No More Parades

"But he looked at every foot himself"

2007-04-05T00:26:00.000-07:00

"Madam! If the brains of an army aren't, the life of an army is. . . in its feet. . . ."(429)

Christopher examined twenty-nine thousand toe-nails, and Sylvia could hardly believe that he would occupy himself with such things.

Sylvia had clearly never heard of trench-foot.

Trench-foot was a particular ailment of the First World War which arose from standing in water for hours and days on end in the trenches. It was a debilitating fungus which often lead to gangrene and the amputation of the toes and feet of soldiers.

By the end of 1914, 20,000 British casualties could be attributed to this condition. With so many soldiers being outright killed or maimed by the machine guns, or drowned in mud, or rendered senseless by shell-shock, it comes as no surprise that Christopher would want to inspect the feet of his troops personally. Christopher's sense of duty to his men and responsibility for their welfare would not have taken this disease, or its results, lightly.

I'll spare you any nasty pictures.

Source: "Trench Foot" at First World War dot com

War: Effects & Shell-shock

2007-04-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

The soldiers:

“He only drinks because he’s shell-shocked. He’s not man enough else, the unclean little Nonconformist (Ford, 359)”.

“Mckechnie’s face worked convulsively, he swallowed as men are said to swallow who suffer from hydrophobia (450)”. Mckenchie is a psychological victim of the war, from the very beginning Christopher judges him to be a mad lunatic, “There were a great many kinds of madness. But what kind was this? The fellow was not drunk. He talked like a drunkard, by the was not drunk (298)”.

“The prevailing mood of those who had been for some time in the trenches was one of acute melancholia; the foul conditions, the constant danger, and the lack of sleep produced such mental depression that the troops felt no desire to kill anyone except their well-dressed proper generals, who were more at home on the narrow path of virtue than on the narrow duckboards of the trenches (Lytton, 197).”

As demonstrated in C.S. Forrester’s The General, the generals had no qualms about ordering their troops to slaughter, for a valiant purpose. Under the command of these generals, the army of the old tradition is completely wiped out. The soldier’s greatest threat is perhaps not the enemy before him, but the general behind him who will order him forward to his death.

In turn, the officer class must face other challenges, namely those from home.

“Heavy depression settled down more heavily upon him. The distrust of the home Cabinet, felt by then by the greater part of that army, became like physical pain (Ford, 297)”.

Christopher:

“His tiny hands seemed about to fall off at the wrists; his temples shuddered with neuralgia (371)”. The war had far reaching effects, even on soldiers and officers who were not on immediate front line. Christopher suffers from fatigue, shedding sleep in favour of duty. The incident of O Nine Morgan makes an impression on him that stays with him for the rest of the war; it becomes an “accursed obsession (484)”. The thought of the death, the noise, and the mud is enough to drive him insane. When the general reveals his plan to send him up the line, Christopher’s senses are overwhelmed with the remembrance of noise and mud.

Lyton, Neville. The English Country Gentleman. London : Hurst & Blackett, 1925

Summary of Part Three Chapter Two

2007-04-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

Summary:
General Campion is writing a confidential memorandum to the Secretary of State for War, as he waits for Tietjens and Levin. He thinks about England’s military strategy, the whole of military history. The general asks Tietjens and Levin to sit down when they entered his office. Levin slides a memorandum slip on to the general’s desk. It says: “T. agrees completely, sir, with your diagnosis of the facts, except that he is much more ready to accept General O’H.’s acts as reasonable. He places himself entirely in your hands” (Ford, 469). Knowing this, the general feels relieved as he is very attached to both Tietjens and O’Hara. As Tietjens sits in front of him, past memory flows in his mind. He recalls “he had lived the greater part of his life with his sister, Lady Claudine Sandbach, and the greater part of the remainder of his life at Groby, at any rate after he came home from India and ruing the reign of Tietjens’ father. He had idolized Tietjens’ mother, who was a saint! What indeed there had been of the idyllic in his life had really all passed at Groby, if he came to think of it” (Ford, 470). Since Groby is of such great importance to him, the general wishes that “he, Tietjens, and Sylvia” can live together at Groby after his retirement. They then discuss how the English “Government’s pretence of evacuating the Western front in favour of the Middle East is probably only a put-up job to frighten our Allies into giving up the single command” (Ford, 473). Tietjens points out that the Cabinet in favour of the Eastern expedition is a one-man party, and, in response, the general accuses the man of extending the war forever. The conversation shifts to how the general was called “Butcher Campion” (Ford, 474) in South Africa. The general claims that “one has to be prepared to lose men in hundreds at the right time in order to avoid losing them in tens of thousands at the wrong!...”(Ford, 474). Tietjens begins to feel that “the general was certainly in disorder” (Ford, 474). It seems that he has overworked. Suddenly, the general says to Tietjens: “in case we never met again, I do not wish you to think me an ignoramus” (Ford, 475). He lets Tietjens know that he has been promoted to be sent to the front line. Being overwhelmed by this tragic notification, Tietjens’ mind becomes chaotic. The general explicitly tells Tietjens that he no longer wishes to be involved in Tietjens’ private life. Tietjens’ come to realize that “he had never been so depressed or overwhelmed” (Ford, 479). O’Hara becomes the next topic between the two men, followed by the unhappy marriage between Tietjens and Sylvia. The general insists on find out the cause of their unhappy marriage and asks: “What the hell are you?...You’re not a soldier. You’ve got the makings of a damn good soldier. You amaze me at times. Yet you’re a disaster; you are a disaster to every one who has to do with you. You are as conceited as a hog; you are as obstinate as a bullock…You drive me mad….And you have ruined the life of that beautiful woman…For I maintain she once had the disposition of a saint…Now! I’m waiting for you explanation!” (Ford, 481). Tietjens says that he used to be a statistician as a civilian, but the general becomes furious about the fact that Tietjens couldn’t give the Department the fake statistics they wanted. Campion then explains why he cannot stop Tietjens from being send to the front. Shyly, he tells Tietjens that “though wrong may flourish, right will triumph in the end!” (Ford, 482). Tietjens enjoys commanding divisional transport, because it “was like a vision of Paradise to Tietjens. For two reasons: it was relatively safe, being concerned with a lot of horses…and the knowledge that he had that employment would put Valentine Wannop’s mind at rest” (Ford, 483). Fears of shellshock and mud take over Tietjens’ mind. Once again, the general asks what Tietjens is going to do with Miss Wannop and Sylvia. Tietjens assures that general that he does not plan to have any relationship with Miss Wannop. On the other hand, regarding Sylvia, Tietjens says: “We ought to have separated years ago. It has led to the lady’s pulling the strings of all these shower-baths….” (Ford, 488). Feeling the urge to pour out all his questions, the general inquires Tietjens whether or not he is a Socialists. In reply, Tietjens says: “if it’s Sylvia that called me a Socialist, it’s not astonishing. The last megatherium” (Ford, 490). McKechnie, according to the general, is modern, while Tietjens is a man of the past. Tietjens now recognizes that the society “wanted the war won by men who would at the end by either humiliated or dead. Or both. Except, naturally, their own cousins or fiancées’ relatives” (Ford, 496). After a discussion on the quality of being in harmony with one’s own soul, they go to dinner. “To Tietjens this was like the sudden bursting out of the regimental quick-step, as after a funeral with military honors the band and drums march away, back to barracks” (Ford, 500).

War between men and women:
“I have contemplated it. That’s a weakening of the moral fibre. It’s contemplating a fallacy as a possibility. For suicide is no remedy for a twisted situation off a psychological kind. It is for bankruptcy. Or for military disaster. For the man of action, not for the thinker. Creditors’ meetings wipe the one out. Military operations sweep on. But y problem will remain the same whether I’m here or not. For it’s insoluble. It’s the whole problem of the relations of the sexes” (Ford, 491).
Campion’s Knowledge of Men (alcohol, money, and sex):
“Be worked for by men that you trust: but distrust them all the time – along certain lines of fraility; liquor, women, money! Well, he had long knowledge about men!” (Ford, 480).
“He looked down at the blanket on the table. He intended again to look up at Tietjens’ eyes with ostentatious care. That was his technique with men. He was successful general because he knew men. He knew that all men will go to hell over three things: alcohol, money…and sex” (Ford, 498).
Mechanical/inhumanity taking over nature/humanity
“But he considered that the civilian element in the Government was so entirely indifferent to the sufferings of the men engaged in these operations…” (Ford, 467).
“Besides, some damn fool of a literary civilian had been writing passionately letters to the papers insisting that all horses and mules must be abolished in the army…Because of their pestilence-spreading dung” (Ford, 484).
“One has to be prepared to lose men in hundreds at the right time in order to avoid losing them in tens of thousands at the wrong!...”(Ford, 474).
“You extinguished the Horse, invented something very simple and became God! That is the real pathetic fallacy” (Ford, 496).
Tietjens’ Toryism:
“’It’s a question, sir,’ Tietjens said, ‘of which is the best way. For the country and yourself. I suppose if one were a general one would like to have commanded an army on the Western front….” (Ford, 472).
Comradeship:
“I’ve such an absolute belief in your trustworthiness. I know you won’t betray what you’ve seen….What I’ve just said…” (Ford, 474).
“One’s friends ought to believe that one is a gentleman. Automatically. That is what makes one and them in harmony” (Ford, 497).
Tietjens’ mind detached from his body:
“Tietjens said, but he did not know where the words came from: ‘Colonel Partridge will not like that. He’s praying for McKechnie to come back!” To himself he said: ‘I shall fight this monstrous treatment of myself to my last breath” (Ford, 477).
“Tietjens said to himself: ‘Great heavens! I’ve been talking to him. What in the world about?’ It was as if his mind were falling off a hillside” (Ford, 485).
Tietjens belongs to the past:
“Ruggles told my father what he did because it is not a good thing to belong to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries in the twentieth. Or really, because it is not good to have taken one’s public school’s ethical system seriously. I am really, sir, the English public schoolboy. That’s an eighteenth-century product…Other men get over their schooling. I never have. I remain adolescent. These tings are obsessions with me. Complexes, sir!” (Ford, 480).

Summary of Part Three Chapter One

2007-04-04T23:49:00.000-07:00

Summary:
Tietjens wakes up. General Campion and Colonel Levin are both present in front of him. Campion asks Teitjens a series of trivial questions with formality. It was “the extreme politeness of the extremely great to the supremely unimportant!” (Ford, 445). The general demands Teitjens to put on his belt, and informs Teitjens that he will be walking around his cook-houses with Teitjens. The general leaves, and Tietjens marches back to the hut. “It was purgatory” (Ford, 447). He arrives at the hut, and starts to converse with McKechnie, who “complains that he is the senior officer and should command this unit” (Ford, 449). Levin tells McKechnie to give up on the thought and leave the hut. Soon, Levin and Tietjens are on their way to meeting with the general. “In the winter sunlight Levin tucked his arm under Tietjens’, leaning towards him gaily and not hurrying. The display was insufferable to Tietjens, but he recognized that it was indispensable” (Ford, 450). On the way, Levin inquires “Was O’Hara drunk last night or wasn’t he?” (Ford, 451). Levin reveals the general, as well as his own concern for what happened at the hotel last night. He also lets Tietjens becomes aware of the fact that Tietjens talk while he sleeps. Levin says “we used to say when we were boys…that if you talk in your sleep…you’re …in fact a bit dotty?” (Ford, 453). Tietjens explains that this queer habit results from the pressure and stress from the war. Then the two men engage in an intense conversation regarding what did Tietjens say in his sleep and what happened last night. To explain the general’s major trouble, Levin tells Tietjens that he said Miss Wannop’s name a lot in his sleep. Levin continues and says “you appeared to be writing a letter to her. And the sunlight streaming in at the hut. I was going to wake you, but he stopped me. He took the view that he was on detective work, and that he might as well detect. He had got it into his mind that you were a Socialist” (Ford, 457). Tietjens becomes emotional and claims that he is not afraid of being cut out. After calming down, Levin speaks more of General O’Hara’s accusations against Tietjens, and Tietjens beings to reveal more about what happened last night. “General O’Hara came to my wife’s room and burst in the door. I was there. I took him to be drunk. But from what he exclaimed I have since imagined that he was not so much drunk as misled. There was another man lying in the corridor where I had thrown him. General O’Hara exclaimed that this was Major Perowne. I had not realized that this was Major Perowne…he was looking round the door. My wife was in a state…bordering on nudity. I had put my hand under his chin and thrown him through the doorway” (Ford, 460). Tietjens further remarks the fact that Major Thurston has told General Caomion “that Mrs. Tietjens was with Major Perowne. In France” (Ford, 462). “He hears Major Perowne shouting about black mail and thieves….I dare say this town has its quota of blackmailers. O’Hara might well be anxious to catch one in the act” (Ford, 463). Tietjens concludes that he has told Levin everything about what happened last night.
Tietjen’s mind detached form his body:
“His legs heflt like detached and swollen objects that he dragged after him. He must mater his legs. He mastered his legs.” (Ford, 447).
“I think I have now told you everything material….” (Ford, 464).
Comradeship
“In the winter sunlight Levin tucked his arm under Tietjens’, leaning towards him gaily and not hurrying. The display was insufferable to Tietjens, but he recognized that it was indispensable” (Ford, 450).
“I remember that my orderw were conflicting just before
Tietjens’ Toryism:
“It was no doubt, really the voices form without that had awakened Tietjens, but he preferred to think the matter a slight intervention of Providence, because he felt in need of a sign of some sort!” (Ford, 444).
“If we lose, they win. If success is necessary to your idea of virtue – virtus – they then provide the success instead of ourselves. But the thing is to be able to stick to the integrity of your character, whatever earthquake sets the house tumbling over your head….That, thank God, we’re doing…” (Ford, 454).
The Parade of History:
“We lie and betray and are wanting in imagination and deceive ourselves, always, at about the same rate. In peace and in war! But, somewhere in that view there are enormous bodies of men….If you got a still more extended range of view over this whole front you’d have still more enormous bodies of men. Seven to ten million….All moving towards places towards which they desperately don’t want to go. Desperately! Every one of them I desperately afraid. But they go on. An immense blind will forces them in the effort to consummate the one decent action that humanity has to its credit in the whole of recorded history; the one we are engaged in” (Ford, 454).
“Only there will be no more parades. Sooner or later it has to come to that for us all…” (463).

How are we to understand Sylvia Tietjens?

2007-04-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

-Most problematic and difficult to understand
-Presented herself to Ford's imagination as a pagan goddess.
-In Some Do Not-Sylvia is compared to Mythological Astarte, Phoenician goddess of love and fertility, and Lamia, in greek stories the witch who sucked human blood.
-Sylvia is neither of these.
-Never reducible to a single fixed aspect.
-"To be seductive and to be chaste" is the condition she aspires to.
-Ford uses the verb coil in connection with Sylvia to suggest a snake, the imagery is connected with her suffering.
-She loves Christopher for his mind but hates his ideas.

(Source: Sondra Stang. Critical Essays on Ford Madox Ford.G.K Hall & Co.Boston, Massachusetts)

Who is Christopher Tietjens? What is he like?

2007-04-04T21:36:00.000-07:00

-He is regarded as a Saint
-He cherishes forgiveness
-Sylvia complains that he closes himself in "invisible bonds"-make him seem cold and feelingless, though he is neither.
-Has extraordinary self-control
-He is a gentleman (refuses to divorce Sylvia, even though she committed adultery)
-Decided to live with Valentine-a way of freeing himself and healing himself.

Does Tietjens represent a Christ figure?

2007-04-04T19:54:00.000-07:00

There are a few attributes that Christopher has that sometimes make us picture him as a Christ figure. Those attributes are:
1st-it is his name Christopher
2nd-it is his mania for self-sacrifice
3rd-it is his duality of mind and body
4th-it is his refusal to accept Groby
5th-it is his mental anguish (he is deserted by his Father)
6th-it is the calumnies and slanders that press upon him like a crown of thorns
7th-it is the burden of guilt he bears like a cross
All of these attributes are very close to the Bible and to the Christ.

Integrity of Tietjen's character

2007-04-04T19:16:00.000-07:00

In No More Parades, Sylvia seems to have her private war that connects with World War so that the two are reflecting human suffering. In my understanding Ford sees the real suffering of the war to be mental rather than physical. There are two things that Tietjens cannot escape from. One is the mental anguish of war. The other is the consequences of his private life. It seems that the public conflict blends in with the private one in No More Parades. For example, Tietjens says when talking about the world " but the thing is to be able to stick to the integrity of your character, whatever earthquake sets the house tumbling over your head" (p.454) In this quote I believe that he means that no matter how difficult things get you always have to be true to yourself and only then one can achieve victory over evil.

SCREAMING!

2007-04-04T14:12:00.001-07:00

The painting above is Edvard Munch’s The Scream. I thought it would be an adequate opening to my discussion on “screaming” within Parade’s End.

Freud talked to many patients with neurotic or hysterical symptoms. After organizing these patients’ experience and thoughts, he concludes that their problem stemmed from repressed and unconscious desires of a sexual nature. The “psychic apparatus” habitually represses these desires. As a result, these repressed wishes and lust become preserved by autonomic function of the brain. Freud suggests that these patients need to lose control of their feelings, and clear out the pain, agony, grief, or stress they have stored in their unconscious mind. Screaming is one of the methods that can help patients to lose control.

Screaming has appeared several times throughout Parade’s End. Ford attempts to illustrate World War I as a Freudian outcome. He points out that the aristocrats, or the ruling class, are not living up to expectations. They are not leading the country properly. Instead, they are corrupted. The only thing that they concern is how to hold the Façade of prosperity and respectability. By avoiding their responsibility, stress and guilt build up unconsciously. Eventually, World War I comes as an eruption of this crisis in the Edwardian era. It injects new vigor into England. The war, in a sense, is the loudest scream.

Freud Ford’s attempt t initiated with the mentioning of Freud on p. 37, when Sylvia said “I prefer to pin my faith to Mrs. Vanderdecken. And, of course, Freud.”

P. 99 “Mr. Duchemin, suddenly feeling the absence of the powerful will that had seemed to overweigh his own like a great force in the darkness, was on his feet, panting and delighted: ‘Chaste!’ He shouted.” Mr. Duchemin is an example of how the aristocracy has diminished in England. As a member of the ruling class, he is not even sane enough to make decisions. He has no virtue, and is incapable of giving speech that inspires. As he feels the “absence of the powerful will,” and perceives that he is not being a responsible aristocrat, he shouts and erupts. Mrs. Duchemin screams as well, because she has to maintain her image as an amiable housewife all the time. She keeps on tolerating Mr. Duchemin’s ridiculous speech and behavior. The anger she suppressed need to be released.

