The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion
Ford Madox Ford
Language: English
Pages: 226
ISBN: 1517267889
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Good Soldier 30th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Set just before World War I, the novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order, through a rather unreliable narrator; for as it turns out, the story is not what we are led to believe at the beginning. The novel’s original title was “The Saddest Story”, from the novels opening lines “This is the saddest story I have ever heard”; however, with the onset of World War I, the publishers asked Ford for a new title, to which he sarcastically suggested “The Good Soldier”, and so it was named.
like that ... But our excursion to M—was a much larger, a much more full dress affair. You see, in the archives of the Schloss in that city there was a document which Florence thought would finally give her the chance to educate the whole lot of us together. It really worried poor Florence that she couldn’t, in matters of culture, ever get the better of Leonora. I don’t know what Leonora knew or what she didn’t know, but certainly she was always there whenever Florence brought out any
eye-openers enough. When we re-entered the Hurlbird mansion at eight o’clock the Hurlbirds were just exhausted. Florence had a hard, triumphant air. We had got married about four in the morning and had sat about in the woods above the town till then, listening to a mocking-bird imitate an old tom-cat. So I guess Florence had not found getting married to me a very stimulating process. I had not found anything much more inspiring to say than how glad I was, with variations. I think I was too dazed.
the tables again. Take a good sleep now and come and see me this afternoon.’ He slept till the lunch-hour. By that time Leonora had heard the news. A Mrs. Colonel Whelan had told her. Mrs. Colonel Whelan seems to have been the only sensible person who was ever connected with the Ashburnhams. She had argued it out that there must be a woman of the harpy variety connected with Edward’s incredible behaviour and mien; and she advised Leonora to go straight off to Town—which might have the effect of
The ship gets stopped and there are all sorts of shouts. And Edward would not promise not to do it again, though, fortunately, they struck a streak of cooler weather when they were in the Persian Gulf. Leonora had got it into her head that Edward was trying to commit suicide, so I guess it was pretty awful for her when he would not give the promise. Leonora ought never to have been on that troopship; but she got there somehow, as an economy. Major Basil discovered his wife’s relation with Edward
establish in Waterbury “some sort of institution for the relief of sufferers from the heart” (p. 163). Perhaps we can say that “having a heart” in a nonmedical sense means to have a share of humanity, and in turn that may imply a healthy sexuality. Florence lacks heart in that sense, using her spurious heart condition to ban sexual relations with her husband. If we were to take the word in its most metaphorical application, we could say that both she and Ashburnham actually did die of heart