The Collector

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He does not make love to her. What he asks is mutual "respect." Miranda's astonishment gets the upper hand of her sense of outrage. At times she wants to help him. At one painful moment she makes the ultimate challenge:

The time spent in Greece was of great importance to Fowles. During his tenure on the island he began to write poetry and to overcome a long-time repression about writing. Between 1952 and 1960 he wrote several novels but offered none to a publisher, considering them all incomplete in some way and too lengthy. Fowles’s psychological study of the two characters is, in fact, a battle of minds and wills. During her time in captivity Miranda didn’t lose her desire to live. She is a survivor. She tries to remain sane by writing about those she loves. An important factor in her survival is the fact that she finds freedom in art. Her moments of solitude are spent in the world of art, a world dominated by the influence of her mentor. Miranda travels down the path of self-spiritual discovery, while she spends her time thinking about life and art. As David Loftus, a Resident John Fowles Scholar puts it, “the narrative encourages us to meditate on the differences between the privileged and elite (not only in terms of class and economics, but native talent and ability) and the masses, and what each may owe or offer to the other.” John Fowles is a well-known British author (1926 – 2005) who has dedicated his life to the world of literature. His first novel, The Collector, published in 1963, has been reprinted several times and has been translated into many languages, thus proving that Fowles’s early works are still of interest to the public. a b "Premiere Scheduled for 'The Collector' ". The Morning Call. Paterson, New Jersey. June 2, 1965. p.30 – via Newspapers.com.Beginning in 1968, Fowles lived on the southern coast of England in the small harbor town of Lyme Regis (the setting for The French Lieutenant’s Woman). His interest in the town’s local history resulted in his appointment as curator of the Lyme Regis Museum in 1979, a position he filled for a decade.

Several teaching jobs followed: a year lecturing in English literature at the University of Poitiers, France; two years teaching English at Anargyrios College on the Greek island of Spetsai; and finally, between 1954 and 1963, teaching English at St. Godric’s College in London, where he ultimately served as the department head. Bagchee notes the novel's greatest irony being that Miranda seals her own fate by continually being herself, and that through "each successive escape attempt she alienates and embitters Clegg the more." [8] Despite this, Bagchee views The Collector as a "horrifying" and "ironic" love story: Poitiers, and I made French friends. Another thing about my generation, of course, is that because of the war, abroad hit us much later than anyone else. That was a kind of love affair with France which I’ve never got over, which I still have. And from there, I could at one point have gone to Winchester and become a public school master. I had one or two other quite interesting jobs offered, but I took a peculiar one. This was to teach in a Greek boarding school, the so-called Eton of Greece, not because I wanted to teach there but because I wanted to stay abroad longer. I had two years there.Some literary truths are about the nature of fiction. The ones I’ve just mentioned in The French Lieutenant’s Woman are in my view truths about the artificial nature of fiction, but that has nothing to do with other kinds of truths in the book, which really are about feeling, and which of course do express opinions about life. I would consider myself a socialist, but I don’t think the novel’s really the right place for explicit socialist propaganda. The right place for that is the essay or the non-fiction book, or obviously the actual involvement in politics. When you say you were lonely, do you find, did you think that that sort of solitude was enriching on the one hand, and on the other hand good training for the solitary life of a novelist?