Despite the absence of artistic forays into these writings, “the mind and personality of the writer—a young lad…are concretely, even poignantly present in these thin books” (Warburton 31). At home, his estrangement from his parents grew both sensible and sensitive: “At Leigh on his long holidays, shut up in a small house with his family, he was aware of unspoken gaps ... awkwardness. Its editor, Jan Relf, comments: "The essays collected here form a chronicle of the various matters that plagued, preoccupied, or fascinated Fowles throughout his life" (WH xii).
As Sarah Benton endorses, “The raw things in men should be brought out of them and discarded” (Benton 19). The overriding theme of The Few and the Many gives vent to his debut novel, The Collector: “The girl represents good humanity, hope for the future, intelligence and love.
The Beginnings
The protagonist in Blue is a "wild aspect of the animus in its most diabolical form" (Grace 247). The lot is the decisive point in determining the division of itself in the Collection. Miranda's views also provide an interwoven perspective on Clegg's account, which enhances understanding of the rigid dichotomy itself.
Fowles herself had said of Miranda, "The girl in The Collector is an existentialist heroine, though she doesn't know it" (Newquist, 225). It is in the penultimate chapter of the novel that the narrator comes to the horrifying truth that Clegg would never set her free: 'It is the dead me he wants.
I Write Therefore I Am
The preface to The Aristos elaborates on Heraclitus' division of humanity, "the intellectual elite, or the 'aristoi...and an unthinking, conforming masses—the hoi polloi...'. Grogan in The French Lieutenant's Woman, Breasley in The Ebony Tower and Professor Kirnberger in Daniel Martin, representing Fowles' the Few of the aristoi. Danger or peril is a necessary facet in life to evolve: and the rest of matter, to evolve.
The concept of Lamaism, a rubric under this heading is, "the withdrawal into self-preoccupation or self-indulgence" (The Aristos 94), a perennial philosophy for Fowles. Suggesting that his protagonist in The Collector, Frederick Clegg can be seen as a product of his time, shaped by the reality of consumerist and capitalist society, Fowles explains that the society in which Clegg lived was, "the result of a bad education, a bad environment, being an orphan: all factors over which he had no control" (The Aristos x). But he wants, "the great problem at the heart of socialism to be how to bring social justice to the many people" (The Aristos 98).
He opposes conservative philosophies that hinder the growth of the self in order to maintain the status quo, such as: "The welfare state, as currently envisioned, eliminates the factors that evolution highly values: danger and mystery" (Aristos 99). The column entitled Adam and Eve under this heading claims that “male and female are the two most powerful biological principles; and their smooth interaction in society is one of the chief signs of social health” (The Aristos 142). In Art and the Artist, the penultimate entry, Fowles rejects aestheticism, which views the vocation of art as a self-sufficient component, "which truths are internal truths, whose coherence is merely internal coherence."
Avoiding it does not mean losing the writer's self: "Loss of identity occurs in the sacrifice of all fear of losing identity" (WH 12). The constant deterioration of nature wreaks havoc on the English mind: “Green England is literally green in our landscapes. The self's pursuit of spiritual renewal in nature, wild peace, the leitmotif of Fowlesean fiction and non-fiction, is at the heart of "To be English but not British." The essay reveals an.
New Possibilities
As Salami admits, "The most striking feature of the novel's complexity is its proliferation of texts: there are countless stories that the reader is invited to explore through reading". In analyzing his sexual conquests it was as if he were playing a game of his own design of 'the lonely heart' (TM 9). In The Aristos, Fowles had elaborated on the concept of the nemo: "The nemo is man's own sense of futility" (The Aristos 35.
The philosophy of Conchis is: “The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone but themselves” (TM 136). Given Conchis' lack of religious beliefs, "...the Nygaard story is not a statement about the search for God, but about the search for oneself—an explanation best understood in the Fowlesan interest in Jungian philosophy" (Acheson 24). She exuded a certain surrender…that extinct Lawrentian woman of the past…the one great power of the female dark mystery” (Ibid 214).
