he headstrong, and the too truthful are condemned (1) Samuel Hynes, ‘The Epistemology of The Good Soldier’, The Good Soldier, Norton Critical Edition (1995. W.W. Norton & Company), p. 315 to suicide and to madness. Nancy’s love must regress, as the etiquette of society must prosper. Fatally for those who were unable to conform to “the technicalities of English life” due to burgeoning eroticisms, “the end was plainly manifest.” Ford creates imagery of umbra and shadow elsewhere in the novel: “inevitably they pass away as the shadows across sundials.” Ford’s adumbrations of unillumination may also reflect the restrictions of human knowledge. Darkness reflects the tenuousness of human cognition. Dowell proposes earlier: what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? It is all darkness. Samuel Hynes agrees by stating: “we recognize an irresolvable pluralism of truths, in a world that remains essentially dark.” (1) Further images of nebulousness are resonant when Nancy had “three weeks for introspection” beneath gloomy skies, in that old house, rendered darker by the fact that it lay in a hollow crowned by fir trees with their black shadows. The allusion purports to the restrictions of society encapsulating Nancy, and others, bounding them from their intimate desires. Convention is “a prison full of screaming hysterics.” Thus, shadow and darkness totemize convention and flame and fire express passion and desire. Immediately Ford alliterates “the flames still fluttered.” Nancy’s passion prevails while “introspection” about desire and love pervades her. Nancy considered marriage as a “sacrament” and the burning logs once represented an “indestructible mode of life.” Now the world Nancy is absorbed in becomes embroiled in doubt a...
