I feel that the universe is female in some deep way. I think one of the things that is lacking in our society is equality of male and female ways of looking at life. (CL 465)
Claiming, in his book, The Aristos, that the "male and female are the two most powerful biological principles [] and their smooth inter-action in society is one of the chief signs of social health"(A 165), John Fowles establishes himself as a socially-conscious writer. He continues by saying that "[i]n this respect our world shows, in spite of the now general political emancipation of women, considerable sickness; and most of this sickness arises from the selfish tyranny of the male"(A 165). Although sympathetic to the Women's Movement, Fowles does not agree with all the ideas that it advocates. Stating that a need exists for an "opposite" pole to generate a balance in our social system, he considers "countersupport" to be an important element in a society. Concerned with showing the "calibanity" of both man and woman, Fowles's fiction explains that "the dividing line between the Few and the Many must run through each individual, not between individuals"(A 9-10).
The word calibanity, used in The Collector to define the character of Clegg, is derived from Shakespeare's The Tempest. For Fowles, at its simplest, it is the equivalent of "Adam-consciousness," as he shows in The Aristos. He explains: "Adam is hatred of change and futile nostalgia for the innocence of animals," while "Eve is the assumption of human responsibility" (A 165). Moreover, Adam societies "exact strict obedience to established institutions and norms of behaviour"(A 166). As a result, the definition of calibanity for Fowles becomes twofold: it constitutes the individual's conformity to social codes and the dominant ideology which controls these codes. Fowles, in The Tree, qualifies his definition when discussing the seventeenth-century view of nature; he explains: "Nature still remained a potential dissolver of decency . . . the nearer nature, the nearer Caliban"(T 68). Although Fowles's own views on nature differ from those of the seventeenth century, one can see that calibanity stands both for the "primitive" and the destructive. Shakespeare's character was a "savage and deformed slave"; Fowles's Caliban is also savage, in a different sense, and as much a slave. In his fiction, Fowles is concerned with the political situation caused by "Adam-consciousness." Eagleton is helpful here in explaining the use of the term political: he says politics are "the way[s] we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves" (194). Examining our social life, Fowles presents fiction that is clearly political. His first three novels, The Collector, The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman, are concerned with calibanity and how it affects gender relationships.
Fowles has maintained his concern with calibanity throughout his career, for he seems to have been raised in a "caliban" environment. Born March 31, 1926, in Leigh-on-Sea, a suburb of London, Fowles was an only child until his sister was born fifteen years later. Of his childhood he says: "I was born in a ... small town dominated by conformism--the pursuit of respectability ... and I believe that ... partly caused my intense and continuing dislike of mankind en masse"(WA 485). Fowles disapproved of his father's Victorian views and considered his father to be "in the middle of the middle class"(ST 33) where he was always striving for a higher status. After graduating from school Fowles attended a Naval Short University Course in Edinburgh. However, the day that Fowles finished his recruit training World War Two ended.
The first step in Fowles's attempt at a new life was to return to his studies, this time at Oxford. Here he became interested in French literature and philosophy, particularly Sartre and Camus. At this time Fowles also became involved in writing, starting stories but never finishing them. After graduating from Oxford, he began teaching at the University of Poitiers in France. In 1951, he decided to move to Greece and took a position at a local school, the Anargyrios and Korgialenios School at Spetses, a source of inspiration for The Magus. Fowles returned to England where he taught from 1953 until 1963 when the royalties from The Collector freed him to write full time. After suffering a mild stroke in 1988, he seems to have stopped writing.
In his fiction, Fowles works within different modes of narration and conventions of literature. Although the forms may differ in each novel, unity can be found in his central themes: the question of free will, the place of an individual in the community, and the problems of our society. One of the ways in which he investigates these concerns is by examining the relationship between men and women and the social conditioning that defines their roles in society. Being sympathetic to women in his fiction, he claims: "My female characters tend to dominate the male. I see man as a kind of artifice, and woman as a kind of reality"(HM 94). As a result, the role of the women in his fiction becomes important to understanding the sexual politics that drive these works.
His first published novel is The Collector (1963), which was followed by The Magus (1965; revised 1978), a book that was actually written during the 1950's. The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), his third fictional work, assured his international success. His next published work, a collection of short stories called The Ebony Tower, which he wanted to subtitle "Variations," investigates the relationships between "old" and "new" art as well as commenting on criticism. Conflicts described in terms of the "hopeless parole in search of lost langue"(ET 174) are investigated in the final story, "The Cloud." To a large extent, the inability to communicate reflects the conflict between the "Adam-" and "Eve-consciousness" in society. The next novel that Fowles published is Daniel Martin. Themes of self and love are at the forefront in this work. Unlike The Collector and The Magus, which were fables, Daniel Martin is a more realistic novel, the emphasis being on a Freudian interpretation of the social struggle between the sexes.
