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much. Florence eventually dies, stated by Dowell to be suicide. If readers suspend their trust in the narrator, some may be left with the impression that the narrator is happy his wife dies, as he does little to prevent it; just as he does little throughout the entire book. Thus, behind the more or less explicit narrative lurks a possible counter-narrative in which Dowell is something of a sociopath, caring for no one but himself, an observer of others who are living more fully while never actively engaging very intensely in life himself, and indeed, perhaps a voyeur relishing the demise of others. This would be the story of a manipulative man trying to elicit the sympathy of the audience he speaks/writes to, which must decide whether he is a deluded victim or a heartless manipulator of the reader's emotions.
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may have abused her. Edward, tearing himself apart because he does not want to spoil Nancy's innocence, arranges to have her sent to India to live with her father, even though this frightens her terribly. Once
Leonora knows that Edward intends to keep his passion for Nancy chaste, only wanting Nancy to continue to love him from afar, she torments him by making this wish impossible. She pretends to offer to divorce him so he can marry Nancy but informs Nancy of his sordid sexual history, destroying Nancy's innocent love for him. After Nancy's departure, Edward receives a telegram from her that reads, "Safe
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591:"by the end of the novel Dowell has tested the limits of rational explanation. He has interpreted character by religion, nationality, gender and the calendar. Dowell's disillusionment follows the arc of modernism; he begins with presuppositions typical of much Victorian characterization: the individual conditioned by circumstance, composed of intelligible motives, susceptible to moral analysis-the justified self. Then, confronted with the singularity of desire, his 'generalizations' totter and fall."
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in order that she could continue her affair with an
American artist named Jimmy. Edward and Leonora have an unbalanced marriage broken by his constant infidelities (both of body and heart) and by Leonora's attempts to control Edward's affairs (both financial and romantic). Dowell is an innocent American who is coming to realise how much he has been fooled as Florence and Edward had an affair under his nose for nine years without his knowing until Florence was dead.
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Religious references are omnipresent throughout the book. Leonora is an Irish
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Florence supposedly poisons herself in a possibly painful manner, and Edward supposedly cuts his own throat, but as always in this novel, we only have Dowell's word for it, and he epitomises the "unreliable narrator." The reader must decide just how much of the truth Dowell reveals. Some commentators
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Dowell ends up generally unsure about where to lay the blame, but expressing sympathy for Edward because he believes himself similar to Edward in nature. The fact is he has been disengaged, a voyeur. While the other characters are flawed, he has never participated in life. He is revealed as less than
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phrase meaning "I believe in an omnipotent God" and the word "shuttlecocks." Dowell states that the story is sad because no one got what they wanted. Leonora wanted Edward but lost him and ended in marrying the normal (but dull) Rodney Bayham. Edward wanted Nancy but gave her up then lost her. Dowell
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Edward's last affair is his most scandalous as he becomes infatuated with Nancy. Nancy came to live with the
Ashburnhams after leaving a convent where her parents had sent her; her mother was a violent alcoholic and her father (it is later suggested that this man may not be Nancy's biological father)
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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 novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life, specifically “the agonies Ford went through with his
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Dowell tells the story of Edward and
Leonora's relationship which appears normal to others but which is a power struggle that Leonora wins. Dowell narrates several of Edward's affairs and peccadilloes including his possibly innocent attempt to comfort a crying servant on a train, his affair with the
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As it turns out, nothing in the relationships or in the characters is as it first seems. Florence's heart ailment is a fiction she perpetrated on John to ensure that he did not seek intimacy from her as it would seemingly be too stressful for her heart, and so to keep him out of her bedroom at night
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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, plus the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion. As an unreliable
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Friend of the
Dowells and husband of Leonora. Ashburnham is a hopeless romantic who keeps falling in love with the women he meets; he is at Nauheim for the treatment of a heart problem, but the ailment is not real, he used it as an excuse to follow a female heart patient to Nauheim. He is Dowell's
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Florence's affair with Edward leads her to commit suicide when she realises both that Edward is falling in love with his and
Leonora's young ward, Nancy Rufford, and that Dowell has found out about her affair with Jimmy. Florence sees Edward and Nancy in an intimate conversation and rushes back to
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The novel opens with the famous line: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." Dowell explains that for nine years he, his wife
Florence and their friends Captain Edward Ashburnham (the "good soldier" of the book's title) and his wife Leonora, had an ostensibly normal friendship while Edward
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The novel has potential narrative inconsistencies that suggest different, hidden plot elements. For example, Dowell marries an heiress who ostensibly has a bad heart. He states repeatedly that he has no need or interest in her money—one might argue that he protests his lack of interest rather too
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How well can we judge the characterisations in the novel when Dowell is such an unreliable narrator? A question to consider is whether he presented himself in a true light or manipulated his description of events to prevent the reader from discovering his true character.