P. 139 “Not ten yards ahead Tietjen saw a tea-tray, the underneath of a black-lacquered tea-tray, gliding towards them, mathematically straight, just rising form the mist. He shouted, mad, the blood in his head. His shout was drowned by the scream of the horse; he had swing it to the left.” This passage shows the violence of mechanical civilization intruding the nature. Horses are symbol of nature in English culture and tradition. The horse screams because the governing class would rather drive. Its scream shows tension that has being building up for a long time prior to the outbreak of the war.

P. 145 “They were dashing from rock to rock on the cliff face, screaming, with none of the dignity of gulls. Some of them even let fall the herrings that they had caught…” The gulls are used to represent the aristocrats. Members of the ruling class, as they let out their emotion by screaming, are losing the dignity they posses. The etiquettes they learned, and their stoic practices have all been reduced to naught. They drop their respectability and prosperity just like the gulls drop the herrings they caught.

P. 177 “Sylvia screamed piercingly: ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’” Sylvia’s emotional outburst is inevitable as she has always been as ice and cold as alabaster. She suppressed her guilt for causing the death of Tietjens’ father inadvertently, and her grief for the death of Father Consett. She blames the war for all her agony, and screams to let out all her suppressed emotions. She can no longer remain cold, as her eyes blaze out anger.

P. 178 “It has been remarked that the peculiarly English habit of self-suppression in matters of the emotions puts the Englishman at a great disadvantage in moments of unusual stresses. In the smaller matters of the general run of life he will be impeccable and not to be moved; but in sudden confrontations of anything but physical dangers he is apt – he is, indeed, almost certain – to go to pieces very badly.” Here, Ford addresses the fact that the Englishman are constantly under a lot of stress. Yet, they cannot release stress through crying or other emotional reactions, because this will be seen as a sign of weakness. Since Englishmen constantly suppress their inner emotions, they can break down emotionally easily.

P. 224 “For a moment he had felt temptation to stay. But it came into his discouraged mind that Mark had said that Sylvia was in love with him. It had been underneath his thoughts all the while: it had struck him at the time like a kick from the hind leg of a mule in his subliminal consciousness.” If Tietjens chooses to not go to war, he will be suppressing his emotion. By choosing to go to the war, he lets out all his inner pain. There will always be a temptation to keep emotions in one’s subliminal consciousness, since it is always easier to not deal with these emotions. As a result, stimulations, such as Sylvia, are necessary for the outburst of emotions.

P. 282 “He had two personalities. Tow or three times he had said: ‘Why don’t you kiss the girl? She’s a nice girl, isn’t she? You’re a poor b-y Tommie, ain’t cher? Well the poor b-y Tommies ought to have all the nice girls they want! That’s straight, isn’t it?...’” By not being able to speak out his mind, Tietjens is suppressing his idea and personality. His mind, like Jacob’s, becomes separated from the body. As a result, a few sentences later, Tietjens’ mind talks to him. As they suppress their thoughts, they prepare themselves, as soldiers, to erupt on the battlefield.

From Schoolboys to Gentlemen Part II

2007-04-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

Christopher is often referred to throughout the text by Sylvia as the perfect English country gentleman. How true is he to this label?

“The country gentlemen were the magistrates, the solons, and the clergy; and that they were not also to any great extent the statesmen of the first rank only enhances the mystery of their persistence.” (Kirby, 15)

“They and their immediate families, comprising both nobility and gentry, were the aristocracy, distinguished from the other agricultural classes and from the urban bourgeoisie and proletariat, and for want of a better name have been called country gentlemen (14).” After his father’s death, Christopher inherits his father’s property, Groby. However, he rejects his wealth; because of the way it was acquired. As a result, he rejects his birthright, which others such as Levin and Mark view as strange. As we have learned from Ann’s post (http://nomoreparades.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-
was-general-so-shocked-to-hear-that.html), his rejection of wealth is one of the reasons that the General is led to believe that he is a socialist. In this case, his refusal of wealth does not conform to tradition. He defends his beach of tradition by the accusation that his father committed suicide under false pretences, “One’s friends ought to believe that one is a gentleman. Automatically. That is what makes one and them in harmony…. The point is, my father should not have believed him (Ford, 497)”.

“When peace and plenty eventually return to England the country life will begin again, but to a large extent there will be a new race of squires; no one can foretell how they will compare with the squires of the past. We have seen how that in the nineteenth century they had no longer the splendid quality of the eighteenth century, for the simple reason that they became merely sporting and bucolic, and neglected the refinements of taste and culture without which no one can be a real gentleman (Lytton, 199-200).”

Christopher embodies the country gentleman in manner and tradition, “Of course Christopher would cultivate an English accent so show that he was an English county gentleman. And he would speak correctly – to show that an English Tory can do anything in the world if he wants to (Ford, 408)”. Throughout the text, we are reminded by Christopher of what a gentleman should do what he should not do – for example he abhors making a scene in front of the lower classes/servants, sees the war as a duty of patriotism, and refuses to divorce Sylvia because it is not a gentlemanly thing to do. As a superior officer he suppresses emotion in front of his troops, “It is proper that one’s individual feelings should be sacrificed to the necessities of a collective entity (357).” Christopher provides an example of the “stiff upper lip” that often characterizes the British protagonist to the point of stereotype.

Sources:

Chester, Kirby. London: James Clarke and Company, 1937
Lyton, Neville. The English Country Gentleman. London : Hurst & Blackett, 1925

Military Ranks

2007-04-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be useful to go over the ranks in the British military, for people like me who are not familiar with the responsibilities and rights of the various positions.

From lowest to highest, here they are:

Lance Corporal
The lowest rank of a non-commissioned soldier. It refers, simply, to a seasoned soldier. The name comes from the Italian lanzia spezzata, which means literally "broken lance", or in other words, a man who has seen enough battles to have damaged his equipment.

Corporal
The second-lowest non-commissioned soldier, a corporal's job varies but in infantry he usually commands a section.

Sergeant
The third-lowest non-commissioned rank, sergeants are usually in specialist positions or in command of a platoon.
Case the cook is a sergeant.

Second Lieutenant
The lowest commissioned rank in the British army, this rank was introduced in the late 19th century to replace the rank of "Ensign".

Lieutenant
An officer who, as the original French might imply, "holds a position" in the army. Typically a commander of a platoon.
Hotchkiss and Hitchcock are Lieutenants.

Captain
A commissioned officer just below a major. The word comes from the old French capitain, which translates to "chief".
Tietjens and MacKenzie are Captains.

Major
A commissioned officer of mid-level command. From the Latin magnus which means "great".
Drake and Cornwallis are Majors.

Lieutenant Colonel
Commands a batallion.

Colonal
An old military rank for a commissioned officer dating back to the Roman times.
Levin is a Colonal.

Major General
A high ranking officer subordinate to a Brigadier General.

Lieutenant General
A rank that dates back the middle ages. Traditionally, this rank is held by the second-in-command on the battlefield. The commander of a division.

General
An officer of high military rank, it comes from the Latin genus for "class, race, kind".
Campion is the General.

Field Marshal
The highest rank of the British army, who were originally the keepers of the king's horses. He acts as commander of the army. The position may only be given out during war time, or to retiring Chiefs of the General Staff.

Sources: British Army Website
Dictionary of Ranks, Appointments and Trades

Summary of Part Two Chapter Two

2007-04-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

Summary:
Tietjens and Sylvia are both at Lady Sachse’s feast. While Tietjens has gone to the telephone with a lance-corporal, Cowley tells Sylvia how Tietjens spent three hours “examining twenty-nine thousand toe nails…” (Ford, 398). Cowley tells Sylvia that Tietjens is a very “admirable officer” (Ford, 398), who writes letter for those who can’t write. Sylvia, attempting to find out whether or not Tietjens is having an affair with Miss Wannop, says “Of course my husband would not have time to write very full letters….He is not like the giddy young subalterns who run after skirts” (Ford, 399). Cowley laughs and says that Tietjens never chased any skirts. As Tietjens join Cowley and Sylvia’s conversation, she realizes that she is intensely and sexually attracted to Tietjens. She tells herself “It’s pure sexual passion…It’s pure sexual passion…God! Can’t I get over this?” (Ford, 400). “I can’t help it…Oh, I can’t help it….” (Ford, 401). “By God, if that beast does not give in to me tonight he never shall see Michael again” (Ford, 401). She wants to sleep with Tietjens, but she needs to know if Tietjens is in love with Valentine. She can barely wait to throw herself into Tietjens’ embrace. “Holy Mary, mother of God!...If you give me a sign I could wait” (Ford, 404). She searches for a presentable man in the room to be the sign. Tietjens and Cowley are going to the telephone, and Sylvia decides to wait for them in the smoking-room. Father Consett’s ghost appears in the smoking-room. Sylvia thinks back to how, earlier, the general asks Tietjens to go talk to the duchess about coal, as the purpose for the duchess to hold this ceremony is to discuss the price of coal. The general reveals that the duchess thinks the price of coal is too high, and that the English have put up such a high price to keep her hothouse stoves out. Tietjens suggests to the duchess that, since his family owns the largest stretch of coal-burning land in England, and the duchess owns the largest stretch of hothouses in France, they should become business partners. The general compliments Tietjens in front of Sylvia by saying “He’s got a positive genius for getting all sorts of things out of the most beastly muddles” (Ford, 409). Then, Sylvia asks the general: “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that Christopher was a Socialist?” The general, astonished, claims that he will drum Tietjens out of service. When the general asks for evidence, Sylvia tells the general that Teitjens “is heir to one of the biggest fortune in England, for a commoner, and he refuses to touch a penny” (Ford, 411). Later, Sylvia tries to further her devilment by telling the general that Christopher desires to model himself upon Jesus Christ, which implies that Teitjens is going crazy. Sylvia promises that she’ll stop torturing Christopher and go into retreat in a convent of Ursuline Dames Nobles for the rest of her life. Then, she sees a presentable man, and recognizes that “he was to be a sign, not a prey!” (Ford, 414). Sylvia gives Tietjens a pack of letter, which she had kept away, and asks Cowley to let Tietjens read the letters for a few minutes. As Tietjens reads the letters, Sylvia thinks back on how the rumours she spread about Christopher having an affair with Valentine “smashed” (Ford, 422) Christopher’s father, instead of Christopher. Suddenly, “a gun manned by exhilarated anti-aircraft fellows, and so close that it must have been in the hotel garden, shook her physically at almost the same moment as an immense maroon popped off on the quay at the bottom of the street in which the hotel was” (Ford, 424). The general quickly cleared the room. Christopher finished reading the letters and tells Sylvia that “as far as he was concerned Groby was entirely at her disposal with all that it contained. And of course a sufficient income for the upkeep” (Ford, 430). It seems to Sylvia that Christopher is intended to get himself killed in the war. “She warned him that, if he got killed, she should cut down the great cedar at the south-west corner of Groby” (Ford, 430). In reply, Tietjens tells Sylvia that he cannot control his own death, and explains to her that he is in no great danger. To Sylvia, the war is nothing more than an “ignoble horseplay” (Ford, 431) not worth sacrificing for. She asks Christopher: “what could you not have risen to with your gifts, and your influence…and your integrity?” (Ford, 432). Later, Cowley begins to talk about how he and his wife dealt with their son’s measles. This reminds Sylvia of how Tietjens took the responsibility to take care of Michael, who suffered from measles as well. She knows “Christopher had been down to hell to bring the child back” (Ford, 437). At the end of the chapter, Sylvia and Tietjens danced in the lounge, and agreed to go to Sylvia’s room to talk.

Tietjens’ Toryism/Compassion:
Tietjens showing care for soldiers that are less fortunate by writing letters for them: “If the captain is a little remiss in writing letters…I have heard….You might say, in that respect, that thank God we have got a navy, ma’am…” (Ford, 398).
Cowley says that “if we had a laugh against him it was that he mothered the lot of us as if he was a hen sitting on addled eggs” (Ford, 399).
“But there, your born gentleman mixes with men all his days and knows them. Down to the ground and inside their puttees…” (Ford, 401).
Tietjens is unwilling to leave Cowley in the cold camp, because he cares about him and is unwilling to see him suffer. To show his gratitude for Tietjens, he tells Syvia “I might have been sitting, now, at this very moment, up in the cold camp….But for you and the captain….Up in the cold camp…” (Ford, 402). In return, Tietjens receives Cowley’s devotedness.
Sylvia tells Cowley how Tietjens helps everyone just like Jesus. “He was always helping people…He helped virtuous Scotch students, and broke-down gentry….And women take in adultery….All of them….Like….You know Who….That is his mode….” (Ford 404).
When Tietjens is talking to the duchess in French, “Of course Christopher would cultivate an English accent to show that he was an English country gentleman. And he would speak correctly – to show that an English Tory can do anything in the world if he wants to…” (Ford, 408).
An orderly asked Tietjens to sign his slip, so he can go and get married. Tietjens, after a short hesitation, signs the slip. He asks the boy: “Got anything saved up?” The boy said: “A fiver and a few bob” (Ford, 429). Tietjens gives the boy money, and adds: “Don’t’ let it get all over camp. I can’t afford to subsides all the seven months children in the battalion” (Ford, 429).
Sylvia’s Sadistic Nature:
Sylvia demands that she should be the center of Tietjens’ attention. She is queen, and it is against decency to neglect her total power to control and torture men. “If you have an incomparably beautiful woman on your hands you must occupy yourself solely with her….Nature exacts that of you…until you are unfaithful to her with a snub-nosed girl with freckles; that, of course, being a reaction, is still in a way occupying yourself with your woman!...But to betray her with a battalion…That is against decency, against Nature…” (Ford, 399).
Sylvia thinks back to the time when she finds a dead bulldog at her door. She “got the rhinoceros whip and lashed into it. There’s a pleasure in lashing into a naked white beast…Obese and silent, like Christopher….I thought Christopher might…That night…It hung down its head” (Ford, 417). Sylvia whips the dog as if it is Christopher. She wants the bulldog, or Christopher, to put down his head, and submit to her victory as a sadistic conqueror.
Freudian universal sexual drive:
When Sylvia was sitting in the smoking-lounge: “It was undeniably like something moving….All these things going in one direction….A disagreeable force set in motion by gawky school boys – but schoolboys of the Sixth Form, sinister, hobbledehoy, waiting in the corners of playgrounds to torture someone, weak and unfortunate” (Ford, 414). All things are going in one direction driven by sexual desire to torture someone weak and unfortunate.
Sylvia, in despise of men’s school boy prank says: “These horrors, these infinities of pain, this atrocious condition of the world had been brought about in order that men should indulge themselves in orgies of promiscuity. That in the end was at the bottom of male honor, of male virtue, observance of treaties, upholding of the flag….An immense warlock’s carnival of appetites, lusts, ebrieties…And once set in motion there was no stopping it. This state of things would never cease….Because once they had tasted of the joy – the blood – of this game, who would let it end?” (Ford, 438).

Summary of Part Two Chapter One

2007-04-04T05:31:00.000-07:00

Summary:
At the lounge of the hotel, Major Perowne is trying to persuade Sylvia to leave her bedroom door unlocked that night. “He had been saying that Sylvia had ruined his life…for her he might have married some pure young thing” (Ford, 379). As Perowne begs unremittingly, Tietjens walks into the hotel with a fixed face and decides not to embarrass Sylvia by approaching her. “And yet it seemed to her, since he was so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog…” (Ford, 381). Christopher’s entrance intimidates Perowne, who has committed adultery with Sylvia. While Perowne continues to whine like an oaf, Sylvia sets her eyes on Christopher’s distant reflection in the mirror. Her mind is now completely occupied by thoughts about Christopher, and how he “would know perfectly well that those petty frightfulnesses of hers were not in the least in her note; so he would know, too, that each of them was just a try-on” (Ford, 384). Although she “had certainly meant their parting to be for good” (Ford, 385) before she went to France with Perowne, Sylvia now sees that she will reunite with her husband. Yet, the existence of Valentine Wannop casts a shadow of fret over her joy. Initially, Sylvia decided to have an affair with Perowne, because she believes that “for your wife to throw you over for an attractive man is naturally humiliating, but that she should leave you publicly for a man of hardly any intelligence at all, you priding yourself on your brains, must be nearly as mortifying a thing as can happen to you” (Ford, 390). She wishes to bring Christopher excruciating agony and pain, but soon regrets. Perowne, a clod that suffered as a child from his mother’s lack of proper care, becomes “fantastically murderous” (Ford, 392) when Sylvia tries to leave him. Moreover, beside Christopher, “other men simply did not seem ever to have grown up” (Ford, 389). Gradually, the pleasure derived from cheating on Christopher wears out. “She beings to miss Christopher” (Ford, 390), and understand how Father Consett had been right. So, with the intent to return to her husband, she writes to her husband and “removes from the letter any possible trace of emotion” (Ford, 393). Now, Sylvia decides that she is “going to investigate” (Ford 397) Christopher’s relationship with Valentine. She imagines that “This whole war was an agapemone….You went to war when you desired to rape innumerable women. It was what war was for….All these men, crowded in this narrow space….” (Ford, 387).
Sylvia’s Desire to Conquer Men:
Sylvia is in love with power rather than sex. With her extraordinary beauty, she is able to conquer men. Paradoxically, the men she had conquered turned out to be not worth conquering. While men become madly in love with her, she begins to despite these men and grow cold towards them. She is “a crule-looking woman with a distant smile…some vampire…La belle Dame sans Merci” (386). She realizes that Christopher is the only men worth conquering. “As beside him, other men simply did not seem ever to have grown up” (Ford, 389). “Men, at any rate, never fulfilled expectations” (Ford, 394). Yet, she can never conquer Christopher, because he will always remain morally superior to her. She tries to bring Tietjens pain by having an affair with “a man of hardly any intelligence at all” (Ford. 390). She “felt the most painful emotion of joyful hatred that had visited her when she had first thought of going off with Perowne” (Ford, 389). Sylvia says, “I swear I’ll make his wooden face wince yet” (Ford, 381). By remaining morally superior to her, Tietjens is waging war against Sylvia. Sex is her weapon, or her means to reach an end.
Freudian universal sexual drive:
“This whole war was an agapemone…you went to war when you desired to rape innumerable women. It was what war was for….All these men, crowded in this narrow space…” (Ford, 397). Ford suggests that there is a sexual drive behind the war. When universal sexual drive initiates a war, there will be destruction leading to the break down of boundaries separating Ego, super-ego, and id.
Sylvia’s Lack of Motherhood:
Sylvia does not care about Michael. Unlike other mothers, she occupies her mind with conquering men rather than her son. She thinks about her child only when she is bored by Perowne’s stupidity. After the long journey across half France by miserable train, she “found herself wanting to see her child, whom she imagined herself to hate, as having been the cause of all her misfortunes…” (Ford, 393). Also, when she finds out that Perowne’s mother “to give him a salutary lesson, had given so much publicity to the affair that he had become afflicted with a permanent bent towards shyness that rendered him by turns very mistrustful of himself or very boastful and, although he repressed manifestations of either tendency towards the outside world, the continual repression rendered him almost in-capable of any vigorous thought or action…” (Ford, 390), she could not careless. It simply is not her business. When she sees a man weak and needs help, instead of showing her motherly virtue inherent in her nature, “she was by no means prepared to readjust other women’s hopeless maternal misfits” (Ford, 390). Nurturing and mothering are not the purpose of her life.
Tietjens’ Toryism:
Tietjens walks into the hotel, and sees Sylvia talking to Perowne. Instead of walking up to Sylvia, Tietjens walks away and decides not to embarrass her. Then, Sylvia says “Damn his chivalry!...Oh, God damn his chivalry!” She knew what was going on in his mind. He had seen her, with Perowne, so he had neither come towards her nor directed the servant to where she sat. For fear of fear of embarrassing her! He would leave it to her to come to him if she wished” (Ford, 381).
Sylvia's Sadistic Nature:
When Tietjens walked into the hotel, “his face was intolerable. Heavy; fixed. Not insolent, but simply gazing over the heads of all things and created beings, into a world too distant for them to enter. And yet it seemed to her, since he was so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog…” (Ford, 381).

