distortion of narrative time produces discontinuity and gaps and holes in
the line of narrative progression. These gaps and holes in narrative development
are called Anachronism. Since there scatter elements of discontinuity and
anachronisms in the narrative progression of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, it
is postmodern meta-fiction.
Ambivalence and blurring (nearly mixing) of genres are two subversive strategy
to introduce elements of postmodernism in fiction. In The French Lieutenant's
Woman, John Fowles is ambivalent. If asked whether he completely knows who
Sarah is, his answer is somewhat ambivalent. If asked why did Sarah reject the
man she thinks she loves? Fowles Says to help him to evolve. If again asked
why did she intend Charles to evolve? His answer will be because she loved
him, she intended him to evolve. That much only.
Even the ending of the novel is somewhat ambivalent. If readers want Victorian
mode of happy ending, Fowles ends the novel by showing Sarah accepting
Charles. If the readers want postmodern ending, Fowles certainly ends the novel
by showing Charles as a rejected lover, a jilted lover condemned to evolve
existentially in the sphere of freedom. Besides the strategy of ambivalence there
is another strategy of blurring of genres.
John Fowles has added chapter-wise epigraph to make a parody of many
Victorian voices. While reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman it seems as if
it is a document. It is an anthropological and sociological record of those who
avoided the rigorously moralistic Victorian society and came to the bay of Lyme
Regis. After reading Dr. Grogan's several examples of melancholic patients we
feel as if Sarah is a poor victim of melancholia. We feel as if we are reading a
medical treatise with an element of wonder. Having seen recurrent emphasis
upon the Darwinian theory of evolution, we feel as if we are reading a
geological or paleontological account. The French Lieutenant's woman presents
an account of rampant prostitution in London and the rapid rise of the middle
class. It brings into foreground several facets of the urbanized London life.
Moreover The French Lieutenant’s woman is not a piece of fiction, it is meta-
fiction. As a meta-fiction, it questions the generic convention of fiction. If
possible, it blurs several generic conventions.
Thus, John Fowles has introduced elements of experimental postmodernism by
making an experimentally subversive use of all these devices. Hence, it would
be no exaggeration to say that The French Lieutenant's Womanis an
experimentally postmodernist meta-fiction.
The Magus Background
These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful of their
contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by Timothy Sexton

The Magus is the first novel that John Fowles actually penned, although it would only
be published after two subsequent efforts were completed. Fowles is perhaps most famous for
later writing The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Anyone who has read that
groundbreaking novel or even seen the acclaimed film adapted from it is familiar with the fact
that Fowles artistic signature is playing around with reader expectation. Fowles was a leading
light in the world of postmodern fiction before that term lapsed into pop culture
meaninglessness capable of application to pert near anything. And The Magus makes The
French Lieutenant’s Woman look like a completely straightforward example of
Modernism by comparison.
The Magus is purposely and notoriously unclear as far as reaching the kind of ending that
most people would seem—judging by standards codified through a century of Hollywood
films—to prefer. As a result, the ending naturally feels incomplete, but in literary terms the
very lack of determinacy is often successfully utilized for the purpose of creating a coherence
synonymous with ambiguity. In turn, a lesser known synonym for ambiguity, but one
endowed with a more facilitative estimation as a device for the creation of a work genuinely
deserving of being designated as postmodern literature is plurisignation. Plurisignation is
the preferred alternative term called into action for the purpose of expanding on the concept of
ambiguity.
The term was coined by author Philip Wainwright in his study of the language of
symbolism, The Burning Fountain. Wainwright rejected the constriction of the inherent
“either/or” meaning connotatively contained with literature seeking to create layers of
possibilities through a heightened demonstration of ambiguousness meaning. His aim
expanding upon the imprecision of the mysterious quality of ambiguity to lend it a “both/and”
concept under the term plurisignation. Perhaps even more to the point is Wainwright also
intended the quality of plurisignation within a text to employ ambiguity as an essential part of
its overall meaning. Such an example of the type of ambiguous writing that employs the
particular technique of plurisignation is John Fowles’ debut effort, The Magus.
The novel is short on plot, long on character and even longer on the ambiguous nature
between what is real and what is unreal. Or, perhaps more appropriately, less real. Or, maybe
even more appropriately, less unreal. At the heart of the narrative motion that carries readers
of The Magus to appointment with disappointment if they are of a mind that needs to have
some sort of definite ending spelled out for them by the author are what the author refers to as
“godgames.” These amusement constructed upon the foundation of blurring the line between
what is reality and what is merely artifice eventually place the reader front and center in the
extricating some sort of unambiguous meaning from the wealth of plurisignatious possibilities
that author has provided for them.

