University 1 Decembrie 1918 Alba

Iulia
Faculty of History and Philology
Specialization:French-English

THE GOOD
SOLDIER by Ford
Madox Ford
Student:Magda DanielaAndreea

Ford Madox Ford

(1873-1939)
Ford was born on 17 December 1873 at 5 Fair Lawn Villas,
Merton, Surrey, in England. He was the first of three children of the
German migr, Francis Hueffer (1845-1889), a musicologist and
author, and Catherine (1850-1927), painter, daughter of Ford Madox
Brown, and his second wife Matilda (Emma) Hill. He was christened
Ford Hermann Hueffer. In 1894
Ford eloped with his school-girlfriend Elsie Martindale, the
daughter of Dr William Martindale, a prominent analytical chemist,
who opposed her marrying someone with such unreliable financial
prospects. Ford and Elsie married in Gloucester on 17 May 1894.
They left London, and settled in Bonnington, on the Romney Marsh;
in 1901 they moved to the Bungalow, Winchelsea. They had two
daughters, Christina (1897-1984) and Katharine (1900-78). Ford
befriended the authors living nearby: Henry James, Stephen Crane,
and H. G. Wells.

The writer now known as Ford Madox Ford was a prolific

novelist, poet, critic, editor, and reminiscer. He is one of the most
intriguing, versatile, and often still misunderstood of the great
Modernist writers. In the years before the First World War he moved
to London, where he founded theEnglish Review, bringing together
many of the best established writers of the day James, Thomas
Hardy, Conrad, H. G. Wells, and Arnold Bennett with his new
discoveries, many of whom would help redefine modern literature,
such as Ezra Pound, Wyndham Lewis, and D. H. Lawrence.
His major work of the Edwardian period includes theFifth
Queentrilogy of historical novels about Henry VIII and Katharine
Howard (1906-08); the trilogy of impressionist books aboutEngland
and the English(1905-07) and the novelsA Call(1910) and Fords
best-known and most highly-regarded novel The Good
Soldier(1915). During the war he wrote propaganda; but in 1915
enlisted, serving in France in 1916-17 during the Battle of the Somme
and at the Ypres Salient.
He was invalided back to Britain in 1917, remaining in the army
and giving lectures. After a spell recuperating in the Sussex
countryside after the war, Ford lived mostly in France during the
1920s, first in Provence, then in Paris. He published his other major
fictional work, the series of four novels known asParades End,
between 1924 and 1928. These were particularly well-received in

The First World War

Ford joined the army in 1915, serving as an officer in the Welch
Regiment. It was an escape from a life that had become intolerable, and
he appears to have wanted to die. When he was sent to the Somme in
July 1916, only two weeks into the bloodiest battle in British military
history, he nearly did die: a shell explosion concussed him, and he lost
his memory for three weeks, forgetting even his own name for a few
days.
Ford was sent to convalesce in the South of France, but when he
returned to the front he had to be invalided home. He served for the rest
of the war mostly in the North of England, attached to the Staff and
lecturing troops. While staying with Violet Hunt on leave he had met
Esther (Stella) Bowen (1893-1947), a young Australian painter who had
come to London to study at the Westminster School of Art under Sickert.
They started corresponding, and soon became lovers. in May 1930, he
met Janice Biala (originally Janice Tworkovski; 1903-2000), an American
painter, with whom he spent the rest of his life. They never had money -the Depression severely damaged his sales -- and he was rarely in good
health. Yet they managed to live their truly bohemian life travelling
between New York, Paris, and Provence (especially at the Villa Paul, Cap
Brun, Toulon), growing vegetables, encouraging writers with talent, and
working tirelessly at their arts. He continued to write novels throughout
the 1930s, becoming particularly preoccupied with the motif of the

