Summary The Good Soldier PDF

Preview

Summary

This is an extensive summary and exploration of the text 'The Good Soldier' that is studied extensively in the course. The work has an extensive summary of the text in question, an in depth commentary on the structure and form of the piece, an analysis of the themes and motifs in the text and finall...

Description

The Good Soldier – Ford Maddox Ford – 1915 The Good Soldier was published in 1915 by Ford Maddox Ford, a prominent English modernist (thought of by some to be the only English modernist). It is set just before WW1 and recounts 9 years of the relationships between Dowell (the narrator of the text) and Florence, and Leonora and Edward. The novel is told in a series of flashbacks, with Dowell recounting events and then commenting on them in the present. The text is split into four sections. Originally the text was called ‘the saddest story’, similar to the first line of the book. Ford’s literary impressionism influences this choice and places it strongly in the modernist category. The novel is loosely based on two messy relationships of Ford’s own life. Ford also extensively utilises the ‘unreliable narrator’ as the narrator reveals events to be quite different from how the introduction leads us to believe. Characters 





John Dowell o Narrator and husband of Florence, Dowell is a man who is searching for meaning in world that is in chaos. He presents himself as being well intentioned and tolerant, and someone who accepts someone for who they at face value. He believes Edward is a good soldier, who is not a ‘brute’ as could be suggested. o Dowell however is an unreliable narrator. He has been cheated on for 13 years and lied to by his wife Florence about her heart condition. He is not perceptive nor insightful. So destroyed is he over the realisation of his saddest story that he is utterly unable to convey emotion. Asked what he feels like to be a deceived husband he replies ‘nothing at all’. We cannot trust his judgements, because he has no clear basis for them. o Ultimately, The Good Soldier is the tale of Dowell’s attempt to chart his way through social and moral confusion. Florence Dowell o Wife of John Dowell and the adulteress of the novel. We never really get her full story, mostly due to the lack of communication between her and her husband. We later get some of her story through Leonora and Edward. The exclusion of Florence’s story allows the author to suspend direct judgement of her. If Dowell criticises Florence, we see the criticism coming from the deceived husband; she is never criticised from a subjective source. o Deceptive and controlling, and willing to feign a heart condition to get her way and commit suicide if she doesn’t. Florence values her ancestors, if not her family. She dismisses her two aunts in favour of a home her ancestors lived in two centuries ago. Dowell varies from pity, ‘poor florence’, to hatred, comparing her to a she-wolf. Florence is however thwarted in her every desire. Perhaps this is cause for pity. Edward Ashburn o Neither very good or much of a soldier, though Dowell assumes he is strong upright and an ‘excellent sort of chap’; someone ‘you can trust your wife with’. His assessment proves incorrect. Edward’s goodness extends only as far as it can bring



him personal honour. He does heroic and selfless acts in selfishness. His passion overcoming his practicality. Leonora Ashburnham o Shaped by her economic upbringing and her strict Catholicism. Though she is not outwardly religious, she believes in right and wrong and in making the best of ones situation. Above all, she values propriety and that the Ashburnhams must maintain the appearance of the perfect couple. She generally keeps control of her emotions, though has outbursts, when she hits Mrs Maidan for example. Leonora likes to remain in control so she may be aware of the world crumbling around her. o She is described by Dowell as ‘normal’, but in the case of the novel this is associated with the cold, boring and lack of passion. Dowell is most intrigued by Leonora because of this. In her normality, Leonora is a new prototype of powerful, controlling women. She endeavours to control not only Edward’s money, but also his romantic affairs. Such power is threating to Dowell, who chooses to remain ignorant about powerful women.

Themes 





The difference between appearance and reality o How people actually are and how they appear in the novel are distinctly different. Dowell views them all as ‘good people’ fundamentally; a good soldier, a loyal but sick wife and a normal but passionless woman, but this opinion steadily falls apart. The four are not really ‘good people’. o Having had the pillars of his belief collapse around him, Dowell is left with a scewed sense of reality and what’s real and what is not. Ultimately, as the novels first person narration shows, personal perception is all one can really have. ‘Reality is merely one individuals version of the truth. The moral significance of adultery o The Good solider present adultery as corrupt and rotting of society to its very core. Adultery is presented as a force that undermines the marital family structure that is at the core of English society. o The novel presents two kinds of adultery. The conservative type, practised by Rodney Bayham, and the passionate kind practised by Edward Ashburnham. It is the passionate kind that leads to problems, as it allows for impracticality and instability. Edward for instance has an ‘abnormal’ attachment to his mistress, not sex, which brings about the collapse of his marriage and his eventual suicide. He wants Nancy to love him from afar. It is not the physicality that he desires. o Dowell’s own opinions on adultery are clear. He believes that the fundamental nature of morality is related to faithfulness in marriage. If that is questioned (and it is) where does that leave every other aspect of morality in every day life? Dowell wonders whether we are supposed ‘to act on impulse alone’ and not living through tradition as he is used to. Definitions of normality o Dowell uses the ‘normal’ in application to people’s personalities in an attempt to bring order to a morally chaotic world. ‘Normal’ for Dowell means passionless,

