The Good Soldier (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Ford Madox Hueffer
- First Published: 1915
- Type of Work: Domestic tragedy
- Time of Work: From the last few years of the nineteenth century through 1913
- Setting: Nauheim, Germany, and the country near Branshaw Teleragh, England
- Principal Characters: John Dowell, Florence Dowell, Edward Ashburnham, Leonora Ashburnham
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: United States or Americans, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Suicide, Twentieth century, Nineteenth century, Marriage, England or English people, Adultery, Ethics, Truthfulness and falsehood, Health, Soldiers, Germany or German people, Heart attack or disease
- Locales: France, Connecticut, Philadelphia, PA, England, Germany
The Novel
The Good Soldier is a novel about the differences between appearance and reality—and about human willingness to see events in a light that best suits the viewer, regardless of how accurate that vision may be. John Dowell calls his narrative “the saddest story I have ever heard”; perhaps the saddest aspect of the story is Dowell’s own unwillingness to see through the fine veneer covering the faults of his wife and friends.
The narrator sets his story up as a fireside conversation, a confession delivered in private to the reader. As the novel...
[The entire page is 2553 words long]
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