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Book beginning: page 3

Setting

• The novel is set during Victorian times.
• Mrs Poulteney took in Sarah exactly a year before this story was set, in the spring of 1866. The story was set in 1867 (p22).
• Our story takes place in “the most beautiful sea-rampart on the south coast of England” (p3).
• There was a local spy in the form of Mrs Fairley (p4).
• The beginning of the story is described as a “petty provincial day” at the Cobb, Lyme Regis. Anything outside the city of London was considered unsophisticated (p5).
• The sea-side attracted everyone, whether they be the fishermen working, the “better-class people,” or the lost admirers of the sea (Sarah), all sorts were brought together here (p47).
• About the marsh lands they visit: “People have been lost in it for hours, and cannot believe, when they see on the map where they were lost, that their sense of isolation […] could have seemed so great” (p67). The land itself and the sensation it produces do not match. It possessed a botanical strangeness. “In summer it is the nearest [England] can offer to a tropical jungle (p67).
• The marshland was dubbed “an English Garden of Eden” in the novel (p67).
• The eastern half of the marshland was called “Ware Commons” (p67).
• Ware Commons “was the nearest place to Lyme where people could go and not be spied on. The area had an obscure, long and mischievous legal history” (p89). It’s a place to hide or engage in illicit activity, for example, poaching, gipsies living there etc.
• A local insult was “one of the Ware Commons kind” (p90).
• Ware Commons had such a bad reputation that Mrs Poulteney didn’t even allow her servants to go there, and fired Sarah because of her frequenting it (p92). Honestly, she wasn’t wrong, a lot of improper acts go on there.
• Anything that encouraged pleasure in Lyme was quickly removed, and “the only building a decent town could allow people to congregate in was a church” (p127).

Lyme Regis vs. London

• Charles was disappointed to know Sarah’s story so easily, she seemed such a mystery, a figure out towards the sea. He said “that’s the trouble with provincial life. Everybody knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance” (p11).
• There were a few references between acceptable behaviour in Lyme Regis and any liberties that could be taken in London. London was the big city where you could hide or go unnoticed, and behaviour wasn’t so strict. In Lyme they very much followed the proper ways, and short of Ware Commons, there was no where to hide.

Gothic elements

• The novel was set towards the end of the Gothic period in literature.
• The weather is often a reflection of the characters’ mood, for example, “the slight gloom that had oppressed [Charles] the previous day had blown away with the clouds” (p39).
• The marshland possesses Gothic qualities: tropical, mysteries, shadows, dangers (p67).
• The description of the Undercliff was sublime, making Charles feel “dwarfed” (p137).
• The theme of outcast: Sarah is an outcast (p71); Charles eventually ends as an outcast; several of the indecent men from the Gentleman’s Club were outcast from family and society.
• The church Charles visits has Gothic arches (p361).

The 1800s

• On average at this time (1850s and 60s) there were about 8,000,000 females age 10 and up in the British population, and some 7,600,000 males. If it’s the destiny of women to become wives and mothers, then there is clearly going to be a shortage of men to go around (p6).
• Charles pointed out that Mr Freeman “did say that he would not let his daughter marry a man who considered his grandfather to be an ape. But I think on reflection he will recall that in my case it was a titled ape” (p7). This shows that what matters most in society is rank, and as the Freeman’s were looking to buy a title for Ernestina, Charles’ beliefs fell second in importance.
• Ernestina’s “father was a rich man; but her grandfather had been a draper, and Charles’s had been a baronet” (p8). Continuing the previous idea, both families had wealth, but only Charles’ was complete as he had heritage to back it up.
• “Nothing of course took the place of good blood; but it had become generally accepted that good money and good brains could produce artificially a passable enough facsimile of acceptable social standing” (p79).
• The revolutions were gone and the 1860s were prosperous so any further rebellion was put to rest (at least in Great Britain) (p13), the author also points out that Charles had no idea about the German Jews workings.
• It is said that Charles’ age (the Victorian era) was not good. Charles “told himself he was too pampered, to spoilt by civilization, ever to inhabit nature again” (p68-9).
• “We could not expect [Charles] to see what we are only just beginning {…] to realize ourselves: that the desire to hold and the desire to enjoy are mutually destructive.” Meaning that Charles should have said “‘I possess this now, therefore I am happy’” instead of what Victorians thought, which was, “I cannot possess this for ever, and therefore I am sad” (p69).
• The novel is set before electricity and television (p93), so anyone who did not have their days filled with labour, were usually looking for some way to entertain themselves.
• Industrialization is an important topic in most literature from this time, and this novel states that anything that was “incompatible with high agricultural profit [was] poisoned almost to extinction” (p164).
• “Gipsies were not English; and therefore almost certain to be cannibals” (p90). At this time, anything non-English was considered to be barbarous.
• The people of society are condemned by social prestige and the myth of a pure-minded virgin (p233).
• Fact about this time: “farm labour […] in the Nineteenth Century [meant that] conception before marriage was perfectly normal, and the marriage did not take place until the pregnancy was obvious… The reason was the low wages paid to the workers, and the need to ensure extra hands in the family to earn” (p272). Meaning that sex before marriage was common in the lower class.
• At this time, marriage wasn’t about love or personal suitability, but prospects and fortune. Therefore, the doctor never thought Charles would choose Sarah, he thought it was obvious he would continue with Ernestina.
• The world is not only hard on women, both in the sense of what is expected of them, and the limitations set on them, but the world is also hard on poor men’s dreams (p330). As we see with the struggles Sam faces upon wanting to open his own haberdashery, and somewhat fortunately, settles for working in Mr Freeman’s instead.

New age thinking

• Charles and Mr Freeman had a falling out about beliefs and philosophy: Mr Freeman “ventured the opinion that Mr Darwin should be exhibited in a cage in the zoological gardens. In the monkey house. [Charles] tried to explain some of the scientific arguments behind the Darwinian position. [He] was unsuccessful” (p7).
• Charles “could not have imagined a world without servants. The new rich could; and this made them much more harshly exacting of their relative status. Their servants they tried to turn into machines. [Charles] kept Sam, in short, because he was frequently amused by him; not because there were not better ‘machines’ to be found” (p44).

Comparisons between 18^th and 19^th Centuries

• “the Cobb has changed very little since the year of which I write; though the town of Lyme has” (p4).
• “One of the commonest symptoms of wealth today is destructive neurosis; in his century it was tranquil boredom” (p13).
• Sam “was more like some modern working-class man who thinks a keen knowledge of cars a sign of his social progress” (p42).
• In 1867 on the undercliff, by the marshland, there used to be several houses, but now there was total wilderness (p67).

