The French Lieutenant's Woman The French Lieutenant's Woman The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1969 postmodern historical fiction novel by John Fowles. It was his third published novel, after "The Collector" (1963) and "The Magus" (1965). The novel explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and independent woman with whom he falls in love. The novel builds on Fowles' authority in Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels. Following publication, the library magazine "American Libraries," described the novel as one of the "Notable Books of 1969". Subsequent to
The Woman Who Did remembrance of Lady Morris, I shall perhaps be forgiven by the public for raising my feeble voice in answer to "The Woman Who Did"". The campaigner Emma Brooke saw this novel and her own novel "The Superfluous Woman" as important in trying to resolve the "Sex Question" which she thought dominated intellectual debate in the 1880s. She was annoyed when H. G. Wells reinvented the question when he spoke to the Fabian Society in 1906. Thomas Hardy approved more of Allen's progressive aims in the novel, than of their artistic realisation. The Woman Who Did The Woman Who Did (1895)