Spinning Jenny

2007-04-04T02:14:00.000-07:00

"that they would rather the war were lost than that the calvary should gain distinction in it! . . . But it was partly the simple, pathetic illusion of the day that great things could only be done by new inventions. You extinguished the horse, invented something very simple and became God! That is the real pathetic fallacy. You fill a flower-pot with gun-powder and presto! the war is won. All the soldiers fall down dead. " (533)

In the years leading up to World War I, the theory of progress was the vogue. The theory of progress grew out of an older religious belief in teleology, that everything that happened in the world happened in order to continue toward a defined goal or end. The religious leaning of this, of course, was that God guided this process and determined its end.

When absolute faith in God faded in England, a faith in science rose to replace it. The people of the nineteenth century, having witnessed the fruits of the industrial revolution, had become enchanted with the idea of technological progress. "Great Exhibitions" were held around the world, starting in England after 1851, and existed for the expressed purpose of lauding the rapid advances of technology and the new age they heralded.

The passage quoted above illustrates just how much of an effect World War I had upon this system of beliefs. Up until that point, technology was seen as nothing but good: efficient factories meant cheaper goods, newer trains meant more convenient travel, etc. The possibilities were limitless.

World War I totally debased this optimistic teleology founded on the wonders of science. Advances in technology elsewhere also meant advances in the technology of war. The technological teleology that brought about steam engines had also brought about the machine gun and mustard gas. In this way, progress brought about the countless meaningless deaths of millions of soldiers and destroyed the world's previous understanding of warfare as an honourable man's pursuit. Certainly the "flowerpot filled with gun-powder" killed more efficiently than a man on a horse, or a knight in armour, but at what cost? At least before, men had the dignity of having a fighting chance for their survival in battle, where survival rested at least partially on skill, and you looked into the eyes of the man you would kill or be killed by.

In the same way progress had depersonalized the process of producing clothing with the spinning jenny, so to did it depersonalize warfare: no longer was it a bloody process where eventually a victor would arise through skill and good fortune, but instead killed all soldiers.

Before thy char--

2007-04-03T23:08:00.000-07:00

"'For God's sake don't start that damned gramophone again!' In the blessed silence, after preliminary wheezings and guitar noises an astonishing voice burst out:
'Less than the dust. . .
Before thy char. . .'
And then, stopping after a murmur of voices, began:
'Pale hands I loved'
The general sprang from his chair and rushed to the hall. . . He came back crestfallenly . . . 'Dancing!' The melody had indeed, after a buzz, changed to a languorous and interrupted variation of a waltz. 'Dancing in the dark!' the general said with enhanced disgust. . . . 'And the Germans may be here at any moment. . . .'" (474-475)

After the commotion of the bombing, the first sounds to be heard are a few lines from separate songs. The first two lines of lyrics seem to reference a poem by Laurence Hope, "Less than the Dust", published in the book The Garden of Karma. Here is the full poem:

Less than the dust, beneath thy Chariot wheel,
Less than the rust, that never stained thy Sword,
Less than the trust thou hast in me, Oh, Lord,
Even less than these!

Less than the weed, that grows beside thy door,
Less than the speed, of hours, spent far from thee,
Less than the need thou hast in life of me.
Even less am I.

Since I, Oh, Lord, am nothing unto thee,
See here thy Sword, I make it keen and bright,
Love's last reward, Death, comes to me to-night,
Farewell, Zahir-u-din.

The other, from the same book and poet, was a popular Edwardian love song entitled "Kashmiri Song".

Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?
Whom do you lead on Rapture's roadway, far,
Before you agonise them in farewell?

Oh, pale dispensers of my Joys and Pains,
Holding the doors of Heaven and of Hell,
How the hot blood rushed wildly through the veins
Beneath your touch, until you waved farewell.

Pale hands, pink tipped, like Lotus buds that float
On those cool waters where we used to dwell,
I would have rather felt you round my throat,
Crushing out life, than waving me farewell!

Two heart-wrenching songs of unrequited love.

The first is the lamentation of a woman who is worthless to the man she loves, an upstanding soldier of the nobility without even rust on his sword. He does not trust her, does not value her, does not need her; she is nothing to him, and the thought of it drives her to suicide.

The second is told from a man's point of view, or at least we must assume so since it would be odd for a woman to moon over a man's "pale" "pink-tipped" hands. This is the story of a man abandoned by a woman, who wonders as to her whereabouts, about who she is now leading on to disappointment in the same way she did to himself previously. This woman is capable of giving the man both pain and pleasure, but the pain of being abandoned by her is too much to bear. He would rather she'd killed him outright rather than torture him the way she has.

Sound familiar?

Sources: Representative Poetry Online
The Poetry Archive

From Schoolboys to Gentlemen Part I

2007-04-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9009582/Thomas-Arnold

Thomas Arnold was headmaster of Rugby school in 1828. He brought about reform to the English school system. He emphasized strength of character through education, and the pursuit of moral and academic excellence. Arnold also concentrated on giving a religious education, he was a devout Christian. He refined the prefectorial system which was essentially aimed at keeping younger boys out of trouble through instilment of discipline and respectability.

“Or really, because it is not good to have taken one’s public school’s ethical system seriously. I am really, sir, the English public schoolboy. That’s an eighteenth-century product. What with the love of truth that- God help me!- they rammed into me at Clifton and the belief Arnold forced upon Rugby that the vilest of sins – the vilest of all sins- its to peach to the headmaster! (Ford, 490).”

“…say you regarded me as a head master in 1912. Now I am your commanding officer- which is the same thing. You must not peach to me. That’s what you call the Arnold of Rugby touch…”

“And he was constantly impressing these sentiments upon his pupils. ‘What I have often said before,’ he told them, ‘I repeat now: what we must look for here is, first, religious and moral principle; secondly, gentlemanly conduct; thirdly, intellectual ability (Strachey)’”.

Christopher is not only the last Tory of his kind; he is also the last English public schoolboy and the last English country gentleman. General Champion misjudges Christopher’s conduct; he believes that his contemptuous personal life jars with the discipline and moral code of his troops. Consequently, like a head master, he decides to commit to the greater good by sending Christopher up the line. “I am to go up into the line so that the morals of the troops in your command may not be contaminated by the contemplation of my martial infelicities (491)”. Like the prefect system, Christopher is responsible to his subordinates by providing a prime example of propriety. Due to the rather public nature of his affairs, the General is uncomfortable with having him in his current position amongst his troops, lest Christopher himself lead their weakening of moral fibre.

Sources:

http://www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/landow/victorian/history/education/rugby/bradby.html

Strachey, Lytton. http://www.bartleby.com/189/301.html

Stoic Philosophy: Suicide & Christopher

2007-04-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

“Diogenes Laertius recounting the Stoic doctrine by saying that they consider that a man takes his own life rationally for one of the following reasons: on behalf of his country, or his friends, or if he is afflicted by intolerable pain or an incurable disease (Rist, 239).”

This passage implicates that suicide is acceptable – if it is done for the right reasons. Christopher believes his father’s suicide was obviously committed for the wrong reasons. Firstly, he chose to believe Ruggles, and on principle (Christophre’s English gentleman principles) one should not choose a stranger over one’s son.

Secondly, it can be seen as an introduction of a destruction force which threatens the family unit. “My father’s suicide was not an act that can be condoned. A gentleman does not commit suicide when he has descendants. It might influence my boy’s life very disastrously…” (Ford, 490).

Thirdly, his father should not have committed suicide because he was not under the duress of an incurable situation, and as mentioned earlier, it has introduced contamination in Christopher’s views. “But you see how bad for one’s descendants suicide is. That is why I do not forgive my father. Before he did it I should never have contemplated the idea. Now I have contemplated it. That’s a weakening of the moral fibre. It’s contemplating a fallacy as a possibility. For suicide is no remedy for a twisted situation of a psychological kind. It is for bankruptcy. Or for military disaster. For the man of action, not for the thinker (491).”

“Sometimes it is a proof of nobility to live even when circumstances are harsh (Rist, 250)”. As a part of the aristocracy, it is their function to set the standard. By committing suicide, Christopher’s father also fails to fulfill his own line of duty, his commitment to Mrs. Wannop and to his family. He also fails his duty as a father by his misplaced confidence in the words of Ruggles. For Christopher, a failure to commit to duty is a failure in the moral fibre.

Sources:

Rist, J.M. Stoic Philosophy. NY: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Trench warfare: The Mud in No More Parades

2007-04-03T16:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.awm.gov.au/1918/trenchwarfare/54553.htm

- The mud becomes a signifier for Christopher’s entrapment in the chaos of war. His fear stems from the event in Part III Ch. II wherein Major-General Campion, wishes to send him up the line to General Perry’s army. He realizes that it is “certain death” (476), and this prompts images of mud. The mud becomes a source of psychological anxiety.

“…the extraordinary living conditions of trench warfare were seldom evoked as contributory to shell shock. Mud, hunger, fatigue, chronic sicknesses, often continual damp, lice, and rats were seldom mentioned as possible contributors to the soldiers’ state. Even so astute an observer and therapist as Rivers (1918) preferred an essentially psychological model of causality, deriving the symptoms of war neurosis from the degree of immobility demanded of the soldier in his combat task. A fuller appreciation of the roles that might be played in symptom generation by environmental factors in the combat zone was not to come until World War II. (Ch. 5, Marlowe)”

“…back to the frozen rifle, the ground-sheet on the liquid mud, the desperate suction on the ankle as the foot was advanced (331)”.

- “There it was then: the natural catastrophe! As when, under thunder, a dam breaks. His mind was battling with the waters. What would it pick out as the main terror? The mud, the noise, dread always at the back of the mind (Ford, 477).” The mud is associated with the battling of waters; after the dam breaks the onslaught of water brings with it the danger of drowning. As we know, mud was a serious problem in trench warfare and soldiers were known to drown in it. The mud elicits from Christopher a sort of mute terror.

- “Tietjens’ mind missed a notch again… It was the fear of the mud that was going to obsess him. Yet, curiously, he had never been under heavy fire in mud… You would think that would not have obsessed him. But in this ear he had just heard uttered in a whisper of intense weariness, the words: Es ist nicht zu ertragen; es ist das dasz uns verloren hat… words in German, of utter despair, meaning: it is unbearable: it is that that has ruined us… The mud! (486).”

- “… A beginning of some November… With a miracle of unshine; not a cloud, the mud towering up shut you in intimately with a sky that arched for limpidity (486).”

Sources:

Marlowe, David H. http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/library/randrep/marlowe_paper/mr1018_11_ch5.html

Stoic ethics in No More Parades

2007-04-03T15:21:00.000-07:00

- Stoic ethics has roots in ancient Greece, with particular influence from Socrates.

- Follows the assumption that all human beings pursue happiness, and that to achieve happiness one must follow nature by being virtuous. “…virtue is the only thing that is good in any way, shape or form. Only what can benefit us, that is, make us happy, is good; and only virtue does that (Brennan, 35).”

- They believe in a reversal of conventions. Money and fame are not considered a good; neither are health, life, and freedom. Conversely death and poverty are not bad, the only evil is that of vice, an evil that humans inflict upon themselves.

- “The most common sense in which emotions are irrational, then, is that they are false. Most of the desires that animate people most of the time- the desires for money, sex, reputation, property, and so on- are all false, inasmuch as they claim that these things are really good when in fact they are completely indifferent (96).”

- Despite having a wealthy inheritance, Christopher does not touch any of it. During the war he elects to live off his meager earnings in the military. Christopher refuses to accept the share of his father’s money because of the way he died, through suicide because of his belief in lies about Christopher. Although it would be practical to accept the money, he does not do so, on principle.

- Sylvia criticizes Christopher, “What was incredible was that Christopher should let her go on starving in such a poverty-stricken place when he had something like the wealth of the Indies at his disposal (Ford, 424)”.

- Christopher on virtue: “If we lose, they win. If success is necessary to your idea of virtue – virtus – they then provide the success instead of ourselves. But the thing is to be able to stick to the integrity of your character, whatever earthquake sets the house tumbling over your head…” (Ford, 454).

Source:

Brennan, Tad. The Stoic Life. NY: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Like a Hogarth Picture

2007-04-03T14:20:00.000-07:00

"She looked hard at the room to get her senses into order again. She said:
'It's like a Hogarth picture. . . .'
The undissolvable air of the eighteenth century that the French contrive to retain in all their effects kept the scene singularly together. On a sofa sat the duchess with one of those impossible names: Beauchain-Radigutz or something like it. The bluish room was octagonal and vaulted, up to a rosette in the centre of the ceiling. English officers and V.A.D.s of some evident presence opened out to the left, French military and very black-clothed women of all ages, but all apparently widows, opened out to the right, as if the duchess shone down a sea at sunset. Beside her on the sofa you did not see Lady Sachse; leaning over her you did not see the prospective bride. This stoutish, unpresentable, coldly venomous woman, in black clothes so shabby they might have been grey tweed, extinguished other personalities as the sun conceals planets. A fattish, brilliantined personality, in mufti, with a scarlet rosette, stood sideways to the duchess' right, his hands extended forward as if in an invitation to dance; an extremely squat lady, also apparently a widow, extended, on the left of the duchess, both her black-gloved hands, as if she too were giving an invitation to the dance." (439)

The artist Sylvia references here is William Hogarth, a British painter and engraver who rose to popularity in the early eighteenth century. He was well known for despising all things French and for his creation of a new style and function of artwork, the modern morality painting. These paintings and engravings satirized what Hogarth saw as minor and social vices, and continued into a series that would culminate with the punishment of a more major crime. His distaste for France, French people, and the import of French culture to Britain were common themes.

Interestingly enough in relation to the scene transcribed above, one of the Hogarth's popular morality paintings was the series "Marriage a la Mode":

The Marriage Settlement

Tete a Tete

The Inspection

The Toilette

The Bagnio

The Lady's Death

In this series, the progression of a marriage in the French style is shown, from writing the settlement, to inspecting the bride, to the dual between groom and the bride's lover, through to the bride's suicide after learning her lover had been hanged for the murder of her to-be groom. In the text, Sylvia witnesses the signing of a marriage settlement in which the mother refuses to participate because of the price of coal. Sylvia compares this scene to a Hogarth painting, suggesting firstly that esthetically the scene does resemble a painting by that artist in its staging and cast of characters, secondly that Sylvia views the arrangement with the same distaste that Hogarth viewed his own subjects, amd thirdly that Sylvia believes that the scene's inherent immorality would eventually lead to a tragic but fitting end, as in Hogarth's famous series. An interesting position for a woman like Sylvia to take, considering the state of her own marriage.

Does anyone with more knowledge in art history or art have anything else they'd like to add here?

Sources: "William Hogarth" at The Artchive
The British National Gallery

Freud and No More Parades

2007-04-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

Sigmund Freud May 6 1856 - Sept 23 1939
* "In each individual there is a coherent organization of mental processes and we call this the ego. It is to the ego that consciousness is attached; the ego controls the approaches to motility- that is, to the mental agency which supervises all its own constituent processes, and which goes to sleep at night, though even then it exercises the censorship on dreams. From this ego proceeds the repressions...by means of which is sought to exclude certain trends in the mind not nearly from consciousness effectiveness and activity"(8).
*"We have come upon something in the ego itself which is also unconscious which behaves exactly like the repressed- that is, which produces powerful effects without itself being conscious and which requires special work before it can be made conscious"(9).-meaning that there is a coherent ego and the repressed which is split from it.
*"The ego is not sharply spererated from the id; its lower portion merges into it. But the repressed merges into the id as well and is merely a part of it.The repressed is only cut off sharply from the ego by the resistences of repression; it can communicate with the ego through the id.... We might add, perhaps, that the ego wears a 'cap of hearing'- on the one side only" (17-8).
*The ego seeks to bring the influence of the external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavours to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle with reigns unrestrictidly in the id. For the ego, perception plays the part which in the id, falls to instinct. The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions"(19).
*In this view Tietjens is pure super ego, he tries to keep everything in control, yet cracks and Sylvia is pure id.
*"The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility, devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id, it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength, while the ego uses borrowed forces.... Often a rider, if he is not to be parted from his hose, is obligated to guide it where he wants to go, so in the same way the ego is in the habit of transforming the id's will into action as if it were its own"(19)
*This fits in nicely with "What about the accursed obsession with O Nine Morgan that intermittently jumped on him? All the while he had been riding Schomburg the day before, O Nine Morgan had seemed to be just before the coffin-headed brute's off-shoulder. The animal must fall.... he had had the passionate impulse to pull up on the horse. And all the time a dreadful depression! A weight!...."(484).

Source:Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id.USA:W.W. Norton and Company. 1960.

*"Repression was one of the basic planks of Freud's theory of personality, which he defined as "turning something away, and keeping it at a distance, from the conscious" (Freud ed. Freud 1991, 524) According to Freud, thoughts or feelings which cause anxiety are pushed into the unconscious, and the person then denies any awareness of the cause of the anxiety. If the repression is not completely effective, then the state of anxiety can be stimulated by the unconscious mind producing threatening feelings without the patient being aware of the reason for anxiety"(3)
*This is represented in No More Parades as the Tea-tray. Tietejens repression of emotions for Sylvia and O Nine Morgan.
*"Another characteristic of repression is "projection", in which internal perceptions are externalised and projected onto something else"(4)
*This is reflected in No More Parades when Tietjens is angry with Sylvia and projects his anger for her by angerly pointing out everyones feminine aspects in part one chapter two

Source: M.J. Geller Feud, Magic and Mesopotamia:How the magic works. November 1996.Folklore: 1997, Vol 108 1/2 .