Narration choices

• There are one or two poems or extracts of text at the beginning of each chapter and they set the tone for the oncoming chapter.
• The novel is meta fiction, the writer states: “This story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind” (p95).
• At the beginning of chapter 13 the writer talks a lot about the options he had to present this information and what it is to write. Telling the reader that they no doubt think the writer only has to tug at a character’s strings and they will automatically produce “their motives and intentions” (p95), but how this is not actually the case.
• The writer also states that as he went on writing, Charles’ character “begun to gain an autonomy; [which the writer must respect], and disrespect all [his] quasi-divine plans for [Charles], if [he wishes Charles] to be real” (p97).
• The writer states he has never understood women like Sarah (p95), yet here he is writing a book with her as the semi-protagonist.
• The writer shows his thoughts behind his decision making, and musing that he could have done things another way (p96). But of course, to write the novel he would always have to choose one, or as he did, produce two alternative endings showing that in life there are so many options, we merely choose one, or none, and follow its course.
• There are details that the narrator admits they do not know (p96).
• The narrator states “I am the most reliable witness” (p97), yet the reader cannot be sure of anything, and various times we are taken down the wrong path because we believe what is written. However, all of the lies told were from the characters’ point of view, and not being written as if directly from the writer, so the writer might be the most reliable, but it doesn’t make them actually reliable.
• God according to the writer: “there is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist” (p97).
• Fiction and reality: “fiction is woven into all […] I do not fully control these creatures of my mind, any more than you control […] your children, colleagues, friends, or even yourself” (p97).
• The basic definition of homo sapiens according to the writer is a character is said to be real or imaginary but “you do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up […] fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf – your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in flight from the real reality” (p97).
• The story jumps back and forth in time to show what different characters are doing at the same time.
• The writer confirms that Sarah is the protagonist, because although the book is named after her, the story follows her from Charles’ point of view mainly. “What Charles wants is clear […] But what the protagonist wants is not so clear; and I am not at all sure where she is at the moment” (p409). Giving the impression that Charles isn’t really even the protagonist of his own life.
• The writer believes that the only way he can stay neutral in the novel “is to show two versions of [the ending]” (p409).
• Along the two-option open ending, which the reader gets to decide the one they favour, the reader doesn’t know what actually happens to the vast majority of the characters. So not only do you have to choose, but you must also fill in the gaps as people fall off the radar when Charles looses interest.

Fashion

• “the height of fashion […] a magenta skirt of an almost daring narrowness – and shortness, since two white ankles could be seen […] a millinery style that the resident ladies of Lyme would not dare to wear for at least another year” (p5).
• “The colours of the young lady’s clothes would strike us today as distinctly strident; but [...] what the feminine, by way of compensation for so much else in her expected behaviour, demanded of a colour was brilliance, not discretion” (p5).
• Sam “had a very sharp sense of clothes style […] and he spent most of his wages on keeping in fashion” (p43).

Sarah

• The reader is introduced to Sarah as Tragedy: “the other figure on that sombre, curving mole. It stood right at the seawardmost end. […] Its clothes were black. The wind moved them, but the figure stood motionless, staring, staring out to sea, more like a living memorial to the drowned, a figure from myth, than any proper fragment of the pretty provincial day” (p5). The text doesn’t state if it is a man or woman’s figure, we find out on p8 it is a woman.
• Sarah was unmoved by the elements, the wind moved her clothes but she stood motionless (p5). Even when the elements pushed back against her, she did not budge, she just held on tighter to not be blown away by the strong gust of wind (p10).
• Charles notices Sarah’s tan “as if the girl cared more for health than a fashionably pale […] complexion” (p71).
• Sarah Woodruff had various nicknames: Tragedy; The French Lieutenant’s woman / whore; she acquired yet another nickname when she went missing after leaving Mrs Poulteney’s employment, “Dorset mystery” (p327).
• Sarah’s nickname The Tragedy vs. The French Lieutenant's Woman: art can get you sympathy, the grotesque a bad reputation.
• The common diagnosis for Sarah is “she is... a little mad” (p9).
• Sarah’s clothes were not only black, which was the opposite of the vibrant-coloured fashion of the time (p5), but her clothes were slightly masculine (p9).
• Sarah’s coat was more than 40 years out of fashion because she was oblivious to fashion trends (p10).
• Sarah was the opposite of women in her day, although we do not know exactly how she looked at / through Charles, it was what wasn’t there that defined it. Women of her day favoured the demure, obedient, and shy look, and what remained with Charles after there first encounter, was that she had none of those things (p10).
• Sarah was described many times in comparison to other ladies and “what the age required”, Charles saying she did not have a pretty face like Ernestina’s. She had “an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. […] No hypocrisy, no hysteria, no mask; and above all, no sign of madness” (p10).
• The vicar stated: “Miss Woodruff is not insane. Far from it. She is perfectly able to perform any duties that may be given to her. But she suffers from grave attacks of melancholia” (p35).
• Sarah was said to be intelligent, and her real quality was said to be of a rare kind, it was the “ability to classify other people’s worth: to understand them, in the fullest sense of that word. […] She could sense the pretensions of a hollow argument” (p53).
• Sarah’s “instinctual profundity of insight” was a curse (p53).
• Sarah’s education was also a curse. Through reading so much fiction and poetry, which became a substitute for experience, she inadvertently “judged people as much by the standards of Walter Scott and Jane Austen” as any standards acquired from her own experience (p54).
• Sarah’s “father has forced her out of her own class, but could not raise her to the next” (p54).
• Sarah’s father bought his own farm “but he bought it too cheap, and what he thought was a cunning good bargain turned out to be a shocking bad one. For several years he struggled to keep up both the mortgage and a ridiculous facade of gentility; then he went quite literally mad and was sent to [an] asylum. He died there a year later” (p55). Madness and appearances had been the demise of Sarah’s family, and she had taken to looking after herself by working for families as a governess.
• Sarah “was too striking a girl not to have suitors, in spite of the lack of a dowry” but then her curse of seeing through people would make her reject any offers because she could see their charity, condescension, and stupidity. “Thus she appeared inescapably doomed to the one fate nature had so clearly spent many millions of years in evolving her to avoid: spinsterhood” (p55).
• Sarah had a “beautiful voice, controlled and clear, though it was always shaded with sorrow and often intense in feeling” (p57).
• Sarah “saw that there was suffering; and she prayed that it would end” (p59). She prays for a better world.
• Sarah always went for the same afternoon walk which shows her as a creature of habit (p62).
• There were some moments of reference to suicide on Sarah’s part (p93).
• Sarah claims that it is as if she were “allowed to live in paradise, but forbidden to enjoy it” (p170). This is supposedly why she takes the job with Mrs Poulteney, as working in the Talbot house was too difficult for her. She was surrounded by the perfect family, loved the children as her own, but none of it was hers.

Sarah’s manipulation

• Sarah managed to attain more free time for herself away from work by being in a fit of tears and not rising from her bed. Although it irritated Mrs Poulteney, she sent for the doctor and then listened to his views on melancholia. Being described as a doctor advanced for his time, he prescribed more fresh air and freedom (p60).

