Good SoldierAt the fashionable German spa town Bad Nauheim, two wealthy, fin de siecle couples -- one British, the other American -- meet for their yearly assignation. As their story moves back and forth in time between 1902 and 1914, the fragile surface propriety of the pre -- World War I society in which these four characters live is ruptured -- revealing deceit, hatred, infidelity, and betrayal. "The Good Soldier" is Edward Ashburnham, who, as an adherent to the moral code of the English upper class, is nonetheless consumed by a passion for women younger than his wife -- a stoic but fallible figure in what his American friend, John Dowell, calls "the saddest story I ever heard." |
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Common terms and phrases
4th of August affair Antibes Anyhow appeared Basil believe Branshaw Teleragh called Catholic Chitral Colonel course D. H. Lawrence dare say dark desire Dolciquita door dress Edward Ashburnham ence English eyes face father feeling fellow Flor Florence Florence's Ford Ford Madox Ford Fordingbridge girl's gone hair hand heard heart husband idea imagined India Kilsyte kissed knew Leonora letter looked Maisie Maidan Mark Schorer marriage marry matter mean to say mind minuet Misses Hurlbird mistress mother Nancy Rufford Nauheim never night nora novel once Parade's End passion Peire Vidal perfectly perhaps poor dear Powys pretty prussic acid queer remember round seemed shoulders Shuttlecocks Soldier sort story suddenly suppose talk tell thing thought told trust your wife voice wanted ward Waterbury whilst wife woman words young
Popular passages
Page 7 - Someone has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the whole sack of Rome by the Goths, and I swear to you that the breaking up of our little foursquare coterie was such another unthinkable event.
Page xvi - I should marry Nancy if her reason were ever sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the Anglican marriage service. But it is probable that her reason will never be sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the Anglican marriage service. Therefore I cannot marry her, according to the law of the land.
Page 5 - We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy - or, rather, with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove's with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them.
Page 14 - I don't know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? Or are we meant to act on impulse alone? It is all a darkness.
Page 14 - I DON'T KNOW HOW it is best to put this thing down— whether it would be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a story; or whether to tell it from this distance of time, as it reached me from the lips of Leonora or from those of Edward himself.
Page 9 - No, by God, it is false! It wasn'ta minuet that we stepped; it was a prison — a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.