Her non-erotic value increases in Nicholas's eyes, and he feels "Alison dead forever" (Rapper 73). Shakespeare's The Tempest, taken as a literary allusion in the context of the Magus, points to the supernatural for a proper meaning. For Fowles, the appeal of nature is in silence, "the positive role of the negative" (WH 442).
Alain Fournier's The Lost Domain (Le Grand Meaulnes) is one of those outstanding books that is complicated for Fowles to examine. For Fowles, it is an established classic: "The concepts of the lost domain and the land without a name have become stock expressions, with an almost Jungian status, in literary discussion and psychology" (WH 256). What is strange in the hills is the silence: no birds...very few insects; no people, no animals; just the quiet stillness and the brilliant light ... the blue sea below, ... mountains beyond. (Ibid 69).
For Kesley, such a feeling negates matter and language, because "the only things that matter are the person and the immediate perception of the divine" (Kesley 133). The broader canvas of The Magus is paralleled by the essays, "The Lost Domain of Alain Fournier", "Behind The Magus" and "Greece". The sense of now or isness that runs through The Magus has a link to the three non-fictional essays.
The Phoenix
Fascinated in the genre of the nineteenth-century romantic and gothic novel, he wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, through the perspective of a twentieth-century writer. The nineteenth-century conventionality of the theme of The French Lieutenant's Woman is shattered by the fact that the author-narrator is aware of twentieth-century events. As part of his narrative device, Fowles uses epigraphs that precede the sixty-one chapters of The French Lieutenant's Woman.
The epigraphs on Marx's comments in Das Capital appropriately maintain the mood of the time. The character of Sam Farrow, Charles's servant in The French Lieutenant's Woman, is a caricature of Dickens' Sam Weller from The Pickwick Papers. In the first part of the novel, Charles is projected as a Darwinian rebel against Victorian orthodoxy.
Charles's dilemmas result from the punishment faced by the Victorian hierarchy in the fantasy of a woman. As the battlefield of the French Lieutenant, it is where success hurts the victor. The status of self-redemption is shown in the book through several endings.
Homer suggests that the sea is the source of all things, "The breeder or origin of the gods and the breeder of all things" (Ferber 179). Written in 1969, "Notes on an Unfinished Novel," concentrates on Fowles' conception and writing of The French Lieutenant's Woman. He provides relevant descriptions of the Victorian man, similarly to the protagonist of The French Lieutenant's.
The silent and confused hope in the ambiguous finale is the telling effect of the book. By dramatizing his absence at the novel's conclusion, he frees himself from any precinct.
The Art and the Artist
The second part will consist of the essays "Eliduc and The Lais of Marie de France" (1974), "My Recollections on Kafka" (1970) and "Hardy and The Hag". The first essay reflects a significant influence of Celtic influence on the projection of the self in The Ebony Tower. The detective genre is also echoed in three of the stories in The Ebony Tower, which show Fowles' preoccupation with disparate framing in the stories.
The sequence of the self in his work is thus never separate, but seeks more ambience. My Memories of Kafka' and 'Hardy and The Hag', studies on the paradigms of the writer's self. The essay also analyzes the effort the male novelist undertakes to place the lost figure of childhood in the construction of his creativity, which plays a key role in the reorganization of Daniel Martin's self.
The final story, The Cloud, comments on the dichotomy of the self, presenting the uncertainties that characterize life in the modern age. The compatibility of the self in the stories in The Ebony Tower does not occur again, but varies in premises and narrative style. Fowles' "A Personal Note" (ET 119), before the second story, can be considered here as an explicit link in the self, because here he justifies the mutual connection of the stories.
The epigraphs in the beginning of each story, the similar settings and some of the incidents are the implicit means of the collection. Although each story has diverse examples of love, detective fiction and fantasy, there is a balance in it, while maintaining the diverse facets of the self. Fowles has woven the texture of the five stories closely into The Ebony Tower, although they differ in their modes of narration and presentation.