Charles

• Charles claims he is a scientist because he has “written a monograph, so [he] must be” (p8). This type of nonchalant attitude or almost sarcasm is one of the most common tones in the novel.
• When Ernestina took Charles to the Cobb and they walked over the fossils, he did not even notice (p8). It seems his love for palaeontology is not that strong, or at least, it comes and goes as needed.
• Charles had already pointed out that he was a scientist, not a romantic on page 8, but then on page 11, he is complaining about the lack of romance in a provincial life. Showing he is what he is in words rather than actions and feelings.
• Charles stares at himself in the mirror but draws no definitive conclusion as to what he sees, simply some sort of “obscure defeat” (p12). He appears to be doubting himself and his life choices.
• Charles was 32 and had “always asked life too many questions” (p12).
• As a man of science, the writer takes the liberty of saying that Charles probably wouldn’t have been astounded by the technological advancement from when the story was set and when it was written a century later, but what would have shocked him was “the attitude to time itself” (p12/13). Our century finds misery in a lack of time, always trying to perfect the speed anything takes to do. But Charles’s time was quite the opposite, their problem was spinning out what they wanted to do to fill the vast amounts of leisure time they had (upper class of course).
• His ways were simple and humble, he only had one manservant, a cook, and two maids, which was very little for someone of so much wealth (p16).
• Charles had travelled a lot during his youth (p16).
• He published the odd article of his travels, but when asked to publish a book he thought it sounded “too much like hard work and sustained concentration” (p16).
• “Toying with ideas was [Charles’] chief occupation during his third decade” (p16). Charles is a thinker, and a doer of the easy, never exerting himself.
• During the last three years [Charles] had become increasingly interested in palaeontology (p17).
• Charles was a catch, “he never entered society without being ogled by the mamas, clapped on the back by the papas and simpered at by the girls,” even though there was a cynicism about him which was a sure symptom of moral decay” (p18).
• He often led pretty girls and their mothers on, gaining a reputation for “aloofness and coldness” (p18).
• It is repeatedly stated that Charles was a man with lots of time to fill (p47).
• The summary of Charles’ feelings about his life choice (to marry Ernestina), reads as him asking himself: “instead of doing the most intelligent thing had he not done the most obvious?” (p130). He “felt sorry for himself – a brilliant man trapped, a Byron tamed.” He also thought that it was not Sarah that attracted him but what she symbolized.
• Charles says “I have no moral purpose, no real sense of duty to anything” (p226).
• Charles talks on various occasions about how he doesn’t appreciate what he has and has taken things for granted, but here he is again rejecting a good offer from Ernestina’s father to eventually take over the business. It is a full grown business handed to him effort free, with any guidance he needs, and he rejects the idea. Even when it is a dignified job and he would still be considered a gentleman (chapter 37).

Ernestina

• Ernestina pointed out that she was kind for bringing Charles to see the fossils on the Cobb (p8), she looked to win him over and have him in awe of her thoughtfulness.
• Ernestina purposely went towards the Cobb and where the fossils were, but she is full of life and it is as if she doesn’t belong there.
• “Ernestina had exactly the right face for her age; that is, small-chinned, oval, delicate as a violet [with grey eyes and pale skin]. At first meetings she could cast down her eyes very prettily, as if she might faint should any gentleman dare to address her. […] To a man like Charles she proved irresistible” (p26).
• Charles had been strictly forbidden by Ernestina to ever look at a woman under the age of sixty (p27). She shows jealousy but it would appear she was right to be cautious.
• Ernestina was extremely spoilt, always having everything furnished especially for her wherever she stayed. Her taste was “emphatically French” which is more fanciful than the English (p27).
• Ernestina “had to suffer the agony of every only child since time began – that is, a crushing and unrelenting canopy of parental worry” (p28). On the positive side, as an only child, all of her father’s vast wealth will go to her, including the business itself.
• Her parents were very overprotective for no reason, the “slightest cough would bring doctors” (p28). This overprotection limited what she actually did, because although they would bend to her every whim materialistically, health-wise she could have danced all night if she had been allowed. The reality was that she outlived her entire generation, born in 1846 and died the day Hitler invaded Poland (1939) (p28).
• The entertainment in Lyme Regis was very spars, and it was said for Ernestina “a young lady familiar with the best that London can offer it was worse than nil” (p29).
• Ernestina was compared to Juliet (from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet), with her Aunt being her nurse more than playing the role of Aunt. Also saying that she had found her Romeo in Charles (p29).
• “Ernestina had certainly a much stronger will of her own than anyone about her ever allowed for – and more than the age allowed for. But fortunately she had a very proper respect for convention” (p29). This is what makes her different to Sarah, because although she has a strong character, she will play to the role set for her by society, and this is what best ensures her a solid future.
• Ernestina would soon “have to stop playing at mistress, and be one in real earnest. The idea brought pleasures, of course; to have one’s own house, to be free of parents… but servants were such a problem, as everyone said. Were no longer what they were” (p78). This is the time old dilemma, Ernestina wanted to play house and gain the freedom that came with it, but the reality of it was far from perfect, she would simply have different problems.
• Ernestina’s origins: her grandfather “moved commercially into central London, founded one of the West End’s great stores and extended his business into many departments besides drapery. Her father, indeed, had given her only what he had himself received: the best education that money could buy. In all except his origins he was impeccably a gentleman” (p79). To a certain extent, Ernestina was treated with equality, as she was not only given an education being a woman, but it was on par with her father’s.

Sarah and Charles’ relationship

• Charles was immediately taken with Sarah, although from concern, he was drawn to her when he saw her on the Cobb (p8/9).
• Charles realised on his visit to Mrs Poulteney’s that Sarah’s “silent meekness ran contrary to her nature; that she was therefore playing a part” (p103). He could already see that although for the most part she stayed true to her wild nature, when she was in the middle of society and at work, she played the silent repentant type.
• Charles knew that in meeting with Sarah there was a certain amount of impropriety and pleasure (p165), and he talks so much about the degenerate society, but he is clearly part of it.
• As much a Charles insists he is not obsessed with Sarah, the way he constantly mentions her, even when thinking “I better not mention her”, let’s the reader know it’s not true.
• How Charles feels about Sarah: “In all that relates to her, I am an enigma to myself. […] I feel like a man possessed against his will” (p227).
• Charles felt like Sarah, when going to find her on the Undercliff it was an exquisite morning, but he “felt in all ways excommunicated. He was shut out, all paradise lost. Again, he was like Sarah – he could stand here in Eden, but not enjoy it” (p242).
• Charles always made a plan before seeing Sarah, but then his instincts always changed when he saw her.
• Once it gets to a certain point, and Sarah and Charles have kissed, Charles only seems to feel his shortcomings, “his clumsiness, his stiffness, her greater dignity than his” (p262). Maybe his attraction to her comes from finding someone who makes him feel their greatness exceeds his own, finally someone who makes him gravitate upwards to be more.
• An advantage of Charles’ uncle marrying, meant that now he didn’t need the perfect wife, so marrying Sarah was actually a possibility for him.
• With so many lies and an unreliable narrator it may never be possible to know what was real. However, there is a chance that when Sarah says the following it is true: “You have given me the consolation of believing that in another world, another age, another life, I might have been your wife. You have given me the strength to go on living (p358). And that Charles did in fact save her.
• Initially, Charles romanticises what his life would look like with Sarah, where they would visit, the house, the flowers (p403).
• At first, Charles proclaims he would search for Sarah for a lifetime (p405), but it turns out he was thinking the reality would be one or two weeks (p411), seriously underestimating how much she doesn’t want to be found.
• Finding Sarah finally gives Charles’ life some meaning.
• Charles’ never asked Sarah if she was willing to be with a disgraced man, and as she dreamt of the perfect life, there is a good chance she never intended to be.