o

boring and completely committed to societies rules. Though initially he states this as simply a matter of fact, he moves to use ‘normal’ in a more condescending manner. Dowell’s use of ‘normal’ marginalises the more threatening members of society, like Edward and Florence, marking them as outside of the mainstream and uncommon. By doing so, he makes them less of a threat to stable order. However, the realisations that there is no real ‘normal’ in the world makes Dowell believe in a world that is fundamentally dark. Leonora, the supposedly ‘normal’ woman, acts in an abnormal way, losing her pride and becoming subtly treacherous. Though he admits he doesn’t like society much, be states he ‘must go on’.

Motifs 



August 4 o Everything that happens to Florence happens around August 4th. Her birth, he trip around the world, her marriage, her first love affair and finally her death. o Strong speculation surrounding what this date means, possibly a reference to the day Britain joined WW1. Seems to ironic. Florence’s suspicion with the date suggests a foolishness in trying to apply meaning to something arbitrary. Heart Conditions o Hearts often reveal true meaning in literature, as is the case in the Good Soldier. Florence and Edward feign heart conditions to get what they want. Florence uses it keep John subdued and Edward uses it to escape his duty in the army. Also used to draw comparisons between the real and the fake, like Maisie Maidan who has a real heart problem and Florence and Edward who merely use their hearts to cover their real aim.

Quotes 



‘This is the saddest story I have ever heard’ o Seems over the top. Literally the worst thing that has ever happened in the world is being recounted and it is regarding the life and love of four couples. Surely there is something more sad than that? Infers the themes of modernists and the chaotic and seemingly pointless nature of the modern world. o ‘Heard’ is important, as it suggests that the narrator was not actually in the scene but rather heard about the story later. Largely, this is true, as Dowell is obviously blind to the tale as it unravels around him. His is naïve, so the significance of events can only be felt as he writes about them. For, though women, as I see them, have little or no feeling of responsibility towards a county or a country or a career—although they may be lacking in any kind of communal solidarity— they have an immense and automatically working instinct that attaches them to the interest of womanhood. o Dowell perceives women to be the radically different other. They assume that, like Catholics, they think and act in a way that is completely different to his own. This quote comes from the last section of the novel and Dowell is reflecting on the tale. By blaming womanhood for irrationality and individualised nature, he allows himself







to believe he is the rational, victimised party. This gives him some order to what appears to an entirely chaotic situation. Mind, I am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too truthful are condemned to suicide and madness. o Dowell attempts to overlay moral order onto the tragedy and chaos of the story. He believes that society is made for the normal person, and any who break its rules are destroyed by it. Society does not fit the passionate or the sentimental. He also implies that this saddens him, and he does not want society to go on as it is currently. In the end, Dowell survives madness and death, but he is left with moral confusion. I don't think that before that day I had ever wanted anything very much except Florence. I have, of course, had appetites, impatiences. Why, sometimes at the table d'hote, when there would be say, caviare handed round, I have been absolutely full of impatience for fear that when the dish came to me there should not be a satisfying portion left. o The passage is strongly ironic. Dowell tries to alike himself to Edward and describe his own personal flaws, but we see through it immediately. Dowell is a ‘normal’ person. His appetite is for caviar and his passion is Belgian trains running on time. Though he denies it to himself he is a passionless and sexless individual, a far cry from the heroic captain Ashburnham. Leonora, as I have said, was the perfectly normal woman. I mean to say that in normal circumstances her desires were those of the woman who is needed by society. She desired children, decorum, an establishment; she desired to avoid waste, she desired to keep up appearances. She was utterly and entirely normal even in her utterly undeniable beauty. o Dowell views Leonora as a perfectly normal woman, in that she fits into traditional values of what a woman should be. A good housewife, beautiful, wanting a family and has a general ‘decorum’ about her....