Brief History of Aristocrats and WWI

2007-04-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

A party for the aristocratic Edwardians.

- Most often, the British Army, Royal Naby or the Diplomatic Corps is considered to be the best continuing education an aristocrat male can get into.

- The officer corps were dominated by the aristocracy. For instance, approximately 80% of the military profession were aristocrats in 1909 and 52% of the officers of the rank of colonel and above were aristocrats in 1913 Britian, a year before war was declared.

- The cause of world war one is partially blamed on the aristocrats as militarism. The aristocrats and military elites had too much control over Germany, Russia, and Austria that the war was a consequence of wanting too much military power.

Men without conscience

2007-04-02T22:46:00.000-07:00

Critics point out that "in contrast to Tietjens's individual conscience is the description that the war is being conducted from the sidelines by men without conscience who view the soldiers as so many statistics in the strategy of power: "All these men given into the hands of the most cynically care-free intriguers in long corridors who made plots that harrowed the hearts of the world. All these men toys, all these agonies mere occasions for picturesque phrases to be put into politicians' speeches without heart or even intelligence. Hundreds of thousands of men tossed here and there in that sordid and gigantic mudbrownness of midwinter..." (p.296).
It is clear from the critical review that the mechanization of war on a vast worldwide scale has made the individual heroism and personal glory typified by ceremonial parade obsolete. Tietjens, composing a sonnet that Mackenzie will translate into Latin, itself an anachronism amid the grim business of conducting a mechanized war, amusingly twists the motif around to rhyme with "soil": "No more parades, Not any more, no oil...(p.319). But we are immediately brought back to the bitter reality of war by the intent of the sonnet to convey the idea that where so many thousands die "there was no room for swank, typified by expensive funerals. As you might say: No flowers by compulsion...No more parades." (p.320)
Also another interesting thought is that Campion believes as does Tietjens, that the honour and reputation of a woman must be protected at all costs; a gentleman can do no less to preserve the sanctity of marriage and the home. But this ideal is lost in the modern world.

(Source: Ford. No More Parades. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol.172 )

Christopher Tietjens's conscience

2007-04-02T22:13:00.000-07:00

When reading Twentieth-century ctiticisms I came across interesting observations of the critic. He writes: The appearance of peace hides the corruption ready to war against personal reputations; the appearance of good maners and good form suppresses the violent emotions in human relationships. The war destroyed even the pretense to good form and exposed the rottenness that had always existed underneath. Tietjens, having just been informed by his brother Mark that their own father thought him "a bloddy pimp living on women", comments on this unnaturalness by observing the dead leaves in the base of a fountain: "This civilization had contrived a state of things in which leaves rotted by August. Well, it was doomed"
The motif is related to the idea of good form with its ceremonious sense of good manners, of not creating a scene, of playing the game. "The curse of the army", Tietjens says, "was our imbecile national belief that the game is more than the player. That was our ruin, mentally, as a nation"(p.305-06) At that moment the body of O Nine Morgan, still bleeding, is brought in. If Tietjens were a man without conscience, he could shrug his shoulders and say "That's war," but, since Tietjens's conscience will not allow him to shrug it off, he feels responsible for Morgan's death. By association of ideas, the sight of the blood reminds Tietjens of the wounded horse in Some Do Not...; the link here is not a remembrance of that earlier sight of blood but the whole idea of responsibility. Morgan is beyond patching up, and "the glowing image of the fellow's blood" becomes the symbol of his sense of guilt even though there was nothing he really could have done for Morgan that would have avoided disaster one way or the other.

(Source: Ford. No More Parades. Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Vol.172)

The Abode of Love

2007-04-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

"She must discover. . . . But how do you discover? Against a universal conspiracy. . . . This whole war was an Agapemone. . . . You went to war when you desired to rape innumerable women. It was what war was for. . . All these men, crowded in this narrow space . . . She was going to watch every face she saw until it gave up the secret of where in that town Christopher had the Wannop girl hidden." (428)

In this passage, Sylvia compares the war to Agapemone. Agapemone was a late 19th century cult lead by former reverend Henry Prince, who suffered from delusions that lead him to believe he was the physical embodiment of the Holy Ghost. Agapemone is Greek for "Abode of Love", and in his Abode, Prince lived with a veritable harem of women, called "Spiritual Wives", who all had sold their worldly possessions and emptied their accounts in order to transfer funds to him. On one instance, Prince raped a young virgin girl in the front of his community's church congregation to the tune of organ and church choir singing hymns. She later became his head wife, and the child she had by him (even though he had claimed their union would not result in pregnancy) was considered a trick of the devil. Other men living in the community worked farms, separate from their wives if they had them, while Prince lived in comfort in the main house of the community with his pick of the women. The community was surrounded by a high wall and guarded by bloodhounds to protect Prince's followers from their family members who attempted frequently to retrieve them.

So what could this comparison mean? Despite his claims that the community was a spiritual one, most outsiders thought Prince to be a madman who used his power in the community to excuse sexual despotism. In other words, the entire community and the faith it was built on existed only for the sexual convenience of one man, who otherwise would never have been able to live such a life of luxury, surrounded by beautiful, mostly willing women.

Sylvia, therefore, is claiming that men who volunteered for the war, like her husband Tietjens, were only doing so for their sexual convenience. War in general, she believes, exists not for land, or for money, or as the result of an absurd collection of alliances or an arms race (as in World War I's case), but as an excuse for men to rape women, to shirk their spiritual and societal duties in the sexual sense and give into their baser desires, all under the cover of a more honourable excuse. Tietjens, acting as Reverend Prince, has gone to France in order to possess what he normally could not: not a harem, of course, but Valentine. Despite what everyone else has told her, Sylvia, operating under her assumptions about war, cannot accept that Valentine would not be present in the town.

Source: "The Abode of Love" at the Utopia Britannica

Ford's theme of Sex-Antagonism

2007-04-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

Anne Marie Flanagan writes that throughout the novel, Sylvia is pictured as a woman of unnatural sexual appetites. Grossly underplayed, however is the fact that Tietjens, her husband, has refused to have sexual relations with her for several years after he discovers that she has been unfaithful to him. At the heart of the difficulties between Tietjens and Sylvia lie sexual frustration and antagonism. Ford adopts the women's movement theme of sex-antagonism, but by exploring it through a character who has no inclanations toward the movement, he is able both to reflect his society's concern about the effects of the suffrage movement on the relations between men and women and to do so without blaming the movement.

(Source: Anne Marie Flanagan. Winter 200/2001 Journal of Modern Literature:Vol 24. University of Sciences in Philadelphia.)

Tietjen's connection to the suffrage movement

2007-04-02T20:36:00.000-07:00

After doing much reasearch I found a paper written by Anne Marie Flanagan that discusses Ford's Women who are represented in Parade's End. She writes that World War 1 deeply affect the novel's hero, Christopher Tietjens, both physically and emotionally. The most interesting thing that she states is that the war that really threatens to destroy him is the one being waged between the sexes. This extends beyond the novel to the outside world. The extent to which women's issues affect all aspects of the society.
Ford and his hero, Tietjens appear to be siding with those who support the suffrage movement.
When Marie Flanagan mentions that women's issues affect all aspects of the society she mentiones Samuel Hyne's words:
"The trouble with women during the Edwardian period was simply that their troubles could not be kept separate and distinct, but kept getting mixed up with each other and with other social issues: contraception threatened the family and the birth rate, divorce threatened the Church and the stability of society, suffrage threatened political balances, and so even the most moderate move toward liberation seemed a rush toward chaos." (Samuel Hynes)
Parade's End comes from this complicated and anxious period in wome's history.
It is known that Ford had his own difficulties with women. Another thing is that Ford supported suffragette movement. He felt anxiety toward women. He supported women's causes but tended to contain and control the advancement of women.
His hero Tietjens also appears to be siding with those who support the suffrage movement. Ford does not portray the women, as many suffragettes were then portrayed, as hysterical and ineffective. The men are portrayed in a realistic and negative light, supporting the notion that Ford was trying to be historically accurate, as well as sympathetic to the women involved in the cause.
(Source: Anne Marie Flanagan. Winter 200/2001 Journal of Modern Literature: Vol.24. University of Sciences in Philadelphia. )

St. Michael

2007-04-02T19:46:00.000-07:00

"She struck me in the face. And went away. Afterwards she threw into the room, through the half-open doorway, a gold medallion of St. Michael, the R.C. patron of soldiers in action that she had worn between her breasts. I took it to mean the final act of parting. As if by no longer wearing it she abandoned all prayer for my safety. . . .It might just as well mean that she wished me to wear it myself for my personal protection. . . ." (374-375)

As the text states, St. Michael is a Roman Catholic patron saint often associated with soldiers. St. Michael was the angel who lead God's side in the battle with Lucifer over heaven. Portrayals of St. Michael, like in the pendant above, often feature Michael in armor, trampling Satan, sometimes in the form of a dragon (as pictured) and others in the form we commonly associate him with. His name, which is Hebrew for "Who is like God?" was the battle cry of God's forces.

St. Michael is not only the patron saint of soldiers, however. He is also commonly associated with the medical profession, and was actually first venerated as an angelic healer rather than as a soldier. He is also the patron saint of police officers, the river of the Nile, and even mariners (in Normandy, at least).

An example of a prayer to Michael that might be said by a soldier at war:

"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirit of wickedness in the high places. Come to the assistance of men whom God has created to His likeness and whom He has redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. The Holy Church venerates thee as her guardian and protector; to thee the Lord has entrusted the souls of the redeemed to be led into Heaven. Pray therefore the God of Peace to crush Satan beneath our feet, that he may no longer retain men captive and do injury to the Church. Offer our prayers to the most High, that without delay they may draw His mercy down upon us. Take hold of the dragon, that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, bind him, and cast him into the bottomless pit so that he should no more seduce the nations. Amen."

For Catholics, pendants or medals like the one Sylvia throws at Tietjens are an old tradition. Often they are given out at significant moments in the receiver's life, such as at their first communion. They are often blessed in order to offer protection to the wearer. In Tietjen's case, a pendant of St. Michael, when worn, would be a constant prayer that St. Michael bring victory to England, keep Tietjen's safe in battle, help him to heal if he were injured and then to protect his soul should he die, since St. Michael is also seen as being a weigher of souls. In this way, Sylvia throwing the pendant is not only breaking up their relationship, but also, in her way, condemning Tietjens to death and England itself to failure in the war. Assuming that as a Catholic she believes in the pendant's power, this scene shows how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to spite her husband.

Sources: "St. Michael" and "Devotional Medals" from The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume X. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1911.
and Michael The Archangel at the Catholic Forum

The Canadian Sergeant-Major's Annoyance

2007-04-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

"The Canadian sergeant-major was worried about a pig-skin leather pocket-book. He had bought it at the ordnance depot in the town. He imagined himself bringing it out on parade, to read out some return or other to the adjutant. Very smart it would look on parade, himself standing up straight and tall. But he could not remember whether he had put it in his kit-bag. . . His present wallet, bought in Ontario, was bulging and split. He did not like to bring it out when Imperial officers asked for something out of a return. It gave them a false idea of Canadian troops. Very annoying . . . He had imagined himself making a good impression on parade, standing up straight and tall, taking out that pocket-book when the adjutant asked for a figure from one return or the other. He understood their adjutants were to be Imperial officers now they were in France." (315)

This passage brings up several issues related to the Great War and succinctly describes Canada's involvement in it.

When war broke out in 1914, Canada was completely unprepared but did not have the option of refusing its services. As a part of the British commonwealth, it had not yet secured for itself status as a country entirely independent of Britain. Unlike the United States, Canada had not won its status as a country through a successful rebellion, but had instead done so peacefully, leaving the British monarch as head of the state. This position at the time was not a symbolic, but rather, a functional one. The result of all this was that when Britain declared war, Canada was assumed to also be involved by default.

When the Canadian government officially announced that they would be sending troops to Britain's aid, the country's military capabilities could easily be compared to the sergeant-major's tattered wallet. German military writers at the time called Canadian involvement in the war a complete non-issue. At the time, it could boast less than 4000 permanent troops and an outdated assortment of weaponry, including the much-maligned Ross Rifle which Canadian soldiers would often abandon, taking the superior guns of dead British comrades as replacement. In this way, Canada's involvement in the war was not only about serving what it regarded as its mother country, or fighting for freedom, but also about proving itself to the world as something more than a remnant of Imperialism, a sad, backwoods place with no significant role to play in the modern world.

The sergeant-major's anxiety about the state of his wallet, then, can be seen as representative of Canada's own sense of inferiority and its wish to prove itself capable and sophisticated in modern warfare. The sergeant-major is hardly concerned about the content of the reports he is giving, referring to them dismissively as "figures from one return or another", but is instead concerned that the Imperial officers be impressed by his new leather pocketbook. He wishes only to make a good impression upon his superiors. In fact, his pride hinges upon their opinion of him. Without his pocket-book, the symbol of his sophistication, he would not be able to "stand up straight and tall" as a soldier on parade.

Source: A Brief History of the Canadian Expeditionary Force
and Their Weapons

Meaning of Parade in No More Parades

2007-03-31T22:36:00.000-07:00

*"Bloody and Gross though the war is, it has it's own version of chastity which goes by the familiar name of "parade" As Ford uses it the word "parade" does not mean quite what it would to an American writer, for in addition to denoting a ceremonial public march with banners and band music, in the English army "parade" denotes a muster of troops for inspection and so, by extension, any moment of official duty. (Do you mind my asking," Tiejten's asks at one point, "Are we still on parade? Is this strafe from General Campion as to the way I command my unit?(Ford,328)) "...the word comes to express much more: it implies not merely discipline but good manners, even amenities, ceremony, perhaps at rare moments-ritual" (Gordon, 101)
*"At the beginning of the war," Tietjens said, "I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow...What do you think he was doing...What the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You can't say we were prepared in the least... Well, the end of the show was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at ease: the band would play Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying There will be no more parades....For there won't. There won't, there damn well won't" (Ford, 306)
"Parade helped make the War possible, and yet the War is destroying parade, as wars always do. This time, however, the destruction threatens to be permanent" (Gordon, 101).
*"It is a world of movement orders and counterorders: we see troops being sent forward to the front, then called back, then late at night being marched into lines of tents by the light of the moon. But this depot is also a place where parade is perpetually being threatened, where morale is perpetually being broken down, for nothing works here quite as it should. "A Base is a place where you meditate, perhaps where in peace where the Tommies should write their last letters home..."(Ford, 297). A replacement depot in a war is different from a combat unit, and the moral of its men is especially subject to erosion by three things 1) red tape and regulations 2) enemy bombing and 3) memories of women and home. Of the soldiers that we see in the hut, Captain Tietjens, Captain McKechine, and Private Morgan all have wives who appear to have betrayed them. Each has suffered and is suffering. Two of these women are mercifully far away; not , however, Tietjens' Sylvia, who soon enters the scene to set the entire camp at odds and put all parade in jeopardy" (Gordon, 101-02)
*An illustration of how enemy bombing erodes Captain Mackenzie: "An enormous crashing sound said things of an intolerable intimacy to each of those men... The young officer stood violently up on his feet and caught at the complications of his belt hung from a nail. The elder, across the table, lounging sideways, stretched out one hand with a downwards movement. He was aware that the younger man, who was his senior officer, was just upon out of his mind" (Ford, 293)
*Memories of Sylvia erode Tietjen's mind. For example when Tietjens sees a vision of his wife (Ford, 299) and how he keeps replaying in his head the last time he saw her (Ford, 316)
*"Parade may be thought of as the principle that produces form; it is the principle also of good form, of coolness, poise and style. It is a function of parade to harmonize and order and so control the madness- the old chaos- that threatens most men at one time or another in this world....It is parade that Tietjens invokes in dealing with the disturbed Captain McKechnie- and not McKechnie alone"(Gordon, 102-3). For example:"There are madmen whose momentarily subconscious selves will respond to a military command as if it were magic. Tietjens remembered having barked 'about turn.' to a poor little lunatic fellow in some camp at home and the fellow who had been galloping hotfoot past his tent, waving a naked bayonet with pursuers fifty yards behind, had stopped dead and faced about with a military stamp like a guardsman" (Ford, 298).
*Tietjens can be seen to emulate the parade form of coolness and poise in part two of No More Parades when Tietjens goes to meet Sylvia at the hotel. Sylvia says: "Damn his chivalry!..Oh, Damn his chivalry! She knew what was going on in his mind. He had seen her, with Perowne, so he had neither come towards her nor directed the servant to where she sat. For fear of embarrassing her! He would leave it for her to come to him if she wished" (381).
*"The really telling part against parade- as against ritual, magic spells, manners and decorum, and perhaps form of all sorts- is its ridiculous, almost impertinent inadequacy when it is opposed to the lawless chaos of forces(the undisciplined squads of emotion") with which by its nature it has to contend. Parade at last cannot control these, since it remains in part at least a function of the forces it seeks to control- like a "church militant" in a fallen world. Drills, which are pretty in peacetime, in war are implicated in the whole senseless mess" (Gordon, 105).
*The idea of Parade can be seen to tie in with Freudism in the sense that one has to suppress the inner id (one's emotions and inner thoughts) and follow orders; form. As stated earlier it harmonizes and orders and so in turn controls the madness of one's inner thoughts about the war or in Tietjen's case Sylvia.

source: Gordon, Ambrose.The Invisible Tent.USA:University of Texas Press,1964.

Quick Summary of the Characters of No More Parades...

2007-03-31T19:45:00.000-07:00

Christopher Tietjens: The last "Tory", Ford's protagonist and perhaps his vision of the 'proper man' : Tietjen's is honest, extremely intelligent and honourable, yet also rigid and unyielding in his sense of ideals and propriety. He is often so 'tight-lipped' that he is mistaken by others as reprehensible and disreputable. His rigid code also makes it easy for characters such as Sylvia to malign him. In No More Parades Tietjen's has rejoined the war and is stationed in France.

Sylvia Tietjens: Tietjen's beautiful and cruel wife who follows Tietjens to France with the sole intent of disrupting his life. Sylvia's sadistic tendencies and obsession with her husband drive her to spread lies about his character and destroy his reputation among his fellow officers.

Major Wilfred Perowne: Sylvia's ex-lover, still desperately infatuated with Sylvia even she is cruel to him. Perowne is a rather pathetic character, spoilt by his mother and a poor officer, he is described by Sylvia as 'a man of hardly any intelligence at all' and is terrified of Tietjens.

