Structure and texture in the "Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford

Résumé du document

The Good Soldier is a novel written in 1914 by Ford Madox Ford and published in March 1915. This novel is considered as the best book of pre-war period. It is also considered as a modernist work, and in fact, many modernist innovations, as well as impressionist ones, are present throughout the novel. Ford Madox Ford gave to his novel a very particular structure and texture, and consequently, it would be interesting to see to what extent the themes of the novel are present through the analysis of the structure, that is to say "the overall principle of organisation in a work" , and of the texture, which means "the surface qualities of the words in a passage, considered apart from their meaning." The narrator, Dowell, is a deceived husband who writes his story in order to understand why his life and the world in which he lives have become a real chaos. The first aspect of the novel to be studied is that this chaos is embodied by the chaotic structure Dowell gives to his narrative. The second aspect will be devoted to Dowell's quest for interpreting this chaos and for finding solutions against it through the themes of appearances, religion, and passion. The last aspect will deal with the process of writing, both for Dowell and Ford, how writing help them to meditate on human experiences and knowledge, to reproduce reality, and finally to question reality.

Extraits

[...] Indeed, Ford is mirroring Dowell's moral confusion with narrative confusion: Good Soldier is a novel of two crises: one of man's moral order and one of narrative structure. Dowell's disorganized tale is evidence of a mind that has lost all sense of order and reason.”[46] So novels have to reproduce the human soul and the exact train of thoughts of the characters so that these latter appears more realistic: “Character changed, we have noted, along with “reality” [ . ] Character became a question of the strange processes of consciousness, the unclear boundaries of the self, the vagaries of human perception.”[47] Because of this other modernist aspect, characters became people like everybody, they have nothing extraordinary, and they are not heroes anymore. [...]

[...] Nancy did the same and suppressed her love for Edward and she became mad. Moreover, Dowell also tends to assign people to categories like normal and abnormal. The word is found seventeen times in the last two parts of the novel on pages 102 (two times) 152(five times), 153(four times) (three times) and 161. Edward is normal and Leonora perfectly normal woman”[33]. However, Dowell eventually forced to the realization that “normality” is something which does not exist”[34], and that assigning people to categories does not help him to restore order to a chaotic world. [...]

[...] Since the original title for The Good Soldier was Saddest Story”, I think that one can say that this story is the saddest because of passion. But it is also saddest story” because no one has gotten what he or she wanted. Florence never got Bramshaw Teleragh; Leonora never got Edward's love; Edward never got Nancy; and Nancy never got Edward. As for Dowell, he did not succeed in finding the interpretations and the solutions he was looking for: events of the past constitute the saddest story because he can neither discern a pattern in them nor find a protection against their repetition. [...]

[...] (See appendix Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (London: Penguin Books, 1996) 104. Jesse Matz, The Modern Novel: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ptd, 2004) 61. (See appendix Jesse Matz, The Modern Novel: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ptd, 2004) 39. (See appendix Vincent J. Cheng, Chronology of The Good Soldier,” in Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915; New York and London: Norton, 1995) 384. Mark Schorer, Good Soldier as Comedy,” in Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915; New York and London: Norton, 1995) 305. [...]

[...] It makes no doubt that for Dowell, this story is a real tragedy. He uses the word “tragedy” five times in the novel on page (two times) and 151. It is true that the novel possesses some of the melodramatic elements that are proper to tragedies. Three characters of the novel die, one becomes mad, and the narrator is depressed by what he discovered that is to say by limitations of human life”. However, an ambiguity does exist since The Good Soldier also possesses comical elements. [...]