(1926-2005)

John Fowles

Leigh-on-Sea

The United Kingdom

Birthplace•Leigh-on-Sea, Essex England

Education Other Jobs• Bedford School • New College, Oxford • A teacher

• A full time writer

Holywell Street, New College, Oxford

The old quad of New College, OxfordGate leading to the gardens of New College, Oxford

• In Lyme Regis home, he made a writing center.

• Thomas Hardy • DH Lawrence

Do you know? Influences

Source: http://pages.ripco.net/~mws/hardy.html

Thomas Hardy

D.H. Lawrence John Fowles

The Novels of John Fowles

• The Collector

• The Magus

• The French Lieutenant's Woman

• The Ebony Tower

• Daniel Martin

• Mantissa

• A Maggot

Prize and Awards

• 1969 Silver Pen Award: The French Lieutenant’s Woman

• 1970 WH Smith Literary Award: The French Lieutenant’s Woman

• 1982 Christopher Award: The Tree

The Collector

• What is your understanding of “the collector”?

• Will you think of an antique collector, an art collector, or a stamps collector? Now, think of a person who collects dead animals for art, such as a butterfly collector or an ivory collector.

The Collector

• From John Fowles’ point of view

John Fowles said, “ I loathe guns and people who collect living things.”

• From Miranda’s point view

Collectors are anti-life, anti-art, and

anti-everything.

What Allusions John Fowles uses in the novel “ The Collector”?

• Bela Bartók Bluebeard’s Castle• Shakespeare’s The Tempest• Alan Sillitoe and Arthur Seaton• Newspapers

Denyce Graves as Judith and Samuel Ramey as Duke Bluebeard in Los Angeles Opera's 2002 Production of Duke Bluebeard's Castle - Photo: Robert Millard

What is wired about Clegg ?

• Clegg talks to himself and says about his thought aloud.

1.“ I used to have daydreams about her, I used to think of stories where I met her, did things she admired, married her and all that. Nothing nasty, that was never until what I’ll explain later.” (P. 8, Paragraph 2, L5 to L9 )

2. “The days we spent together, not together exactly, because I always went off collecting and he’d sit by his rods, though we always had dinner tighter and journey there and home, those days (after the ones I’m going to say about) are definitely the best I had ever had.” (P. 9, Paragraph 4, L1 to L5)

Work Cited: Fowles, John. The Collector. 1963. Taipei: Bookman, 1996.

What is wired about Clegg ?

• A hinting at an approaching threat or horror.

“She was so changed that I managed to forget what I had to do later.”

“I could have done anything. I could have killed her. All I did later was because of that night.”

• The reader can’t know: does Clegg decide to break his promise?

“to forget what I had to do later”

“all I did later… ” Work Cited: Fowles, John. The Collector. 1963. Taipei: Bookman, 1996.

Summary

★ The Collector is the story of the abduction and imprisonment of

Miranda Grey by Frederick Clegg, told first from his point of view,

and then from hers by means of a diary she has kept, with a return

in the last few pages to Clegg's narration of her illness and death.

Structure★ The Collector presents the same story from two different viewpoints.★ This book divided into four parts

The Collector (1965 film)

Structure (1)

• The first Part: Clegg’s narrative technique

★ Clegg speaks in the first person point of view and restricts his observation to his own perception of events. The events beginning with her capture and ending with her loss of consciousness are retold from her point of view as well as long passages about her past life, her goal, and her social and aesthetic values.

Structure(2)• The second Part: Miranda’s diary blending with

letters

★Her narrative in the form of personal journal entries running from 14 October to 7 to December is highly reactive in nature, as indeed journals tend to be.

★ Miranda’s narrative lacks clear overall structure; that is to say, she has no large-scale plan. Such a narrative strategy fits Miranda’s situation, since a captive cannot see the larger design.

Structure(2)

• The second Part: Miranda’s diary blending with letters

★ Although Miranda expects nobody else to read her diary, she feels a strong necessity to communicate with the outside world, and so will try to break her isolation psychologically, by choosing to address some of her entries in the diary. The following passage combines with two techniques—the letter and the diary

Structure(2)• For example:• I can’t write in a vacuum like this. To no one. When I draw I

always think of someone like G.P. at my shoulder be like ours, then sister really become sisters. They have to be to each other what Minny and I are.

• Dear Minny. I have been here over a weak now, and I miss you very much, and I miss the fresh faces of all those people I so hated on the Tube and the fresh things that happen every hour of every day if only I could have seen---their freshness, I mean.

Work Cited: Fowles, John. The Collector. 1963. Taipei: Bookman, 1996.

Structure(3)

• The third Part: The open-ended conclusion

★ Clegg covers information first brought up in the journals and indeed, he finds the journals and responds to their contents.

Structure(4)

• The forth Part: Revenge for anther victim

★ Clegg is again investigating another victim—“another M”. Closure suddenly becomes unsettling rather than reassuring; chilling in the recognition that Clegg with strike again, that he believes his mistake was aiming for a girl out of his own class.

Comparison between Clegg and Miranda

Psychoanalysis—Freud

• Oral stage (0 1.5)

• Anal stage (1.5 3)

• Phallic stage (3 6)

• Latency stage (6 12)

• Genital stage (12 adulthood)

Personality

• Id- impulsive ex. Frederick• Ego- realistic ex. Miranda• Superego- moral ex. G.P.

The struggle between id and superego will result in anxiety. Therefore, ego will seek a proper way to solve the problem, or find another way to deny or distort the reality (ego-defense mechanism).

Ego-Defense Mechanism• Repression

• Projection

• Reaction formation

• Displacement

• Regression

• Rationalization

• Fixation

Obsessive-compulsive neurosis

• Freud’s definition-a over-compensation for repressed sexual impulse.

• Repression and reaction are features of this disease.

Archetype-- Jung

• Doubling mother archetype.

(1) Saint Mary, breeding, protection, fulfillment.

(2) Evil witch, dragon, grave, ocean, danger.

• Seasons