The French Lieutenant’s Woman: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

Sarah doesn’t look around as Charles approaches through the tunnel of ivy. It’s a beautiful day, and there are butterflies everywhere that will later almost be driven to extinction by humans. Charles looks around to be sure that no one sees him, but the forest is deserted. When he reaches Sarah, she doesn’t look at him, but gives him another test. He says he should pay her what he would pay at the fossil shop. She’s offended, and Charles feels he has failed her, but it prompts him to take on the attitude he decided to have during the last two days. His discussion with Dr. Grogan is helping him see scientific and charitable aspects in this meeting. He feels that it’s his duty as one of the fittest. Charles considered telling Ernestina about his conversations with Sarah, but he feared her questions. He didn’t think she could understand that he was acting as he was to help Sarah.

Charles says it is only luck that he is rich and Sarah poor. He plans to be sympathetic to her, but to maintain a distance between them. She says they’re all she has to give him in return for coming. He replies that he’s come because he’s decided that she does need help, and he’s prepared to listen to her. Sarah leads them across the clearing, and Charles notices how worn her shoes and stockings are and how beautiful her hair is. She leads them out onto a green slope and climbs to the top. Behind her, Charles can see the bottoms of her pantalettes above her ankles. They walk along the top of the bluff and across a dangerously steep slope, then emerge in a small, flat valley shaped like an amphitheater. A block of stone has been set against a tree trunk, making a seat. The edges of the dell are filled with flowers.

Sarah says she’s good at finding solitude, and she offers Charles the seat against the tree. She sits facing the ocean, so that her face is half hidden from him. As she adjusts her bonnet, Charles can tell that she doesn’t know how to begin. She sits quietly with her hands folded, and her coat looks slightly masculine. Charles realizes that her shabby clothes look better on her than nice ones would. She doesn’t make any attempt to enhance her appearance and doesn’t care about fashion. As her silence continues, Charles realizes he’s supposed to seek out answers.

Charles says he won’t judge Sarah too harshly. She hesitates, then begins her confession. She says the Frenchman’s name was Varguennes. He came to Captain Talbot’s house after his ship wrecked. She admired his courage; he had an awful wound but he never complained. He spoke almost no English. Supposedly his father was a rich lawyer who had cheated him of his inheritance. He said he was first officer on the ship, but none of it was true, and Sarah doesn’t know who he really was. She speaks with strange pauses between sentences.

Sarah says Varguennes was handsome, and no one had ever flirted with her the way he did while he was recovering. They always spoke in French, which may have contributed to the sense of unreality she felt, and she didn’t always understand him. She can’t entirely blame him, as she liked his attention. He accused her of being cruel when she refused to let him touch her, so she eventually did let him.

Charles says he understands, but Sarah says he can’t, because he’s not a woman who was educated to move up in the world. He’s not a woman who desires things she has no right to—intelligence, beauty, learning. He’s never been paid to look after children when he has none. Sarah loved the Talbot children, but it was painful to live so close to a happy family but not have one herself. Charles suggests that social privilege doesn’t necessarily bring happiness, but she insists that she has no chance of happiness, that no one in her position can marry.

Charles urges Sarah to continue her story. Varguennes recovered, and he declared his love for her. They talked about marrying, and he said he would be promoted to captain when he returned to France. He wanted her to go with him. Sarah didn’t tell Mrs. Talbot because she was ashamed. Varguennes made her believe that neither of them could be happy unless she went with him. He had found out about her background and her loneliness. She has always been lonely and outcast. Ever since her father had to sell their possessions, it seems that even furniture makes her feel lonely because it will always belong to someone else. She feels powerless to change her situation.

Sarah says that Varguennes left to take a ship from Weymouth, but he told her he would wait there for a week for her to join him, though she swore she wouldn’t do so. But her sense of loneliness returned once he was gone, and she was plunged into despair. Charles asks whether she didn’t become suspicious because Varguennes hid everything from Mrs. Talbot. Sarah says her blindness was in part due to a desire to be blind, and a path of deception is hard to leave. Charles doesn’t think to take this as a warning.

Sarah says she made excuses to Mrs. Talbot and went to Weymouth. She doesn’t know how to speak of what happened next. Eventually she says she tracked Varguennes down at an inn, which she could tell was not a respectable place. He was very happy to see her and apologized for the inn. He soothed her fear, and they went to a sitting room. Sarah could tell that he was different, that he wouldn’t have cared much if she hadn’t come. She realized that he was a liar and she could never marry him. She thinks she saw this before, but refused to acknowledge it. Seeing him in the surroundings of the inn, she could no longer deny it.

Sarah knows she should have left immediately, and she can’t really explain why she didn’t. She continued trying to see good in Varguennes, but she was also angry at being deceived. She had never been in a place so given to sin as this inn. She was confused about her situation, and in any case, she stayed. She drank the wine Varguennes gave her, and it seemed to help her see more clearly. She wasn’t surprised when he made his real intentions clear. She’s not trying to defend herself; she knows she could have left, and he didn’t rape her. Sarah finally turns to look at Charles, and she seems angry and defiant. She says she gave herself to Varguennes, so she is dishonored both by circumstances and by choice.

Charles reminds Sarah that he didn’t ask for this confession. She says she wants him to understand why she gave her virginity to someone she didn’t love. She did it precisely so that people would talk about her as the French Lieutenant’s Whore, so that they would know she suffers. She’s married shame instead Varguennes. Sleeping with him was a kind of suicide that she committed out of despair, because she didn’t know how else to change her life. If she had simply returned to Mrs. Talbot’s house, she would have killed herself. She stays alive because she knows she’s marked out as different. She’ll never be happy the way other people are, and no one will understand why she slept with Varguennes. She feels that she’s freer than other people, because she’s beyond insult; she’s hardly human.

Charles only somewhat understands what Sarah means. He can sympathize with the pain of being a governess and letting Varguennes dupe her, but he can’t understand her desire for shame. She’s begun to weep, and she turned her face away so Charles wouldn’t see. But now he steps towards her and sees her tears. He imagines her sleeping with Varguennes, and he is both Varguennes and a man who strikes him down. Some part of him forgives Sarah and recognizes that he himself might have taken her virginity if given the chance.

It’s impossible for this kind of shift to take place in the twentieth century, because men and women immediately imagine being together sexually. However, the Victorians close their minds off from such things. The Victorians are like the Egyptians in wanting to wrap everything up and hide reality. The Pre-Raphaelites, at least, try to access nature and sexuality, but they idealize it. Because of this, Sarah’s openness seems idealized to Charles; it’s strange because it seems unrealistic.

Charles stares at Sarah, then sits again, feeling as though he’s just stepped back from a cliff edge. Clouds are gathering out to sea that look like a far-off fantasy world of pleasure. They remind Charles of his desire to travel and his dissatisfaction with his life. But the figure of his dead sister moves up into the mysterious world.