Primarily concerned with aesthetics, Mantissa, the next novel, is different from anything else Fowles has written. Describing the relationship between a writer and his muse, these two figures argue over who is writing and who is in control. Written as a response to a trend of modern criticism, particularly French critics such as Roland Barthes, this novel was begun in the early 1970's, after The French Lieutenant's Woman. Highly postmodern, Mantissa addresses many of the textual problems that Fowles himself has faced as a writer, particularly where sexuality is defined by the male world. The surrogate author of the novel is under attack by his Muse (Erato) for trying to be a dominating force in his sexual (and textual) experiences. The last novel that Fowles has published is A Maggot. Again setting the novel in the past, this time the eighteenth century, he questions the authority of received history. The use of the female voice and the idea of Holy Mother Wisdom continues Fowles's concern with the presence of the female in society and the loss of this voice in history. In this novel, as in his others, Fowles examines the masculine ideology that creates present society.
In The Aristos, Fowles offers his own views concerning society and the "universal situation" of humanity. His thinking becomes political as he discusses the concept of the "few" and the "many." For Fowles, Heraclitus's idea of the aristoi and the polloi is relevant. The former is defined as "a moral and intellectual elite" while the latter is "an unthinking, conforming mass"(A 9). Admitting that such thinking may be considered fascist, Fowles maintains that the "basic contention is biologically irrefutable"(A 9). Such a split in humanity is false, for "the gradations are infinite . . . none of us are [sic] wholly perfect [] and none wholly imperfect"(A 9-10).
From the idea of this biological split, Fowles sees in humankind a form of socialism being born. He says that terms such as "'affluent society' and 'conspicuous consumption' are euphemisms, in the context of our poverty-stricken and starvation-ridden world, for selfishness"(A 35-6), since "our stereotyping societies force us to feel more alone"(A 39). Capitalist societies, according to Fowles, "condition[ their] members to envy and be envied"(A 44); however, "this conditioning is a form of movement; and the movement [is] out of the capitalist society into a better one"(A 44). In short, such a society for Fowles contains the "seeds of [its] own transformation"(A 45).
One final aspect of Fowles's politics is his linking of inequality in capitalist society with the human psyche. Adding a fourth dimension, the nemo, to the Freudian triune of id, ego and superego, Fowles investigates the concern with "the state of being nobody--'nobodiness'"(A 47). For him, the nemo is a "specifically human psychic force"(A 48) and is, moreover, a "negative force"(A 48) representing what we as humans react against. Stating that the "nemo is a man's sense of his own futility and ephemerality; of his relativity, his comparativeness; of his virtual nothingness"(A 49), suggests that Fowles believes that calibanity, the "hatred of change"(A 165), places the "dividing line" between individuals, and not within the individual. By allowing the "line" to exist between people, one is always in contrast with others; thus one does not confront the nemo but feeds it.
Focusing on the individual leads Fowles to investigate existential qualities in society. Existentialism, for him, is "the revolt of the individual against all those systems of thought, theories of psychology, and social and political pressures that attempt to rob him of his individuality"(A 122). It is an "attempt to combat . . . the nemo in modern man"(A 122). In Fowles's "perfect society," an individual's freedom of choice would not be smothered by socialist doctrine. Socialism, as it stands, does not allow the individual freedom Fowles desires: "Too much social security and equality breed individual restlessness and frustration"(A 118). Only a socialist doctrine that allows people "to choose the inauguration of a juster world"(A 120) seems acceptable to him.
Concerned with the social position of women, Fowles analyzes society in terms of its dominant ideology. He claims that "the very cunning and sophisticated systems of brainwashing that so-called democratic Western societies have evolved to keep the ordinary man and woman passive and sheeplike"(RI 115) result in a state of calibanity. Such thinking is not Marxist, but one of concern for the unfortunate existence of the uneducated. He continues: "I'm against the glamorization of the Many. I think the common man is the curse of civilization, not its crowning glory. And he needs education, not adulation"(CO 218-19).
