The Trauma of Betrayal in Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier

Abstract

Analysing literary texts by using trauma theory provides remarkable insight into how a character goes through different stages of trauma from acting out towards healing. This paper proposes a reading of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (1915) as a trauma narrative with its different aspects of a traumatically affected character, John Dowell. The paper first looks at how the confused narrator John Dowell acts out his trauma of betrayal in the forms of repression, amnesia, deferred action, and affective numbing. It then focuses on how he tries to deal with his traumatic memories of adultery by transforming them into a comprehensive narrative but ends up acting out his trauma. In doing so, this paper suggests that although trauma theory has its roots in psychoanalysis, it provides the possibility of reading literary texts such as The Good Soldier from a different perspective. As such, John Dowell is a telling example of a traumatically affected character incessantly performing his traumatic memories.   

Keywords

• Ford,The Good Soldier,trauma,betrayal,repression,amnesia,nachträglichkeit,affective numbing

The Good Soldier’da Aldatılma Travması

Abstract

Travma teorisini kullanarak edebi metinleri incelemek, bir roman karakterinin travmanın ortaya koyulmasından iyileşmesine kadar olan farklı süreçlerinden geçişini anlama olanağı sağlar. Bu çalışma Ford Madox Ford’un The Good Soldier (1915) adlı romanında John Dowell’i travmatize olmuş bir karakter olarak ele alarak, romanın bir travma anlatısı olduğunu öne sunar. Bu doğrultuda, kafası karışmış olan John Dowell’in aldatılma travmasını bastırma, amnezi, gecikmiş etki ve afektif hissizleşme gibi travma belirtileriyle sergileyişini inceler. Sonrasında ise Dowell’in travmatik aldatılma anılarını detaylı bir anlatıya çevirerek onlarla başetmeye çalışmasına fakat travmasına hapsoluşuna odaklanır. Böylece, bu çalışma travma teorisinin psikoloji alanında ortaya çıkmasına rağmen, The Good Soldier gibi edebi metinleri farklı bir açıdan değerlendirme imkanı sunduğunu önerir. Buna bağlı olarak da John Dowell travmatik anılarıyla boğuşan bir karakter örneği olarak karşımıza çıkar. 

Keywords

• Ford,The Good Soldier,trauma,betrayal,repression,amnesia,nachträglichkeit,affective numbing,working through trauma

References

1. Bort, B. (1967). The Good Solder: Comedy or tragedy? Twentieth Century Literature. 12:4,194-202.
2. Caruth, C. (1995). Introduction. In C. Caruth (Ed.) Trauma: explorations in memory (pp.3-12). Baltimore: John Hopkins UP.
3. Charcot, J-M. (2014). Clinical lectures on diseases of the nervous system. London and New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1991)
4. Dreiser, T. (1997).The saddest story. In F. Macshane (Ed.), Ford Madox Ford: The critical heritage (pp.47-51). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1915)
5. Ford, M-F. (1990). The Good Soldier. Oxford: Oxford UP. (Original work published 1915)
6. Freud, S. (1939). Moses and monotheism. K. Jones (Trans.). London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
7. _____ (2001). Remembering, Repeating and Working Through. In J. Strachey, A. Freud, A. Strachey & A. Tyson (Eds. and Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1911-1913). Vol.12. London: Vintage. (Original work published 1914)
8. Freud, S., & Breuer, J. (2001). On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication. In J. Strachey, A. Freud, A. Strachey & A. Tyson (Eds. and Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (1893-1895). Vol.2. London: Vintage. (Original work published 1893)

9. Janet, P. (1976). Psychological healing: A Historical and clinical study. E. Paul and C. Paul (Trans.) 2 vols. New York: Arno. (Original work published 1919)
10. Leckie, B. (1999). Culture and adultery: The novel, the newspaper, and the law 1857-1914. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
11. Luckhurst, R. (2008). The trauma question. New York: Routledge.
12. Onega, S. (2012). Affective knowledge, self-awareness and the function of myth in the representation and transmission of trauma: The case of Eva Figes’ Konek Landing. Journal of Literary Theory 6.1, 83–101.
13. Pines, D. (2003). Irony and the marriage plot in The Good Soldier. In R. Hampson and M. Saunders (Eds.). Ford Madox Ford’s modernity (pp.73-82). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
14. Rainey, L. (1997). Institutions of modernism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
15. Robertson, R-M. (1993). The wrong ‘saddest story’: Reading the appearance of postmodernity in Ford’s Good Soldier. In B. Readings & B. Schaber (Eds.) Postmodernism across the ages (pp.171-187). New York: Syracuse University Press.
16. West, R. (1997). Mr. Hueffer’s new novel. In F. Macshane (Ed.), Ford Madox Ford: The critical heritage (pp.44-46). London and New York: Routledge. (Original work published 1915)