Ernestina and Charles’ relationship

• To a certain extent, the day Ernestina took Charles as a surprise to the Cobb to see fossils, is the same day she began to loose him. He may have come across Sarah at some other point, but this day where Ernestina tried her hardest to keep him, actually achieved the opposite.
• Ernestina and Charles shared “a sense of self-irony” which was one of the factors that first attracted them to one another (p29).
• Ernestina said repeatedly that she did not like it at Lyme Regis, but Charles was said to think “the country was charming. […] On a day like this I could contemplate never setting eyes on London again” (p40).
• Ernestina frequently hid her bad moods from Charles by staying at home and saying she was too ill to see him (p45).
• Whenever Ernestina said she was ill, Charles would get Sam to buy her some flowers (p45), showing that he was actually romantic, at least by today’s standards.
• It is implied that during this “pre-marital” stage, Charles was required to meet certain obligations, which usually meant doing whatever Ernestina wanted or needed, but giving the impression that once married, this behaviour was not going to continue (p46).
• Upon finding a fossil sample he vowed to give it to Ernestina “it was pretty enough for her to like; and after all, very soon it would come back to him, with her” (p51). Showing he very much intended to marry her at the time, and also, how he only gives away what he will get back.
• So many of Ernestina’s musings are idealised, that no one is really sure she actually loves Charles. But then it was different times, and people married for different reasons, in her case the all important title.
• Ernestina knew about Charles’ past and that he had travelled a lot, and between his experience of the world and being 11 years older, she wasn’t quite able to trust him. She always felt he was hiding some woman from his past who he truly loved. She wasn’t worried about other women he might have slept with, but was jealous over his heart, “she could not bare to think of having to share, either historically or presently” (p74).
• Ernestina mistook Charles’ calm exterior about matters of the heart, thinking he must be in anguish, rather than realising his silence came as his heart was “a place without history” (p74).
• Charles was never worried about her lack of a title (p79).
• Ernestina’s and Charles’ relationship bloomed from them both thinking it was going to be “just one more dull evening” but “they saw in each other a superiority of intelligence” (p80).
• A large part of suitors’ attraction to Ernestina’s was the wealth to be inherited (p80).
• Ernestina hit a nerve when she teased Charles about becoming “a sour old bachelor” (p81), it was an “increasingly sensitive place in Charles’ innermost soul; his feeling that he was growing like his uncle at Winsyatt, that life was passing him by.”
• It is said of Charles that “travelling no longer attracted him; but women did, and he was therefore in a state of extreme sexual frustration” (p82).
• He gave it some thought and one day it just all became very clear to Charles, he would like to get married, and he loved Ernestina. He wanted the simple life of waking up of a cold morning next to her (p82).
• When Charles proposed to Ernestina, he made her cry as he pretended he was going to leave England forever (p83).
• Charles said “it is a most fascinating wilderness, the Undercliff. I had no idea such places existed in England” (p88). Although he is telling this to Ernestina, he actually shares his wild side with another woman.
• Charles was selective when relating his days back to Ernestina, telling her “almost everything,” and leaving out anything he thinks she may not understand as it pertains to another woman (p88).
• Charles was only free when Ernestina was ill, otherwise he would find himself doing whatever she wanted.
• After a time, Charles started wondering what Ernestina really had to offer as a person, and felt that if you took away her looks she was pretty much left with only “vapid selfishness” (p129). And is starting to compare her lack of character to Sarah’s liveliness.
• He says that he won’t tell Ernestina about meeting with Sarah to hear her story because Ernestina would not understand his motives (p165). However, would Ernestina be wrong to think he is going because he has an attachment to Sarah? Also, at the same time, making it Ernestina’s fault that he was not being honest.
• When Ernestina found out that Charles would not inherit Winsyatt she was relived, as she knew “women who run great houses need a touch of the general about them; and Ernestina had no military aspirations whatever” (p254). So in the end, she actually didn’t want the life she was building for herself or the responsibility. This experience will help her when she makes her next match.
• When Charles lost out on his inheritance, he became an equal to Ernestina at best, but money wise, he would be slightly inferior. He was still to be taken care of financially, but it would be a much smaller sum and house, and without a title. So now, Mr Freeman thought it proper to offer Charles a partnership in the business (p289), but Charles as a true upper-class Englishman would never accept. And somewhat feels the depths to which he has sunk, as though he had himself become an employee because he would always need Ernestina’s money and be in Mr Freeman’s debt (p287).

