THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VICTORIAN BACKGROUND IN THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN OF JOHN FOWLES: A CASE STUDY

Historical elements in novels take the readers into a realm of complete conventionality and a writer may choose it for many reasons as a background for his story. Especially, a writer who has conceived characters that are free from the contemporary inhibitions and with social and moral consciousness will certainly want to move away from the known world to unknown. Some create a world of their own to let their characters play attractively with the values and the dignity of their own, with the creation of a strong sense of possibility and probability in the minds of the readers. On the other hand few in its place, find a suitable moment in the past, with which they need not try and toil in the work of creating it and their job becomes very easy as they only call for the memory of their readers. Thus the novelists generally succeed in creating a distinctive ground for their story. The present study discloses the reasons and the advantages of the novelists for luring back the audience with the elements of the past in general and Victorian world in particular with The French Lieutenant’s Woman of John Fowles as an epitome.