Beyond the Boundary: Virgin/Whore Dichotomy Sarahs alias The French Lieutenants Whore discloses severe Victorian classification

of women with the dichotomy of virgin and whore. This dichotomy is strictly put into practice to regulate female sexuality and create moral boundary. When Queen Victoria came to the throne, her virginity exerts great influence on social and sexual dimension. Her virginal image reinforces the fetishism of virgin and at the same time displays the aversion towards sexually degenerate women. That virginity becomes the duty for the Victorian women is emphasized by Victorias virginal image. Virginity hence is shaped as a natural attribute to women instead of a patriarchal constructed product. Female virginal body in this respect is the manifestation of body politic, ensuring the socio-sexual codes in male-dominated society. There are social powers that manipulate the dichotomy of virgin and whore. It is man who creates the illusion that virginity is a natural characteristic and consequently women should maintain their body virginal. Virginal body becomes the target for the exercise of powers. Lloyd Davis argues that the expression queens you must be in Victorian era particularly functions to consolidate the female sexual regulations and morality.The symbol of whore likewise is the instrument that Victorian patriarchy has female sexuality under full control. For Victorian women, prohibitions are interlaced with obligation. In addition, against such a society of highly-worshipped virginity, the flourishing business of prostitution exposes the Victorian sexual hypocrisy. The sexual inequality between the fetishism of virginity and the blooming of prostitution in Victorian Age is perceived. Although Sarah is stigmatized as a whore, a social outcast, for transgressing the Victorian sexual codes, she does not have herself reduced to the plight of a sexual victim as other fallen women in Victorian traditional literary conventions. Instead of being an object to be classified by patriarchal society and to be saved by Charles gallantry, she is a pivot who initiates different responses among other characters. Sarah, as an impenetrable enigma to Victorian patriarchy, eventually pursues her emancipation in the final second ending. From feminist perspectives, she achieves her subjectivity as a New Woman by shattering the dichotomy of virgin and whore and refusing the bondage of marriage. Being a model in Pre-Raphaelites as a means for her economic independence manifests her liberation from being the property of husband. The literary tropes and traditions are included under the impact of virgin fetishism. The tragic life and death of fallen women are described as a dominant myth in Victorian traditional literary conventions. Women of sexual impurity would inevitably face the misfortunes and end their life in death, like Hardys Tess. This myth is concerned with the warning that the deviation from the moral codes would unavoidably result in degeneration and death. With respect to the bourgeois sexual morality, such a woman would become the social outcast and is ostracized as a fallen woman. However, being analyzed from another perspective, the Victorian phallocentric cult of virginity and then their dominance over female virginal body manifests the fear of female sexuality. They dread that the subversive power brought by female sexual autonomy would shatter the social order and reverse the sexually predominant position that males have taken ever since. Charles shows such phallocentric fearfulness at the moment when he suddenly realizes that Sarahs loss of virginity to Varguennes is fictional and, what is worse, that he forces a virgin. He considers himself being snared in Sarahs fallen-woman plot. All of a sudden, he is in a panic-stricken mood about the absurdity of Sarahs behaviors. With the atrocious juridical case of La Ronciere suddenly flashing in his mind, the dubitation of Sarahs evil intention is recurring: she is going To put him [Charles] totally in her power. Like Marie in the trial cited by Dr. Grogan to explain female hysteria, for Charles, Sarah presently becomes the embodiment of succubus.She is no longer the victim of her fate. Sarah is mad, devilish, enlacing him in the strangest of nets, and attempts to suck the virility from their [male] veins through having sexual intercourse. To Charles, Sarah at this moment seems to appear with the image of a female vampire, a dangerous attraction with vicious intention. She is associated with the femme fatale image, alluring and seductive but equally leading him to danger. Like the threatening Siren, she employs feminine wiles sexual allure and lying in order to achieve her hidden and villainous purpose that he does not perceive. Her malicious intent is to instigate his fall, as Eve causes the fall of man. Now he has been mired thoroughly. Charless conjecture of Sarahs evil purpose derives from his incomprehension that a woman dares to employ her chastity as a means to intrigue a man. Sarahs behavior is unconventional and eccentric, since for the Victorian woman the virginity exceeds everything and is the standard that values a woman if she is on the trajectory of sexual morality. It is female duty to maintain their virginal body which is thought of as a most treasurable property before marriage. Although Charles tries to clam down, he still is unable to think logically. Sarahs real purpose is beyond Charless comprehension so that he is caught in the spin and confusion. He never thinks it is love and Sarahs pursuit of sexual emancipation that result in her rebellious behaviors. Despite being portrayed as a symbol of religious and moral corruption, Sarahs femme fatale image, from modern perspectives, implies her free will and unconstrained passion. She is the sexual counterpart to sexually restrained Ernestina. Sarahs freedom lies in her resistance to the feminine sexual ideal and myth of virginity. She struggles to liberate

