What Happens At The End Of The French Lieutenant'S Woman?

Can't stop thinking about Charles and Sarah's final choice; does the Victorian era limit their futures? Discuss spoilers for Fowles' classic novel, please!
2026-01-08 04:34:28
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Donna Blando Callejo Concepcion
Donna Blando Callejo Concepcion
At the end of this novel two alternatives are offered for the reader’s consideration regarding the main couple’s relationship – choice versus determinism. An alternative to this novel’s unconventional but very impressive ending is offered by The wife he left behind, where a man disappears, leaving his wife to uncover the secrets of the past that he had concealed. Her discoveries lead to a quiet devastation in the novel’s ending.
2026-07-31
Xander
Xander
The ending of John Fowles' The French Lieutenant’s Woman is just as complex and layered as the rest of the novel. Fowles presents his readers with two alternative endings to the story of Charles and Sarah. The first is provided in full, a dramatic and satisfactory romance for Charles and his French Lieutenant’s Woman, while the second is interrupted by Fowles and provides a different conclusion to the lives of his characters. In both cases Charles leaves Sarah, but in the second ending of the novel she is a completely independent character. The two endings of Fowles’ novel show us that life is not neat and tidy, and that his characters are not going to be either.

Both endings are hugely satisfactory in their own ways, of course, but in very different ways. The first is conventionally dramatic in the style of Jane Eyre and the second more mellow and ultimately more free in a modern style. The way Fowles portrays Sarah in particular is to me deeply and complexly inconsistent. Is she a tragic heroine or is she liberated? I think the two endings point up that it is not at all clear that it matters whether Charles loves her or not: what matters is whether she can love herself or not. Every time I go back to it I get it differently and it’s that which makes it such a fantastic read, one that continues to haunt me long after I’ve finished it.
2026-01-09
Wyatt
Wyatt
‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ is pretty wild. It ends twice. Fowles rewinds the film of a Victorian cliffhanger about 100 pages into the novel. Charles Edward Sturk retrieves Sarah meet her and then they can hug each other again in a classic Victorian-style ending. But he then just turns around and deletes it. The second ending is pretty great – there, Charles walks off into the fog while Sarah is left to wonder what she’s done in her life and to glide off into the distance with all of her independence intact.

On another note, the most fascinating character of them all is probably Sarah. Is she a victim, a seductress, or simply a highly advanced woman for her time? Both endings of The French Lieutenant’s Woman lead one to decide for themselves how one feels about her. I personally prefer the alternative ending with the enigmatic Sarah as she fits better into the rest of the novel, especially concerning topics of rebellion and uncertainty. The author Fowles creates an entirely new perspective of storytelling in this highly-acclaimed novel of the 20th century and still makes it feel so incredibly fresh to this day.
2026-01-11
Connor
Connor
At the end of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles cleverly leaves the reader with a puzzle to resolve. The two alternative endings proposed for Charles and Sarah’s story are that they can return to each other or not. While the option that returns them to each other is proposed in a manner that is somewhat dutiful to the expectations of the Victorian novel, the other option presents a harsh reality to the two star-crossed lovers. Sarah is a remarkable woman to literature; she is utterly in defiance of Victorian propriety yet remains a fully human character who cannot be classified as either extremely good or evil.

I also really enjoy that Fowles doesn’t give the reader an easy way out by providing clear answers to the book’s many questions. The dual endings of The French Lieutenant’s Woman are particularly engaging and even after I put the book down it still has lots to offer. Particularly the second ending, where Charles and Sarah don’t end up together and in fact the novel leaves it quite ambiguous whether or not it would have been better if they had. Perhaps some relationships are just better left unresolved.
2026-01-14
Nicolle Pete
Nicolle Pete
The book had such an impact on me after reading it that it affected me for a week after finishing. The dual ending of the novel was not a simple trick that Fowles was using to manipulate his readers. Instead, it was the entire basis of the novel. We see Charles as a man trapped in the Victorian era by expectations, and then there is Sarah, a mysterious figure breaking free from the constraints of the period. The official ending of the novel is that of tragedy, where Charles leaves for the train and never returns to Sarah. This is his punishment for being indecisive and for the societal pressures put upon him. But then there is the 'what if' ending of the novel where the author intervenes and allows Charles to choose between his love for Sarah and his sense of duty to his family. In this ending, Charles chooses love and returns to Sarah. This ending is also a comment on the way that we read historical fiction. Is it more enjoyable to read a period piece as a tragic tale of constraint, or as a vehicle for a modern romance? For me, I found myself flipping back and forth between the two endings searching for the 'realest' reading. In the end, it was the ambiguity of the two endings that seemed to be the true message of the novel. There is no truth in history and there is no truth in fiction.
2026-08-01
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