The Concept Of Marriage And Family In The Good Soldier By Ford Madox Ford
Marriage is usually being defined as a socially or ritually recognized union between spouses that also establishes rights and obligations between them, as well as between them and any children brought into the family. It takes many forms, varying all around the world as it mostly depends on the religion or the culture - in some regions being even compulsory. It is considered as a cultural universal and has many reasons for happening, love being only one of them. It was actually described as ‘triumph of hope over experience’. Throughout centuries of history, marriage has not changed or adapted drastically, as only now its traditional form is being redefined and roles of spouses being more equal. It was quite typical to want to get married just out of need or desire to be married as it was often thought that any marriage is better than no marriage at all. The concept of both marriage and family are recurrent themes throughout the modern drama and are often used as devices to portray social fears and conventions and provide insight into the functioning of human interaction when it is at its most intimate stage. The manipulation and subversion of marital ideals can be used by dramatists as leverage, usually of emotional kind, an aspect with which the entire audience can relate, while also putting these themes to more divisive purposes as vehicles to convey social and political meanings and what they bring. Even though modern drama is broad both when it comes to location and social fundaments, the exploration of marriage and marital relationships is vivid and significant on many layers, especially as it is a reflection of specific social rules principles. The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion written by Ford Madox Ford is a novel set just before World War I as it chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends. The novel is told using a series of flashbacks in non-chronological order as it employs the device of the unreliable narrator to great effect as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads the reader to believe.
The Good Soldier is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the story of those dissolutions and the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion. As an unreliable narrator, the character is telling his story in a subjective manner, everything is affected by his feelings or judgements, and whether his perception of events is true or know is up to the reader to decide. Dowell starts his story with an explanation that, for nine years, he, his wife Florence, and their friends Edward Ashburnham and his wife Leonora had an ostensibly normal friendship while both Edward and Florence sought treatment for their forged heart ailments. John Dowell could be described as a simple, but gullible man, being too faithful in people and ignorant of their flaws. Ultimately, he is mistaken in almost everything about Florence. There was no romance even at the beginning of their marriage. They met each other and shortly after they decided to get married. And for Florence marriage is not about love. Florence knowingly enters into a marriage she has no intention of honouring. In fact, Florence is already in a sexual affair when she meets her future husband, an affair that continues for several years until she takes a different lover. She had specific desires and rules of who her future husband should be - she wanted to marry a gentleman of an English accent with a specific income. That was the reason why she married Dowell. He could supply these wants, which he did. ‘She wanted to marry a gentleman of leisure; she wanted a European establishment. She wanted her husband to have an English accent, an income of fifty thousand dollars a year from real estate and no ambitions to increase that income. And — she faintly hinted – she did not want much physical passion in the affair.’ And John does not seem to mind - he agrees to marry Florence in spite of her requirements. Shortly after leaving the United States on their trip to Europe, she fakes heart problems. Once in Europe, doctors tell John that he ‘had better refrain from manifestations of affection’ to protect Florence’s heart, and John has no opinion on that - he is casually becoming nothing more than his wife’s nurse. Even though he has been warned against marrying Florence, he misunderstood her aunts' intentions. He was convinced that ‘Don’t do it, John. Don’t do it. You are a good young man’ was meant to keep him away from Florence because of her heart condition and not her inability to stay faithful. He did not pay any attention to it, he was determined to marry her - ‘I determined with all the obstinacy of a possible weak nature, if not to make her mine, at least to marry her’. Even upon reflecting on their relationship, John first states: ‘I believe that for the twelve years her life lasted, after the storm that seemed irretrievably to have weakened her heart – I don't believe that for one minute she was out of my sight, except when she was safely tucked up in bed and I should be downstairs’ yet later he changes his opinion: ‘When I come to think of it she was out of my sight most of the time.’ At first, she is also referred to as ‘poor dear wife’ and as the story unravels Dowell says that now, after knowing the truth, he feels hatred for her. He admits that Florence was a burden to him and that he did not love her. She is referred to as ‘an unattained mistress’ and ‘a goodly apple that is rotten at the core’ - showing how deceived by her he feels at the end. But John is also neutral of his wife and ignorant to her adultery most of all.