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A young, pretty, married woman with whom Edward fell in love. Leonora pays for her treatment for a weak heart at
Nauheim, knowing that Edward would follow her there. Maisie's heart gives way after she hears Florence and Edward talking about her disparagingly and she
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John Dowell's wife and a scheming, manipulative, unfaithful woman who uses Dowell for his money while pursuing her affairs on the side. She fakes a heart ailment to get what she wants out of her husband and has a lengthy affair with Edward
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with a kept woman known as La
Dolciquita. Edward's philandering ends up costing them a fortune in bribes, blackmail and gifts for his lovers leading Leonora to take control of Edward's financial affairs. She gradually gets him out of debt.
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The young ward of the Ashburnhams; Edward falls in love with Nancy after he tires of Florence. Eventually, Edward arranges for Nancy to be sent to India to live with her father, but she goes mad en route when she learns of Edward's
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have even suggested that Dowell, who presents himself as considered by all to be passive, murders both Florence and Edward. In this view the entire story is his justification for doing so without his admitting his guilt.
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The novel's last section has Dowell writing from Edward's old estate in England where he takes care of Nancy whom he cannot marry because of her mental illness. Nancy is only capable of repeating two things—a
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A Spanish dancer (The Grand Duke's mistress) who is Edward's first sexual affair. Although he believes himself to be romantically attached to her, he quickly becomes disillusioned by her thirst for his
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the resort where she sees John talking to a man she used to know (and who knows of her affair with Jimmy). Assuming that her relationship with Edward and her marriage to John are over, Florence takes
243:. Having a rattling good time. Nancy." He asks Dowell to take the telegram to his wife, pulls out his pen knife, says that it's time he had some rest and slits his own throat. When Nancy reaches
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narrator the reader can consider whether they believe Dowell and his description of how the events unfolded including his own role in the "saddest story ever told".
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build a Catholic chapel on his property for Leonora and who would have converted to Catholicism had he been spurred to it by his wife, who remains indifferent.
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the foolish innocent he represents himself as, when he walks away, leaving Edward to slit his throat with a very small pen knife.
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married Maisie Maidan, the one character in the book whose heart problem was unquestionably real, and his bizarre tryst in
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and Florence sought treatment for their heart ailments at a spa in
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Levenson, Michael (1984). "Character in The Good Soldier".
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The Saddest Story or The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion
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587:However
459:removed
444:sources
335:Please
224:Antibes
208:Nauheim
181:ranked
169:ranked
67:English
1150:(1915)
1126:(1903)
1118:(1901)
1099:(1928)
1091:(1926)
1083:(1925)
1075:(1924)
996:
878:
872:441407
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705:
570:money.
563:death.
530:Quaker
392:biased
46:Author
876:S2CID
868:JSTOR
812:. BBC
754:JSTOR
577:dies.
257:Latin
75:Novel
72:Genre
994:IMDb
932:BBC
818:2015
789:ISBN
765:2023
703:ISBN
623:and
442:any
440:cite
245:Aden
222:and
145:wife
992:at
980:at
966:at
860:doi
607:by
453:by
394:or
179:BBC
1166::
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856:30
854:.
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1044:e
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