herself from being the victim of patriarchal fetishism of virginal body. Following her free will, she breaks this illusion that virginity is natural. At the same time, by fictionalizing her loss of virginity and being stigmatized as The French Lieutenants Whore, she proves that she is the only master of her body and sexuality, breaking away from the patriarchal surveillance of sexual disciplines on female body .Even though the alias presents the meaning of female sexual filthiness and social contempt, this stigma sets her beyond the pale of Victorian stringent sexual disciplines and the patriarchal cult of female virginal body. Sarahs alias The French Lieutenants Whore not only involves the Victorian demand of female sexual purity but also discloses the great social problem: prostitution. The flourishing business of prostitution uncovers the sexual hypocrisy against the society of virgin fetishism. If I went to London, I know what I should become I should become what so many women who have lost their honour become in great cities. Sarahs confession to Charles exposes the tough condition of Victorian womens economic predicaments and sexual exploitation. We can infer from this confession that thepoverty is the main cause that forces women to prostitution. Women have been placed in vulnerable economic and social position for thousands of years. In Victorian Age, they are more strictly disciplined by gender roles. Since the sphere of domesticity is their most important responsibility and being kept far away from the public sphere, economic dependence is out of the question and is considered as one form of boldness. As a result, prostitution thus becomes the means of survival for these poor women. Fowles imitates the conventionally opaque way in Victorian literature about sexuality by using the metaphors of female body, but still there is something unusual in this description. This opaque portrayal of debauched life in the brothel exposes Victorian patriarchal sexual hypocrisy and sexual double standard. In this narrative, some noun phrases with the first letter capitalized, such as Parts, Throne of Love, Hair, Grotto, and Mount of Venus, function as metaphors for some parts of female body. Specifically speaking, since this is a scene in a brothel, these metaphors are related to sex. Male sexual debauched life is presented through Fowless stark-naked description of the profligate scenes in a London brothel. Not only can we see that the prostitutes have to please the male libertines with any boldly sexual postures, but the younger son of a bishop, a baronet, and a pillar of House of Lords, including Charles, are also the visitors. Victorian men declare the need to be temporarily free from sexual constraints but women do not possess the same right. This argument rationalizes male voracious demand. Fowles argues that it is paradoxical that the men can buy a thirteen-year old girl for a few pounds at the era where woman is sacred.258. Sarahs alias Poor Tragedy and The French Lieutenants Whore disclose not only this historical context of dichotomy virgin and whore but also Sarahs social and sexual predicaments. Sarah is not a real prostitute, but appears with the image of a whore. The namesake prostitute Sarah whom Charles solicits is insinuated to misunderstand readers and Charles that Sarah is a real fallen woman. Nevertheless, Sarahs image as a whore not only means her sexual transgression but also connotes the powers given to revolt the patriarchal sexual dichotomy. She is outside of the patriarchal structure; namely, she rejects the discourse that is defined by masculine meaning. Hence, her fictional story with Vagueness is one manifestation of her rebellion and her breakthrough in the virginal ideal. The moment as she realizes her fictional story with her free will by having sexual conduct with Charles is another one that shows her sexual emancipation. Throughout the novel, Sarah has been an enigma and a figure from myth that defies the chauvinist logics. Such a mystification of Sarah shows how the Victorian patriarchal society dogmatically interprets and defines her. Unlike traditional sexually tamed Victorian women, what makes Sarah a unique woman consists in her active role in sexuality. Katherine Tarbox argues, Sarah manipulates Charles into a position where he must begin to deconstruct his affiliation with official manhood. To Sarah, her body/sexuality is her powerful means to rebel the Victorian sexual constraints on women. As Stephen Best and Douglas Kellner claim, Sarahs body breaks free from its socially articulated, disciplined, semiotized, and subjectified state and become disarticulated,dismantled and deteritorialized. Characterizing Sarahs reappearance with the image of a New Woman in the final chapters, Fowles exposes the falsehood of Dr. Grogan and Charless patriarchal perspectives upon Sarahs deviant conducts. Sarah has been associated with Other, but in fact she is a woman who rebels against patriarchal society by casting herself outside that society and thus outside masculine ideology (Michael 233). She has herself viewed as an object to be gazed, to be diagnosed and to be given a disgraceful name. By virtue of taking advantage of being a social outcast, she maintains her individuality to uncover the unfairness that the Victorian patriarchal society imposes on female sexual liberation. Sarah not only breaks away the virgin/whore dichotomy but more significantly reappears as a New Woman with her fresh dressing style. When Charles meets Sarah again in Rossettis house, the fashion of electric bohemian is presented in Sarahs dressing before Charless eyes. She rejects the contemporary cumbrous female clothing style. According to Fowless descriptions, Sarahs New Woman dressing style obeys her disposition and reinforces her frankness, directness and unaffectedness.

From the perspectives of the phallocentric sexual ethics, Sarah has been categorized as the New Woman, the Odd Woman, the Wild Woman, since she chooses not to pursue the conventional bourgeois womans career of marriage and motherhood (Ardis 1). Gail Cunningham indicates that in the fictions of 1890s, heroines who refused to conform to the traditional feminine role, challenged accepted ideals of marriage and maternity, choose to work for a living are identified by readers and reviewers as a New Women (3). The delineation of Sarah as a New Woman and a sexual emancipator shows Fowless sensibility to not only human emancipation but also the topics associated with female sexual liberation. When we account for the social and sexual elevation of woman, the following two crucial factors should be concerned: the economic independence and the rejection of marriage. Therefore, that Sarah works by herself as a sensuous model in Pre-Raphaelites and rebels the role of feminine domestic ideal can exemplify the manifestation of a New Woman. Sarahs emancipation echoes back the historical year of 1867 in the novel. This is the year when the feminine emancipation begins in England. The critic Linda Hutcheon has called The French Lieutenants Woman a historiographic metafiction. Within this narrative, John Fowless play of intertextuality in the dimension of Victorian womans social and sexual emancipation is explored. The diversity of intertextuality and the intrusion of novelist-surrogate significantly presents Fowless breakthrough in the traditional literary narrative. Unlike the chronological and the realistic narrative in Victorian novels, the interweaving of the present/the past and the fictionality/the reality shows Fowless experimental narrative strategy. Through this creative narration, the themes of this novel can be grouped under such headings: the critique of inhuman sexual constraints on women, the disclosure of phallocentric version of female hysteria and the importance of freedom.