Charles’ childhood and family

• Charles’ family history: Charles’ grandfather had two sons, the eldest (Charles’ uncle) inherited a love of pursuing artefacts much as the grandfather, and did not have any children, making Charles his heir. The younger son (Charles’ father) also received a large inheritance, he sold the land and invested well in the railway, however, he also liked to gamble, loosing Charles’ inheritance as the railway boom eventually died down as well. But making Charles the sole heir to both brothers: the estate, money, and title (p14).
• Charles’ childhood had been quite happy. His mother died when he was one years old in childbirth, with what would have been Charles’ little sister. His father “swallowed his grief” and whether he showed much affection or not to Charles, he did provide him with a great many tutors that Charles liked. Charles’ father was said to have “lived very largely for pleasure… and died very largely of it in 1856.” When the story was set in 1867 the uncle showed no sign of dying (p14).
• Charles did not fit the requirements of being a gentleman: he refused to hunt foxes (although he would shoot partridges and pheasants) (p14); he preferred walking to riding as it allowed to view things at close range and at leisure (p15); then he would carry wedge hammers and a collecting sack for digging, rather than a riding-crop or a gun (p17).
• Charles had faults: he didn’t write once a week and he loved the library (p15) “a room his uncle seldom if ever used.”
• After having a carnal encounter with a woman during his second year at Cambridge, Charles ran towards the Church, wanting to take Holy Orders. His father horrified at the news, sent him to Paris with the hopes of his lost virginity becoming a distant memory, and Charles’ wishes to take Holy Orders (p15).
• The God that Charles could find in this world, he found in Nature, not the Bible (p16).
• Paris was displayed as “The City of Sin”.
• Charles would go to church on Sundays only if with others. If he was alone he usually wouldn’t go (p16).
• Charles had a chance encounter with someone that made him realise that his grandfather’s mania about “digging” was actually well revered by others outside the family, remembering him as a pioneer of pre-Roman archaeology in Britain (p16). This also made him realise he was more like his grandfather than his own father or uncle (p16-7).
• Charles was interested in the Liberal Party, and his uncle most strongly interested in the Tories. So when Charles was encouraged to go into politics, he refused, declaring himself “without political conviction,” meaning that “family respect and social laziness conveniently closed what would have been a natural career for him” (p17).
• In short, Charles’ inheritance was an excuse to do nothing: “Laziness was […] Charles’ distinguishing trait. Like many of his contemporaries he sensed that the earlier self-responsibility of the century was turning into self-importance: that what drove the new Britain was increasingly a desire to seem respectable, in place of the desire to do good for good’s sake” (p17).
• More excuses, Charles argues that how could one be great at anything these days, as all the prime spots were occupied by others, in writing, in science, in statesmen. He would simply fall short (p17).
• Death and inheritance: “death may be delayed, as mothers with marriageable daughters have been known to foresee, it kindly always comes in the end.” (p17-8)
• Humour and another defect of Charles’: his travels abroad had rubbed away some of his humourlessness which the Victorians called a range of names from “earnestness” to “moral rectitude” (p18). This was “required of a proper Englishman of the time.”
• Charles’ uncle often tried to get him to marry, but Charles simply pointed out that his uncle had never married either. The lack of marrying did not bother the uncle, however, the lack of “children to buy ponies and guns for [made him see] his way of life sinking without trace” (p18). This was largely due to Charles being so into books and archaeology, however, this point does show the uncle to be a bit of a hypocrite.
• Charles’ “skin was suitably pale, though less so than that of many London gentlemen – for this was a time when a sun-tan was not at all a desirable social-sexual status symbol, but quite the reverse: an indication of low rank” (p42). This point makes him somewhat like Sarah as she didn’t take much care in these matters of fashion either.
• Charles had “too innocent a face, [which showed] too little achieved” (p42).
• Supposedly, Charles inheriting Winsyatt is what he had been waiting for all his life, what he was brought up to do and explained all his idling in life (p198).
• Whilst Charles’ uncle is telling him he is going to get married, and therefore will probably have children of his own, his uncle’s thoughts go through various accusations, mainly how Charles fell short of what he expected a son to be: dutiful and loving (p216). This means that in the end, Charles is the cause of his own downfall, not only because he becomes disinherited but also through his choice not to marry Ernestina. And, by extension, the document Mr Freeman had him sign because of his infidelity with Sarah, meaning he will never be able to marry without the new fiancee knowing Charles’ disgrace.
• Charles’ uncle was not happy with his choice of bride as Ernestina was not interested in country life, and to a certain extent thinks his uncle may have found someone to marry so that the inheritance would stay in good hands (p218-9).
• Charles states another reason for his uncle’s sudden change of heart to marry was his inspiration from seeing Charles engaged. Should Charles have kept the bond of bachelorhood with his uncle, and not married until the inheritance was his?

Mrs Poulteney and her grand house

• Mrs Poulteney’s house stood “in a commanding position on one of the steep hills behind Lyme Regis” (p19).
• The tyrant changes with the times, back then they would have known it was Mrs Poulteney, but these days it would be the “the enormous kitchen range” and its three fires which could never go out (p19).
• Employees in the grand house were held to very gruelling standards by Mrs Fairley, saying they could only take so much before they fled. They were made to work a hundred-hour weeks. One stating “I should rather spend the rest of my life in the poorhouse than live another week under this roof” (p20).
• Mrs Poulteney had two obsessions: the first, dust, the second immorality. And nothing ever escaped her eagle eye (p20).
• She was described as a “plump vulture” (p21).
• Mrs Poulteney knew no bounds to her authority even outside of her own home. She made her staff go to church at both matins and evening song every Sunday; the young maids were not to be seen walking about with a young man; and no young men were to visit the house in secret (p21).
• Mrs Poulteney “had a way of interrogation that could reduce the sturdiest girls to tears in the first five minutes. In her fashion she was an epitome of all the most crassly arrogant traits of the ascendant British Empire. Her only notion of justice is that she must be right” (p21).
• “Among [Mrs Poulteney’s] own class, a very limited circle, she was renowned for her charity” (p21).
• Mrs Poulteney believes in Hell (p22).
• Mrs Poulteney said “we must never fear what is our duty” (p65).

Mrs Fairley

• Mrs Fairley was introduced as the “sergeant-major” of the domain, she was in fact the house keeper. She was “a thin, small person who always wore black, but less for her widowhood than by temperament” (p20).
• Mrs Fairley did not particularly like Sarah as she now had less work to do and therefore less power, as Sarah now read to Mrs Poulteney. Also since saving Millie, Sarah was very popular and respected between the servants, which obviously Mrs Fairley was not. It was said “Mrs Fairley’s deepest rage was that she could not speak ill of the secretary-companion” (p62).

Mrs Poulteney and Mrs Fairley’s relationship

• Mrs Poulteney and Mrs Fairley put up with each other as Mrs Fairley mostly likely would have been the same way if she were the rich one. “Her envy kept her there; and also her dark delight in the domestic catastrophes that descended so frequently on the house. In short, both women were sadists; and it was to their advantage to tolerate each other” (p20).
• Mrs Poulteney’s spy outside of the house was Mrs Fairley (p62).

Mrs Poulteney and Sarah’s relationship

• When Mrs Poulteney took Sarah in, she only knew her Grecian nickname: The Tragedy (p21).
• One of the main factors that redeemed Sarah in Mrs Poulteney’s eyes is that she had saved money, and in this troubled time, had been living off of her savings (p36). Being sensible saved Sarah in more than one way.
• Mrs Poulteney was pleased when she first saw Sarah as she had a “visible sorrow, which showed she was a sinner, and Mrs Poulteney wanted nothing to do with anyone who did not look very clearly to be in that category” (p37). This was because she was looking for a charity case, someone to secure her entrance to Heaven.
• Upon first meeting with Sarah and asking her about her mishap with the French Lieutenant, Sarah states she wishes not to speak of it, and as this is a gesture for God “Mrs Poulteney let a golden opportunity for bullying pass” (p38).
• Sarah “had exactly sevenpence in the world” when she began working for Mrs Poulteney, which was one of two reasons she accepted the post (the other was the magnificent view of Lyme Bay), but as she had other job offers, and for better people, why did she really accept this one?
• Sarah took up “her responsibility for Mrs Poulteney’s soul,” which is such a strange role to play. Following Sarah’s lead, Mrs Poulteney showed forgiveness to her maid Millie after asking Sarah “what am I to do?” (p57), an altogether astounding act on Mrs Poulteney’s behalf which led her to discover “the perverse pleasures of seeming truly kind.”
• Sarah soon twigged on to how Mrs Poulteney worked, and she was soon adept at handling her (p57).
• Mrs Poulteney made several attempts to extract the details of the sin from Sarah and her level of repentance. However, Sarah was not willing to talk and would only divulge what was in her interest, each time doing so with the same words (p61).
• Mrs Poulteney wanted to be informed of Sarah’s conduct outside of the house for of course “the best and most Christian of reasons,” and everyone being ready to gossip about Sarah, “darkly exaggerated and abundantly glossed” every movement and expression (p62). Coincidently though, nothing good that Sarah ever did got back to Mrs Poulteney’s ears (p63).