General Campion: Tietjen's godfather and military commander, though reputedly a great general he is easily influenced by Sylvia's suggestions and his own rigid code of propriety.

O Nine Morgan: officer who Tietjens refuses to give leave and ultimately dies in Tietjens arms. The 'ghost' of O Nine Morgan is figure who continually haunts Tietjens thoughts.

Summary of Part one chapter four

2007-03-31T15:11:00.000-07:00

Summary:
Again, we are looking back at what happened after Tietjens found out that it was Sylvia in the car. We are place just before where, in the previous chapter Tietjens had mentioned of being startled by the mention of O Nine Morgan by the doctor's batman and yet had not gone into detail. In this chapter we get a better sense of how O Nine Morgan's death effects him. We get a more detailed account of why Tietjens did not send O Nine Morgan home and how Tietjens blames himself for his death.
A draft comes back led by a drunk subaltern Pitkins. Tietjens is asked by his quartermaster-sergeant, for directions before putting the draft into the tents with the other men. Tietjens in his pajamas (because his slacks are being pressed for the ceremony of the signing of the marriage contract of Levin) and a British warm goes outside and learns of a railway accident due to the French strikers.Tietjens gives commands on what to do with the men. Tiejens watches soldiers in a quick march with affection.
The next day, Tietjens is riding Schomburg a horse captured from the Germans on the Marne, again looking back at the night before. He had managed to keep thoughts of Sylvia at arms length, was keep awake by McKechnie telling him his story of how he had taken leave to divorce his wife which he acting under the "conscientious scruples of the younger school of the day" (364) had refrained from doing. He also learns that McKechnie is the nephew of his good friend Macmaster. Tietjens had then inspected the breakfasts of the various fatigues and inspected the cookhouses.
At breakfast he was "detained by the colonel in command of the depot, the Anglican padre, and McKechnie" (365). Tietjens contemplates good naturely about his religious standing while walking to his orderly hut. He receives a letter from Levin warning about the draft how they would be there for probably another 7-10 days and that he should draw all the tents he could. Levin also explains that the French railway strikers had sabotaged a mile of railway,and that had completely blocked the lines, and how the French civilians would not let their own breakdown gangs make any repairs and that Tietjens' Canadian railway troops would be probably wanted.
Tietjens learns of Girtin "the respectable man with the mother to whom Tietjens had given the two hours leave the night before" had not returned (368). Tietjens, near the end of the chapter, learns what really happened. "Apparently trying to annoy the Canadian, the beery lance-corporal of the Garrison Military Police had hustled the mother. Gritin had remonstrated; very moderately, he said. The lance corporal had shouted at him. Two other Canadians returning to camp had intervened and two more police. The police had called the Canadians--conscripts, which was almost more than the Canadians could stand, they being voluntarily enlisted 1914 or 1915 men. The police --it was an old trick-- had kept them talking two minutes after the last post had sounded and then had run them in for being absent off pass-and for disrespect to their red hat-bands"(375). He then marked the charge explained and told the Canadians to get ready for parade knowing that he would get into a "row" for letting them go because the provost-marshal,O'Hara,"loved his police as if they had been ewe lambs"(375).
Tietjens learns that he is being sent up to the front at a civilian request to look after the horses of the XIXth division. At first Sergeant - Major Cowley presumed it was because of the Earl of Beichan. "The Earl Of Beichan, a Levantine financier and race horse owner, was interesting himself in army horse, after a short visit to the lines of communication. He also owned several newspapers. So they had been waking up the army transport-animals department to please him..."(372). Tietjens furiously decries going up to the front for Beichan. He then learns that it was really his brother Mark, the permanent secretary to the Ministry of Transport, that had made the request. He feels an instant of dismay. He feels that his "violent protest" would be like a smack to the face of his brother. He also remembers how Valentine had begged Mark to get him a job as a divisional officer and then pictures her "lower lip quivering and tears in her eyes"(374).Tietjens takes his men on parade after letting Girtin and the other two Canadians go that had been charged of absence from the draft.
Tietjens wrote a report on the "undesirability of lecturing his men on the causes of the war"(376) and had lunch.
Now then placed back in the present again;Tietjen's sitting on Schomburg.
Soldier comradeship: Tietjens as motherly:
*We find Tietjens in the middle of the night standing in his pyjamas and greatcoat, while the troops march past, in order to bring his troops in smartly: "Extraordinarily glad...A strong passion...How damn well these fellows move!...Cannon fodder...Cannon fodder...That's what their steps say..."His whole body shook in the grip of the cold that beneath his loose overcoat gnawed his pyjamaied limbs. He could not leave the men........It was sheer exhilaration to freeze there on the downside in the extraordinarily pure air with the extraordinarily fine men. They cam around, marking time with the stamp of guardsmen. He said, with tears in his voice...." (Ford, 362)
*Tietjens says: Damn it! The men ought not to be standing in the cold like that.... Fury filled him with dispair"(359)
*McKechnie is worried about Tietjen's going outside in his Pyjamas and chastizes him is a motherly way: "Good God man, you aren't going out in nothing but you pyjamas. Put your slacks on under your British warm...." and "I wish you would not go out like that... I'll make you some cocoa..." (360).
Tietjens Toryism:
"McKechnie said in reference to Tietjens' protruded foot: ......."If the fellows in Whitehall are determined to do old Puffles in, why don't they recall him?" The legend was that an eminent personage in the Government had a great personal dislike for the general in command of one army-the general being nicknamed Puffles. The Government, therefore, were said to be starving his command of men so that disaster should fall upon his command. "They can recall generals easy enough," McKechnie went on, "or anyone else!" A heavy dislike that this member of the lower middle classes should have opinions on public affairs overcame Tietjens.....All their comrades were to be sacrificed as a rear-guard to their departing host. That whole land was to be annilhilated as a sacrifice to one vanity. Now the draft had been called back. That seemed proof that the Government meant to starve the line!"(358).
Tietjens Freudism:
*Tietjens is sitting in his "flea bag...his eyes going over and over again the words with which his report on his own case had concluded"(355), when the doctor's batman had uttered the words "Poor --- O Nine Morgan!..." and over the whitish sheet of paper on a level with his nose Tietjens perceived thin films of reddish purple to be wavering , then a glutinous surface of gummy scarlet pigment. Moving! It was once more an effect of fatigue, operating on the retina, that was perfectly familiar to Tietjens. But it filled him with indignation against his own weakness. He said to himself: Wasn't the name of the wretched O Nine Morgan to be mentioned in his hearing without his retina presenting him with the glowing image of the fellow's blood?"(355). Tietjen's says that what is happening is an effect of fatigue. He denies that the reason for him seeing blood everytime O nine Morgan is mentioned is that his death really bothers him and he has not had time or the will to deal with it. This is what Freud calls repression.
*"[A]t two in the morning picking a leaf from a rose tree and slobbering over it, without knowing what he was doing. And then discovering ti was half for a pug-nosed girl whom he presumed smelled like primrose; and half for ...England!...And why these emotions? ...... He said to himself: "It is probably because a hundred thousand sentimentalists like myself commit similar excesses ofg the subconscious that we preserve in this glorious but atrocious undertaking. All the same I never knew I had it in me!" A strong passion!...For this girl and this country!"(363)
Parade etiquette:
Tietjens says: "I'd go out... but I don't want to have to put that filthy little Pitkins under arrest. He only drinks because he's shell shocked. He's not man enough else, the unclean little Noncomformist..." McKechnie said: "Hold on! I'm Presbyterian myself..." Tietjens answered "You would be!..." He said: "I beg your pardon.... There will be more parades.... The British Army is dishonoured forever..."

"A World that's Foundering..."

2007-03-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

"Paths of Glory" Nevinson

"The intolerable vision of the line, starving beneath the moon, of grey crowds murderously elbowing back a thin crowd in brown, zigzagged across the bronze light of the hut. The intolerable depression that, in those days, we felt- that all those millions were the play-things of ants busy in the miles of corridors beneath the domes and spires that rise up over the central heart of our comity, that intolerable weight upon the brain and the limbs, descended once more on those two men lying upon their elbows. As they listened their jaws fell open. The long, polyphonic babble, rushing in from an extended line of men stood easy, alone rewarded their ears." (No More Parades, 357)

Ann Barr Snitow wrote in Ford Madox Ford and The Voice of Uncertainty that "a central motif of all trench literature is a sort of Cassandra sydrome: men at the front are trying to tell everyone else that a disaster of unimaginable proportions is going on while it is business as usual ing London" (194).
Parade End often describes this divided consciousness. This sense of 'us' and ' them' was perhaps the representative of the greater division that the war would represent. The war became the great divide: giving everyone who survived it and came after a distinct sense of "before" and "after". The war would come to represent the end of a way of life, both economic and social. So, in a sense, both 'us' and 'them' would become the casualties of war. Along with parades, it was the end of innocence. England, in innocence, had not foreseen the proportions of the disaster, it had not grasped its own mortality.
For after such losses, how could their be victory? George Bernard Shaw wrote "The earth is still bursting with the dead bodies of the victors"(4), and as such, the word 'victory' becomes grotesquely ironic.

Snitow writes:
"If one of the by-products of the war was a sense of irresolvable irony, of an unfitness in the scale of things that constantly rendered experience absurd, another of its by-products was the fervent desire to escape the irony, to find unity and transcendance in the midst of disorder and wholesale death." (195)

Perhaps this it what Parade's End asks... after the parades end and innocence destroyed, what is left of the joy of love or the honor of war?

"He picked a leaf, pressed it to his lips and threw it up in the wind..."That's for Valentine," he said meditatively. "Why did I do that?..Or perhaps it's for England..." He said: "Damn it all, this is patriotism!...This is patriotism..." It wasn't what you took patriotism as a rule to be. There were supposed to be more parades about that job!...But this was just a broke to the wide wheezy, half-frozen Yorkshireman, who despised everyone in England not a Yorkshireman, or from more to the North, at two in the morning picking a leaf from a rose-tree and slobbering over it, without knowing what he was doing. And then discovering that it was half for a pug-nosed girl whom he presumed, but didn't know, to smell like a primrose; and half for...England!
...And why these emotions?...Because England, not before it was time, had been allowed to decide not to do the dirty on her associates!...He said to himself: " It is probably because a hundred thousand sentamentalists like myself commit similar excesses of the subconscious that we persevere in this glorious but atrocious undertaking." (363)

Snitow, Ann Barr Ford Madox Ford and The Voice of Uncertainty Lousiana State University Press, London, 1984.

Shaw, George Bernard Heartbreak House and Horseback Hall (preface) Penguin Books, New York, 1964.

History on the Suffragettes During WWI

2007-03-28T22:37:00.000-07:00

A famous suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst (more below), on a campaign for women to do war work.

The term suffragette comes from the word "suffrage" which means "right to vote" and was established around 1897. At first, it was a peaceful movement that failed to attract much attention and when protesting, the Parliament stated, "women would not understand how politics worked so they cannot vote".

Furious with this, Emmeline Pankhurst (above) and her daughters started the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903. This Union became known as the "suffragettes", and unlike the earlier movements, they used violence. They smashed windows, burned down churches, bombed houses of politicians, vandalised golf courses (as Valentine tried to do) and even threw themselves infront of the King's horse (this unfortunately killed Emily Davidson in 1913). These violent acts were not very persuading as the men thought, "if this is what educated women do, what might a lesser educated women do? How can we trust them to vote?"

When the First World War broke out, there was a serious shortage of men and women were required as replacements in the work force. This led to the new view that women were capable of doing work outside the house. However, the war caused a split in the suffragette movement. Emmeline and her daughter Christabel instructed the suffragettes to stop their violent campaigns and support Britian patriotically, but the more radical suffragettes, such as the Women's Suffrage Federation, continued their fight.

Political movement towards the suffragettes advanced as the war began and women proved themselves worthy by working and contributing to the war effort at home. In 1918, the Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act which granted the vote to wives of householders, women over the age of 30 who were householders, women who occupied property with an anual rent of £5 and university graduates.

Ford Madox Ford and the Suffragette Movement:

- In 1911, Ford declared that he was a supporter of the suffragette movement: "Personally, I am an ardent, I am an enraged, suffragette".

- In 1912, Ford wrote a pamplet titled: "The Monstrous Regiment of Women" for the women's freedom league.

- He also wrote many anonymous articles for the leader of the Womens Social and Political Union.

- Ford was greatly influenced by Violet Hunt, who was a member of the Women Writer's Suffrage League and lectured on the cruel treatment suffragettes were going through in prison (i.e., being force-fed when they went on hunger strikes).

"The Rules of War!" - discuss?

2007-03-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

I found this quotation very interesting so here is a short entry for it. Perhaps it would be fun to start a discussion since our blog is kind of lacking communication? (and I thought it might encourage other people to check on our blog more often and start making more entries).

"That was according to the rules of the service…General Campion, accepting with equanimity what German aeroplanes did to the hospitals, camps, stables, brothels, theatres, boulevards, chocolate stall, and hotels of this town would have been vastly outraged if Hun planes had dropped bombs oh his private lodgings…The rules of war!…You spare, mutually, each other’s head quarters and blow to pieces girls that are desired by six thousand men apiece” (332).

Some of the major crimes of war (during WWI and presently) is to:
- cause deliberate destruction of civilian buildings.
- attack hospitals, doctors, nurses, wounded soldiers or ambulances.
- murder, torture, and/or physically harm the civilian population

Thus, by General Campion calmly accepting these war crimes, but being upset when his property is damaged, signify the end of the English aristocratic value, Noblese Oblige. Ford seems to criticize the crumble of Noblese Oblige and the Feudal System as the military leaders, who are supposed to protect the soldiers and civilians, cares about only themselves. From Tietjen's reaction, the reader can sense that he really is the last of person who truly values Noblese Oblige.

* Thoughts? Comments? Anything to add? Other readings of this quotation??

"There were shells dropping in Poperinghe"

2007-03-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

(two postcards of Poperinghe from the war)

"The Huns were shelling Poperinghe! A senseless cruelty...There were two girls who kept a tea shop in Poperinghe...The shells had killed them both...the senseless cruelty of the Hun! - to shell Poperinghe. An innocent town with a tea-shop five miles behind Ypres" (531).

- Poperinghe is a Belgian town situated south of West Flanders, about 10km west of Ypres. The population is estimated to be around 20000 people when the war began, although there were approximately 250000 British soldiers in 1916-17

- The town suffered from frequent air raids and fell into the German hands briefly during August to October 1914 and came close to falling once more during the Spring of 1918.

"the Germans had heard that we were massing men in Poperinghe. It was erasonable to shell a town where men were being assembled...So they shelled Poperinghe in the silent grey day..." (532).

- Poperinghe was the primary military centre for British forces located in Flanders and it had many camps, hospitals, supply depots around town.

- The town established itself as a favoured recreational area for resting soldiers. One of the famous rest place of soldier's is the Talbot House (which still operates today as a museum), populary known as "Toc H" and ran by Tubby Clayton.

- Currently, there is a small military cemetery, Poperinghe New Military Cemetery that contains the burials of many soldiers, and 17 allied soldiers who were executed for military offenses.

A Brief History About Ford Madox Ford

2007-03-28T14:57:00.000-07:00

Since I am incharge of the history part (along with Heather), I thought I would blog on Ford Madox Ford's war life.

When the war broke out, Ford was recruited by Charles Masterman, the head of the War Propaganda Bureau, to write pamphlets attacking German literature, art, and music. He also wrote pamphlets attacking the British pacifists.

During 1915, when the zepplins where shelling London at night, Ford and Violet Hunt frequently entertained at their South Lodge to pass the tense and freightening zepplin nights.

In the course of these zepplin nights, the hosts and guests increasingly became concious about the cruelty of the war and troubled by the deaths of their friends in the front. Ford decides to enlist then, claiming "Damn it all, havent I been for forty years or so in the ruling class of this country; havent I enjoyed their priveledges, and shant I then, pay the price?"

In late July 1915, Ford obtained his commission and was to serve as a lieutenant in the Welch Regiment. Ford's war experience inspired some of his poerty (i.e., "Antwerp"), novels and propaganda pieces.

During the battle of Somme, Ford was gassed and went throught several periods of shellshock, neurasthenia and memory loss.

After Ford was demobilized, he returned to London and rented a small room and started seeing Stella Bowen, and by May, they moved in together. Hunt was furious and continued trying to demand his attention and his presence at South Lodge.

I was going to elaborate this and compare it to Tietjen's life, but I will let Mariya handle that as she is in charge of blogging about Tietjen!

Violet Hunt and Sylvia Tietjens: Fact or Fiction?

2007-03-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

The parallels between Ford Madox Ford’s own life and the life of Christopher Tietjens are abundant and obvious; his British Tory ideals, his transformation as a result of the war, his conflict with social expectations and criticism, and particularly his personal relationships with the many women in his life. The latter has often been a topic of much speculation and sometimes criticism. Joseph Wiesenfarth wrote an entire book on the subject, cunningly named “Ford Madox Ford and the Regiment of Women” after both the infamous book which superficially protests the rule of women (monarchs) over men and Ford’s own ‘suffragette’ pamphlet written in 1913 which argued the opposite. Wiesenfarth illuminates how Ford, in his memoirs, presents his life’s work as those of a ‘proper man’ and reviews the many issues he believed in, rebelled against, promoted or revived’ (22). What is interesting is the area Ford neglects: his work is devoid of all mention of his many relationships and sexual exploits. With this and other examples, Wiesenfarth reveals many of Ford’s contradictions; he was both a ‘proper man’ and yet was an adulterer, an ‘enraged suffragrette’ who refused to ‘submit to the regiment of any woman’, a self-professed ‘man’s man’ who was quite obviously a woman’s man as well.

While Ford Madox Ford may have rejected the effects of the woman in his life on his ideals or aspirations, their effects on his work can be revealed in the way they are reflected in the characters he created; specifically that of Ford’s character Sylvia Tietjens in Parade’s End and her real life counterpart Violet Hunt. Ford eloped at an early age and had been married for fifteen years when he became Violet Hunt's lover in 1909. The relationship lasted until he returned from serving in WWI in 1919, and went to Sussex to live with Stella Bowen. Already, the actions of Ford’s life mirror his protagonist in Parade’s End: Tietjens’ relationship with Sylvia ends when he returns from the war and leaves her to live with Valentine. Also, later Violet made ‘forays into the countryside’ to spy on Ford and Stella, like Sylvia does in The Last Post.