He also turned to autobiography, producing brilliant but

partly fictionalised memoirs of his pre-war world --Return to
Yesterday(1931) -- and of his post-war life in Sussex and France
--It Was the Nightingale(1934). His writing rarely confined itself
to narrow genres: in his last phase he fused history,
reminiscence, cultural criticism, and travel-writing, into the
charming books onProvence(1935), and on what he called
theGreat Trade Route(1937)--his personal 'impression' of the
process of civilisation.
His last published book wasThe March of Literature(1938),
an immense comparative survey From Confucius to Modern
Times, a vivid, idiosyncratic testament to his faith in literature as
an international republic of letters. Most days of his life Ford got
up early, and wrote a thousand words or two. He produced nearly
eighty books, some of which changed the course of modern
literature. He died in Deauville, on 26 June 1939, and is buried
there.

Character
s:

John Dowell- The novel's narrator, John Dowell is the reader's only
guide through the twisted story of the thirteen years the couple spent in
France. He is a nave man, quickly taken in by appearances, and easily
cuckolded by his wife* He tells the disjointed story of his own gradual
understanding of what has occurred. Ultimately, he is a man who has
lost all moral certitude, all comprehension of right and wrong.
Florence Hurlbird Dowell- Dowell's wife, and the adulteress of
the novel, Florence is a manipulative and deceptive woman. Because
she never really communicates with her husband, Florence's story is the
only one that is never told.
Leonora Powys Ashburnham- Described as a "sheer
individualist," Leonora cares deeply that her affairs are in order and that
the Ashburnham family maintains every ounce of propriety. She is
economical, practical, and efficient with matters of money.
Captain Edward Ashburnham- Dowell describes Edward
Ashburnham as "the cleanest looking sort of chap," "an excellent
magistrate, a first-rate soldier, and one of the best landlords." He
appears to be exactly the sort of man one could trust with his wife. He is
generous with those who live on his land and even jumps overboard
from a ship to save a drowning man.
Nancy Rufford- Also known as "the Girl," Nancy Rufford becomes

Characters:
Jimmy- A cabin boy who travels with the Hurlbirdson their trip
around the world, Jimmy becomes Florence's first lover.
Uncle John Hurlbird- The old, wealthy uncle of Florence
Hurlbird, Uncle John is thin, gentle and extraordinarily lovable. He is
a violent Democrat and a hardworking man who has owned a factory
is entire
life. Maidan- Maisie Maidan is described by Dowell as
Maisie
young, gentle, and "so submissive." From the same convent school as
Leonora, Mrs. Maidan preserves some of the strict morality that was
once taught to her.
Rodney Bayham - is the second husband of Leonora.
Mrs. Basil- The wife of an army officer stationed in India.
La Dolciquita- Mercenary and manipulative, La Dolciquita is
the mistress of a Grand Duke who is visiting Monte Carlo.
Selmes- A young man from Fordingbridge whose father has
been ruined by a fraudulent solicitor.
Colonel Powys- The father of Leonora

Summa
ry
The Good Soldieris narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one
of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel.
Dowell tells the stories of those dissolutions as well as the deaths of three
characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological
fashion that leaves gaps for the reader to fill. The "plot" is not then the real
story; the reader is asked to consider whether they believe Dowell and
what part he truly played in how this "saddest story ever told" actually
plays out.
The novel opens with the famous line, "This is the saddest story I have
ever heard." Dowell explains that, for nine years, he, his wife Florence, and
their friends Captain Edward Ashburnham (the "good soldier" of the book's
title) and his wife Leonora had an ostensibly normal friendship while
Edward and Florence sought treatment for their heart ailments at a spa in
Nauheim, Germany.
As it turns out, nothing in the relationships or in the characters is as it
first seems. Florence's heart ailment is a fiction she perpetrated on John to
force them to stay in Europe so that she could continue her affair with an
American thug named Jimmy. Edward and Leonora have a loveless,
imbalanced marriage broken by his constant infidelities (both of body and
heart) and Leonora's attempts to control Edward's affairs (both financial
and romantic). Dowell is a fool and is coming to realize how much of a fool
he is, as Florence and Edward had an affair under his nose for nine years

