| Ford Madox Ford(1873-1939), a founding father of English Literary Impressionism, a famous novelist, poet and critic, is labeled very special in the history of British literature. The writer had gone through what we may describe as "twist of fate":unacknowledged in his youth-doubted in his50s-neglected after his death-eventually recognized as "one of the few important writers in English literary circles since1970s, standing side by side with famous litterateur like Conradd、 Lawrence and Joyce." His best-known fiction The Good Soldier, also known as a modernist masterpiece, has piqued heated discussions among readers and critics and was selected as one of100Best Novels of Modern Library in1998. However, due to the updated survey of researches in domestic journals, The Good Soldier is still quite fresh to critics in China with only18critical essays in the database. Critics have mainly focused either on its moral theme or narrative art, but few have analyzed the tale in depth from the perspective of physical and psychological deficiency of the characters in general, especially lack of the densely-described heart and passion. The paper tries to have an overall psychoanalytical insight into the innate root and external manifestation of the "patient" images of the protagonists, and further exposes the aesthetic and realistic significance of the disease depiction in The Good Soldier.This thesis contains five chapters.Chapter one is the introduction, declaring the value and purpose of the research. This part briefly introduces the influence Ford Madox Ford’s personal life has on the creation of The Good Soldier, an overview of the current researches at home and abroad, and further the methodological perspective and arrangement of the research.Chapter two explains that the blasting fuse of the tragedy is the various defects generally existed in the characters of the story. It makes a symbolic interpretation of the important clue of deficiency in "heart" and "passion"."Heart" is the power source of the story, for the two couples made acquaintance during the recuperation of heart, and Maisie’s sudden heart attack intensified the conflict between characters."Heart" served as the wave to push the plot toward the climax, and finally the story ended up with the death of all the heart patients, either true or fake."Passion" is connected with characters’cognition about life. The narrator Dowell, with neither moral passion nor sexual passion, seemed to lack a supposed sense of participation, thus many passionate scenarios were shown in a fracture form with fading passion, this fragmented impressions, seemingly unreliable, form the real world. The lack of "passion", served as a barrier to the cognitive effects.Chapter Three explores the internal and external factors unfolding the tragedy, and mainly studies the morbid manifestation of the spiritual isolation, faith vacuum and broken identity with its impact on the heroes’fate. As a presentation of the human heart, the spiritual isolation between two hearts in The Good Soldier has performed in Dowell’s "drifting" for being trapped in Europe, Florence’s "escaping" for no acceptance from her family, Edward’s "loneliness" for not being understood and Leonora’s "restrained" from unrequited love to resent. Belief in vacuum causes the turbulence of protagonists’outlook of the world, and inner confusion and conflict arouse the rupture of the personality. Dowell constantly denied his male identity, Florence carried suicide poison with her, Edward tried to stop the adulteries but cannot, Leonora distorted and misunderstand her Catholic conception.Chapter Four gives a respective view of the pathological images the two couples could not dispel:Florence’s trauma resulting in bipolar disorder, Edward’s loneliness causing depression, Leonora’s self-strain leading to anxiety, and Dowell’s indifference showing impotency. In the case of Florence, she had less subjective words in the novel, because she lacked an in-depth communication with the narrator Dowell. Florence was psychologically abandoned by her aunts after tasting the forbidden fruit, and the spiritual isolation before marriage made her eager to escape through lies. After getting married, she couldn’t be honest with Dowell so she had to remain silence and depressed. To be relieved from the nameless pain, she became chatty with the Edwards. Florence’s faith was her family, but its condemnation and restraint led to the conflict of her own personality, gradually developing symptoms of bipolar disorder, and driving her to poison herself upon the revelations of her affairs. Because of the spirit isolation, Dowell began to suspect his masculinity, and finally conflicts led to the loss of sexual passion; Edward fell into the tearing of moral and passion finally killed himself due to excessive depression; Leonora experienced love and hate with anxiety and unbearable headache, finally began a spiritual persecution of Nancy and Edward.Chapter five is the conclusion, summarizing the aesthetic and realistic significance of disease depiction. The selected perspective of "disease" in this research was based on the new development of the aesthetics of ugliness in19th century. Its special presentation was diseases and grotesques, with disease gradually extending to the psychological level. However, when history moves forward to20th century, modernism began to show the irrationality of human and the absurdity of life, in which many writers start to make sense of the world’s nature through psychological diseases. Diseases’strains on the human body and spirit embody it with the aesthetic significance of ontological sense. Schlegel once commented,"Sickness was a way of making people’interesting’," enriching the fictional characters to some extend. Disease is the extremely sick symbol of old aristocracy in modern environment. In the realistic sense, people exist morbidly in fragmented form after the industrial revolution, humanity has been in the sub health status ever since. In this paper, the disease image has a certain function of psychological treatment. As the kernel of plot, disease and death can better present the pleasure and purification of the tragedy, alleviate depressed mind, and arouse man’s deeper pursuit for the meaning of life. |
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