THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Maddox Ford - denial, suspence, psychology and marital dysfunction

It was an interesting discussion as usual at the Houston Central Market Book Club on Monday, October 12, 2009. We discussed THE GOOD SOLDER by Ford Maddox Ford. As usually the case, I had a much better understanding of the book by the time we finished the discussion. Jackie led the discussion of ten attendees starting with a question about the first sentence of the book which is a famous one: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." She asked "what is the sad part?".

I thought the first responder in our group was very enlightening when she noted that this sentence used the word "heard" at the end of it indicating that the narrator of the story was distancing himself from the story when in fact, he was a very key participant and not just one on the periphery listening. This was one of the first indicators of the immense denial that the narrator suffered from.

Others in our group described him as a "pushover" and also as guilty of "lying by omission". The comment about "lying" led Jackie to ask us about the credibility of the narrator. Did we believe him? Was he telling us the truth? It was noted that at one point, the narrator whose name is Dowell tells us that Florence, his wife, was never out of his site and then shortly after that, he comments that in fact, yes, she definitely was out of his site, especially since she locked her bedroom door every evening, a bedroom that was not shared by both the narrator and his wife. What are we to think?

In response to this, we also talked about how the narrator changed his opinions numerous times from one extreme to another as he told the story. The key characters about whom his opinions changed were Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, a married couple whom the narrator classifies, numerous times as "good people". It was their dysfunctional marriage and the fact they were so mismatched that was also an example of the "saddest story" in my opinion. At times, the narrator loves them and other times, he hates them. It was at this point, I think that it became clear or clearer to me that the author was showing the "silent reader" how someone can psychologically change their mind based on events, change again and change once more. It happens. It was pointed out that this is actually a very realistic type of phenomenon. That people have both good and "dark sides" which is a theme that I greatly enjoy reading about whenever it comes up and it comes up very often in Great Books (uppercase "G" and "B").

And Edward Ashburnham definitely had a dark side. Initially, the report by the narrator is negative and in my opinion, it grows more positive and then with a diversion represented by a "vulgar" affair, becomes negative again with a final conclusion of being positive. (And maybe even more changes back and forth than what I've described here.) I don't want to provide any "spoilers", i.e. details that will impact the suspense that someone will experience not knowing how this ends so I won't continue further with events concerning Edwards mistakes or missteps or with events that were positive. But we are privy to quite a bit of information in this regard which basically constitutes most of the substance of the book.

Reading this, one might ask, what makes this story special since immoral characters or ambivalent ones are very commonplace in literature. We talked about one of the key aspects of the story being the way the author has the narrator ramble back and forth in time. It is somewhat confusing but I believe the author is simply letting us participate in the confusion the narrator experiences as he reflects on what has happened. We are viewing how the narrator arrives at an understanding about himself and the other characters. This is often something that happens in real life only after some "mulling over" or ruminating about details until things become clear. And oftentimes, the ruminating is not "linear" but instead consists of re-tracing occurrances trying to view them from different sides from the viewpoint of different people recognizing ones own lack of certainty along the way, something that the narrator does very often. This is the best part, I think - the part where the reader is privy to the psychological machinations of the narrator's mind, how it works at arriving at conclusions about himself and others after being in denial for so many years, at least twelve to be exact which was the number of years he was married to Florence. The author describes this psychological journey very well, in my opinion.

We covered details about the nine years that the narrator didn't remember really doing anything. One attendee suggested that he might be gay and I agreed this might be a possibility or at least thought that he was passive and effeminate because of his references to inadequacies in the realm of "sexual instincts". The narrator was married to Florence who didn't love him, and who was an invalid because of a heart condition or at least this is what we are led to believe in the first part. This caused the narrator to basically become her nursemaid, something that he did very well but he owns up to the fact that if he had a choice, this was not something he wanted to be.

Jackie led us back to her earlier question asking us again about "What kind of an unreliable narrator was he?" I spoke about his unreliability being due to the fact that he was not consciously aware of his real feelings and hence this ignorance impacted his reliabilty. How can you be credible about things you don't know or understand? Someone else mentioned that they couldn't imagine him not on some level understanding that his wife was deceiving him. I wonder if this isn't the weakest part of the story, that the author really stretched credulity in having us believe the narrator was deceived for so long. There were many in the group who nodded their heads at this point.

Other parts of the story we discussed included:

• the character of his wife Florence. There was quite a bit to talk about here.
• the character of Leonora, Edward's wife. There was even more to talk about here.
• the theme of a woman's role being either a "madonna" or "whore" except for Leonora who started out as a "madonna" and ended up as a "whore" or worse (the way the narrator describes her) as a "normal person".
• the predicament of women, especially Catholic women in not having Divorce as an option in a bad marriage
• the theme of "good people" and how their appearances were very civilized but beneath their surface, very much less so. Someone in the group said she wouldn't mind living in the time the story covers (early 20th century) if she could have been one of the "good people" and everyone laughed.
• the theme of being British versus being American which we concluded the author wrong on some of his points
• what is meant by the term "sentimentalist" as the narrator described Edward
• lesser female characters who were part of Edwards extra-marital life including the servant girl in the Kilsyte case, the mistress of the Duke, Mrs. Basil and Maisie and Nancy Rufford
• Jimmy - who was a lesser male character without any dialog in the story but important in his participation in the deception of the narrator
• the character of Nancy Rufford who was the ward of Leonora and definitely a female character falling in the category of being a "madonna"
• the ways in which Leonora and Edward were different - regarding business and their idea of loyalty when it wasn't in their own self-interest
• what happens to the characters in the end (which I don't want to explain here so those who haven't read this won't have the ending spoiled)
• the theme of Catholicism which was mentioned many times (We didn't spend as much time talking about this as we probably should have.)

In going around the room at the end of the discussion when everyone has a chance to make final comments, I learned that many didn't like the book very much. But I will conclude my report here by saying that I loved the book. I may go so far as to say it is one of the top ten best books that I have ever read but I probably need to think about that a bit more. I make no claim that this report does justice to this classic. Hope anyone reading this takes time to read the book for themselves and enjoys it as much as I did.

A couple of the other attendees seemed to enjoy it as much as I did which I was glad about so I didn't feel so out of tune. Someone else had said to me they thought it was a soap opera which I don't disagree but I have never read (or seen) a soap opera with the complexity of characters described along with the complexity of the narrator's mental processes described so well and so realistically. And it was also pointed out in our discussion that there was some humor included along the way mostly in the form of British understatements. I hope to read more by this author. Books like this really contribute to my being grateful that I belong to this discussion group.

Besides the discussion, we also elected new books for our reading list. Check out our web page at http://www.houstonbookclubs.org/CentralMarket to see the list. (Though it may take me a week or so to get the dates coordinated and posted so stay tuned. Haven't done this yet as of this writing.)

Looking forward to our next discussion of THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene next time, November 9, 2009 at 7:00pm in the Community Room upstairs at Houston Central Market.