Fowles writes that the "one principal reason [he] think[s] the novel is not in any danger as a form is that it is a marvelous changer of social sensibility"(ML 183). In "A Personal Note" to The Ebony Tower, Fowles, in discussing the twelfth century and Marie de France, suggests that the social status of women has not changed very much. In this period "amour courtois was a desperately needed attempt to bring more civilization (more female intelligence) into a brutal society" (ET 114), much like our own. Fowles suggests that to free women "the crude things in men should be educated out of them and jettisoned"(NS 19). Aware of the influence of society on the individual, he shows that women also have to be educated. Moreover, he insists that he is "totally for the female principle, as [he] hope[s] all [his] novels prove"(ML 189). Although Fowles began writing The Aristos while at Oxford, he adheres to his earlier principles. He says:
I still think that most men, and still today, are over- obsessed by order, logic and theory--that is, by various abstract games systems that allow them to compete more or less ritually for artificial status-- and women by the contrary qualities, which also have their faults. (RI 121)(emphasis added)
Almost thirty years after beginning The Aristos, Fowles still believes that "the only rational political doctrine one can hold is democratic socialism"(A 8), a brand of socialism that allows the individual freedom of choice.
As well as being popular with British and North American readers, the fiction of John Fowles has caused much debate among literary critics. Ranging from psychoanalytical to Bakhtinian to feminist approaches, much of the emphasis of the literary criticism of his novels has been on the relationships between the male and female characters. One critic, Bruce Woodcock, in his book, Male Mythologies, suggests that "while [Fowles's] work allows such an analysis to be made, its outcome is an evasion of this central issue, which promotes a realigned version of the very myths of masculinity he lays bare"(8). What Woodcock is referring to is Fowles's attempt to show the oppression of females in society. He goes on to say that "Fowles is caught within the limits of masculine ideology . . . [where] he exemplifies the use of women within the contemporary male imagination"(23). Magali Michael, in her criticism of The French Lieutenant's Woman, suggests that one must question Woodcock's argument for the same reason (233). In his criticism, Woodcock states that the novel is not about Sarah but about Charles. For evidence Woodcock quotes Fowles as saying that "the book was always equally about Charles"(85) [emphasis added]. The central problem with Woodcock's and other criticism on Fowles's work is the refusal to discuss all the aspects of his ideas, his plurality, in these early works.
What the critics of Fowles's handling of gender relationships ignore is the fact that Fowles himself has provided The Aristos as a guide for treating his novels. The psycho-analytical interpretations often use Jungian terms to define the relationships between the male and female characters but neglect the fact that Fowles believes in the idea of the "nemo," which proposes another--a social--view of these relationships. Many of the feminist critics simply claim that Fowles is merely a male and cannot understand the problems women face. Yet, to claim that a person cannot at least make observations about social problems because of his sex is ludicrous, especially considering Fowles's concern with the education of the male. Defending the character of Sarah in The French Lieutenant's Woman, Fowles says "[he] would not blame her--as a symbol of a certain class of then much-exploited womankind--for using Charles to find her own freedom" (MF 195). He continues: "It has to be an excessively fastidious morality that condemns an oppressed race, class or sex for using the same weapons as its enemy"(RI 119). Chris Weedon posits that feminism "is a politics directed at changing existing power relations between men and women in society"(1). Although sympathizing with feminism, Fowles's overall concern is with more than female emancipation, what he refers to as "whole sight [] or all the rest is desolation"(DM 1). He states that the problem of feminism is "its unhappy habit of beginning for just and good reasons but ending as one more tyranny"(MF 196).
To examine the politics in his fiction, one needs to be aware of Fowles's "theory" of writing. Claiming that he can "only report"(FW 81) his characters' thoughts and feelings, Fowles allows his characters a large degree of freedom. Distancing himself in this way, the novelist has shifted the responsibility of interpretation to his readers, requiring them to "question their own (and by implication others') interpretations"(Hutcheon 180). In discussing his politics, particular attention is given to The Aristos to define and explain the nature of the individual in society. Foucault's theory on power and discourse is helpful in investigating the nature of subjectivity in these texts. In order to establish this responsibility, the narratology of the novels is considered in postmodern terms to show that the morality at question in these novels is that of the reader as well as Fowles, for he challenges the reader to question both the text and society.
The loss of an individual's identity due to the force of social pressure is at the heart of Fowles's politics. This can be seen in his reworking of The Tempest in both The Collector and The Magus, where the transtextual characters--Caliban, Miranda, Prospero and Ferdinand--are deconstructed, laying bare Fowles's politics and sympathies with feminism. Fowles has, in The Aristos, given his readers not only the themes that pervade his novels, but also the materials to construct a cultural or political theory by which to judge these novels. Discussing the nemo, he says:
The ordinary man and woman live in an asphyxiating smog of opinions foisted on them by society. They lose all independence of judgement and all freedom of action. They see themselves increasingly as limited special functions, as parts of a machine, with neither need nor right to perform any other than their role in the economic structure of society. (A 53)