The Vicar

• The vicar was very suited to Lyme as he “knew very well which side his pastoral bread was buttered,” meaning he knew who would give the biggest donations and stayed on the right side of them, namely Mrs Poulteney (p22).
• The vicar was known to give Mrs Poulteney compliments where possible, usually to even out harsher words (p34).

Religion

• The difference between religion and a health scare is that illness comes and goes and the fear of nearly dying rubs off after a while, whereas religion brings an on-going doubt in the mind about your fate.
• Mrs Poulteney wishes her husband had not died, as he would know how to advise her. However, the vicar says “his advice would have resembled mine. […] I know he was a Christian. And what I say is sound Christian doctrine” (p23). The interesting thing about this is that everyone, by default, due to religion, became the same.
• At this time, especially by upper classes (as lower classes “are not so scrupulous about appearances,”) it was considered unacceptable that someone not be Catholic, however, with the changing times it was possible for some characters to be “without any Christian faith” (p35).
• An idea coming from religious origins is to swear on a Christian Bible, however the metaphor of a Bible takes on different forms according to the primary pillar of importance in a character’s life: A copy of The Origin of Species was used to lay a hand on and swear an oath by the doctor and Charles (p223); another form of “the Bible” is mentioned, referring to an accounts ledger that is being poured over by Mrs Endicott (the owner of the low-class hotel) (p278).
• When Charles sleeps with Sarah, his first reaction is to go to church asking for forgiveness (p360-1), even though he had been warned by the doctor what would happen if he went to visit her (p226-8).
• When Charles wants to entre the church, the curate says that they lock the doors because of an expensive plate they have, although he believes “the house of God should always be open,” (p361) ultimately, it is money over God.
• Charles was a man of religion by the end, praying on his knees (p405), pondering where does science get you in matters of the heart? This proves that you can wander like a lost sheep, but you will return.

The Doctor

• It is stated that the doctor is unlike the vicar, he was not financially dependant on Mrs Poulteney, so he could speak more freely with her (p60). And when you have independence and freedom you can get things done.
• The doctor and the vicar are the two characters who most intervene when there is an issue, whether it be social or medical. There are of course the lawyers as well, who intervene in legal matters.

Mrs Poulteney and religion

• This whole story started with Mrs Poulteney’s fear of going to Hell, in the sense that “like all matters pertaining to her comfort, [this] was a highly practical consideration” (p22). She wondered “whether the Lord calculated charity by what one had given or by what one could afford to give,” because although she had given a lot of money to the church, it fell short of the ten percent other serious candidates for paradise were giving. She had also arranged for part of her wealth to go to the church after her death, but, “God might not be present at the reading of that document” (p23). So, she embarked on her journey to enter paradise by asking the vicar to find her a charitable case to help, thus bring Sarah to Lyme Regis where her and Charles met.
• The previous problem arises when Mrs Poulteney thinks she has given to the needy and the church, but she has not done good deeds, aside from comparing herself to others who she considers to have done more (p24).
• Mrs Poulteney had an internal conflict with the vicar, as she felt herself with two different people, one her social inferior, the other a representative of God (p23).
• Mrs Poulteney’s husband’s early death went back and forth between being an omen, and being a sum already paid off for any penance she might owe to God (p24).
• When the vicar and Mrs Poulteney are looking for a charitable act she might do, they do so in very different mental states. The vicar is meditating on his dinner, still an hour away, and Mrs Poulteney is meditating on her wickedness (p24).
• Even after all of Mrs Poulteney’s talking with the vicar, she still cannot be bothered to act as he suggests, and looks to compromise (chapter 4).
• The only requirement Mrs Poulteney made of the charge she was to take in was that they be “of irreproachable moral character. I have my servants to consider” (p25).
• Mrs Poulteney’s “nearest acknowledgement to an apology she had ever been known to muster” came when the vicar reminded her that she was looking to do an act of charity, and letters of reference are only for employment (p33).

Excuses

• Mrs Poulteney’s excuse for not taking action is that it is distresses her (p24). All the rich have excuses.

Sex

• The topic of sex at this time: Ernestina had a sexual thought and it was said that her profound ignorance on the subject frightened her: “she had once or twice seen animals couple; the violence haunted her mind,” this was her point of reference, thinking that sex with Charles would “deny all that gentleness of gesture […] that so attracted her in Charles” (p30).
• “Ernestina wanted a husband, wanted Charles to be that husband, wanted children; but the payment she vaguely divined she would have to make for them seemed excessive” (p30). Much the same as everyone else, Ernestina doesn’t particularly want to pay the price for her dreams.

The French Lieutenant

• The French Lieutenant was described as quite clearly “a heartless deceiver” (p35).

Mrs Talbot (Sarah’s former employer)

• Mrs Talbot described as “a somewhat eccentric lady” (p35).
• Sarah trusted Mrs Talbot’s judgement and she took the job in Lyme Regis, but, Mrs Talbot “concealed her doubts about Mrs Poulteney” (p53).

Employers and employees

• There was a closeness some employers shared with employees, Charles “and Sam had been together for four years and knew each other rather better than the partners in many a supposedly more intimate menage” (p40).
• “Though Charles’s attitude may seem to add insult to the already gross enough injury of economic exploitation, I must point out that his relationship with Sam did show a kind of affection, a human bond, that was a good deal better than the frigid barrier so many of the new rich [were] erecting between themselves and their domestics” (p43).

Time

• Several times it is stated that “the times had changed” (p43-3). Not only showing comparisons from the time the novel was set and the time it was written (100 years apart), but also noticed changes by the characters within their own lifetimes.
• There were different types of pronunciation from different parts of the country, and within different classes from the same areas, and they became “signs of a social revolution, and this was something Charles failed to recognize,” no doubt along with the rest of the upper class (p43). It was a slow but definite change over time.
• At the end of chapter 10, it says “in those brief poised seconds […] the whole Victorian Age was lost” (p72). Showing that it only takes a few moments to undo everything you know.

Darwin

• Charles had different qualities for different situations, showing his ability to adapt which reinforced Darwin’s theory he loved so much. For example, in town he would use a “languid town stroll” but on his journeys from the beach to the marsh land he used a “quick and elastic step” (p47).
• Ancestors: “If we take this obsession with dressing the part, with being prepared for every eventuality, as mere stupidity, blindness to the empirical, we make, I think, a grave – or rather frivolous – mistake about our ancestors; because it was men […] as over-dressed and over-equipped as [Charles] was that day, who laid the foundations of all our modern science. […] They sensed that current accounts of the world were inadequate; that they had allowed their windows on reality to become smeared by convention, religion, social stagnation; they knew, in short, that they had things to discover.” (p48-9).
• Darwin’s evolutionary theory upset Carl Linnaean’s original theory that no new species can enter the world, Linnaean’s theory attempted “to stabilize and fix what is in reality a continuous flux” (p50). It thought of the universe as still, instead of like a labyrinth “whose walls and passages were eternally changing.”
• “Orderliness in existence” was “immensely reassuring” for Charles, asking “for who could argue that order was not the highest human good?” (p50).
• Evolution in nature but also in society: “if new species can come into being, old species very often have to make way for them. Personal extinction Charles was aware of – no Victorian could not be” (p51).
• The samples he collected could all be labelled clearly “with a date and place of finding,” which is maybe why Charles liked this occupation, it was one of the few things easily ordered whether understood or not (p51).
• A copy of The Origin of Species was used to lay a hand on and swear an oath as if it were the Bible.
• “An abstract idea of evolution was entrancing; but its practice seemed [...] fraught with ostentatious vulgarity (p291). It is all very well and good to have a hobby, watch how the past has changed into your present, but it’s quite another to watch the present evolve into a future which you no longer have a place in.

