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1.1 The Author and His Work
John Fowles is a contemporary novelist who enjoys high prestige in English literature world. His novels suit both refined and popular tastes and are widely loved by readers and critics alike. His works cover various genres including fiction, short story, poetry as well as essay and autobiography. Among these works The French Lieutenant’s Woman, which came out in 1969, is considered as his masterpiece. Since its publication, The French Lieutenant’s Woman wins tremendous recognition of academic reviewers for its high aesthetic accomplishments. His first two novels The Collector (1963) and The Magus (1965) are also popular success. Besides these three important works，others include Daniel Martin (1977), Mantissa (1982) and A Maggot (1985).
1.2 The Adaption of The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman, written by John Fowles(1969), was adapted to film by playwright Harold Pinter(1981). Fowles wrote three endings for the book. First ending: Charles marries Ernestina, however, their marriage is unhappy and Sarah’s fate is unknown. Second ending: Charles becomes intimate with Sarah and he ends his engagement to Ernestina with unpleasant consequences. Sarah flees to London without telling Charles, who searches for her for years before finding her living with Rossettis and enjoying an artistic, creative life. He then learns he has fathered a child with her. As a family, their future is open with possible reunion implied. Third ending: the narrator re-appears, standing outside the house where the second ending occurred. Events are the same as in the second-ending version but, when Charles finds Sarah again, in London, their reunion is sour. Sarah does not tell Charles about a child, and expresses no interest in continuing the relationship. He leaves the house, deciding to return to America and sees the carriage, in which the narrator is thought gone. Raising the question: is Sarah a manipulating, lying woman of few morals, exploiting Charles’s obvious love to get what she wants?<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_French_Lieutenant%27s_Woman>
Rather than attempting to incorporate those endings in Charles and Sarah's story, Pinter added the storyline of the actors for the unhappy ending. The film interweaves two story lines: the book's original story of Sarah Woodruff and Charles Smithson set in Victorian England and the story of the two actors who portray them, Anna and Mike, set in approximately 1980. The original story: Charles Smithson, a Victorian paleontologist, who is engaged to a young rich girl, meets Sarah Woodruff , a woman dubbed "tragedy" or "the French Lieutenant's Whore" by the townspeople in Lyme Regis. Charles and Sarah have several encounters along the undercliff outside Lyme Regis, and eventually Charles learns Sarah's story and develops feelings for her. The second line: During the making of the film, Anna, in relationship with David, falls in love with Mike, who is already married. The interweaving of the two ages shows in Pinter’s creating the “real” Victorian age while inserts some descriptive things of the modern society. Charles and Sarah's relationship develops to consummation and his engagement and reputation are destroyed when the actors struggle with the weight of their affair. This paper focuses on discussing the self-awareness of Sarah.
1.3 Literature Review
Critics probe into the novel from different theory such as postmodernism, traditional historicism, neo-historicism, existentialism, and feminism and so on. No doubt these explorations have enlightened studies of the novel. After reading the novel and various critical reviews, it is easy for people to see that critics are more often to use the existentialism to analyze this novel from different aspects such as character, plot, indeterminacy ending and theme. The French Lieutenant’s Woman wins tremendous recognition of academic reviewers for its high aesthetic accomplishments. For example, Barry Olshen argues Sarah, the female protagonist, is “an existential character” who “has refused to submit to the conventional life allotted her by society”(Olshen, 1987). Some feminist critics point out that Sarah, as a woman who has chosen her life, is the image of New Woman and actually embodies the modern feminist ideas. As Deborah Byrd says, Sarah is “a positive role model” (Aubrey, 1991).The adapted film with the same name has draws great attention for its postmodernism narrating style and its successful create of characters. But it has got rare comments which are almost all paid to the reorganizing skill of its script. Besides, Peng Jie(2007) has once used Lacan’s theory to analyze heroin Sarah who has been regarded as the Desire Subject. This thesis tries to focus on Lacan’s “Mirror Stage” theory, to analyze the relationship of Subject, Mirror, and Other in the film The French Lieutenant’s Woman.