Ford Madox Ford and the 'nouveau roman': From the unreliable narrator to the self-conscious creator

Ford Madox Ford's novel The Good Soldier (1914) is famous for its unique and provocative first-person narrative voice. Most criticism results from attempts to clarify the narrator's (John Dowell) theme and then to determine how much confidence the reader should have in the accuracy of his report. The uncertainty on one count perpetuates the uncertainty on the other because, without a consensus regarding the events that occurred, there are insufficient grounds on which to judge the accuracy or integrity of the narrator's report and interpretation of them. The majority of commentators agree that he is unreliable, either because he is naive or because he deliberately misrepresents the presumed antecedent.; Because, ultimately, the ambiguity of the text is impenetrable, the most fruitful analysis focuses first on the characteristics of the narrative which contribute to the instability of the referent by encouraging doubt and internal conflict. Inevitably, however, defining these characteristics leads the investigator to an evaluation of their fictional origin: the narrator.; In Part I, Chapter II, I consider the idiosyncracies of Dowell's narrative technique which seem to illuminate his psychology. These include his preference for inference over direct statement, his problematic logic, inconsistencies, and omissions. I also consider his sadistic and hateful attitude, towards his wife in particular. All these are grouped within the framework of a case history by Freud, whose remarkable thematic correspondences to The Good Soldier, make it relevant to the novel. Part 2 relates the ambiguity resulting from unreliability to the prevalence in the nouveaux romans of what Ricardou terms the "dimension literale" over the "dimension referentielle." It compares narrative techniques used by the nouveaux romanciers to achieve this effect with those used by Ford, who obtains comparable results. I offer two (compatible) portraits of the narrator and recognize the ubiquity of alternatives.