SOURCE: "Fowles as Collector : The Failed Artists of The Ebony Tower," in Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter, 1987, pp. 70-83.

In the following essay, McDaniel traces the character development of the protagonists of The Ebony Tower in terms of a paralysis-action dichotomy that she identifies as a major feature of Fowles's fiction, emphasizing their relationship to the protagonists of his novels.

The world of John Fowles's fiction is polarized by a powerful pair of contrary forces, described by the author in The Aristos as stasis and kinesis (165).¹ For Fowles, these forces of inertia and motion, usually thought of as laws of the physical world only, also govern the moral and emotional development of human beings. Stasis is a life-denying force characterized by passivity, conservatism, the absence of change, and sterile lifelessness. Kinesis governs all that moves, matures, and improves; it is a life-affirming force that drives...