The dominant theme in James Gould Cozzen's novels is that of order imposed on a meaningless world—or, rather, that of order being maintained, and even occasionally extended….

It is always a comparative handful of men whom Cozzens shows as holding society together and keeping it orderly: the few adults of his novels, as opposed to the many children.

The best and smartest of these grown-ups operate somewhat the way Shakespeare's dukes do in the late comedies. That is, they are the centers of their societies, and not merely in some social sense, but truly in the middle, so that most information passes through them, and most connections are made by them. (p. 278)

One can trace the growth of the ducal type in Cozzens's earlier work, the hard-won but triumphant mastery of a town or an army base in the great novels, and the final defeat in Morning Noon and Night….

The type first appears in The Last Adam, not as a duke but a duchess. Mrs. Banning is the upholder of stability and order in New Winton, Connecticut, as her son Guy will be after her. (Though probably not in New Winton. Probably in Hartford or New York.) What is surprising when one looks at the whole sweep of ordering characters in Cozzens is that both Mrs. Banning and Guy are viewed satirically. Or, at least, more satirically than not. Cozzens is far too complex and realistic a writer to deny them their genuine power and worth….

Mrs. Banning does have one characteristic that foreshadows the later ducal characters. She is able to hold a good many thoughts in her mind at once, without getting muddled and without losing the power to act. (p. 279)

Cozzens reserves his sympathy in The Last Adam for three quite different sorts of characters. The first, exemplified in Mr. Banning, is the person who has simply opted out, who attempts to order nothing more intractable than a flower garden. The reader is invited to feel a certain scorn for Mr. Banning's weakness (he is not a true man—read duke—as his father had been) but a good deal more sympathy for his insight, even when it cripples his power to act….

The second type is represented by three important characters in the book: Mrs. Banning's daughter Virginia; Dr. Bull, the last Adam of the title; and Miss Janet Cardmaker, Dr. Bull's mistress…. All three are members of New Winton's small upper class, and all three feel contempt for the orderly and ordering life of that class, as seen in Mrs. Banning and in such minor characters as Matthew Herring. All three are, in fact, centers of disorder. Virginia might be a young Sartoris out of Faulkner….

If Virginia Banning is Cozzens's Sartoris, Dr. Bull is his Gatsby. Symbolically, it is apt enough that Virginia dies at sixteen, and that Dr. Bull and Janet leave no descendants—are each the last of their families. (p. 280)

[May Tupping, an example of the third type], is a very faint sketch of the good dukes who will dominate the later books. Intelligent and responsible, May is literally the center of communication in New Winton; she plugs the town in to itself. (p. 281)

May is, at twenty-two, too naive and too powerless to be more than a sketch of what a full Cozzens ordering character will become. She perhaps also starts from too low a social position. But she is clearly already an adult in Cozzen's terms…. It is within her mind that Cozzens first formulates ducal awareness and duty. (pp. 281-82)

In Men and Brethen, published three years later, the characteristics that May and Mrs. Banning possess only embryonically or comically appear at close to full force. Ernest Cudlipp is the first of Cozzens's major ordering characters….

Cozzens first uses in Men and Brethren what is going to be his favorite and most successful narrative structure. Using his central character as a batter, he throws pitch after pitch, sending them at steadily shorter intervals, until there seem to be a dozen in the air at once. Or to put it more abstractly, he presents the mounting tension, over a brief period, of more and more almost insoluble problems coming at the central character (and the reader) faster and faster until it seems impossible for him to deal with them all. (p. 282)

Just when a character in a Cozzens novel begins to think that he alone can hold the world together, he is likely to discover that not only is he not alone in this ability, but that from time to time there is someone holding him together. (p. 284)

Ernest is a stoic who happens also to be a Christian minister. Presumably what led Cozzens to invent him was an interest in the traditions and social dynamics of the Episcopal church and an even greater interest in the natural ordering roles played by ministers, not any new awareness of a transcendental It.

The Just and the Unjust, though published six years later than Men and Brethren, is a step backward in the presentation of the ducal character. (The book itself is no step backward.) Ernest Cudlipp long ago accepted his obligation; what we watch is how he fulfills it. But Abner Coates in The Just and the Unjust, though he comes of a ducal family, decides only at the very end of the book to accept his.