Science vs. Nature

• When Charles was at Ware Commons, nature allowed him to look and enjoy his surroundings, science however, made him search in minute detail (p69).
• Sarah was always hiding from view when possible, including where she decided to sleep on the marshland (p70). Nature allowed her to do this, whereas in the city she was always in view.
• Charles is said to look but not see the fine landscape that laid before him (p70).
• The way Sarah was sleeping was “childlike” on the marshland (p70).

Sexism

• The fact that Sarah’s main identification is “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” shows how women are identified by their male halves.
• Upon Charles’ first encounter with Sarah at Ware Commons, he does not understand how a woman can be in such a wild place, as women were supposed to be “timid [and] incapable of sustained physical effort” (p71).
• “Women were chained to their role at that time” but the Reform Bill was being argued for as “now was the time to give women equal rights at the ballot-box” (p115).
• “[Charles] could not be angry with [Ernestina]. After all, she was only a woman. There were so many things she must never understand: the richness of a male life, the enormous difficulty of being one to whom the world was rather more than dress and home and children” (p130).
• Shortly after the previous point, came Sam’s very different thoughts about Mary: “Sam, at that moment, was thinking the very opposite; how many things his fraction of Eve did understand” (p130). The difference of upper and lower class.
• Most men at this time would have been repelled by Sarah’s nature (p120).

Aunt Tranter

• The parts of Aunt Tranter’s house that weren’t decorated to Ernestina’s liking were “in the style of a quarter-century before” whose memory was attached to George IV (p27). This shows Aunt Tranter as living somewhat in the past, attached to older customs.
• “Nobody could dislike Aunt Tranter […] solitude either sours or teaches self-dependence. Aunt Tranter had begun by making the best of things for herself; and ended by making the best of them for the rest of the world as well” (p27). She was such a kind soul and a self-dependent woman.

Mary

• In the author’s opinion, of the three young ladies to take on a significant role in the novel, Mary was the prettiest. “She had infinitely the most life, and infinitely the least selfishness; and physical charms to match (p75).
• [Mary had] eyes that invited male provocation and returned it as gaily as it was given” (p75).

The Tranter house

• Mrs Tranter and Mary’s relationship: if the cook had the day off then Mrs Tranter would sit and eat alone with Mary in the downstairs kitchen. Mary envied Ernestina because when she came to visit, Mary ceased to be the favourite, and she also came “with trunkfuls of the latest London and Paris fashions (p76).
• As revenge towards Ernestina, Mary would time her comings and goings to coincide with Charles’, “and each time he raised his hat to her in the street she mentally cocked her nose at Ernestina” (p76).

Sam and Mary

• Sam really opened up to Mary which made them such a strong couple. It is also said Sam’s “listener felt needed, and a girl who feels needed is already a quarter way in love” (p133).
• Sam thinks “it is easier […] to be dishonest for two than for one” (p333).

Charles and Sam’s relationship

• Charles really wasn’t very considerate of his employees. One time, knowing he would be out all night, he didn’t tell Sam, who then had to wait up all night for Charles’ return (p319). It was the small things like this that then made Sam turn against him.
• Another time Charles brushes off Sam. Charles is so wrapped up in his own problems that he didn’t allow Sam to express an important issue about him and Mary (p390).
• In the end, Sam played a big part in Charles’ downfall, playing his cards to his own advantage as he had gone on learning a few tricks, and knew that a gentleman uses finer weapons (p390). Sam was able to secure a good job in Mr Freeman’s store and provide a respectable life for himself and Mary (p423-27).

Upper class vs. Lower class

• When Charles and Ernestina went to see Mrs Poulteney it was said that “Mrs Poulteney ignored Sarah absolutely. So […] did Ernestina. Aunt Tranter did her best to draw the girl into the conversation” (p103). Showing Aunt Tranter’s kindness of heart as always, and how the other two were true to their class, and left Sarah aside as she did not rank between them.
• Charles was always said to have plenty of time on his hands and searching as to how to fill his days, but “when you have worked a twelve-hour day, the problem of what to do after your supper is easily solved” (p113).

Charles and the doctor’s conversation

• The doctor points out during his conversation with Charles that Sarah went “to a house she must know is a living misery” (p156). Explaining to him about some cases he has heard of where women appear to be addicted to melancholia much the way people can become addicted to opium (p156-7).
• “Genesis is a great lie; but it is also a great poem” (p161). This novel widely believes in Darwin’s theory of evolution, and that religion is a contradiction. The idea, as the novel goes along, is that although science is more realistic, it is also a lot colder, and a lot less comforting in troubling times. This means that when thinking logically, Darwin would be the go-to theory, but when Charles becomes lost without Sarah, and questions life, God and religion are the comforting notion.
• The few that recognized ‘the truth’ or ‘reality’ and believed in Darwin and not God, thought of themselves with exulted superiority and an intellectual distance from the rest of humanity (p163).
• Charles walked with his head high that he understood the world and all that inhabited it, “all except Sarah, that is” (p163).

Charles and Sarah’s first conversation about “the truth”

