Oops, sorry for the double post.

This book could not have been written haphazardly, it couldn’t have been written in the same manner as it was told. Ford had to have everything planned out carefully. So it seems that there were no pyrotechnics or sensationalism, just a superduper structure. Will this novel make anyone seek out others Ford has written? I get the impression he is a writer mostly under the radar, not receiving the praise or interest like Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Should he? Modern Library placed the novel at 30 in their Top 100 list compiled by the board, but the readers left it off. And it does not appear on the Time or Radcliffe lists. Does he deserve a firmer place in the Western Canon?

I think this is a worthy book--for the time it was written and what he did.  I think he was pretty prolific, but only a few others are at all notable (from what little I have read)--the rest were potboilers.  This was also on The Observers list of 100 most important novels.
Danielle

Imani,
Thanks for that quote.  I didn’t think she committed suicide, but then later in my other readings I got that impression, which confused me.  Still a tragic death.

Danielle

Oh Litlove, I like that image.

I am hesistant to call Florence crazy too Imani. It’s too easy to label her as such. Even though we don’t know much about her, I imagine she had motives and complexities that would be interesting. For some reason I imagine her home life before she married John as stiffling and dull. John doesn’t seem an improvement but she had her affair with Jimmy to distract her.

Quillhill, I don’t know if I will make it a point to read any other Ford books or not. I am interested, but not to the point where I want to make an effort. I do think The Good Soldier is worthy of more attention than it seems to get.

I somehow remembered Maisie as killing herself too Danielle. But I guess she didn’t which I am for some reason glad of. Does that make her a more genuine person, I wonder? Considering she really was ill, she really did love Edward, and she really died of natural causes? Are she and Nancy innocent victims of a sort?

I got the same impression as Danielle --you’re welcome, btw-- about the quality of his other output. I agree with you that the novel had to meticulously constructed and that a great part of its success is that it doesn’t read that way. I think that The Good Soldier has a firm place in the academy, so it seems anyway by the number of articles that come up for it in JSTOR, but I don’t know that it has much of a stature in the public eye. I know that I had never heard of it before until a couple of years ago.

Does the way Dowell tells the story make him out to be a victim? I think he was full of denial and full of excuses. Would the story told by Maisie or Nancy make them out to be victims? I don’t know if anyone is innocent. But aren’t we all the victims of our own story?

Quillhill - 02 June 2007 09:42 AM

Does the way Dowell tells the story make him out to be a victim? I think he was full of denial and full of excuses. Would the story told by Maisie or Nancy make them out to be victims? I don’t know if anyone is innocent. But aren’t we all the victims of our own story?

Dowell’s tries to make him out to be a victim but he undermines himself all the way through. Of all the women in the story he is the least antagonistic to those two—he has a problem with “independent” women I think—but I don’t know that Maisie is “innocent”. She is an adulteress and knew what she was doing, even if she didn’t realise how bad things were between Edward and Leonora.

I would say that Nancy was the most innocent certainly, and tried to bite off more than she could chew. Her infatuation was misguided but Edward did plant the idea in her mind.

People fall in love in this novel like little chicks opening their eyes for the first time and saying ‘Mama!’ to whatever object lies in front of them. Sexuality is confused with affection, admiration, escape, protection, you name it. I would say that Florence is simply a silly girl who longs for romantic escapades and lacks the brains to consider the consequences. She’s a romantic idealist really, in the good old Emma Bovary tradition (only she’s a bit worse) which is probably why Dowell is so very angry with her - he’s one too, when it comes down to it. A woman like that is bound to carry prussic acid on her person - it would fit in with her novelistic conceptions of herself.

I also wanted to say something about the homo-erotic tension between Dowell and Edward Ashburnham. I think it’s a fascinating and many-layered relationship with something potentially sexual. But look at it this way - what the narrative tells us, and doesn’t tell us outright, is that Dowell is still a virgin. He’s been married for all those years to a woman who keeps the bedroom door firmly locked. By the end of the book it’s likely that he’s never even been kissed. So love and sexuality become very confused entities to this man, and the undirected, unplaced and unsublimated eroticism he possesses gets applied to all the objects of his admiration.

I wondered about whether Dowell and Florence ever consummated the marriage, I thought perhaps they did at the beginning, but Florence said right off that she had a bad heart so maybe that kept them apart?

Why did John take on the care of Nancy in the end? Is playing nursemaid the only way he felt needed and necessary? Did he think it was the right and noble thing to do? He made it seem as though he had to take care of her but really there was no obligation on his part at all.

I kind of thought she was just a stand-in for his wife and his friend.

Sorry I haven’t been around much this weekend for discussion--guests from the States have kept us busy.

I have enjoyed reading over everyone’s comments.  I’m not sure this book is worthy of being part of the “canon” that gets read by everyone, but I think it’s a shame it is so little known--that I never even heard of it until this project.  It is very readable, although I think it’s a bit too subtle and, for lack of a better word, “grown up” for highschoolers.  I don’t think they’d be able to appreciate the subtlety of the characters or the story-telling (I’m sure there are exceptions).  Anyway, I homeschool two teenagers, and I don’t feel inclined to add this book to reading lists, although they will at least be aware of its existence since we have it on the shelf now.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the manner in which the story was told, I really think John Dowell (and Danielle, you *really* threw me off by calling him Arthur.  You have to understand--after finishing the book, I couldn’t for the life of me remember his name, and I just snagged it off the back cover of my Dover Thrift Edition.  When you called him Arthur, I was afraid it was wrong...I never thought of checking Wikipedia!)...okay, I really think John Dowell was my least favorite of the bunch.  I actively dislike him, and if he is a victim, I think he’s a pretty willing one.  Leonora all but warned him outright about Edward when he and Florence first made a “connection,” and he understood her (at least, in recollection, he says he did), and deliberately decided to understand her a different, more palatable way.

He has no energy...no ambition...he’s just a lump of a person.  But I also think he’s a bit passive aggressive, and didn’t like Florence much even while she was still alive (whether he was aware of her affair or not).  He knew good and well she wanted an estate in England, and was well able to afford to give her one, and I think his keeping her on the continent was as much a malicious way to “punish” her for being weak and sick as it was out of her concern for her heart.

This is why I never read a review before reading the book. I never write a review either because I don’t wanna print an influence on some other reader. I prefer to let everyone experience the lecture as they wish and feel. We all try to relate to what we read and this si why we won’t have the same opinion. I loved this book. I loved it because I felt as if someone was inside my head telling the story as seen trough my eyes. This doesn’t mean I found the way the author wrote it as being excellent. It missed some aspects.
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