nd uncertainty. Ford exploits repetition in: “love was a flame,” and “a man who was burning with inward flame” to reiterate fire signifying Passion. The tone shifts after the passage, passion is extinguished by “the whole collections of rules:” “the fire had sunk to nothing…a mere glow amongst white ashes.” Eros has imminently subserved to convention. The tone of the passage is melancholic, morose (1) ‘The Epistemology of The Good Soldier’, p. 315 and formidable. Ford formulates a mood of passion in retrogression like the “fading day.” Time seems unyielding, passing tentatively and laboriously, reminiscent in “The long afternoon wore on” and “lolloped.” The ambience of fatalism is encircling all in Bramshaw Teleragh. They are without control over their predestined existence as Ford reiterates in the latter: “Not one of us has got what we really wanted.” Everything passionate and picturesque is proscripted to contraction as society imprisons them. Nancy has gained comprehension which amounts to her vexation and Leonora is realising she will never procure Edward’s love, thus a lachrymose and deranged mood blankets the household. “The little cottage piano that was in the corner of the hall” resonates concupiscent desires. Ford constructs this elsewhere in the novel using an analogy of their “little four-square coterie” and “stepping a minuet.” Dowell questions the consistency of human nature and agonises over why honest and pure beings are prevented from flourishing. “Isn’t there any Nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments…?” The “silly old tune” is Eros, candour and Nancy’s purity endeavouring to survive while preordained by society to degeneration. The dialogue represents a juxtaposition of protagonists. Themes of antipathy and ...
