Religion, Science, and Evolution Theme Analysis

While Victorian morality was based on deeply religious elements, science made leaps forward during this time that challenged the worldview of traditional Christianity. Most important was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as presented in On the Origin of Species, which proposed that life evolves through natural selection, meaning that humans are descended from apes and were not created by God in one fell swoop, as depicted in the Bible.

Mrs. Poulteney represents the way in which many traditional Victorians used religion to support their self-serving, close-minded hypocrisy. Mrs. Poulteney believes in an exchange-based form of religion that the Anglican Church seems to support. Though she pretends that her piety sets her high above her fellow residents of Lyme Regis, her way of practicing her religion actually makes her the cruelest character in the book. She also exemplifies a form of religiosity that helped give the Victorian era its reputation for sexual repression and worship of social conventions. However, Charles eventually realizes that this is not the point of Christianity—instead, he believes, Christianity should bring about a freer world.

In contrast to Mrs. Poulteney, Dr. Grogan represents science and the theories of evolution that permeate the book. Grogan attends church only to keep up appearances, and his faith in science has replaced any faith he ever had in God—at one point, he swears on On the Origin of Species as one would swear on the Bible. Whereas Mrs. Poulteney judges Sarah as a sinner based on religious principles, Grogan judges her mentally unsound based on earlier medical cases and his own scientific appraisal of her. Even though these two characters seem ideologically opposed, it’s noteworthy that they essentially come to a similar conclusion, that there’s something fundamentally wrong with Sarah that makes her unfit for general society.

Charles, on the other hand, can’t entirely accept either of these frames for Sarah. He has little difficulty rejecting Mrs. Poulteney’s moralistic view, and although Dr. Grogan’s medical literature temporarily convinces him, he ultimately can’t reconcile his experience of Sarah with the scientific view that she is insane. Similarly, Charles vacillates between religion and science in his own life. He once wanted to become a priest, and he’s now become an amateur paleontologist. Despite that he seems more aligned with science than religion, he still finds some spiritual comfort in the church in Exeter after he has sex with Sarah. However, Charles does subscribe wholeheartedly to the idea of evolution. In fact, he shares a first name with Darwin, and he studies fossils, which present the clearest evidence of Darwin’s theories. He often applies principles of evolution to his daily life and that of other characters, thinking of himself, for example, as either “the fittest” or, in moments of fear, as “a fossil.” But in spite of his supposedly scientific viewpoint, Charles can’t help but cling to convention, and he often fails to evaluate his behavior or choices in strictly secular or scientific terms. For example, when he thinks of himself as “the fittest,” he applies a scientific concept to his life, but his application of it rests on aristocratic assumptions that fitness is determined by birth rather than by ability or effort. Even as Fowles rejects religion, he points out that science can be just as ideological as religion if not applied critically—a trap into which Charles often falls.

The idea of evolution, and Charles’s belief in it as a guiding principle, shapes his development as a character. At first, Charles believes that he’s one of “the fittest” because of his aristocratic birth, a position that makes him part of the future, evolutionarily. However, his interactions with Sarah lead him to realize that his adherence to convention is actually making him a “fossil”—a relic of the past, not a harbinger of the future at all. This belief leads him to reject convention and attempt to become one of the fittest by pursuing Sarah, but it doesn’t work out the way he expected. Fowles suggests that only by acting in ways different from the rest of the population can humanity make evolutionary advances, and thus Sarah’s position as an outlier from society makes her one of the fittest who will contribute to the survival of the human race. Sarah, who all along sees society and people more clearly than anyone else, figures out how to create the life she desires. Charles, however, lacks this vision for himself, and when Sarah ultimately rejects him, the reader realizes that he has not sufficiently evolved to thrive in the way she does. He’s too rigid, and too blinded by generalization. He has a hard time fundamentally questioning the structures of his life, such as marriage and the class system; he thinks that he must either live by them or abandon them entirely, rather than taking what is useful and abandoning the rest.

Sarah, on the other hand, understands these societal structures so intimately that she can choose to what extent she adheres to them, thus making her able to use them to her advantage. For example, rather than entirely rejecting the gender expectations of her time, Sarah appropriates the narrative of the fallen woman and uses it to her own ends. She’s flexible about how she achieves her goals, but she’s always working towards them. Charles, by contrast, has trouble knowing what he wants, so he relies on ideology to tell him what his goals should be—such as marrying Sarah, even though she doesn’t want to marry him. Sarah has tools that allow her to thrive even in conditions that would break someone else, while Charles’s inability to imagine new ways of being make him more fragile. In terms of evolution, then, Sarah certainly seems “fitter” than Charles in the struggle for survival.

Perhaps, then, it’s ideology that Fowles condemns—ideology of any sort, whether embodied in religion or science. Belief systems trap and confuse Charles, whereas Sarah rejects and manipulates them in order to attain the life she wants. Just as Fowles argues that history must exist outside of the ideology of any particular moment, he argues that history is governed by change—by evolution—and those who reject the backwardness of any age herald the future. With any luck, Sarah’s characteristics will pass to the future through her daughter Lalage.