John Fowles and the Fiction of Freedom

Abstract

Fowles is an enigma in broad daylight. He is exceptionally open about his feelings and opinions, yet it is hard to be absolutely certain that one has understood his work or his position in post-1960s fiction. He is an erudite novelist who is at the same time immensely popular.¹ He is obsessional about freedom and at the same time critical of the uses to which it has been put. Much of his work seems to have a left wing or feminist bias, yet he can also be seen as crypto-fascist and sexist. He is a self-proclaimed atheist whose most recent novel, A Maggot, presents a bigoted fanaticism of the eighteenth century as a necessary step towards freedom.² He says that he has ‘little interest’ in the historical novel, yet he is an expert at the evocation of the past and at convincing period dialogue.³ The catalogue of enigmas could be continued almost indefinitely, but the daylight, the accessibility and the ‘readerly’ character of his work remains.