Vonneguts Slaughterhouse 5 and Fowles French Lieutenants Women -Two Post-Modern Novels in Comparison Narratology Inner Space- peek

k into the mind of the character Authorial intrusion Vignette of the setting Stream of Consciousness- past, present and future juxtaposed and intermingle together Pioioumena(a type of meta fiction)- a process of creating an art Pastiche- like a collage of cut and paste techniques Meta fiction- labyrinth narrative Inter texuality Fabulation- using fables to foreground Post-Modern issues Reader Response Theory- importance to the reader Matter Post war literature Anachromistic concept- coming ahead of time- Sarah Woodruff New Women concept Hybridization Alienation Concept of time Patriotic, religious, racial and gender reading Polyphonic- many layers of meaning and understanding Tragedy? Theme of identity Dilettante- Jack of all trades, master of none Expressionalism Surrealism Backgrounding, maximalism, minimalism, Hyper reality, magic realism No absolute meaning- constant shifting of meaning. Readers perspective on a pedestal Belief in fluidity- all barriers broken Black humour- problematic and didactic Black satire of the highest polishGuardian Modern world- paranoia

The French Lieutenant's Woman is not a fictional comparative cultural study of the second half of the Victorian period and of the twentieth century.

Introduction Comparative Literature involves the study of two texts across culture that it is interdisciplinary study of and that it is concerned with patterns of connection in literature across both time and space. - Susan Bassnett The two texts to be compared here are John Fowles French Lieutenants Woman and Kurt Vonneguts Slaughterhouse 5. But, they are not particularly written in different times or from different cultures. The confusion of what is Comparative Literature still persists. Thus, With the understanding that Comparative Literature simply means to examine the similarities and contrasts between texts the next few pages are written. Genres If one is looking for a Romantic novel with a Hero and Heroine who after plenty of hurdles unite at the climax, The French Lieutenants Woman would be a disappointment. Yet, the novel is categorized as the Nineteenth Century Romantic Novel. The characters in the novel are stereotypes in the Victorian sense- Sarah Woodruff is introduced as the mysterious person full of scandal; Charles Smithson is the wealthy, educated and up-todate young man ready to be married, and Ernestina Freeman the pampered, nave fianc of Charles. These stereotypes disappear in the process of the novel leaving way for deconstruction of the traditional love story and reconstruction of the Post-Modern one. The questions raised in this text pertain to convention and faith. On the other hand the genre that Slaughter House 5 falls in is not similar to The French Lieutenants Woman. Kurt Vonnegut is a man grown to be cynical of war; his humour and seriousness are based on the absurdities of the humankind. The protagonist Billy Pilgrim travels through time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. Billy travels through different times of his life unable to control where he lands, which reflect the uncertainty of war prisoners and the times. Nevertheless the usual themes of every war novel- free will, fate, chaos- is inevitable in Slaughterhouse 5. To compare French Lieutenants Woman and Slaughterhouse 5 with reference to its themes would be ambiguous. To compare the techniques used to portray these themes and the narratology would be more apt. And by doing so the similarities in their content would also be brought out. Narrative Technique

Both, French Lieutenants Woman and Slaughterhouse 5 do not directly jump into the plot of the novels. Fowles begins with an excerpt from Thomas Hardys poem, The Riddle which describes the mysterious Sarah Woodruff who stands by the pier overlooking the sea. This technique of employing other literature is known as intertextuality. Vonnegut also uses this Post-Modern Literary technique in a few places; he takes from Roethke, Ostrovsky and even the Gospel. Unlike in French Lieutenants Woman in Slaughterhouse 5 the intertextuality goes along with the plot as Billy experiences them. Fowles extensively employs this method of narration- so much so that each one of his chapters open with one or more excerpts- ranging from Tennyson, Jane Austen and Hardy to Marx and Darwin; making the text hybrid. Some characters from other novels make chameo appearances in Slaughterhouse 5. Billy Pilgrim has read every fiction written by his favourite author Kilgore Trout(almost Billys alter ego), a character who features in many of Vonneguts other novels. Kilgore acts as a critique, cynic making him a good friend to Billy. Billys mate Eliot Rosewater says that Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel, The Brothers Karamazov, contains "everything there was to know about life". Vonnegut references The Marriage of Heaven and Hell at one point when talking about William Blake, Billy's hospital mate's favourite poet. Post-Modern writers are obsessed with the art of writing. It is hard to separate an artist from the art so authors began figuring themselves in their writing ever since James Joyce wrote about the hardships of an artist in his A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. Vonnegut as well as Fowles appear several times in their novels as themselves, voicing their opinions, playing the role of characters, making changes to the plot and as if in the process of creating the piece of art. Since the rise of Post-Modernism the importance given to the artist has reduced and the onlooker gone up. While reading a novel, listening to music, watching a movie/drama, looking at a painting or coming in contact with any work of art the person receiving it may perceive it in their own ways from their life experiences. This is known as the Reader Response Theory. As the voice of the writer has shrunk down, by the author directly intrudes in the writing making the authors voice louder. All of this happened, more or less. The war parts anyway are pretty much true is how Slaughterhouse 5 starts. The plots connection with reality is deep; it grows from Vonneguts experience as a war prisoner, from the bombing of Dresdan leading to the writing of this book. So, it is only good if Vonnegut himself appears in the novel, rather than speak through a character. Exiting from the corpse mines of Dresden, Vonnegut mistakenly dials Billys telephone number. These authorial appearances anchor Billy Pilgrims life to reality, highlighting his existential struggle to fit in the human world and Vonneguts surreal existence in the real world. "That was I. That was me. That was the author of this book." Fowles also has a good reason for appearing in his novel. He reproduces a typical Victorian plot, stereotypes for characters and situations. But, the inherent irony is evident- every time the author appears is to make a comment on the happenings of Victorian society. Even drawing from other writers is to contradict the worldview of the