Summary
Florence's affair with Edward leads her to commitsuicidewhen
she realizes that Edward is falling in love with his and Leonora's
young ward, Nancy Rufford, the daughter of Leonora's closest
friend. Florence sees the two in an intimate conversation and rushes
back into the resort, where she sees John talking to a man she
knows (and who knows of her affair with Jimmy) but whom John
doesn't know. Assuming that her relationship with Edward and her
marriage to John are over, Florence takesprussic acidwhich she
has carried for years in a vial that John thought held her heart
medicineand dies.
With that story told, Dowell moves on to tell the story of Edward
and Leonora's relationship, which appears normal but which is a
power struggle that Leonora wins. Dowell runs through several of
Edward's affairs and peccadilloes, including his possibly innocent
attempt to comfort a crying servant on a train; his affair with the
married Maisie Maidan, the one character in the book whose heart
problem was unquestionably real, and his bizarre tryst in
Monte CarloandAntibeswith a kept woman known as La Dolciquita.
Edward's philandering ends up costing them a fortune in bribes,
blackmail and gifts for his lovers, leading Leonora to take control of
Edward's financial affairs. She gradually gets him out of debt.

Summary
Edward's last affair is his most scandalous, as he becomes infatuated
with their young ward, Nancy. Nancy came to live with them after leaving a
convent where her parents had sent her; her mother was a violentalcoholic,
and her father (it is later suggested that this man may not be Nancy's
biological father) may have abused her.
Edward, tearing himself apart
because he does not want to spoil Nancy's innocence, arranges to have her
sent to India to live with her father, even though this frightens her terribly.
Once Leonora knows that Edward intends to keep his passion for Nancy
chaste, but only wants Nancy to continue to love him from afar, Leonora
torments him by making this wish impossibleshe pretends to offer to
divorcehim so he can marry Nancy, but informs Nancy of his sordid sexual
history, destroying Nancy's innocent love for him. After Nancy's departure,
Edward commits suicide. When Nancy reachesAdenand sees the obituary
in the paper, she becomescatatonic.

Summary
The novel's last section has Dowell writing from Edward's old estate
in England, where he takes care of Nancy, whom he cannot marry
because of her mental illness. Nancy is only capable of repeating two
thingsaLatinphrase meaning "I believe in an omnipotentGod" and
the word "shuttlecocks." Dowell states that the story is sad because no
one got what they wanted. Leonora wanted Edward but lost him and
married the normal (but dull) Rodney Bayham. Edward wanted Nancy
but lost her. Dowell wanted a wife but ended up a nurse to two sick
women, one a fake. Dowell closes the novel by telling the story of
Edward's suicide. Edward receives a telegram from Nancy that reads,
"SafeBrindisi. Having a rattling good time. Nancy." He asks Dowell to
take the telegram to his wife, pulls out his pen knife, says that it's time
he had some rest and slits his own throat

Analysis:
The Good Soldier is one of the few stylistically perfect
novels in any language, and perhaps what Ford was alluding to
in his remarks about references and cross-references is this
sense that the contradictory and complementary meanings in
every paradoxical sentence are entirely understandable
because he has made sure a clear explication of his fictional
situation - the psychologies of his characters, the interweaving
of character and event, intention and chance.

Conclusion
Ford originally titled his novel The Saddest Story. After the
outbreak of the first world war and his departure for the front, his
editor changed the title to The Good Soldier, which Ford did not
care for. But the editor was right - Ford's title is empty and
meaningless. The Good Soldier subtly cues the reader to the
larger social dimension of Ford's subject.
Leonora and Edward,
and to a lesser degree Dowell and Florence, are struggling with
ignorance as much as moral failure.
By Ford's time, all the social and cultural arrangements of
feudal Europe were imploding in the first world war. Ford was
astute enough to depict both the inevitability of the implosion
and its sadness - the world of Jane Austen a hundred years on,
depopulated, lonely and dark.