What is the past? Put simply it is the time before the moment of speaking and writing. The past is something we associate with history, it is a form of storytelling where certain events are documented, preserved and then passed onto the future generation. But how do we know that these stories are telling the truth? Well, we can’t and that’s the problem. There is no way to confirm whether these stories that have been told for centuries have been glorified or not and whether they even occurred at all. This topic is quite prominent within the novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman and the play Arcadia. Both texts present the argument that the relationship between past and present can be paralleled to the contrast between fiction and reality. The two texts also demonstrate a deep understanding that the past although, tangible through literature, stories, or education, can never be fully understood due to the curse of bias.
Firstly, let's first look at how the theme of the “past” is interpreted in the play. Within the text history, is very significant in the fact that the play occurs within 2 periods of time, within the 1809–1812 and the present day. What’s interesting is that Tom Stoppard (Stoppard) intentionally made that the setting from both time periods was the same, strictly stating in scene 2 that “The general appearance of the room should offend neither period”. From this, we can clearly see that Stoppard is trying to achieve some type of message by the manipulation of time.
This message is introduced to the audience very early on in the play with Septimus and Thomasina conversing about rice pudding. The text writes, “When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?”. Within this quote, the rice pudding serves as a metaphor for time. Stoppard relates the rice pudding to time, how time moves inexorably forward, and we cannot rewind it backwards, just like how (within the rice pudding) heat is always lost, energy is dissipated, entropy takes over. This single quote early into the text basically summarises Stoppard’s view of what the past is. Time in this quote is embodied in the second law of thermodynamics.
The play Arcadia demonstrates that knowledge, although grand and crowned the basis of the human intellect, is the basis of how the past is moulded into the present. Valentine also raises a valid point in that, “You can’t open a door until there’s a house” translating to you cannot know things if others have not made discoveries that paved the way. Valentine when discussing the linear progress of human knowledge states that others that have come before have paved the way, meaning that they have shifted into a single path devoid of uncertainty. When we are taught something, we are told to accept and apply, which further supports my argument earlier in this paragraph, how are we so sure that this path that was paved for us is correct? It is fact that human nature is rather selfish, this is especially prominent within the “present-day” when Hannah and Bernard are introduced. Specifically, we see “Bernard is going through the library like a bloodhound”. It's just the curse of human nature, that we as humans only seek out information that benefits your argument and if you want an example look at me. To research this topic, I had to handpick quotes that supported one of the prompts given to me and I had to research why these certain quotes are able to back up my hypothesis. Human nature lies within the palms of confirmation bias and as scholars develop more “proofs”, the more they limit creativity, and as this intellect is passed on through generations, the more scholars with input their idea of what correct is and shaping this intellect, thus moulding the past into the present.
Secondly, let’s now look at how The French Lieutenant’s Woman (TFLW) explores the connection between the past and present. John Vintage Fowles (Fowles) is rather unique in that the story is told through a godlike omniscient reader and shares many stylistic characteristics as a Victorian novel (when the book is set in).
The use of the third person reader struck out instantly, what is Fowles trying to achieve here? Well, he reveals it to us later in the novel. He writes “[in] this story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. If I have pretended until now to know my characters’ minds and innermost thoughts, it is because I am writing in (just as I have assumed some of the vocabulary and the “voice” of) a convention universally accepted at the time of my story: that the novelist stands next to God. He may not know all, yet he tries to pretend that he does.” He in this quote comments that he is in the process of creating the characters and that they have not existed before his pen has touched the paper. This means that none of the events presented can be found in the “past”, rather as we read the words come to life and that the characters begin to have meaning.
TFLW uses the above quote to comment on the nature of the past and present as being identical to the relationship between fact and fiction respectively. He further proves this argument by writing, “In other words, to be free myself, I must give him [Charles], and Tina, and Sarah, even the abominable Mrs Poulteney, their freedoms as well. There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. And I must conform to that definition.” Here Fowles states that characters that in order for him to write freely, he must grant his characters their own will. He clearly states that he isn’t the one controlling them (ironic as he is the writer after all), but rather the actions are caused by the characters own judgement. They are able to do this as they did not exist before Fowles started writing, therefore are not bound to their past, set on a linear line. They are not bound by fact and as a result, their present story is merely fiction, a made-up story that the characters write themselves.
What’s interesting though is that although one text is a play (Arcadia) and the other is a novel (The French Lieutenant’s Woman), they both share a common characteristic in that they are both subjected to the curse of bias and misconception.
As stated, before in the paragraphs discussing Arcadia, we know that the characters are subjected to the desires of human nature, predominantly seen through academics in the present day. Both Hannah and Bernard are subjected to this as when researching for their academics they always miss the true picture due to their nature to search for arguments that support their clause. Septimus also predicts this when comparing life for the quest of knowledge stating, “We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long, and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.” The story as we know it spans over many generations and thus many scholars will come and go. The human desire is hungry for knowledge and thus what one scholar will start will be finished by another. Therefore, as education passes through time more and more brains will work on one topic and thus dilute the original concept with ego.
What’s interesting is that TFLW is also subjected to the curse of human nature. Fowles writes, “You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it… fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf — your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in flight from the real reality. That is a basic definition of Homo sapiens.” Even Fowles acknowledges the desires of Homo Sapiens stating that we ourselves also dress up our past as a fairy tale, a rather happy memory than one of pain.
In conclusion, although both texts are written in different formats, styles, and eras they both come to the same conclusion of what humans truly are. They are beasts who seek out knowledge as a sign of strength, boosting their own ego through biased research and “proofs” that further proves the point that they are “smarter and better” than everyone else. We as humans romanticise our past to form our present, identical to know the fact is romanticised to fiction.