• Sarah says “no gentleman who cares for his good name can be seen with the scarlet woman of Lyme,” for which Charles is appreciative of her trying to protect his reputation, although in truth, she was protecting them both as she should not have been there either (p122).
• Charles said to Sarah that “no one is beyond help… who inspires sympathy in others” (p122).
• “Tragedy” one of the nicknames given to Sarah, was then said by Charles to be “all very well on the stage, but it can seem mere perversity in ordinary life” (p124).
• When talking to Sarah, Charles tried to use common sense to reason with her, saying she does not need to be in Lyme Regis for the French Lieutenant to find her if he truly wanted to come back for her (p124). He was trying to convince her to find a better more suitable life for herself, and not to worry about leaving Lyme behind. Charles’ point about searching for someone is true as Charles did everything humanly possible to find her when she left.
• In a role reversal, Sarah followed Charles silently, and although he could then feel he wasn’t alone, it was him who “was almost frightened” (p138). Showing a man to feel vulnerable in the presence of a woman.
• There are moments that Charles and Sarah compare better to the type of relationship Sam and Mary had. When they came across each other on the Undercliff, it says as Charles talked, he was listened to with grave interest (p139). And although Sarah’s appearance was strange, from the questions she asked, he could tell she was far from deranged, as people generally thought.
• Sarah says “I live among people the world tells me are kind, pious, Christian people. And they seem to me crueller than the cruellest heathens” (p142).
• Sarah says “my only happiness is when I sleep. When I wake, the nightmare begins” (p142).
• Sarah asks “why am I born what I am? Why am I not born Miss Freeman?” to which Charles replies: “It is beyond my powers – the powers of far wiser men than myself – to help you here” (p142).
• “a woman did not contradict a man’s opinion when he was being serious unless it were in carefully measured terms. Sarah seemed almost to assume some sort of equality of intellect with him” (p143). Was it the changing times and Charles being unaccustomed to talking to lower class ladies (the upper class were all looking to pacify, especially those looking for a husband), or the scenery which gave her freedom to talk openly?
• Sarah was a very manipulative character and planned out everything exceedingly well.
• Supposedly, a large part of why Charles agreed to hear Sarah’s story was for scientific reasons as well as humanitarian. After his conversation with the doctor, who stated Sarah would be cured if she could just open up to someone (p157), Charles wanted to test the theory (p165).
• Charles claims that “social privilege does not necessarily bring happiness” (p170), as Sarah seems to think everything would be alright if she were one of the rich.
• Sarah had described herself as feeling “in some mysterious way condemned […] to solitude. [That her] life has been steeped in loneliness [and] shall never form a friendship with an equal” (p171). However, given the ending and how she found a place for herself, it may seem she just needed to travel a little further a field.
• As to why Sarah allows people to believe what she does when it comes to the French Lieutenant: “I did it so that I should never be the same again. I did it so that people should point at me” (p175). According to the dictates of society at the time, a good woman should be pure and free of any male contact other than her husband’s. Sarah felt that her flirtations and plans to run away with the French Lieutenant condemned her to a life of disgrace.
• Charles felt “the openness of Sarah’s confession – both so open in itself and in the open sunlight” (p177). Maybe he should have realised she was lying as it made him feel like he was in a mythological world.

Turning your life around

• Anyone can turn their life around, it is never too late. Charles’ uncle priorly “sunk into a black gloom” each time Charles departed, but now, with a fiancee at hand, he was actually “relieved to see the back of [Charles]” (p218).
• However, one of the prostitutes says “once you been done wrong to, you been done wrong to. Can’t be mended, so you ‘ave to make out as best you can” (p315).
• And, not even money can save someone from certain scandals. Eventually, Charles, a rich man, came to the same outcast fate Sarah did. So it would seem that as long as you do not loose society’s respect, anything is possible, but outside of that, you will pay the price forever.
• A remedy for these outcasts is always to leave and try to start a new. Some examples are: when Sarah first came into her French Lieutenant problem, they told her to leave town; and again when Mrs Poulteney dismissed Sarah; when Charles chose Sarah; and when Charles couldn’t find Sarah and was lost for what to do, he went travelling abroad.

Gentlemen

• Everyone encountered at the “gentlemen’s” club is a disgrace (chapter 39).
• Everything is about money and then women (p301).
• If Charles did go into trade, he would never have been allowed into his current gentlemen’s club (p302).
• One of the major roles of women in the novel are prostitutes, largely seen in the novel when Charles goes to the club.
• Eventually, Charles becomes impulsive and emotional (more or less from chapter 39 onwards), going against what his gentleman’s education had taught him.
• When he is with the men from the gentlemen’s club, he starts to remember why he wanted to get married (p308).

Appearances

• There is elitism in society but also in professional fields, where Charles is mentioned to be an amateur and should be free to “dabble everywhere” and the “scientific prigs” should not try to shut him up (p50).
• Sarah was told by Mrs Poulteney not to look out to sea so often, it gave the appearance of persevering in her sin (p63). The townsfolk are said to think that Sarah is “looking for Satan’s sails” (p64), being very poetic and inventive in their descriptions of Sarah’s behaviour. Mrs Poulteney knew that the French Lieutenant was expunged from Sarah’s heart but she said that Sarah needed to show it as well, noting she could still sometimes walk by the sea, but not always that way (p64).
• Charles’ reaction to being disinherited vs. Ernestina’s reaction: “a gentleman could never reveal the anger she ascribed to him. But there seemed to him something only too reminiscent of the draper’s daughter in her during those first few minutes” (p202).
• Charles wonders if he had not misled the doctor and exaggerated Sarah’s strangeness, in an attempt to hide his own feelings for her (p238). He retold their story in a way to save himself and condemn her, showing more concern about saving appearances than his own soul. He then uses this as an excuse to go and find her to save her.
• When Sarah left Mrs Poulteney’s employment, Charles gave her some money. Instead of spending it on living costs, she went out and bought several pretty things, that she would most likely not have any occasion to use (p280-1). Thereby becoming instantly like Ernestina, and valuing fashion and pretty objects above practical matters. Charles would be disappointed.
• The lower Charles sank, the more majestic his movements became (p320).
• Even though the doctor would remain Charles’ friend personally, he could not do so socially (end of chapter 53).

Concepts

• “Death is not in the nature of things; it is the nature of things” (p297).
• Duty = complying with whatever is expected of you (p337).
• It is said that desire can be postponed, but not entirely abandoned forever, “for eternity is when the iron bites” (p350).

The Ending

• The overall moral of the story is that it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, rich or poor, you cannot go against society’s rules.
• Charles finally says “I wish I were dead” (p419).
• Ultimately, Charles was ruined by passion.
• To show the insignificance of certain characters in Charles’ life, the reader does not get to know how their lives went on. Although we do see Sam’s and Mary’s in some detail, showing Charles’ attachment to Sam.
• Both possible endings were full of lies and manipulation on Sarah’s part, so why should Charles want to start a life with someone who he could not trust?
• In the second alternate ending, it is said that Charles “at last found an atom of faith in himself” (p470), much like Ernestina had wished for him at the beginning.

Charles searching for Sarah

• Charles turned to poetry in his sad travels (p429).
• Charles “felt like he had merely changed traps, or prisons” he was an outcast but different to other men as this was of his own making, it was his own decision. Because “however bitter his destiny, it was nobler than that one he had rejected” (p431). It may have been the right choice but that doesn’t make it easy or perfect.
• Charles never went to his uncle’s wedding, as he made an excuse and stayed abroad (p431). It is worth noting that it is his uncle’s money that is paying for everything.
• Eventually, Charles finds his way to America, and the ladies there are more suited to his tastes as the “young American women were far more freely spoken then than their European contemporaries” (p436). In one sense, he may have had the same problem as previously mentioned for Sarah, that he simply hadn’t travelled wide enough to find his place yet. If he had gone to America before it was impossible for him to marry (due to the document Mr Freeman made him sign for disgraceful behaviour), he may have found himself a suitable wife.
• As Charles travelled America “he might, perhaps, very soon have lost his heart; but there travelled with him always the memory of that dreadful document Mr Freeman had extorted. It stood between him and every innocent girl’s face he saw; only one face could forgive and exorcise it” (p437). This is his hope and dream and as long as he holds onto Sarah, he will have an excuse not to marry, and will have something to chase.
• America gave Charles back his faith in freedom, he saw himself able to be happy living there, and was no longer bored (p438).

Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant's Woman. Vintage Books, 2004.