However, the similarities go far beyond simple plot structure; the likeness in the personalities of Violet and Sylvia are unmistakable. Violet Hunt was a ‘New Woman who lived her life as such’, refusing marriage offers to pursue a series of affairs, usually with older married men (Wiesenfarth,4). Like Sylvia, Violet was a beautiful, forceful, self-determining woman who took control of her life and often dominated the lives of those around her; she was known as “Violent” Hunt even by some of her friends (Wiesenfarth,31). Like Sylvia, Violet was also vengeful, after Ford’s desertion she used her position as a novelist to portray Ford as a faithless lover, most notable in her book The Flurried Years (1926) a memoir which openly tried to destroy his reputation. Wiesenfarth describes their relationship as “eventually so stormy a time together that Ford thought service in the Welch Regiment and life in the trenches fighting the Huns preferable to battling Hunt on the home front”.

Conversely, while Violet made her own efforts to ‘villainize’ Ford, she did in fact defend him from other attacks. Even though the reflection of her own traits in Sylvia Tietjens was obvious in Some Do Not and No More Parade, as were the traits of Stella Bowen in the character of Valentine Wannop, she actually defends the novelist’s art of amalgamation:
“…she and Sylvia were the only two human beings (Tietjens) had met for years whom he could respect: the one for sheer efficiency in killing; the other for having the constructive desire and knowing how to set about it. Kill or cure! The two functions of man. If you wanted something killed you’d go to Sylvia Tietjens in the sure faith that she would kill it: emotion, hope, ideal; kill it quick and sure. If you wanted something kept alive you’d go to Valentine: she’d find something to do for it…The two types of mind: remorseless enemy, sure screen, dagger…sheath!” (Wiesenfarth,49)

Sadly, while it is evident that Violet Hunt spent much of her life after the breakup in a relentless effort to destroy Ford’s reputation, his response to her attacks was consequently often the same as his protagonist, Tietjens: he said nothing.

Wiesenfarth, Joseph Ford Madox Ford and the Regiment of Women The University of Wisconsin Press, U.S. 2005.

executions during world war one

2007-03-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

"Why does Christopher stay on in this God-forsaken hole?.... The inglorious base, they call it...." "Because he's jolly well got to..." Major Perowne said. "He's got to do what he's told..." She said: "Christopher! ...You mean to say they'd keep a man like Christopher anywhere he didn't want to be..." Major Prerowne said "They'd shoot him like anybody else if he bolted.... What do you think?.
In this quote Major Perowne is absolutely right in saying that Christopher would be shot if he decides to run from the battle field. During world war one there were 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers that were executed for crimes such as desertion and cowardice. Many of them suffered from shell shock. Between 1914 and 1918 about 80, 000 men suffered sympoms of shell shock in British Army.
If men ever deserted front line, they were caught and later received a court martial. If they were sentenced to death, most of them were shot by 12 man firing squad.
If anyone left front line, seniour military commanders counted it as desertion. Military commanders were afraid that if they do not punish this kind of behaviour , others would leave the front line as well. British Army would then collapse.
During World War One majority stood trial for desertion from their post.
Court Martial was fast and then execution followed. Legal status of court martials was questioned. Soldiers did not have any access to formal legal representatives-no defense. Court Martials should have "judge advocate" present but there were none present. Soldiers also had the right to petition the King for clemency but they were not aware of this right. And no one seemed to use that option. In 1915 Genereal Route Order 585 was issued and it reserved the belief of being innocent until found guilty. Soldier was guilty until evidence prove otherwise.
Many also say, that executions were based on class status. For example, James Crozier was guilty in deserting his post, he was shot. Earlier Lieutenant Annandale was found guilty but he was never sentenced to death due to technicalities.
On Nov. 8, 2006 new law was passed( Part of Armed Forces Act). It pardoned men in the British and Commonwealth armies who were executed in WW1. Law removed stain of dishonour with regards to executions on war records but it did not cancel out sentences.

Summary of Part one chapter three

2007-03-23T21:02:00.000-07:00

Like a game of cat and mouse:
*"It was Sylvia who had made, unknown to him, the appointement with through which the girl had met him. Sylvia had wanted to force him and Miss Wannop into each other's arms. Quite definitely. She had said as much. But she had only said that afterwards. When the game had not come off. She had had too much knowledge of amatory manoeuvers to show her hand before..."(348)
*"What in the world was wrong with Sylvia? She was giving away her own game and that he had never known her to do"(350).
*"Sylvia did not make mistakes like that. It was a game. What game? He didn't even attempt to conjure! She could not expect that he would in the future even extend to her the shelter of his roof... What then was the game? He could not believe that she was capable of vulgarity except without a purpose" (350).

This chapter best brings out Sylvia's sadism although she plays it off as though she really cares for him. It also brings out more of the love triangle that is going on between Tietjens and Valentine and Sylvia and Tietjens. Holes are filled in of details between what happened between Sylvia and Tietjens that was not known before.
Summary:
We are in the present looking back at what happened after Tietjens realized that it was Sylvia in the car. Levin had related to Tietjens monstrous news of Sylvia's activities. The reason that Levin did not tell Tietjens right away that Sylvia was in the car was because the general had taught Levin to consider that Tietjens was "an extraordinarily violent chap who would certainly knock Levin down when he told him that his wife was at the camp gates" (341). Levin had been making references to mysterious "rows" in the previous chapter,which is now to be understood as referring to several letters that Sylvia had sent to the general accusing Tietjens of stealing two pairs of her best sheets, amongst a great deal more. "It was difficult for Tietjen's to make out exactly what she had said. His channel of information had been Levin, who was too gentlemanly to say anything direct at all "(sounds like Tietjens!!)(351). The General is convinced that Tietjens,"as Man of Intellect, had treated Sylvia badly, event to the extent of stealing two pairs of her best sheets, and he was also convinced that Tietjens was in close collusion with Sylvia....he was almost ready to believe that Tietjens was at the bottom of every trouble that occured in his immence command" (352-3). Sylvia had apparently held some sort of conference on Tietjen's case in Campion's salon which Sylvia was presiding at, with more intimate members of his headquarters and exposed Tietjens various wrongs. She had convinced them that she was distressed because she had not received any letters from Tietjens and wanted proof that he was alive. That was why she came all that way and was sitting at the bottom of the hill in the car that night.
Tietjens is in his camp bed, in the doctor's lent hut, with a stiff glass of rum punch and his officers pocket book "complete with pencil because he had to draft before eleven a report as to the desirability for giving his unit special lectures on the causes of the war"(340). There are two other people in the hut: Tietjens had invited MacKechnie whose actual real name was James Grant McKechnie and the doctors batman. They are having a conversation and this is annoying to Tietjens who is trying to introspectively "recapture what exactly were his relations with his wife. Before the doctor's batman had interrupted him by speaking startlingly of O Nine Morgan" (343). Tietjens is in an "extraordinary state "the idea had suddenly occurred to him that his parting form his wife had set him free for his girl...the idea had till then never entered his head"(345). Tietjens then takes out his pocket book and starts to write his and Sylvia's history from the beginning to the end trying to imitate a report to General Headquarters.
Themes:
Tietjens stoicism
*Tietjens is methodically going through his and his wife's history. Tietjens wanted to refrain from drinking because he "was to think cold-bloodly of Sylvia, and he made a practice never of never touching alcohol when about to engage in protracted reflection" (344). Comment: Alcohol is known to bring about emotions and he wants to keep his emotions out of it. Tietjens tells of a time when he had alcohol on the battlefield of Somme. "In three or four minutes the whole world changed beneath your eyes..... as far as the Germans were concerned you were supposed to kill the swine; but you didn't feel that the thought of them would make you sick beforehand.. . you were in fact a changed man" (344)
*"He would rather be dead than an open book" (342)
Freudism:
*Tietjens emotions slip and he lets out another groan so loud that "McKechnie from the other end of the hut, asked if he had not said anything. Tietjens saved himself with: "That candle looks from here to be too near the side of the hut. Perhaps it isn't. These buildings are very flammable" (348).
*"What was he doing now with all this introspection? Hang it all he was not justifying himself"(350)
Sylvia's sadism:
*"Why then had she done it? Partly, undoubtedly, out of pity for him. She had given him a rotten time; she had undoubtedly, at one moment, wanted to give him the consolation of his girl's arms.. Why, damn it, she , Sylvia, and no one else, had forced out of him the invitation to the girl to become his mistress. Nothing but the infernal cruelty of their interview of the morning could have forced him to the pitch of sexual excitement that would make him make a proposal of illicit intercourse to a young lady to whom hitherto he had spoken not even one word of affection. It was an effect of a Sadic kind. That was the only way to look at it scientifically" (349).
*[Sylvia] had lived years beside him, apparently on terms of hatred and miscomprehension. But certainly inconditions of chasity. Then, during the tentuous and lugbrious small hours, before his coming out there again to France, she had given evidence of a madly vindictive passion for his person. A physical passion at a any rate"(343).

Alain Char-tier's La belle Dame sans Merci & stoicism, Part 1

2007-03-20T15:09:00.000-07:00

(http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=g&p=c&a=p&ID=923)

"There's a picture that my mother's got, by Burne-Jones... A cruel-looking woman with a distant smile...some vampire... La belle Dame sans Merci. That's what you're like (Ford, 387)". (Perowne, speaking to Sylvia)

Perowne compares Sylvia to La belle Dame sans Merci, "The beautiful Lady without Mercy/Pity". It was originally a poem written by Alain Char-tier, wherein the lady rejects the young lover and he dies days after their debate. The lady is held accountable for his desire, and so she is expected to take pity on him. Instead, she rejects him. The rejection he recieves proves to him that the lady is merciless and has a heart of marble. He accuses her of being indifferent.

A reverse of the dynamic in Char-tier's poem can be seen between Sylvia and Christopher. Although Sylvia is described as cold and her actions seemingly merciless, her relentless torture of Christopher can only be seen as impassioned, driven by her craving for him. He elicits her sadism and emotion, which is what drives her mad. "It was at Tietjens' terrifying expressionlessness, at that completely being up to a situation, that the first wave of emotion had come over her...(406)." The lady in Char-tier's poem is interpreted as possessing a sexual coldness, while Sylvia possesses an inherent sexual nature and does not try to abstain from it. In No More Parades, Sylvia enquires about her husband's sexual fidelity. Cowley attests to Christopher's solidarity in the military, "The captain run after skirts... Why, I can number on my hands the times he's been out of my sight since he's had the battalion! (399)". He is described as a mother hen who is completely devoted to duty. When Sylvia muses about him having a girl in town, Perowne answers, "Well, he hasn't got one"(397). For Sylvia, Christopher's devotion to duty and suppression of outward emotion leaves him devoid of life, passionless. Sylvia is cruel in her torture of Christopher, but she percieves him as equally cruel for his lack of outward feeling. The more of an English country gentleman that he exhibits, the more she is driven to hurt him. With Sylvia, "...the fits of emotion were periodical and unexpected, though her colder passion remained always the same...(405)". Unlike the lady in Char-tier's poem, she is not pursued desperately by a young man. Their positions are reversed, she can not react to his passion because he exhibits none. Instead, she turns to sadism, and her cruelty is a reaction to his indifference.

Works consulted:
http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/sym4int.htm

Why was the general so shocked to hear that Tietjen is a socialist?

2007-03-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

a propaganda postcard of WWI illustrating Lenin and socialism, titled "end of puppet show"

"Of course, refusing property is a sign of being one of these fellows" (443)
"But...give all his goods to the poor!" (444)

- Socialism is defined as production being owned by the workers rather than by the rich minorities. A socialist society can control production unlike capitalism and production is for the common good rather than for individual profit. This way, workers are also owners and recieve the "full fruits" of their labour by participating fully.

- Therefore, it makes sense that Tietjen is refusing wealth as socialists believe that it is wrong for one individual to be wealthy, everyone should be equally wealthy in a socialist society.

"dirty minded Socialist" (442)

- socialism was significant in Germany. The following is a quotation during the ends of WWI from German politician (and president during 1919-1925), Friedrich Ebert:
"Germany can still do the world many services. It was a German who gave the workers of the world scientific Socialism. We are on the way to leading the world once again in Socialism, since we serve that Socialism which alone can be permanent, which increases the prosperity and the Kultur of the people - Socialism in process of realization."

- The largest socialist party, SPD, had become quite popular in Germany leading up to the first world war, and it became the largest party in 1914.

- Socialism was also linked to being unpatriotic as social class was much more important than country. They had many anti-war movements that expressed how the war heightened extremem patriotism and racism. Moreover, many socialists opposed how ridiculously patriotic the government was.

- As a Military General of Great Britian, socialism was utterly disgusting because it was linked to the enemy and not having the loyalty to support the country.

"I always knew he had a screw loose...But...Not a Socialist!" (442)

- The socialists demonstrated many anti-war movements during WWI, especially when it came from workers or students who felt that the society was barbaric for fighting. They were upset that the taxes were raised, welfare was cut, presses were censored and conscriptions were introduced. They were especially angry at how the war effected workers, such as lowered wages, lengthened working hours and strikes were banned.

- They worked to stop WWI by questioning how to get rid of the system which produces war and what caused the war in the first place. Lenin, a Russian revolutionary and later the leader of the October Revolution, argued that wars cannot be abolished unless classes are abolished and socialism is created. For Lenin and the socialists, the most effective way of fighting against the war was to intensify the struggle against the ruling classes.

- Socialists believed that workers can change society and the war will end by the struggle between the working class and the ruling class. In a way, WWI did end in this way as the revolution took place in Russia and Great Britian lost most of it's upper class members.

Summary of part one chapter two

2007-03-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

Sylvia the Hunter
In book one Sylvia refers to men as sport(149). This is fitting because Tietjens refers to Sylvia as a hunter:
*"Tietjens groaned and sank more deeply into his beef case. It was if an unseen and unsuspected wild beast had jumped on his neck from an overhanging branch" (314).
*"To Tietjen's it was as if an immense cat were parading, fascinated and fatal around that hut. He had imagined himself parted from his wife"(315).
Summary:
The next morning after the air raid the "All Clear" came at once.Tietjens gets a buff memorandum slip that is marked private and reads:
"E.C. Genl., For God's sake keep your wife off me. I will not have skirts round my H.Q. You are more trouble to me than all the rest of my command together (314) After Tietjens receives this message he starts insulting everyone, because of their supposed feminine aspects, for example: "His feminine solicitude enraged and overwhelmed Tietjen's with blackness"(314), "That's your sort of Oxford young woman's rhyme"(315), "And here was Levin with the familiar Feminine-agonised wrinkle on his bronzed-alabaster brow.." (326).
Captain McKenzie and Tietjens are waiting for their draft to move off. Tietjens moves in and out of shock over Sylvia and her games. Tietjens keeps going over the last time he saw her. Tietjens and McKenzie play their poetry game.
The hut fills with soldiers and then things get hectic enabling Tietjen's mind to forget about Sylvia- at least momentarily. Captain Tietjens is in charge of taking care of the soldiers who need to make their wills and Captain McKenzie is in charge of men who want to withdraw money. We learn that there is a confession area for the men.
Tietjens is reminded of Sylvia again by Pte. 197394 Thomas Johnson "a shining faced lump of beef, an agricultural off jobman from British Columbia where he had worked on the immense estates of Sylvia Tietjens' portentous ducal second cousin Rugeley.
Colonel Levin gives grief over the draft not being sent out yet and wastes their time, Sergeant -Major Cowley defends, giving a sense of how long things took to get done and the confusion that everyone is in, not knowing if they are coming or going "they had urgent instructions not to send up the draft without the four hundred Canadian Railway Service men who were to come from Etaples. These men had only arrived that evening at 5:30.. at the railway station. Marching them up had taken three quarters of an hour......"(324)
Levin takes Tietjens for a walk and talks of his soon to be marriage of Nanette. He beats around the bush a while, trying to hint unsucessfully that Sylvia is in the General's car, at the gate, down the hill beside the camp guard-room. Tietjens "for a lunatic moment" thought it was Miss Wannop.
"Sentimental happiness had descended upon him merley because he had imagined her! He imagined her little, fair, rather pug-nosed face; under a fur cap, he did not know why. Leaning forward fhe would be, on the seat of the general's car, glazed in, a regular raree show! Peering out, shortsightedly on account of the reflections on the inside of the glass..." (334-5) comment; notice the difference when Tietjens has hallucinations of Sylvia verses his imagination of Valentine. Sylvia is a lot more fantastic; fairytale like verses Valentines realness.
Tietjens gives leave to a man who "wants to go to his mother who is waiting in a decent estaminet at the end of the tramline just out side the camp where the houses of the town begin"(335). He tells the man of the potenial danger of what might happen if he missed the draft- being shot by a firing squad at dawn.
Tiejens thinks about what Valentine might think of him if she heard him tell the man that. Valentine was "unreasonable" says Tietjens. She would consider it brutal to speak to a man of the possibility of his being shot by a firing party. A groan burst from him at the thought that there was no sense bothering about what Valentine Wannop would or would not think of him..." comment: this groan that burts from can be seen as a Freudism. Like the screams throughout the novel the release of supressed emotions.
Themes:
Tietjen's Troyism
"It was at that date the settled conviction of His Majesty's Expeditionary Force that the army in the field was the tool of politicians and civilisans In moments of routine that cloud dissipated itself lightly; when news of ill omen arrived it settled down again heavily like a cloud of black gas. You hung your head impotently" (327).
Parade etiquette
*"Now, if [Tietjens] said: "Look here, colonel..." or "Look here, Colonel Levin.." or "Look here, Stanley, my boy..." For the one thing an officer may not say to a superior whatever their intimacy was: "Look here, Levin.." If he said then: "Look here, Stanley, you're a silly ass. It's all very well for Campion to say that I'm unsound because I have some brains. He's my godfather and has been saying it to me since I was twelve.....But when you say it you're just a parrot......If Tietjens should say that to this popinjay, would that be going farther than an officer in charge of detachment should go with a member of the Staff set above him, though not on parade and in a conversation of intimacy? Off parade and in intimate conversation all His Majesty's commission, there can be no higher rank and all that Bilge!... For how off parade could this descendant of an old-clo' man from Frankfurt be the equal to him, Tietjens of Groby? He wasn't his equal in any way- let alone socially..."(332)
*"even off parade you might well be the social equal of a Staff colonel, but you jolly well had to keep from showing that you were his superior. Especially intellectually. If you let yourself show a Staff officer that he was a silly ass- you could say it as often as you liked as long as you didn't prove it!- you could be certain that you would be for it before long. And quite properly. It was not English to be intellectually adroit. Nay it was positively unEnglish.."(333).

Du bist wie eine Blume

2007-03-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

(http://www.bigdipperfarm.com/cgi-bin/searchstuff.pl?Botanical=Primula)

Du bist wie eine Blume is from a poem written by Heinrich Heine, a Jewish German poet (hence Tietjen’s reference to him being a ‘Jew’). His poem also inspired Romantic composer Robert Schuman’s No.24, from Myrthen. Heinrich Heine was an admirer of Napolean, his poetry often reflected either political or romantic themes—he is considered part of the German Romantic movement.

