Two couples – the Dowells and the Ashburnhams – live a life of luxury and idleness in pre-World War I Europe. To narrator John Dowell, they represent the height of civilization. Spa treatments, educational tours of nearby landmarks, dressing for dinner, and accepting the deference of servants and hoteliers are all the ‘nice’ things that ‘nice’ people do. But Dowell gradually exposes the reality behind the façade – the self-appointed superiority of British Protestants; the desperate economies that prop up vanished family fortunes; the seduction, infidelity, madness, and suicide that these ‘nice’ people are capable of.
The Good Soldier broke new ground in storytelling by giving the narrator late and incomplete understanding of the events he has witnessed, and by retelling the key episodes with the subtle differences that come with dawning comprehension. At the beginning, Dowell informs the reader that he is going to tell the story as if he is sitting by the fire with a sympathetic listener, and that is what he does – flashing forward, making side comments about the other characters and about himself, lightly touching on asonishing revelations, but at all times keeping as his focus the detailed destruction of the five people involved.
Ford’s sure hand guides Dowell in his narration, turning him from a passive, chaste innocent into an embittered man barely suppressing his rage even as he upholds the noblesse oblige that traps him. Like an jeweler shaping a stone, Ford holds each character, save one, to the light of his examination. The work he does polishing each facet is not to reveal beauty in the individual, but to show the complexity of each character and the rottenness at the heart of each one. As a psychological examination, this is a masterwork.
As you might imagine, this is not the stuff of pageturners. Dowell is frequently more interested in the motives of the Ashburnhams than in what they do. His nonlinear narration makes it difficult to keep precise track of events in order. He himself is filled with self-pity, self-deception, class and religious bigotry, and a willful blindness towards the faults of those ‘nice’ people. But the growing sense of disaster and gathering doom that portends not only the destruction of the Dowells and the Ashburnhams but of their entire way of life becomes a compelling reason to continue reading.
It is difficult to imagine much of 20th Century British and American literature without Ford as a major influence. I’m not a literary historian (and I didn’t stay at Holiday Inn Express), but I think Ford led the way in breaking the narrator free of omniscience, in breaking the rigid storyline from it’s A-B-C requirements, and in prying into the depths of human psychology without judging or moralizing. As an editor, sponsor, and collaborator, his work with Conrad, Hemingway, and Lawrence maintained the continuum from the late 19th Century into the explosively creative 1920’s. As an author, The Good Soldier stands easily with the best in modern writing, and deserves consideration by any reader.
Or place a reservation for the Gab Bag
Blogging for a Good Book 
Fabulous book. Thanks for blogging it. The British Modernists (think DH Lawrence, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh) are amongst my very favorite writers, and FMF is right up there. For these folks, plot usually takes secondary importance to style and theme– a turnoff to some readers, but for those who don’t need a lot of action, FMF and his ilk are absolutely wonderful, better than most of the Literary Fiction writers we have today. (Just my opinion…)
This book started off weird but I eventually got into it it was a good book. The title The Saddest Story made sence too.Whats the Literary period though? And the setting?
Ford (and I hope you don’t mind if I use his first name*) was a contemporary of Joseph Conrad, and both are most often characterized by critics of British literature as Early Modern writers. They embraced the theme of change and turned the more traditional Victorians on their heads, while paving the way for more experimental writers who dealt with the enormity of changes in the first half of the 20th century. So I think Jessica’s placement of them as Modernists holds up, but I’d also say that they were the grand old men of the Modernist movement. (The young Ernest Hemingway, who initially admired Ford, later felt stifled by him and began ridiculing him, which I believe affected Ford’s subsequent literary reputation.)
As to the setting of the novel, there are several: Dowell is telling the story from the ancestral home of the Ashburnhams, where he is living. The story opens in Germany, but the Dowells and Ashburnhams travel throughout Europe. Dowell meets his wife Florence in Philadelphia. However, it isn’t the geographical setting that is important to the story – the social settings of spa, club, estate, drawing room, officers’ mess – are far more important. Those are the places where standards of public behavior are set and enforced, even as they are being violated in secret.
*One of my favorite literary jokes, which I repeat ad nauseam whenever the topic comes up.
[…] for me. Something more highbrow? Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier. This is the saddest story I have ever […]