THAT ONE CONGENIAL FRIEND: THE READER'S PLACE IN "THE GOOD SOLDIER"

This study analyzes the assumed reader in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. The assumed reader, as distinct from the "characterized" and the actual reader, is that reader toward whom the writer addresses the work in its entirety. A writer does not seek any reader, but rather that reader who promises to satisfy both consciously and unconsciously held needs and desires. The study argues that, to some extent, writers may be defined by the sorts of readers they seem to desire; the means they employ to get them; and what they want from or do to such readers. The concept of the assumed reader is used as a technique to determine the reliability of Ford's narrator John Dowell. Since Mark Schorer's 1948 essay, in which he decided that the book was a work of comic irony and Dowell was Ford's dupe, criticism has been divided on this crucial issue. I find that Dowell is no more unreliable than Ford; that the book is indeed ironic, but that Ford directs his irony against a generally insensitive world, rather than his narrator. Moreover, the study argues that Ford's irony was not entirely under his control, a consequence of his uncertain anticipation of his potential audience. The study juxtaposes three aspects of the novel: Ford's framing devices and dedicatory letter; Dowell's syntax, particularly his insistent use of ellipses and the adjective "poor"; and Dowell's description of tragic events in morbidly humorous language. The juxtaposition reveals that the covert thrust of Dowell's character is toward a will to power, disguised by the appearance of overt humility and victimization, corresponding to a parallel desire for authority masked by self-effacement on Ford's part in the framing devices. Both indicate that Ford projected his own best hopes outward, and pretended they were his readers.