Du bist wie eine Blume
So hold und schön und rein:
Ich schau' dich an, und Wehmut
Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein.

Mir ist, als ob ich die Hände
Aufs Haupt dir legen sollt',
Betend, daß Gott dich erhalte
So rein und schön und hold.

English translation:

You are, to me, a flower
So lovely, pure and fair
I look at you
And melancholy my heart could tear.
I feel the need to lay my hands
In blessing, on your hair
Praying that God may keep you e’er,
So lovely, pure and fair,
Praying that God may keep you e’er,
So lovely, pure and fair.

"Obedient heart! Like the first primrose. not any primrose. The first primrose. Under a bank with the hounds breaking through the underwood...It was sentimental to say Du bist wie eine Blume... Damn the German language! But that fellow was a Jew..." (Ford, Parade’s End, 309).

Tietjen’s thoughts wander to Valentine during his shock of handling O Nine Morgan’s corpse. He thinks of her “fair, undistinguished, fresh face” (309) and likens her to the first primrose. Te meaning of the primrose derives from ‘prima rosa’ which literally means the ‘first rose’. In the opening to No More Parades, it is revealed to be a winter’s night. Primroses are amongst the first flowers to bloom; they are able to thrive in January and are considered easy to grow.

Tietjens experiences a moment of sweet tranquility by his contemplation of Valentine as the first primrose which immediately brings to his mind the poem Du bist wie eiene Blume. Tietjens argues against the poem’s depiction of a flower, because it fails to express the “strong feelings” he has towards a specific woman, which should be depicted instead as the flower, or the “special flower”(309). Consequently he concludes that the poem is too sentimental, an insincere attempt at expressing his attraction. Tietjen’s fierce contemplation of Valentine suggests a conscious attempt at washing away the affair of the dead man; he turns to the thoughts of one for whom his strong feelings could distract him in his shock. Tietjens thinks of her so strongly that he even imagines the smell of her as he kisses her, even though they had never kissed. She is at the forefront of his mind, she is so golden and sweet he suddenly finds himself stripped of all else, a “eunuch. By temperament” (309).

Sources:

ftp://opensource.nchc.org.tw/gutenberg/etext05/8glyr10.txt

http://store.recordare.com/schmdubl.html

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hheine.htm

http://ingeb.org/Lieder/dubistwi.html

http://www.nuspel.org/dubist.html

http://www.plantpress.com/wildlife/o730-primrose.php

Sylvia: Sadist or Liberated Woman?

2007-03-03T17:17:00.000-08:00

Vintage Ad, 1913

Sylvia Tietjens is arguably one of the most fascinating females in British literature. In the first book of Ford's tetrology Some Do Not, Sylvia is the seductive, conniving female who tricks the protagonist, Christopher Tietjens into marriage, even though it is uncertain if he is the father of her child. After the child is born, Sylvia leaves Tietjens to commit adultery, and then, unrepentant, she returns to Tietjens with the seemingly sole intent to degrade, enervate or destroy his honorable character. Her motives seem to be a deep hatred of her husband’s temperament: the typical British “stiff upper lip” sort that represents the authentic Tory of Victorian England. However, in No More Parades, the reader is given further insights into Sylvia character and motivations…

At the end of Some Do Not it seems as though Tietjens and Sylvia have parted ways, he has gone back to serve in France and she has decided to go to a convent. However, in part two of No More Parades, we (the readers) learn that Sylvia has followed Tietjens to France. In the opening scene, she awaits Tietjens in the lounge of the best hotel in town, accompanied by Major Perowne, the man she had an affair with. Through Sylvia’s narrative, we soon see that the affair, for her, was in way motivated by typical reasons such as passion or romance but out a desire to upset or embarrass her husband:

“At the later date Sylvia had no difficulty in accounting to herself for her having gone off with such an oaf: she had simply reacted in a violent fit of sexual hatred, from her husband’s mind… For, for your wife to throw you over for an attractive man is naturally humiliating, but that she would leave you publicly for a man of hardly any intelligence at all, you priding yourself on your brains, must be nearly as mortifying a thing as can happen to you.” (389-90)

Her motives are revealed to be based on a kind of sexual sadism. Sylvia is obsessed with her husband; her hatred of his temperament and principles is coupled with her dark sexual need for him, and it is this friction that seems to be at the root of most of her frustrations and actions.
After a few weeks with Perowne, she finds she can no longer put up with him, but also that she ‘misses’ her husband. She is bored by Perowne, instead she misses the agony of her sexual frustration and hatred for Tietjens. When she reunited with him, she finds herself in a state of almost violent sexual tension:

“Emotion was going all over Sylvia…at the proximity of Tietjens. She said to herself: “Is this to go on forever?” Her hands were ice-cold. She touched the back of her left hand with the fingers of her right. It was ice cold. She looked at her hands. They were bloodless…She said to herself: “It’s pure sexual passion…it’s pure sexual passion…God! Can’t I get over this? Father!...you used to be fond of Christopher…Get our Lady to get me over this…It’ll be the ruin of him and the ruin of me. But oh damn, don’t!...For it’s all I have to live for.” (400)

Sylvia is in a fit of sexual frustration and desire, she wavers between wanting it to be over and needing it to continue. She realizes the dangerousness of her feelings; that she may indeed ruin them both as a result but the virulence of her passions and her addiction to them drives her on. She attacks Tietjens out of a need to ‘shake the unshakeable’, to cause in him a measure of what he does to her:

“She said to herself: “By God, if that beast does not give in to me tonight he shall never see Michael again… Ah, but I got him…” Tietjens had his eyes closed, round each of his high-coloured nostrils a cresent of white was beginning. And increasing…” (401)

Of course, no matter how Sylvia tries to torment Tietjens, he is always stiffly polite in response, a reaction that further infuriates her. We can almost feel sorry for Sylvia for the simple fact that it is obvious she will never be satisfied or at peace:

“How, she said to herself, could she ever move, put emotion into, this lump! It was like trying to move an immense mattress filled with feathers. You pulled at one end, but the whole mass sagged down and remained immobile until you seemed to have no strength at all. Until virtue went out from you…
It was as if he had the evil eye, or some special protector. He was so appallingly competent, so appallingly always in the centre of his own picture.” (406)

Sylvia is a creature of passion, she acts on impulse, out of spite and frustration. When she sees Tietjens behave like the perfect example of an English Tory in front of the duchess, her rage drives her to tell General Campion that Tietjens is a Socialist:

“A triumph for Christopher was at that moment so exactly what Sylvia thought she did not want that she decided to tell the general that Christopher was a Socialist. That might take him down a peg or two in the general’s esteem…for the general’s arm-patting admiration for Tietjens, the man who did not argue but acted over the price of coal, was as much as she could bear…But, thinking it over in the smoking-room after dinner, by which time she was not so certain that she had done what she wanted.” (409)

Sylvia’s action is rash and she begins to realize, as she did with her affair with Perowne, that her actions may be moreover detrimental to her actual goals. While she may succeed in ‘disturbing’ her husband, the ill effects of her actions often seem to catch up with her.

One of Ford's remarkable abilities as a writer is evident in his characters' many contradictions. Part of Sylvia’s appeal may be understood through the fact that none of his characters seem to be entirely admirable, or even likable. While it has been argued that Christopher Tietjen's represents Ford's 'proper' man, extremely intelligent and unshakably honorable, he is also at times irritatingly rigid, pompous and sexist. He makes such statements as:
"I stand for monogamy and chastity. And for no talking about it. Of course if a man who is a man wants to have a woman he has her." (SDN, 18)
And:
“I don’t read novels,” Tietjens answered. “I know what’s in ‘em.”

It is these and other comments that can lead the reader to sympathize with Sylvia; while her actions are often cruel and immoral, the reader can at least identify with her frustrations.

Overall, there are aspects of Sylvia’s character that may be admired. She represents the modern women, independent and fearless; a woman who is in control of her own destiny and unaffected by social criticism. She is also mysterious, alluring and stunningly beautiful. Unlike many of her sex at the turn of the century, Sylvia is not controlled by the men in her life but rather the opposite: she comes and goes according to her own fancy and is proud of her ability to do as she pleases.

However, on the other hand, Sylvia is also cruel, spoiled, self-centered apathetic, aggressive and sadistic. This is never clearer than when she sees her husband weary from war and likens him to a whipped dog:

"His face was intolerable. Heavy; fixed. Not insolent, but simply gazing over the heads of all things and created beings, into a world too distant for them to enter. And yet it seemed to her, since he was so clumsy and worn out, almost not sporting to persecute him. It was like whipping a dying bulldog..." (381)

While Sylvia’s voice seems almost sympathetic, we soon realize that she is heartless and without mercy:

“…I remembered the white bulldog I thrashed on the night before it died…A tired, silent beast…With a fat white behind…Tired out…You couldn’t see its tail because it was turned down, the stump…A great, silent beast…
…And I found it at the door when I came in from a dance without Christopher…And got the rhinoceros whip and lashed into it. There’s a pleasure in lashing into a naked white beast…Obese and silent, like Christopher…I thought Christopher might…that night…It went through my head…It hung down its head…A great head, room for a whole British encyclopedia of misinformation, as Christopher used to put it. It said: “What a hope!’…As I hope to be saved, though I never shall be, the dog said: “What a hope!’…Snow-white in quite black bushes…And it went under a bush. They found it dead there in the morning.”
“…It’s the seventh circle of hell, isn’t it? The frozen one…The last stud-white bulldog of that breed…As Christopher is the last stud-white hope of the Groby Tory breed…” (416-7)

If Christopher Tietjens is meant to represent the last of the English Tory breed, an obvious question that follows is what does Sylvia symbolize? Perhaps, in a way she represents Britain itself, a country which mercilessly exploited and destroyed almost the entire upper class with the First World War. As Ford so clearly states over and over throughout the book "There will be no more parades": things will be changed by the war; pomp and circumstance (like the band playing Land of Hope and Glory) will no longer be important as the old order is overthrown. After a disaster of such epic proportions, what can be left of the honor of war?

Land of Hope and Glory

2007-03-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

- "the band would play Land of Hope and Glory and then the adjutant would say: There will be no more parades...Don't you see how symbolical it was - the band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying There will be no more parades?...For there won't. There won't, there damn well won't...No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me and any more. Nor for the country...nor for the world, I dare say...None...Gone..Napoo finny! No...more...parades!" - Tietjens (330)

- This ceremony can be seen as Britian betraying her people in order to fight the war as there is nothing to celebrate in Britian. The war was going to kill the upper class, reduce the male youth population, demolish the class system and change the foundations of British society. The old values (thus Britian, or the Land of Hope and Glory) will no longer exist or be important. The Britan and Toryism that Tietjen knew will no longer exist as there will be no more land of hope and glory.

- The Land of Hope and Glory is a British patriotic song and was one of the most widely popular songs played during WWI.

- This song was written shortly after the Boer War was won and some critics say it was to promote the extension of the British rule around the world. (Since Britian gained further territory and mineral wealth by winning the Boer War).

Lyrics:
Land of Hope and Glory
Dear Land of Hope, thy hope is crowned.
God make thee mightier yet!
On Sov'ran brows, beloved, renowned,
Once more thy crown is set.
Thine equal laws, by Freedom gained,
Have ruled thee well and long;
By Freedom gained, by Truth maintained,
Thine Empire shall be strong.

Land of Hope and Glory,
Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider
Shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet.

Thy fame is ancient as the days,
As Ocean large and wide:
A pride that dares, and heeds not praise,
A stern and silent pride:
Not that false joy that dreams content
With what our sires have won;
The blood a hero sire hath spent
Still nerves a hero son.

(click here for sound clip)

parades in world war one

2007-03-02T15:15:00.000-08:00

(an image of a send-off parade in 1917)

* Send-off Parades: where the people encourage and wish luck to the soldiers going into battle or over-seas (first picture).

* Victory Parades: held to celebrate a win in a battle. One of the most famous victory parades in history were held in London (1918) and Paris (1919) marking the end of WWI.

A soldier describes a victory parade in Paris as: "In the parade were hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the U.S., England, Canada, France, Australia, Italy and the colonies. Each soldier had his arms full of French girls, some crying, others laughing; each girl had to kiss every soldier before she would let him pass. The streets are crowded and all traffic held up...It is impossible to buy a flag in Paris today. Everyone has one it seems and the old streets are one solid mass of colors from all the allied nations...It's wonderful! So full of feeling and meaning".

(A very nice images site of the 1918 victory parade)

* Recruitment Parades: common during WWI, as militia regiments tried to sign up the young men of the community, desperately needed to replenish the supply of men.

- the suffargettes also stated numerous parades, one of the most famous took place in London (1910) where 10000 women marched to support the women's suffrage bill.

- The parades symbolized a break from the war, where the soldiers could leave the battlefield and return to their civilian life. Also, it gave a sense of glory and pride to the soldiers as they saw how much they were respected and appreciated by the civilians. This can be seen on page 314 where the Canadian sergeant-major imagined himself on parade with his leather pocket book, thinking how "very smart it would look on parade, himself standing up straight and tall".

- Therefore, the title, "No More Parades" symbolize the end of glory and no hope of returning. The soldiers were going to be "massacred, by the quarter million...they should be massacred without jauntiness, without confidence, with depressed brows, without parade" (320). In a way, they were betrayed by the government and civilians who held parades for them; there is "no more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades" (330).

Summary and discussion of part one chapter one

2007-02-24T22:16:00.000-08:00

Picture of a replacement depot
"A Base is a place where you
meditate, perhaps you should pray; a place where in peace Tommies should write their last letters home and describe how the guns are 'owling 'orrably"(297).

Part one:
Tietjens is now in France serving in a replacement depot."When you came in the space was desultory, rectangular, warm after the drip of the winter night, and transfused with a brow-orange dust that was light. It was shaped like the house a child draws"(Ford, 291).Outside there is an air raid going on. "These German air-raids had lately become continuous".The men are waiting to be drafted. There is a general sense of claustrophobia ("The Base was packed with men, tighter than sardines"Ford, 295.), mixed with chaos, panic ("he desired to cut certain throats with sharp trench knife that he had. That would take the weight off his chest" Ford, 294.) and insanity ("There were a great many kinds of madness" Ford, 298.). Tietjen's is keeping an eye on an officer who appears to be going insane, being asked by the general to do so. The general is "Tietjen's godfather and his father's closest friend"(298). The man mentions Tietjen's wife: "They say up at H.Q. that your wife has got hold of the disgusting general....Tietjen's lauged at this madness" (299). Tietjen's reflects on the "extraordinary beauty of the wife from whom he was separated" (299), or how he had thought they had separated. He sees a vision of her:"she appeared before him so extraordinarily bright and clear in the brown darkness that he shuddered" (299). He repeatedly sees Sylvia as radiating light and "in a golden gown" (565). Sylvia even sees herself in a dress of "golden tissue" (403). Captain O Nine Morgan dies- plaguing Tietjens for the rest of No More Parades. Tietjen's exclaims "What about the accursed obsession of O Nine Morgan that intermittently jumped on him?....And all the time a dreadful depression!A weight!"(484).Tietjens also has a ghostly visit from O nine Morgan in A Man could Stand Up (561)."If he, Tietjens had given the fellow the leave he wanted he would be alive now!"(309)... To get past the shock he tries to picture Valentine's face.

Themes:
Solider Comradeship
The reader gets a sense of the intimacy and comradeship between the soilders. They look out for each other and try to keep each other sain.
*"He felt arising in his motherly heart that yearned at the moment over his two thousand nine hundred and thirty four nurslings a necessity, like a fatigue, to extend the motherliness of his functions to the orfcer....he felt vaguely that it was a fatigue to have to mother an officer" (293).
*"[Tietjen's] sticks up in that blessed old camp like a blessed she-chicken sitting on addled eggs....That's what they say of him"(396).
*Tietjen's let the trunk of the body sink slowly to the floor. He was more gentle than if the man had been alive"(308).
This theme follows throughout No More Parades for example:
*Levin says to Tietjens "We are all one family"(451), when Tietjens tries to explain what happened the night in Sylvia's room when he hit Perowne.
*Cowley explains to Sylvia how O Nine Morgan died in Tietjen's arms "The captain held him in his arms while he died, as if he'd been a baby. Wonderful tender, the captain was! Well you're apt to be when it's one of your own men...No rank then!"(433).
*"Cowley snuffed in Tietjens' ear something that Sylvia did not catch- consolatory and affectionate. That intimacy was more than she could bear"(435).
Soldiers as property/ Tietjen's Toryism:
The following quotes are examples where Tietjens is expressing his dislike for the middle class because the middle class ran the war for their own reasons; like a game:
*"It had occurred to him that it was a military duty to bother himself about the mental equilibrium of this member of the lower classes. So he talked...any old talk, wearisomely, to keep his mind employed! Captain Mackenzie was an officer of His Majesty the King; the property, body and soul, of His Majesty and His Majesty's War Office. It was Tietjen's duty to preserve this fellow as it was his duty to prevent deterioration in any other piece of the King's property.That was implicit in the oath of allegiance" (305).
*"The curse of the army, as far as the organisation is concerned, was our imbecile national belief that the game is worth more than the player"(305).
*"Intense dejection, endless muddles, endless follies, endless villainies. All these men given to the hands of the most cynically care-free intriguers in long corridors who made plots that harrowed the hearts of the world. All these men toys, all these agonies mere occasions for picturesque phrases to be put into politicians' speeches without heart or even intelligence. Hundreds of men tossed here and there in that sordid and gigantic mud-brownness of mid-winter" (296).
It was a monstrous tea party:
I never thought about it before but this opening scene does seem like the morbid flip side of an Augustus tea-party; a way to show social upheaval. The way the soldiers are sitting around the hut, having different conversations. Then an "immence tea tray, august, its voice filling the black circle of the horizon, thundered to the ground" (Ford,291). This gives an image of how things were before the war in the sense of over indulgence and now that the "tea-tray" has crashed to the ground, it's as if the world has been turned upside down; a social upheaval. As soon as the tea-tray has flipped, the pace of the narration picks up and in turn gives a sense of the chaos of the war.
*The opening scene of No More Parades is indoor of a replacement depot in France. "We are boxed in.... it's indoor- even domestic aspects are stressed almost to the point of claustrophobia. About all the doings in that hut, clings a suggestion of a monstrous tea party. The falling, and lethal, insides of shrapnel shells are called 'candlesticks'. Of the men by the crazier, one is muttering dejectedly about his unfaithful wife, another about a queer cow that "took a hatred for its cawve" (Ford, 291), the Canadian sergent-major is worrying himself about a new pocket book. The hut is shaped like the house a child draws. Inside is a curious air of false domesticity, into which the sounds of the outside come, appropriately like the falling of a huge tea-tray" (Gordon, 8).
Gordon, Amrose. The Invisible Tent. University of Texas Press. 1964
Compare this to where Valentine and Tietjens have just come back from their overnight horse carriage ride in book one and they have a collision with the General and since Tietjens is seen with Valentine (so early on a Sunday, alone) an again there is a social upheaval:
"Not ten yards away Tietjen saw a tea-tray, the underneath of a black-lacquered tea-tray, gliding towards them, mathematically straight, just rising form the mist. He shouted, mad, the blood in his head. His shout was drowned by the scream of the horse..... there was a crash and scraping like twenty tea-trays, a prolonged sound" (139).
*Not only can a tea-tray be seen to represent a social upheaval but it can be seen to represent a Freudian aspect of the book: Tietjen's subconscious mind; the suppression of Tietjen's emotions. When Tietjens cannot handle a situation,the tea-tray can be seen to represent the upheaval of his mind.
*In book one Valentine plays on the name of Tietjen and refers to Tietjen's father as Tea-Tray(84).
*The emotions that Tietjens suppresses are of his wife, Sylvia. For example, in book one Sylvia brings him a tea-tray (31). When Tietjens is thinking Sylvia's sexual wrongs he sees O Nine Morgan's blood (381).
*Tietjens also suppresses his emotions surrounding the death of Captain O Nine Morgan and therefore blood, as well, can be seen to represent the tea-tray.
*In the scene where Valentine and Tietjens are on the all night horse carriage ride, when the horse is bloodied due to the collision this is associated with the tea-tray (139) and the tea-tray can also be seen to represent the General who is a representation of the war and blood.

