Article: Charles and the hopeful monster: postmodern evolutionary theory in 'The French Lieutenant's Woman.' (protagonist in book by author John Fowles)

The French Lieutenant's Woman clearly enough tells a story involving the great crisis of Darwinism in Victorian England. But we should look closely at the precise way in which Fowles represents this crisis, otherwise we may miss the significance of the Darwin of our own time, which is equally important in the novel.(1) The book makes it plain that we have this later Darwin to consider. Of his protagonist, Charles Smithson, the narrator tells us that "Charles called himself a Darwinist, and yet he had not really understood Darwin. But then, nor had Darwin himself" (45). We here in the late twentieth century have corrected at least some of these earlier misunderstandings and ...

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