Victorians. The author directly ridicules the 18th Century English society making his novel a farce. Towards the climax of the novel, the author enters as a dramatist unhappy with his ending. He tries out different endings, and leaves the story open ended for the readers to decide. This is yet another Post-Modern feature- Open Endedness- closely connected to the Reader Response Theory that leaves the readers imagination to fly. There is nothing absolute in Post-Modernism, placing the observer on the pedestal. There is a need to look into the kind of humour in both the novels in discussion. They are similar. The guardian reads Black satire of the highest polish for The French Lieutenants Woman and A great deal of wit and playfulness an entire universe of disorder is distilled for Slaughterhouse 5. The subtle humour is brought out when Fowles communicates with his characters by ridiculing them, Sarah is unchanged as she is aware of herself and cannot be defined by conventional roles. However from being portrayed as an unchaste person in the beginning of the novel, she is shown as an ideal of the New Woman of the 20th century. She does not change, the authors portrayal of her changes, thus ridiculing the Victorian perspective of women. Charles sees himself as playing a series of roles. With his fiance, he is indulgent and paternal; with his servant Sam, he is patronizing, and with Sarah, he is stiff and uncomfortable. When he attempts to respond to Sarah's honesty, he hears the hollowness of his own conventional responses. We can hear Fowles laughing at Charles for being caught in between the conservative and Modern thoughts and ways. So it goes is a refrain that repeatedly occurs after every account of death, it occurs 106 times in the 177 page novel. It acts as a comic relief and reflects the absurdity present in all post-war texts. The fantasy of Billy being unstuck in time, traveling many planets, the Tralfamodrians witnessing the fourth dimension which help in the reproduction of human beings is humorous. Yet it does not stop there, it provokes thoughts about existence, free will and fate. The books basis in rock-hard facts makes the humour dark, dirty, heavy and problematic. Upon Modernism emerged the Stream of Consciousness technique of narration. A method that flows as the thoughts flow in the human mind; the past, the present and the future are constantly juxtaposed in thought; and so is the narration in a non-liner format. It is unlike the omniscient narration widely employed prior to Hemmingway and Joyce. We get a sneak peek into the inner space of the characters; it takes us a step further than the first person narration. We readers are aware of Billys time travel whereas his own wife has no hint of it. We are witness to Charles sexual attraction towards Sarah, a feeling that he wants to repress. Like rowing a boat down the stream we can travel through the consciousness of the characters. The whore in Victorian society is the ideal woman of the Post Modern world according to The French Lieutenants Woman. Slaughterhouse 5 portrays time as

fatalistic; we are all victims to war according to Vonnegut. It appears as though Vonnegut has no faith in the idea of time. The Narrator introduces Slaughterhouse-Five with the novel's genesis and ends discussing the beginning and the end of the Novel. The story itself begins in chapter two. The story is disjointed with respect to chronology, discontinuous narrative, and from Billy Pilgrim's point of view, he is being unstuck in time. On the other hand Fowles has taken two traditional romantic characters, a young hero and a mysterious woman, and has transformed them into human beings by throwing them into the Post-Modern Period to enlighten how morals are not absolute. The concept of time is relative in both the novels. In Indian theatre and oral tales meta-narration is contributes largely to the plot. This technique of a story within a story is common in the Post-Modern texts. There is the apparent reality that Fowles lives in, there is the story he is narrating, there are the stories of the minor characters telling about Sarah and there is the twists of the theatrical rehearsal towards the end. The fables are not definite; they are used to bring out the ideas of Post-Modernism, it is a labyrinth of tales shuffled together. Vonnegut is narrating a story, his Protagonist is narrating his stories and there are the stories of the people Billy comes in contact with. Such a narration gives polyphonic layers of meaning simultaneously to the storys construction. Post-Modern intellectuals as Lyotard, Foucalt and Derrida emphasise on Meta-narration as they see the world as a maze of stories from big to small. The art of writing about writing a story is a kind of meta-fiction present in both the novels known as Pioioumena. Conclusion Though both the texts in discussion appear to vary extensively at first sight, to compare and contrast them brings about the similarities together. John Fowles and Kurt Vonnegut question convention but do not place an alternative. They want the readers to take from their writings and think for themselves how they are going to react to the ways of society. French Lieutenants Woman and Slaughterhouse 5 infuse us with the desire to want to read the books from which the excerpts are taken. Bibliography Illusion and Reality by Christopher Caudwell Beginning Theory by Peter Barry Post Modernism by A.S.D Pillai