The Use of Animals in the War

2007-02-24T21:59:00.000-08:00

1.Artillary Horses 2.Horses with Gas Masks

There are several references to war horses throughout No More Parades For example:

Army Veterinary Corps:
"The A.S.C. fellow [Hotchkiss] had been talking positively about horses. He had offered his services in order to study the variation of pink eye that was decimating all the service horses in the lines. He had been a professor-positively a professor- in some farriery college or other. Tiejen's said in that case, he ought to be in the A.V.C. - The Royal Army Veterinary Corps perhaps it was. The old man said he didn't know. He imagined that the R.A.S.C. had wanted his service for their own horses...."(316). As well as references to a charger (320), a galloper (388) etc. The use of horse was important in the war and Tietjen's. They could be seen as man's best friend on the battle field.

The use of horses in the war:
*Troops trained to fight on horseback were called Cavalry: In Canada some mounted troops were refered to as "Dragoons" and "Light Dragoons".
*"For almost two hundred years there had been two types of mounted solider in British service. Units of horse fought on horseback using edged weapons, the horse itself being a weapon used to ride down the enemy in charge of a pursuit. Dragoons were originally infantrymen, equipped with firearms, who fought on foot but were transported by horse, although over the years they were used less and less.... Light Dagoons were less heavily equipped and mounted on faster horses to facilitate their use in reconnaissance and screening operations"(11).
(The Royal Canadian Armoured Corps by John Marteinson and Micheal R. McNorgan. 2000. The Royal Canadian Armoured Corps Association)
*"The contribution of animals, especially to the transport services and artillery, was of central importance to the Great War. Without them the guns would have run out of ammunition, the infantry would have missed breakfast, the distribution of mail would have ceased, and many urgent casualties could not have been evacuated from the battle zone"(193).
*"Although horses were useless in the trenches, "in Flanders and France, as on all other fronts, horses and mules were required for two basic purposes. One: to pull guns and wagons and carry packages and two: to wait patiently for the artillery and infantry to breach the enemy positions and then dash through and cut off their escape. During the peak month of August 1917, the British had 368,000 horses and 82,000 mules on the western front. One third of these were for riding and the others were draught or pack animals"(190).
*"Horse transport also played an essential role in maintaining the lines of communication.Supplies for British field units were taken by train from the channel depots to railheads approximately ten to twelve miles from the trenches. At the rail heads they uploaded on to motor trucks, or sometimes light railways, to be transported to an assemble point about five miles from the front line. The combat divisions collected their supplies from these advance depots and brought them forward by horse or mule power. Horses were used to pull the divisional supply trains because the last few miles of road were so badly catered that they were impassable to all motor vehicles except the heavy artillery’s caterpillar tractors"(190)
*"Man and beast marched together into battle. There were few heroic charges, instead an endless column of animals bearing heavy loads toiled through the mud and rain, often in darkness; frequently to the accompaniment of shell or machine-gun fire(203).
*According to John Glubb (presumming a solider) experienced transport horses did not worry about shelling, and only gave a “plunge” when one exploded nearby. They stuck to their task with remarkable stoicism” (191).
*"At Flers on the Somme, in October 1916, horses were used to pill makeshift sledges carrying the wounded, because the mud was so bad that stretcher parties could barely walk"(191).
*"After a hard day’s work, in muddy conditions it could take up to twelve hours to clean the horses and their harnesses"(191).
*"The use of horses and mules, and the stock of military animals increased from 535,000 in 1915 to 870, 000 in 1917"(193).

The sick and wounded:
*"Sick and wounded horses and mules were the responsibility of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps. Up to 90,000 animals at a time were to be found in hospitals and convalescent homes with British forces throughout the world. On the Western front the treatment of battle casualties was revolutionized. Mobile veterinary sections accompanied the combat divisions. Wounded animals were destroyed on the spot or taken to casualty clearing stations, where their injuries could be assessed and emergency treatment given. Survivors were evacuated to the main hospitals in horse drawn ambulances or the motor vans donated by the R.S.P.C.A. Convalescent animals were sent to recuperation centers before being returned to the front. Preventative medicine was also practiced and animals were regularly inspected for disease. One third of the horses on the western front were provided with rudimentary masks which were effective against chlorine but not mustard gas"(198,99).
*"Gunfire and gas accounted for a surprisingly small proportion of horse mortality. Horses had mostly to fear from exhaustion and mud borne and respiratory diseases(199).
*"Taking the war as a whole, each year 15% of the animals employed by the British army were either killed, reported missing, died or abandoned"(199).

Horse debate:
*"Frequent calls were made during the war for economies in the use of horses". It was thought that horses played a small role in the war and that the cost of them was not equal to their use. " Vast sums were psnt buying and shipping animals from far places of the world to the battle field"(202)."Lord Kitchener, the secretary of state for the war, ordered the appointement in 1916 of a committee to report on ways of reducing the number of horses"(192).The R.S.P.C.A. wanted the number of horses reduced for other reasons. The death rates of army horses in other wars was appalling to the R.S.P.C.A. and "petitions were affressed to the gorvernment calling for action to be taken to reduce the suffering of wonded animals. They lobbyed the government on animal welfare issues and they donated motor ambulances to the veterinary service.
This is reflected in Parades End:Tietjens says: “some damn fool of a literary civilian had been writing passionate letters to the papers insisting that all horses and mules must be ablolished in the army... Because of their pestilence- spereading dung...It might be decreed by A.C.I. that no more horses were to be used! ...Imagine taking battalion supplies down by night with motor lorries..." (Ford, 484)

After the war:
*"When the war was over the disposal of army animals was a sensitive political issue in the

United Kingdom

. Although the public accepted that horses had to die on the field of honour, they insisted that veterans be found a decent retirement home"(201).
*"The disposal of horses and other animals was placed under the jurisdiction of the veterinary corps. French and Italitan farmers were rationed to a maximum of two animals each and they had to produce a certificate of good behaviour signed by the mayor. About 45,000 animals were sold to French horse butchers"(201)
*Despite promises some horses were still sold and put to work in quarries and the transport industry...this was exposed in the 1920's amd Dorothy Brooke the wife of an English officer, exposed the scandle and established a charity to help the victims" (201).
*"over 100,00 horses were repriated to Britian and sold at auction draught- horses being the greatest in demand....The British army sold 225,812 animals at hoime and abroad by march 1919"(201).
Source:Article by John Singleton
Past and Present No.139.(May, 1993), pp 178-203
Interesting......
*In book one Tietjens says " A wonderful magnetism with horses. Perhaps with women too?" (140)."Captian Tietjen's was known to be wonderful with horses" (372).
Tietjen's appears to have great powers over horses, but why not Sylvia? Or does he?
-Horses were seen as stoic soliders (article) as well as soilders seemed stoic. They struggled to no let their inner id be shown and the character of Valentine appears to be similar in this way. Tietjen's refers to her in book one as just as good as a man- maybe that is why he gets along with Valentine more? Because she is as stoic as he is. Less of a wild mare?
*Tietjen’s repeatedly refers to Sylvia as a "thoroughbred" (299).
"She was a thoroughbred. He had always credited her with being that. And now she was behaving as if she had every mean vice that a mare could have. Or it looked like it. Was that, then, because she had been in his stable? But how in the world otherwise could he have run their lives? She had been unfaithful to him. She had never been anything but unfaithful to him, before or after marriage. In a high handed way so that he could not condem her, though it was disagreeable enough to himself" (Tiejen's 350).

The Artillery Horse's Prayer

"To thee, my master, I offer my prayer.
"Treat me as a living being, not as a machine.
"Feed me, water and care for me, and when the day's work is done, groom me carefully so that my circulation may act well, for remember: a good grooming is equivalent to half a feed. Clean my feet and legs and keep them in good condition, for they are the most important parts of my body.
"Pet me sometimes, be always gentle to me so that I may serve you the more gladly and learn to love you.
"Do not jerk the reins, do not whip me when I am going up-hill. Do not force me out of the regular gait or you will not have my strength when you want it. Never strike, beat or kick me when I do not understand what you mean, but give me a chance to understand you. Watch me, and if I fail to do your bidding, see if something is not wrong with my harness or feet.
"Don't draw the straps too tight: give me freedom to move my head. Don't make my load too heavy, and oh! I pray thee, have me well shod every month.
"Examine my teeth when I do not eat; I may have some teeth too long or I may have an ulcerated tooth and that, you know, is very painful. Do not tie my head in an unnatural position or take away my best defense against flies and mosquitoes by cutting off my tail.
"I cannot, alas, tell you when I am thirsty, so give me pure, cold water frequently. Do all you can to protect me from the sun; and throw a cover over me-not when I am working, but when I am standing in the cold.
"I always try to do cheerfully the work you require of me: and day and night I stand for hours patiently waiting for you.
"In this war, like any other soldier, I will do my best without hope of any war-cross, content to serve my country and you, and, if need be, I will die calm and dignified on the battlefield; therefore, oh! my master, treat me in the kindest way and your God will reward you here and hereafter.
"I am not irreverent if I ask this, my prayer, in the name of Him who was born in a stable."

NOTE-Written by Captain De Condenbove, French Army, during the World War.
The above appeared in Field Artillery Manual, Vol. I, by Arthur R. Wilson, Capt., Field Artillery, U.S. Army, published 1926.
http://www.militaryhorse.org/studies/artillery/prayer.asp

Other animals used in the war:
Messenger Pigions

Dogs to search for the wounded

War Poetry: "[Tietjen's] had a rule: Never think on the subject of a shock at the moment of a shock"

2007-02-13T20:13:00.000-08:00

Siegfried Sassoon
War Poet
(1886-1967)

"And Inbetween our carcass and the moil
of marts and cities, toil and moil and coil
Old Spectre blows a cold protecting breath
Vanities of vanities, the preacher saith
No more parades, not any more, no more oil
Unambergrise'd our limbs in the naked soil
No more funeral struments cast before our wraiths..." (318,19)

Tietjens says about the poem: "the general idea was that, when you got into the line or near it, there was no room for swank, typified by expensive funerals. As you might say: No flowers by compulsion.. No more parades" (320)

How the Poem came about in the story:
Tietjen's is just handed a slip of paper from Mackenzie marked private. Tietjens sank down bulkily on his bully-beef case. He read on the buff at first the initials of the singnature,"E.C. Genl.,: and then: "For God's sake keep your wife off me. I will not have skirts round my H.Q.You are more trouble to me than all the rest of my command put toether"(314).

........"The hut was moving slowly up and down before the eyes of Tietjens. He might have just been kicked in the stomach. That was how shocks took him. He said to himself that by God he must take himself in hand, He grabbed with his heavy hands at a piece of buff paper and wrote on it in a coloumn of fat, wet letters

a
b
b
a
a
b
b
a and so on. He said opprobriously to Captain Mackenzie: "Do you know what a sonnet is? Give me the rhymes for a sonnet. That's the plan of it." Mackenzie grumbled: "Of course I know what a sonnet is. What's your game?" Tietjen's said: "Give me the fourteen end rhymes of a sonnet and I'll write the lines in under two minutes and a half." Mackenzie said injuriously: "If you do I'll turn it into Latin hexameters in three. In under three minutes"(315).

"Mackenzie had tossed the sheet of rhymes under his nose.Tietjens read: Death, moil, coil,breath, Saith-" The dirty Cockney!" Oil, Soil, wraith..."(317).

Ideas on how Trench war poerty originated:

Taken from the Journal of Modern Literature; Fall2006, Vol. 30 Issue 1, p104-128, 25p. Written by Nils Clausson "Perpetuating the Language": Romantic Tradition, the Genre Function, and the Origins of the Trench Lyric.
http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/ehost

Modernist writers for the most part rejected the whole idea of genres. This essay examines several major and minor trench poets that show consitency of "code" through them.

*"Without a code, without a language, not only is it impossible to express what one wants to say, but it is also impossible to have anything to say in the first place- a view of language that those still in the grip of expressivist, Romanitc, and humanist theories of literature find threatening".
*"To write a trench lyric, it is not enough to have experienced the reality of trench warfare: one must...be enamoured of the poetic form, the genre, that one must imitate in order to say anything poetic about one's experience....The would be poet must imitate a model. When World War One broke out , not only was there no tradition of soilders writing poetry, but there was simply no English tradition of was poetry upon which a modern poet could draw on to write about trench warfare"(3).
*So therefore a "code" had to be made.
*"For it is the conventions(the code) that create the "content"; content does not come unmediated from experience through the poet and then into the poem"(3).
*"the dominant poetic models available to them for writing about their war experience, the patriotic sonnet and the Romantic lyric, were designed neither to critocize the war nor represent it realistically"(4).
*The Romantic lyric was kept as a primary inspiration, but it was transformed into a new lyric form, the trench lyric, "that was capable of representing what had only seemed alien and ungraspable"(4).
*M.H. Abrams in his essay "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric": The greater Romantic Lyric typically consists of the first person utterance of a thoughtful, sensitive, and perceptive speaker who is usually alone in (or close to) a natural landscape. This landscape is described in some detail, usually in the opening lines. Then some particular aspect of the landscape (flowers, a bird) attracts the attention of the speaker who is moved to reflect, speculate, or otherwise respond to this arresting aspect of the natural scene. The rest of the poem consists of his reaction, reflection, or analysis, as the peom shifts from the preceived object to the preceiving mind(8,9)".
*"So strongly had this genre enforced itself upon the literary consciouness of poets and readers alike that, by the end of the nineteenth century, it had virtually synonymous with the lyric poem. The solider poets of the Great War took this model with them, along with their rifles, kitbags, and copies of the Oxford Book of English Verse, into the trenches of France and Flanders"(9).
*"Sassoon for the most part abandoned the nineteenth-century nature lyric and turned instead to eighteenth-century epigram and satire as models, [though] he sill wrote several poems in this Romantic tradition" (9).
*"Owen rarely wrote first person lyrics in the manner of the Romantics and Victorians, and therfore the pattern is less evident in his poetry"(10).
*"Rosenberg and Blunden however, never abandoned the form; instead they transformed it and therby accommodated an unprecedented subject matter to a familiar literary precedent" (10).

War Poetry as a diversion:

*In part two of No More Parades Tietjen's uses poetry in order to divert his thoughts from his wife's four in the morning departure.
"He had a rule: Never think on the subject of a shock at the moment of a shock. The mind was then too sensitised. Subjects of shock require to be thought all round. If your mind thinks when it is too sensitised its then conclusions will be too strong. So he exclaimed to Mackenzie: "Haven't you got your rhymes yet? Damn it all" (315).

*I imagine poetry was used as a diversion as well from the war itself. It was also a good healing mechanism. A way to deal with the overwhelming emotions of the war and shock.

Impressionism

2007-02-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

Claude, Monet (1840-1926)The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Kirchner's "self portrait of a soldier" painted in 1917, during a furlough caused by a nervous breakdown.

*"the main and perhaps most passionate tenet of impressionism," Ford wrote. "was the suppression of the author from the pages of his books. He must not comment; he must not narrate; he must present his impressions of his imagionary affairs as if he had been present at them" (Gordon, 45). Comment: Can Parades End be viewed by this definition as an immpressionist novel? I don't really see a suppression of the author from the pages of this book. A lot of the characters can be seen to represent people in Ford's life and even Ford himself. Maybe it can be viewed as the Ford Maddox Ford's inner id coming through the pages?
*"by 1918, Ford believed, "every one who had taken physical part in the war was then mad." Ford himself suffered a serious mental breakdown in France, as does Tiejens also" (Gordon, 73)
*"If the novel represents a transcendence or "breakthrough," then whose? Tietjens? Or Tiejens' and the author's? Probably both. For Tietjens, the slow ordeal of which his experience in the trenches is the outward and visible sign is a matter of sloughing off a false -or a superficial- identity and, in his resulting nakedness and dispossession, finding .. his supreme idenity. For Ford, recording this process was at last a chance to have his fantasy and his realism together..."(Gordon,75)
*"It seems quite appropiate that Ford Maddox Ford's maternal grandfather was born in France, in Calais, and appropiate that he was a painter. In Ford's novels the effects are very often painterly- and nearly always French. In "getting in" an interior- and especially in Parade's End- he will characteristically give the source and quality of light"(Gordon, 38) for example: "A shadow- the shadow of the General Officer Commanding in Chief- falling across the bar of light that the sunlight threw in at his open door" (444).
*"Fords eye had been trained early in the studio of his grandfather"(Gordon, 38)
*Examples of his painting technique: "...the space was desultory, rectangular, warm after the drip of the winter night, and transfused with a brown-orange dust that was light"(291)
*"The sergent-major looked poetically down a ribbion of white-washed stones that descended the black mountainside. Over the next shoulder of hill was the blur of hidden conflagration"(312).
*"Captain Mackenzie in the light of a fantastically brilliant hurricane lamp appeared to be bathing dejectedly in a surf of coiling papers spread on the table before him"(312)

source: Gordon, Ambrose.The Invisible Tent.USA:University of Texas Press,1964.