The Art of Ambivalence: The Good Soldier

Abstract

IN his biography of Ford Madox Ford, Max Saunders tells us that apart from a passing reference to having known about?and disapproved of?The Interpretation of Dreams, there is no record of Ford's having read Freud. Saunders notes, however, that the influence of Freud's ideas about the Oedipus complex is probable. There is, I am sure, no evidence that Freud read Ford, so we cannot speak of influence in either direction. Whatever Ford thought of Freud or Freud might have thought of Ford, we can speak of an affinity be tween them. Many of Freud's influential ideas, more or less developed, were already circulating, in various versions, during and before the time the master came on the scene to give them their masterly formulations. Lawrence, who began writing Sons and Lovers before he knew anything of Freud, strengthened its oedipal theme when Frieda intro duced him to Freud's ideas. Ford's imaginative concerns anticipate those of Freud, as Sondra Stang has pointed out in the connection she makes between The Good Soldier and the two late essays, Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Civilization and Its Discontents, published five and fifteen years respectively after The Good Soldier (1915). Dowell, the narrator of the novel, has been contemned by critics who fault him for na?vet? and obtuseness in his mar riage and friendships. And yet how can we not be impressed with the range, incisiveness, and eloquence of his speculations about civilization and the passions? His language at times brings Freud to mind. He wonders, for instance, how it is possible that he does not know whether a remark Leonora makes is that of a harlot or a decent woman and moves im mediately to generalize his ignorance to one?that is to everyone. Yet, if one doesn't know that at this hour and day,