Books Blog: English Literature & Linguistics

In his dedicatory letter of The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford writes about the effort that went into perfecting his final novel. He wrote into it an “intricate tangle of references and cross references” using his own experience as fuel and ambition as fire. Ford believes that The Good Soldier is his finest craftsmanship:

“It is the finest French novel in the English Language” (lvii).

However, I feel that The Good Soldier sinks heavily under the weight of the author’s hand. He is trying too hard with word and letter to achieve impossible effects.

First, Ford uses paired intimate words which are deliberately similar in appearance and organization. The effect is jarring, rather than subtle. For example, take the phrase “good glove’s,” used to describe the narrator’s relationship to the Ashburnhams (3). It breaks the parallelism of the previous pair “loose and easy,” and ruins the flow of the sentence. You have to read “good glove’s” at least twice, letter by letter, because both words are roughly the same length, contain two vowels, start with the same consonant, and have one letter that extends above the mid-line. Why break the glove? I see no purpose here. He does the same thing, but worse, with “quite quiet” describing the disposition of the same Ashburnhams (4). Why use a single-letter inversion to confuse the words? Is there something hidden that we should look to, in the context of this construction?

Second, Ford uses grandiose self-praising hyperbole. Rather than wait until his work is publish and critically reviewed, he writes his own review into the narrative. This comes off as purely arrogant, rather than intellectual. Take, for example, his reference to the Aeneid:

“You may well ask why I write. […] It is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down what they have witnessed” (5, italics mine)

The Aeneid is told from the point of view of Aeneas who just witnessed the fall and sack of his home city Troy and then leads a band of stragglers to found Rome. Thus, the preceding paragraph attempts to associate the narrator with the great epic poet Virgil. The guile of it is such that an ordinary reader ought not notice the reference, so that it can serve as a private arrogance. Unfortunately, to anyone moderately well-read, this and many others are clear as daybreak, and distract from the story.

I didn’t want to write immediate comments about the end of D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love until I’d had some time to think it over. My conclusion is that D.H. Lawrence is giving us a three-layer mixed message about homosexuality, higher love, and homosexuality again. He throws out the theme of plain homosexuality to bait the reader, but then hopes that we’ll see a higher message about pure love. Finally, we’re left with an obstinate question—“Can’t you have two kinds of love?”—that leads us back to a wistful homo/bi-sexual yearning (421).

I offer the following passages as evidence. First, Birkin’s post-Gerald love confession to Ursula offers a strong pro-homosexuality position:

“He should have loved me,” he said. “I offered him.”
She, afraid, white, with mute lips answered:
“What difference would it have made!”
“It would!” he said. “It would.” (420)

Because Birkin offers his love to a man and his woman asks rhetorically what difference it would have made, his descendent reply “It would” gathers more force. We’re convinced by the end of the passage that a Birkin-Gerald union would indeed transcend the sad events surrounding his death and the interplay of heterosexual love.

But, we cannot assume that D.H. Lawrence is so obvious. He cannot be simply advocating homosexual love in reflection of his personal lifestyle. There’s more at stake here than that. The real message is about higher love. Birkin says,

“To make it complete, really happy, I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love.” (421)

In this passage, homosexuality is secondary and subordinate to the notion of “another kind of love.” We finally feel that D.H. Lawrence is reaching for something higher than base sexuality by expression through Birkin’s voiced thoughts.

The final paragraph confuses me:

“You can’t have two kinds of love. Why should you!”
“It seems as if I can’t ,” he said. “Yet I wanted it.” (421)

This has little to do with high love, but rather bisexuality, loving both a man and a woman at the same time. This splits the point. We now are left wondering “if there’s a higher love” and “if a man can love twice at once.” Maybe we’re supposed to fold both into one and assume that “the higher love is loving a man and woman at once,” but there’s nothing to tie them together, and we end the book feeling … confused?

Melanie Spiller wonders why some words have one meaning, while others have yet another, for sets of very similar words. She gives definitions, but I’m going to bring out the derivations from the OED:

Adapt v. Adopt:

Adapt is from the latin ad + aptare, to fit for yourself. Adopt comes from latin ad optare, to choose for yourself. The common prefix is now understandable, and the difference is in the “apt” or “opt,” both of which now stand on their own.

Accede v. Exceed:

Accede is from the latin ad + cedere, to move on. Exceed is from the latin ex + cedere, to move [go] out. This time, the words differ by prefix rather than suffix, one bringing something in, the other moving out.

Infamous v. Notorious:

Infamous is from the latin word famosus, for fame. Notorious is from classical latin, notoria–a written notice informing a crime. Thus, the two are basically indistinguishable, though have come to have slightly different connotations in modern form.