존 파울즈의 『프랑스 중위의 여자』에 나타난 실존주의 양상 -사르트르의 인간존재론을 중심으로-

Abstract

John Fowles tried to clarify the moral and existential attitude toward the future by his combining a new style of writing novels (post-modernism) and his own conventional style. The main concern of Fowles's works is existentialism which is about modern people's subjective consciousness of themselves. The main characters of his early works tend to realize existential ideas, too. The main focus of his existentialism is trying to realize personal authenticity. Fowles insisted that one should choose the way of one's life and decide the reason of one's own being to achieve existential freedom. Thus, we can see that his existentialism is very similar to that of Sartre. Existentialism was the method whereby Fowles studied human freedom, his greatest concern. According to Sartre's theory, the human being has one trait that makes him different from things. That is the fact that the thing, being-in-itself, exists in the world with a certain purpose from the beginning but a human being, being-for-itself, exists with only a type of conscience and has no purpose for being. From this fact, Sartre could insist that “existence precedes essence.” That is, a human being exists before the human being with reason knows what he or she is, and what human nature is. Life corresponding to art is the main theme of Sartre's works and we can understand the reason why he tried to do it by understanding the traits of art. The key traits of art are uniqueness, self-satisfaction, and self-control. These traits of art are different from other things such as tools. One can see that those traits of art are linked to the concept of an existential human being. In existentialism or Sartre's theory of the human being, a human being is a unique being, different from a thing which has a particular purpose for use, and makes his or her value by selection for himself or herself. Also as the work of art is made out of the artist's creative act, so the human being can elevate his or her own value through creative behavior. In Fowles's novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman, the main character Sarah has tried to be free of everything binding her by throwing herself into Charles. When she met Charles again about two years later, she changed entirely into a free woman who had escaped her solitary situation. Although Sarah was involved in an avant-garde art group criticized by the society in the mid 19th century, she found the lofty goal of life in those artists' life and art there and felt happy on her own.