Or, put in a less plurisignatious manner, the ending of The Magus is left entirely until to
reader. And there is no ambiguity about that, as the many letters addressed to Fowles from
readers pleading for a definitive qualification of the outcome of the novel that was intended
by the author. Confirmation that The Magus fulfills Wainwright directive that
plurisignation requires the ambiguity to be essential to the meaning of the story, when Fowles
took upon himself the task of responding to such pleas, his answer would depend on how he
felt at the moment and could be an outcome utterly oppositional to his most immediately
previous response to a reader.

The Magus Summary

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful of their
contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by Julia Wolf

Nicholas Urfe was born in 1927 in the family of brigadier general; after a brief service in the
army in 1948 he went to Oxford, and a year later his parents died in a plane crash. He stayed
alone, with a small but independent annual revenue, has bought a used car - among students it
was quite uncommon and contributed to his success among girls. Nicholas considered himself
a poet; engrossed into reading novels of the French existentialists, taking metaphorical
descriptions of complex philosophical systems of the tutorial correct behavior not realizing
that favorite anti-heroes act in literature, but not in reality; he created a club Les Hommers
Revokes (Rebellious people) - bright individuals rebelled against the gray routine of life;
and finally came to life, on his own assessment ,"fully prepared to fail."
After graduating from Oxford he got a place of a teacher in a small school in the east of
England; having hardly endure year in the boondocks, he appealed to the British Council,
wanting to work abroad, and so ended up in Greece as an English teacher at the school of
Lord Byron on Fraksose, an island eighty kilometers from Athens. On the same day, when he
was offered the job, he met Alison, a woman from Australia, who rented a room on the floor
below. She was twenty-three, he was - twenty-five; they fell in love with each other, but were
afraid to admit it. So they broke up he went to Greece, she received a job of a flight attendant.
Island Fraksos appeared divinely beautiful and deserted. Nicholas was alone wandering
around the island, learning previously unknown to him absolute beauty of the Greek
landscape. He wrote poetry, but it was on this earth, where is some strange way the true
measure of things became clear for him, and suddenly realized conclusively that he was not a
poet, and his poems were mannered and pompous. After a visit to a brothel in Athens he got
sick, and that finally threw him into a deep depression - up to the suicide attempt.

But miracles began in May. A deserted villa on the southern half of the island suddenly came
to life: on the beach, he found blue fins, smelling faintly with feminine makeup, a towel and
an anthology of English poetry. Under one of the tabs were underlined with red the poems of
Eliot.

Until next weekend Nicolas made inquiries in the village about the owner of the villa Burani.
They spoke about him not too eager considering him a collaborator: during the war he was a
village chief, and his name is associated with the contradictory story of shooting by Germans
half of the village. He lives alone, very closed, does not communicate with anyone. This
contradicts with what Nicholas had learned in London from his predecessor, who had told
him when he was in the Burani villa and fell out with its owner – but he about it told too
sparingly and reluctantly. The atmosphere of mystery, omissions and contradictions that
enveloped the man are intriguing Nicholas, and he decides certainly to meet with Mr.
Conchis.
The meeting took place. Conchis was as if waiting for him; tea table was set for two. Conchis
showed Nicholas the house: a huge library, originals of Modigliani and Bonnard, old
clavichord, and ancient sculptures and paintings on vases provocatively erotic properties.
Conchis after tea played Telemann - played superbly, but said he was not a musician, and a
"very rich man" and "visionary". Materialistically bred up Nicholas wondered if he was not
crazy when Conchis pointedly said that Nicholas was also "chosen". Nicholas had not seen
such people before; communication with Conchis promises him a lot of fascinating puzzles.
Conchis said goodbye throwing his hands up with an outlandish priestly gesture, as the host -
as God - as a magician. And he invited Nicholas to spend the next weekend together, but put
conditions: not to talk about it anyone in the village and not to ask him any questions.

Now Nicholas lived from weekend to weekend, which spent at Burani; a desperate, magic,
antique feeling that he had entered into a fabulous maze that was awarded with the heavenly
bounty did not leave him. Conchis told him stories of his life, and the characters of these
stories were illustrated, in some way materialized: once Nicolas met in the village an old
foreigner, who introduced himself de Ducane (according to Conchis, in the thirties he
inherited from the de Ducane the old clavichord and his vast fortune), then a ghost of
Conchis's bride Lily, who died in 1916, went out to the dinner. Of course, this vivacious
young girl only played the role of Lily, but she refused to tell Nicholas, for what and for
whom was this performance - for him or for Conchis? Nicholas found out there were other
actors, "living pictures" depicting a satyr chasing a nymph of Apollo at Blowing a Horn, or
the ghost of Robert Foulkes, the author of 1679 "Edification sinners. Deathbed confession
Robert Foulkes, murderers” given to him by Conchis to read at bedtime.

