The French Lieutenant’s Woman: Chapter 18 Summary & Analysis

Over the next two days, Charles avoids thinking about paleontology or Sarah. But then Ernestina gets a migraine, so he has a free afternoon. It’s a dull, gray day, and he doesn’t feel like doing anything except perhaps traveling, which would provide a delicious sense of freedom. He walks to Ware Commons, though he’s determined not to talk to Sarah if he comes upon her, which he doesn’t think he will. Charles enters a grove of gigantic ash trees, which make him feel small. Soon he finds a worn test, and he searches along the foot of the bluffs for more. He pushes through a tunnel of ivy and begins to scrutinize the flint in a clearing. After a while he hears a stone drop, but he sees nothing. Then he senses someone’s presence and turns around.

Sarah is standing by the tunnel of ivy. Charles almost feels frightened that she appeared so silently. It seems she has followed him on purpose. He greets her, and she says that she saw him passing by. She looks slightly wild, and he wonders whether she is rather mad. He asks if she has something to tell him, but she just stares at him. A shaft of sunlight is lighting her face and making her look very beautiful. Charles remembers hearing that a peasant in the Pyrenees claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary looking just like this.

To Charles’s surprise, Sarah takes two excellent tests out of her pockets. She offers them to him, and when he takes them, their hands touch. He thanks her. She asks whether they used to be marine shells, and he explains their features to her. He realizes that she’s sane after all. He says he’s about to head back to Lyme, but Sarah says she wants to thank him for offering her help the other day. He makes to leave, and she says she shouldn’t have followed him. Charles moves to leave again, but he glances back at her, and she’s looking at him with an intense anguish. She says she has no one to help her. He mentions Mrs. Tranter, but Sarah says she doesn’t need kindness. Charles says it would not be proper for him to take a further interest in her.

Charles asks whether Sarah has considered his suggestion to leave Lyme. She implies that she would become a prostitute if she went to London. Charles blushes. Sarah says she’s weak and has sinned. This admission makes him judge her more harshly again, but he also feels strangely flattered. He asks whether anyone else knows that the Frenchman is married, and she says they don’t. As Charles stares at Sarah, their relationship becomes less objective and more personal in his mind. It makes him uncomfortable, and he says he doesn’t understand why she’s confided in him.

Sarah says that Charles is an educated and well-traveled gentleman, whereas the other people around her are supposedly good Christians but seem very cruel and stupid. She believes that there must be people who can understand that she doesn’t deserve her suffering. Charles feels she is proving that her intelligence goes beyond convention. She says her life is a nightmare, and she can’t understand her crime. Charles wants to escape but can’t. She asks why she wasn’t born as Ernestina instead. Charles feels she has gone too far. He says he can’t help her, but she refuses to believe it.

Women do not contradict men’s opinions the way that Sarah has just done. She seems to be assuming that she’s equal to Charles. He feels insulted, but for some reason he doesn’t leave. He fails to recognize her as a siren because she doesn’t look like one. She worries she’s offended him, and he says again that they can’t continue to meet. Sarah says that she wouldn’t have come to him if she wasn’t desperate. He understands, but says he doesn’t even know what she wants from him.

Sarah says she wants to tell Charles what happened to her the previous year. He falls back into convention and seems disapproving. He’s about to leave, but Sarah falls to her knees. Charles can only imagine with horror what anyone watching might think, but Sarah seems calm. She says she’ll go mad if no one helps her, and she has no one but him. Charles makes her stand up and leads her into the ivy. He says he has no choice—he can’t help her. Sarah asks only that he meet her once more. She’ll come to this place every afternoon. She feels that he understands more than anyone else in Lyme. Recently she was almost overcome by madness, and she almost came to his lodging to find him.

Charles thinks Sarah is threatening him with scandal, but she denies it. She is filled with despair and has no one to talk to. Charles wants only to escape, and he says he has to leave and can’t return to meet her. He wishes she would talk to Mrs. Tranter instead. She’s very insistent, but Charles continues to refuse to meet her. However, Charles almost becomes different people depending on whom he’s talking to. This can be seen as Darwin’s cryptic coloration, meaning that Charles changes to blend with his surroundings. It can also be seen as a way of ignoring one’s own repression. Women like Ernestina encourage this distance from reality, but Sarah seems to urge a deeper kind of honesty.

Sarah asks that Charles meet her for just an hour. She says that she would do whatever he advised after that. She understands that they would have to stop meeting. The day is getting colder, and Charles feels like he’s on the edge of a cliff and he can’t figure out how he got here, but he agrees. Sarah thanks him. Charles bows and then stumbles away through the ivy like a startled deer. He heads back to Lyme, thinking that he made many mistakes in the interaction. He knows he’s moving into forbidden social territory. It seems like when he’s with Sarah, he’s blind to her danger. He knows he won’t tell Ernestina anything, and he feels ashamed.