The French Lieutenant’s Woman: Chapter 11 Summary & Analysis

At about the same time of Charles and Sarah’s meeting, Ernestina takes out her diary and turns to her bland entry from that morning. She stayed in and didn’t feel happy. Even the flowers Charles sent had irritated her. She had heard Mary flirting with Sam at the front door, and she worried it had been Charles there instead of Sam. Ernestina knows that Charles has traveled and is older than she, and attractive. She believes he’s hiding some woman in his past. However, she’s more jealous of his love than worried that he might have slept with other women. His calmness seems to her to prove that he was once passionately in love, rather than the truth, which is that he never has been.

Soon after Sam left, Ernestina rang for Mary, who came in smiling with the flowers. Ernestina frowned at her. The narrator thinks that Mary is the prettiest woman in this story. She’s the liveliest and the least selfish. She has a pure complexion, blonde hair, and flirtatious eyes. Her figure is seductively plump. Mary’s great-great-granddaughter, who is twenty-two at the time of writing, is a movie star and looks rather like Mary.

Mary got a job with Mrs. Poulteney because she’s related to Mrs. Fairley, but Mrs. Poulteney fired her when she caught her kissing a stable boy. She then began to work for Mrs. Tranter, where she is happy and Mrs. Tranter likes her. Sometimes Mrs. Tranter even eats with Mary in the kitchen when no one was around, and they get on quite well. However, Mary is jealous of Ernestina, in part because her London fashions make Mary’s clothing seem so inadequate. She also thinks Charles is too good for Ernestina, so she often runs into him on purpose so she can feel triumphant when he tips his hat to her. She knows Ernestina watches from her window.

Mary put the flowers on Ernestina’s bedside table, but Ernestina made her move them farther away. She asked where Charles was, but Mary didn’t know, and she interrogated her about her interaction with Sam. Sam acted very differently than he had that morning with Charles. After handing over the flowers for Ernestina, he whipped out a small bouquet for Mary, with a compliment for her looks. Mary smelled them. Sam said that he would deliver her bag of soot as long as it was paid for immediately. When she asked how much it would cost, he winked at her. She laughed and slammed the door.

Ernestina warned Mary that Sam is a womanizer and demanded that she report it if he made advances to her. Ernestina asked for barley water, and Mary left, though there was a small light of defiance in her eyes. This interaction reminded Ernestina that she’ll soon have to be a real mistress to servants. It will be wonderful to be independent, but servants are so troublesome. Life clearly must be seen as good, but it’s also difficult in the moment. Now, in the afternoon, she takes out her diary and turns to the page where she’s pressed the jasmine.

In London, wealth has begun to take precedence over good breeding. Ernestina’s grandfather grew up a modest draper, but he died very rich after founding a large store in the West End. Her father is a gentleman in all ways except by birth, and he gave Ernestina an excellent education. She really has no reason for her worries about her social status, and Charles isn’t concerned about it.

Charles met Ernestina the previous November at the house of a woman who wanted him to marry one of her daughters. They all pretended that they were interested in paleontology, but Ernestina simply teased him about his vocation. They liked each other’s intelligence and sense of humor. Ernestina’s parents made inquiries about Charles and were satisfied with what they found. Ernestina had realized that Charles would never fall in love with anyone who threw herself on him. When he began to attend social events at her house, her parents never made any sly suggestions of marriage, and Ernestina carefully ignored and teased him, making it clear that she knew he would never marry.

Then one January evening, Ernestina saw an old lady across the room. She went up to Charles and suggested that she could introduce him to the lady so that he could learn from her about the Early Cretaceous era. As they crossed the room, she stopped him and said that if he was going to be an old bachelor, he would have to practice. Her eyes showed an offer as clear as that of the prostitutes in the Haymarket.

Charles had, in fact, been growing worried that he would waste his life like his uncle did. Traveling had long substituted for a wife, letting him sleep with women sometimes, but he no longer wants to travel. He feels sexually frustrated and is too moral to travel just for the sake of sleeping with women. One morning everything seemed very simple; he wanted to wake up with Ernestina.

Soon after, Charles spoke with Ernestina’s father, and then went to find Ernestina in the conservatory, where she was pretending to cut flowers. He said he had decided to leave England forever, but when he saw that she was too distressed to realize he was teasing, he said he would stay if someone cared about him. She turned with tearful eyes and they drew together. They didn’t kiss, because they had been too sexually repressed for too long. On the way out of the conservatory, Charles picked a sprig of jasmine and pretended it was mistletoe, and they finally did kiss. Charles led her back to her parents, and Ernestina cried in her mother’s arms while Charles and Mr. Freeman smiled at each other.