What we watch is the process by which a nice young man finds himself forced to give up his scruples and his privacy and become an adult. (pp. 284-85)

One way to describe Guard of Honor is as the search for a duke. In the context of a novel nearly all of whose characters belong to the U.S. Army Air Force, "duke" means someone worthy to command an Air Force base or a substantial military unit.

For most of the book, there seem to be no such people—at least not among those with sufficient rank to be given command. (p. 286)

The search for a duke is not carried on by any of the characters in the book, but by the reader. The stupider characters are unaware that there needs to be any search, because for them rank and worthiness to command are identical (or almost identical—some of them make a separation in the case of Colonel Woodman). Since General Beal is two ranks higher than anyone else at Ocanara, he is automatically their duke. The smarter characters have already decided before the book begins that the search is useless. No one of ducal caliber is available. (p. 287)

By Love Possessed, among its many richnesses, contains a study of the aging and death of dukes. (p. 289)

[Arthur Winner] is a reigning duke: the most fully drawn, the most admirable, and the most believable that Cozzens created. He is the culmination of the development I have been tracing. But at the same time he is in two ways quite different from any earlier duke. (p. 290)

One is that he sees much less prospect of using his power to reward merit or extend justice than they did….

The other difference is that Arthur Winner neither holds nor aspires to office. He avoids it. In the somewhat loose sense that I am using the term "duke," it is possible to be one as a private citizen. But both in Cozzen's novels and in real American life, office, power, and responsbility are so intimately allied that actually to refuse office comes close to declining the ducal role. (p. 291)

Cozzens leaves no doubt that Arthur Winner is fully worthy of the crown. The whole book is a statement of that. In addition, there are symbolic details at the beginning and end of the book to drive it home. (p. 292)

[Morning Noon and Night] completes Cozzens's study of dukes. [It] is a denunciation of ducal characters, by one.

The duke who attacks his class is old Henry Worthington, a man of sixty-five, like his creator. Our Hank, he usually calls himself. He is the central character, the man whose loose and baggy autobiography the book purports to be. He is as ducal as human beings come. (pp. 292-93)

Dukes are especially likely not to be nice people, Henry says, because they have power. Ernest Cudlipp and Norman Ross and the others had power, and used it to do good. Arthur Winner came to doubt that you could do much good with power, and his doubt was strong enough to keep him out of office. The lightning striking the ducal oak out at the lake is a symbol of that doubt. But as a private lawyer in Brocton, he continues endlessly to solve social problems and to work at keeping his society intact. (The oak survives, though damaged.) He sees no other rational option.

Like the Shakespeare of Sonnet 94, Henry Worthington views power primarily as the capacity to injure other people. And, taking issue with the sonnet, he says he has never seen a man with that capacity who didn't use it. "Power (the pleasure of the prince) simply by being in-being unfailingly brings hurt to someone, and never can do none."… (pp. 293-94)

If that is true, there is an end to the heroic figure of the duke; we are left only with the duke-as-bully. In fact, if we follow the strict logic of the sonnet, it is an end of dukes altogether, because there are no more "Lords and owners of their faces," only a race of stewards….

The stout, stubborn will, in short, has abdicated. And the novelist, James Gould Cozzens, has closed his career with a non-novel.

Back in the beginning, it was the lords of disorder—Dr. Bull, Janet Cardmaker, Virginia Banning—who left no heirs, while May Tupping and Guy Banning are sure to. Now it is the last duke whose line runs out. Henry Worthington has one daughter. She had two children, who died pointlessly in a plane crash, and she is not able to bear more children. There will be no more dukes.

But though Cozzens in effect disavows his own earlier novels and their ducal heroes, the reader is not obligated to. Guard of Honor and By Love Possessed have passed from their creator's control. Norman Ross and Arthur Winner exist in their own right as two of the great ordering characters of twentieth-century literature. (p. 294)

Noel Perrin, "The Good Dukes," in Just Representations: A James Gould Cozzens Reader, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli (copyright © 1978 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Southern Illinois University Press), Harcourt and Southern Illinois University Press, 1978, pp. 278-94.