The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Although Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier is a story about infidelity and betrayal, it is also about the mind frame of Dowell, the narrator. This is evident in the narrative style Ford uses. Dowell’s disorganized tale shows that he has lost his sense of reason and order, and is quite confused. His confusion can be attributed to the realization of his wife adultery and the circumstances of his discovery. Therefore, the story is about two set of crisis: the characters’ lives and Dowell’s psychological state. And to understand the crisis in the characters’ life, you have to understand the confusion in Dowell’s mentality.


Virginia Woolf is quoted in Ian Watt’s "Impressionism and Symbolism in Ford, Conrad, Crane": “if we "look within" ourselves, we see "a myriad impressions" quite unrelated to anything that goes on in such fiction; and if we could express "this unknown and "uncircumscribed spirit" of life freely, "there would be no plot, no comedy. No tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style.... Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.” (Watt 255-56)And in his essay “Ford’s Literary Technique,” John A. Meixner agrees with Woolf saying “characters in their effort to find the key to unlock meaning, may recall past circumstances, but their persons and the incidents in which they take part are confined within the basic movement of an advancing present” (Meixner 261). 

Since Dowell is reflecting about past incidents and writing a supposedly self-conscious letter, it’s understandable that he forgoes the idea of plot, as he isn’t writing fiction. And since he is recording the events after the have happened, the present – his current understanding of the occurrences—interferes with his tale—the past. He himself says

“I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it… when one discusses an affair—a long, sad affair—one goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. I console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best I the way a person telling a story would tell them. They will then seem most real.” (Ford 125)

And according to Woolf world, life isn’t structural perfect; it’s filled with chaos and disorder. Hence the reason his tale is structurally and literally chaotic.

The story begins with a declaration from the narrator, “this is the saddest story I have ever heard,” an indication that it’s a tale of self-consciousness (Ford 9). The use of the first person point of view indicates that the narrator, who the reader later finds to be Dowell, has some unburdening to do. After all, the first person point of view is the most intimate way to narrate a story, as the narrator’s main goal is to confide in the reader. However, 1st person POV is always limiting, as readers are not privy to other characters’ thoughts and emotions, and are only subjected to the narrator’s view of the event. And this is one of the reasons why The Good Soldier is both restrictive and awkward and why Dowell is an unreliable narrator.

Minus the narrating technique, Dowell as a character adds to the confusion in the story. Dowell is a naïve man who can’t seem to make a decision on his own and has no idea who he really is. Irony lies in the fact that although this story might seem to be a self-conscious story, like I earlier said, Dowell isn’t actually self-conscious. He poses as if he does understand himself or what’s happening and tries his best to convince the reader but he doesn’t actually comprehend his strengths and weaknesses. His statement “I don’t know that analysis of my psychology matters at all to this story,” is a bigger irony as the understanding of his psychological mind-frame is what connects the dot in the story and provides the total picture in the unraveling of the story (Ford 75). Dowell also immediately undercuts any discovery he offers and confesses his lack of knowledge: “I know nothing—nothing—of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone—horribly alone… in the name of God, what should I know if I don’t know the life of the hearth and of the smoking room…?” (Ford 12) From the beginning of the tale, the reader begins to wonder if Dowell’s account of the story is actually true.

Dowell also fluctuate from finding others at fault, almost like he can’t decide which party is at fault. On Florence actions, he says “I suppose it was my own fault, what followed” when Florence “embraced” him, even though he realized that “she had not any remorse. She was only anxious to carry out her plans” relieving Florence of the blame of actually deceiving him into marrying her (Ford 63). He also provide his burst of anger towards Julius as the reason why Florence is deceptive: “it affirmed in her the desperate resolve to conceal from me the fact that she was not what she would have called “a pure woman” (Ford 63, 68). In as much as he, clearly, thinks negatively about Florence’s deception, he continues to proffer the reasons for her actions.

He also refuses to hold Edward Ashburnham responsible for his actions, offering “perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not give her the comfort of his physical attractions” as the reason for Edward philandering and asks the reader “I trust I have not, in talking of his liabilities, given the impression that poor Edward was a promiscuous libertine. He was not; he was a sentimentalist” (Ford 69, 47). And even when Edward commits suicide, Dowell refuses to hold Edward accountable for his death, instead Dowell holds Leonara and Nancy responsible, saying “it was as if Leonara and Nancy banded themselves together to do execution, for the sake of humanity, upon the body of a man who was at their disposal…. I tell you there was no end to the tortures they inflicted on him.” However, he absolves Leonara in the same breath saying “I don’t think that Leonara was any more to blame than the girl… Leonara…was the perfectly normal woman” (Ford 159). So, who then is responsible for Edward’s suicide? Dowell can’t seem to decide.

Dowell also continually calls Nancy Rufford “the girl,” objectifying her. According to him, “Edward always called her “the girl” and it was very pretty, the evident affection he had for him and she for him” (Ford 70). Even though Dowell says he really love Nancy, one does wonder if it’s really true. And if Leonara never said “Of course you might marry her,” would he have ever thought of Nancy in a romantic way? (Ford 75) His reply “whom” and the following reason “for I had never had the slightest conscious idea of marrying the girl; I never had the slightest idea even of caring for her” suggest that the possibility that he might not have that inclination (Ford 75).

His fickle mind is confirmed when he claims that the only two people he ever loved is Edward and Nancy, yet in the earlier part of the novel, he professes his love Leonara, although not in a sexual way: “I loved Leonara always and, today, I would very cheerfully lay down my life, what is left of it, in her service” (Ford 29). I believe Dowell has no understanding of what love is and doesn’t really love anyone. He mixes other strong emotion with love. He needs Florence, not for love but for the idea and institution of marriage. He says that from the moment he met Florence at the Stuyvesants in Fourteenth “I determined with all the obstinacy of a possibly weaker nature, if not to make her mine, at least to marry her” (59). He admires and secretly wants to be like Edward, recognizes the kindred spirit in Leonara – she was in the same predicament he is in: both in a loveless marriage with partners who cheat and have a “heart” –and is drawn to her, and Nancy is the replacement for Florence. He doesn’t love Nancy, only the idea of being married to her. He also loves the idea of a nursemaid to the women in his life, hence the reason he is willing to care for Nancy at the end. Since he feels like that his mission in life is to be Florence’s nurse, it’s only normal that he finds a replacement for her place in order to get a bearing on his life. He tells the reader

“I suppose you will retort that I was in love with Nancy Rufford …. I was in love with Nancy Rufford as I am in love with the poor child’s memory…. I don’t mean to say I sighed about her or groaned; I just wanted to marry her as some people want to go to Carcassonne …. Do you understand the feeling—the sort of feeling that you must get certain things out of the way, smooth out certain fairly negligible complications before you go to a place that has, during all your life, been a sort of dream city.” (Ford 89)

Yet he claims to have loved Leonara, Nancy, Edward and Maisie Maidan, although not in a consistent manner. With each confession or statement, Dowell further shows that he is an unreliable narrator.

Work Cited

Ford, Ford Madox. “The Good Soldier.” The Good Soldier. Ed. Martin Stannard. New York: Norton, 1995. 9-169. Print.

Meixner, John A. “Ford’s Literary Technique.” The Good Soldier. Ed. Martin Stannard. New York: Norton, 1995. 260-266. Print.

Watt, Ian. “Impressionism and Symbolism in Ford, Conrad, Crane.” The Good Soldier. Ed. Martin Stannard. New York: Norton, 1995. 255-259. Print.