It is recreated by the way and timeline of his narration - by representing events, not in a causal sequence but as they occur to Dowell during the course of his reminiscences. He is not misleading on purpose, but he does tease the reader by revealing crucial bits of information in an off-hand way. John Dowell initially describes the time with the Ashburnhams as a beautiful minuet in which each participant is in tune with the others’ actions. He corrects himself immediately by saying it was really a prison of screaming hysterics, which highlights his coming to terms with the true history between the couples. At first, however, they were a model couple for him. Edward was a devoted husband and Leonora was ‘too good to be true’. Leonora and Edward lived a life of acting. Everyone perceived them as a perfect couple. In reality, it was far from perfect. Edward is portrayed as a passionate and romantic man and in his series of affairs, he carries over his chivalric sense of protection from his estate to the women he believes he loves. Leonora not only forgives him his wayward forays but also helps him acquire new conquests. She is relieved when the objects of affection are well-to-do since she knows there won’t be a scandal — she values the appearance of a perfect marriage more than having one. When they accompany Maisie to Nauheim, Leonora believes things are actually improving with Edward even though they no longer speak in private. The Ashburnhams’ marriage is tested early on with the Kilsyte case, in which Edward kisses a crying servant girl. Leonora rallies behind Edward, which is what he needs at the time. A few years later, Edward began a series of affairs where his passions took a physical, mental and sometimes financial toll on him. After the La Dolciquita affair cost him a huge sum, Leonora insists he transfer to India and she takes control of the couple’s finances. By economizing and extracting more money from the management of Branshaw, she improves their lot but at the cost of emasculating Edward. They are a perfect example of a toxic couple, in addition to harming those around them, the Ashburnhams also inflict massive damage to themselves. And the reason for that might be the fact that the marriage between them was arranged. Edward was always admiring Leonora, but he did not love her. He always denied all his infidelities, he wanted to ‘preserve the virginity of his wife’s thoughts’. On the other hand, Leonora loved him and she lived her life hoping that Edward would come back to her. Her perception of what a marriage should be like was entirely influenced by her religious beliefs. By condemning divorce and deeming marriage an eternal binding, Leonora’s duty to her church stands between her duty to her husband and her duty to herself. Her motives are ‘to show that Catholic women do not lose their men’. Leonora’s emotions are being forced toward hate toward her husband while her allegiance to her family and her church keep her rooted to her place in society. This drives Leonora mad as she struggles with her search for identity. Once she recovers from it, she takes her cruelty out on Edward and Nancy. In trying to drive Nancy into Edward’s bed, Leonora strips Nancy of her innocence and eventually her mind.
In addition, Edward is stripped of his manhood and ultimately his life while trying to behave properly. Edward’s cowardly death by penknife after he loses the adoration of his last affair, Nancy, is the ultimate capitulation of his wife’s power - by telling Nancy what a horrible husband Edward is, she crushes her ideals and reveals the true immorality behind Edward’s advances. In The Good Soldier, Dowell assumes faithfulness in marriage to be a very basic level of human morality. When faithfulness is questioned, all morality seems threated. ‘In all matrimonial associations, there is, I believe, one constant factor - a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career. For it is intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small meannesses. It is really death to do so - that is why so many marriages turn out unhappily.’ Dowell's gradual realization, however, is trumped by the fact that the idea of ‘good people’ seems to lose its very definition as the novel progresses. If this well-born and well-mannered English couple is not ‘good’, and if his own wife is deceiving him, then he feels he has nothing to believe in. In the absence of appearances, Dowell is left only with madness, a skewed perception of reality. Ultimately, as the novel's first-person narration shows, personal perception is all one can ever have. The Good Soldier constructs adultery as a destabilizing force in society. At its very core, it is a violation of the marriage contract and the betrayal of a promise. More deeply, adultery undermines the family structure on which the unity of the country is built. In the end, both marriages end tragically, and both marriage and its sanctifying meaning are somewhat mocked. They are completely and fully exposed as institutions which are merely situated as enabling class mobility but moreover based on deceit and immorality.
