Fowles--The Undercliff

The Undercliff

I have chosen to examine the passage in which Charles first encounters Sarah in the Undercliff. This passage shows the stark contrast between the wildness of the Undercliff and the rigid proprieties of Lyme Regis. This is a crucial passage in relation to the story because it is here that Charles first begins to have some intimation of a world beyond the Victorian Age.

At the beginning of this passage, Fowles describes the Undercliff as robust and full of life. Fowles writes “Eyebright and birdsfoot starred the grass” and “vivid green clumps of marjoram reached up to bloom” (70). These descriptions give the reader a sense that the Undercliff is a wild, untamed place where life thrives with abandon. This mysterious forest gives heed to every whim and impulse; it is the complete antithesis of the stifling provinciality of Lyme.

When Charles walks to the edge of a plateau and sees Sarah, he immediately believes to have seen a corpse. The thought that a woman would come to the Undercliff of her own volition is so inconceivable to Charles that he first assumes she had been left there by a murderer. Charles then realizes the he is staring at a sleeping woman who “had chosen the strangest position” (170). Fowles explains that Sarah is sleeping on a slope of grass several feel below the plateau, necessitating Charles to come to the very edge in order to gaze upon her. Sarah’s position has important symbolic meaning. She is such an anomaly of her time period and so detached from the rest of civilization that she is almost completely inaccessible. Charles, in walking to the edge of the plateau to view her, is staring out of his fixed little world and glimpsing something vague and new and exciting. Fowles describes how the natural balcony of the plateau had created a sun trap. The addition of a sun trap heightens this revelatory moment. Charles is standing on the edge of his comfortable, complacent existence, and the luminosity of the sun further suggests some kind of insight percolating inside of Charles.

Fowles describes the slumbering Sarah and her surroundings in an idyllic manner. Fowles writes, “her right arm thrown back, in a childlike way. A scattered handful of anemones lay on the grass around it” (70). Charles beholds a childlike tenderness in Sarah that has been all but obfuscated by the cold, rigid social mores of his time. Charles cannot help but feel an erotic component to this surprising spectacle. The picture of Sarah’s tranquilly sleeping in this wild and forbidden forest engenders thoughts in Charles that would be immediately disapproved of by the citizens of Lyme. The sight causes Charles’ memory to turn to a girl in Paris whom he had “seen sleeping so, one dawn, in a bedroom overlooking the Seine” (70). The vision of Sarah in the Undercliff evokes feelings of passion, beauty, and serenity which are in stark contradiction to the town of Lyme.

Only once Charles repositions himself on the plateau after his reverie of Paris does he realize that the sleeping woman is Sarah. Sarah’s physical appearance seems pronouncedly different than it did when Charles first encountered her. Fowles writes that Sarah’s hair “ had seemed to him a dark brown; now he saw that it had ret tints, a rich warmth…” (71). Something about the surroundings gives Sarah’s appearance a luxuriant quality that Charles had not previously detected. The wildly rich life of the Undercliff seems to be almost infectious, vivifying anything that comes into contact with it. Fowles writes that Sarah’s skin “seemed very brown, almost ruddy, in that light, as if the girl cared more for health than a fashionably pale and languid-cheeked complexion” (71). Here Fowles seems to liken Sarah to the forest in which she is sleeping. Just as the teeming life of the Undercliff contrasts with the pervasive repression of Lyme, the healthy, robust appearance of Sarah contrasts with the pale, weak, demure appearance of Lyme’s female citizens.

As Charles stands, enthralled by the sleeping figure, he begins to feel indignation about her being stigmatized by the town of Lyme. Fowles writes that Charles feels a “certainty of the innocence of this creature, of her being unfairly outcast…” (71). Seeing Sarah in the Undercliff seems to drive out any suspicions Charles may have had about her ignobility. The Undercliff appears to have a primordial quality, incapable of being defiled by the hypocrisies and superficialities of civilization. The purity of this strange place has the ability to confer truth, and causes Charles to ascertain the falsehood of the accusations against Sarah. Charles realizes that Sarah is a victim of human folly and the gossiping town’s hypocritical moral standards. As Charles moves even closer to the edge of the plateau, he also realizes that all of the sadness and despair that Sarah exhibited at the Cobb is now gone. Whereas the constant, judging, vigilant eyes of the town cause Sarah terrible distress, the pure, embracing, indiscriminate Undercliff gives her peace and equanimity.

Sarah awakes and is startled by the figure watching her from above. Charles, incapable of dismissing his inveterate gentlemanly ways, foolishly bows to her. The tranquility which Sarah had previously been enjoying immediately escapes her. Fowles writes, “She said nothing, but fixed him with a look of sock and bewilderment, perhaps not untinged with shame” (71). Charles’ presence seems to be an intrusion of the damning town of Lyme into Sarah’s haven of peace and solitude. Upon seeing Charles, Sarah’s joy dissipates and she is again reminded of her shameful, debased position. Fowles writes that as Charles and Sarah stare at each other, Sarah seems “as if, should he take a step towards her, she would turn and fling herself out of sight” (71). Seeing this girl in the Undercliff is such a fascinating and uncanny experience for Charles that the sight seems to rest precariously before his eyes, as if he is glimpsing another world that is elusive and unattainable.

Charles finally regains possession of his faculties, apologizes for his intrusion, turns around and walks away. Fowles writes that during those moments on the plateau “the whole Victorian Age was lost” (72). This single sentence encapsulates Charles’ experience and the mysterious power of the Undercliff. As Charles gazes upon Sarah on that slope of grass beneath the plateau, he begins to have some nebulous idea of a world other than the one in which he lives. The liberating, enchanting Undercliff brings forth ideas that would otherwise be unthinkable in the town of Lyme. Its purity elucidates the detestable social norms of the time; its rich, wild life makes Charles realize how lifeless and repressed society has become; its secluded, all-forgiving surroundings fill Charles with thoughts and desires that could normally never go unchecked. To enter the Undercliff means to leave the Victorian Age.