Nicholas had almost lost the sense of reality. Burani space was permeated with metaphors,
allusions, mystical meanings. He did not distinguish truth from fiction, but to get out of this
strange game was beyond him. Having pinned Lily to the wall, he found from her, that her
real name was Julie Holmes, that she had a twin sister June and that they were young
British actress who came for the shooting of the film, but instead of shooting they had to take
part in the Conchis’s performances. Nicholas fell in love with the alluring and elusive Julie-
Lily, and when received a telegram from Allison, who was able to arrange a weekend in
Athens, he gave her up.
However Conchis built the circumstances so that Nicholas still went for the meeting with
Alison in Athens. They climbed to Parnassus, and among Greek nature Nicholas told Alison
everything about Burani, about Julie, because he does not have the person closer, he told her
everything as if at the confession, selfishly without separating her from himself and not
thinking what effect this may have on her. Allison made the only possible conclusion - he did
not love her, and in hysterics she did not want to see him in the morning and faded out of the
hotel and out of his life.

Nicholas returned to Fraksos, as never before Julie was necessary for him, but the villa was
empty. Returning to the village at night, he became a spectator and a participant in another
show: a group of Germans caught him. Beaten, with a dissected arm, he was suffering in the
absence of news from Julie and did not know what to think. The letter from Julie, a gentle and
inspiring came at the same time with the news of the suicide of Allison.

Rushing to the villa Nicholas found there Conchis alone, who dryly said to him that he had
failed his role and tomorrow must leave his home forever, and today, as a goodbye, Nicholas
would hear the last chapter of his life, because was only now ready to accept it. As an
explanation of things happening at the villa Conchis put forward the idea of a global
metateatra, and again, did not explain the main thing - what for? Again Nicholas was afraid to
understand that this issue was not important, what more important was to break through
injections of pride to the truth, which was unkind and ruthless, like Conchis’s smile.

Last Conchis’s story was about the events of 1943 on the execution of the punitive villagers.
Then the village chief Conchis was given the choice - to shoot a partisan by his own hand,
thus preserving the lives of eighty, or refusing and to subject the extermination of almost the
entire male population of the village. Then he realized that in fact there was no choice - he
just organically could not kill a human being, no matter what reasons the reason cited.

In essence, all Conchis’s stories were about the ability to distinguish between true and false,
of fidelity to oneself, to one’s natural and human, to rightness of living life to the artificial
institutions, such as the loyalty oath to duty. And before leaving the island, Conchis said
Nicholas that he was not worthy of freedom.

Conchis sailed away, and Nicholas stayed waiting for Julie, as she promised in her letter. But
before he could believe that the presentation was over, he found himself again in the trap,
literally, in the underground shelter, he managed to get out of there not at once. In the evening
came June, who replaced the metatheatre with another explanation - psychological
experiment. Conchis was supposedly a retired professor of psychiatry, medicine, and the final
and the apotheosis of the experiment was the procedure of the court: first, "psychologists"
described in their terms the personality of Nicholas, then he should take out the verdict to
participants of the experiment - the actors (Lily-Julie is now called Dr. Vanessa Maxwell, she
should be the embodiment of all the evil done to Nicholas). And she put him a whip in the
hand, and he should decide ti hit her or not. He did not dot that, and began to understand.

Waking up after the "trial", he found himself in Monemvasia where to Fraksosa he had to get
by water. In the room, among other letters, he found thanks from Alison’s mother for his
condolences on the death of her daughter. From school he was fired. Villa Burani was
boarded up. The summer season started and he moved to Athens, continuing investigation of
what and how actually happened. In Athens he discovered that the real Conchis died four
years ago and visited his grave; it was decorated with a fresh bouquet: lily, rose and small
inconspicuous flowers with a sweet honey aroma. On the same day he saw Alison - she posed
under the window of the hotel. Relief from the fact that she was alive, mixed with rage -
turned out she also was in the conspiracy.

Feeling still an experimental subject, Nicholas returned to London, obsessed with only one
desire - to see Allison. To wait for her became his principal and, in fact, the only occupation.
Over time much became clear - he realized a simple thing: he needed Alison because he
cannot simply live without her. And his investigation was not so important, he kept it only to
escape from the longing for her. Unexpectedly he came to the mother of twins Lydia and Rosa
(these were the real names of girls). There comes a moment when he finally realizes that is
surrounded real life, not Conchis’s experiment, that the cruelty of the experiment was the
cruelty to fellow man, revealed to him, as in a mirror. And then he finds Alison.