The Ironical War between Victorian and Modern Values in John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman

John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman can be labeled as a metafictional novel since the writer makes readers aware of the fictional nature of his work through his comments in the novel. As a matter of fact, he detaches himself from the realistic novels by using metafiction—a type of fiction to demonstrate the controversial relationship of fictionality versus reality. Fowles produced his work under the guise of a Victorian novel which provides him to criticize cruel hypocrisy and sexual repression of the age. Also, the characters are given an opportunity to choose their ways, and thus they are not forced to be under the control of the author. For this reason, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how Fowles as a writer brings an ironical approach to the norms of the Victorian society and novel through deconstructing the so-called Victorian values by focusing on the representation of metafiction, which is one of the key elements of postmodernism