Deconstructing Postmodern Narrative Techniques in The French Lieutenant's Woman

Postmodernism began after the end of the Second World War and was both an intellectual movement and a continuation and an experiment on modernism. The end of the Second World War challenged the ideas of identity, individuality, and gender relations. The old discourse could not represent the newly formed ideas and thus a new narrative technique was created. Postmodernism challenged the modernist approach to literature. Postmodernists believe the world to be meaningless and chaotic, without any single truth. Instead of controlling the readers' minds, postmodern literary texts tend to give the readers room for interpretation. John Robert Fowles’ novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”, published in 1969, is a seminal work of postmodern historical fiction that subverts the traditional style of writing novels. This work is an amalgamation of both postmodern and modern fiction. Fowles through this work questions the traditional narrative styles of the Victorian era. The novel has multiple endings, and the role of the narrator is also questioned. This research article will examine and analyze some of the postmodern techniques employed by John Fowles.