Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier as Detective Story: Is Dowell a Murderer?

The voluminous criticism on The Good Soldier’s John Dowell has made his thinking a focal point. No one much studies what Dowell actually does in the novel because he presents himself as such a nonentity. One action of his in particular needs consideration—the possibility that Dowell murdered his wife. When one looks closely at the things Dowell actually says about himself, a strong pattern of misdirection and even violence is revealed. The contemporary audience would have known the effects of prussic acid poisoning and wondered if Florence was arranged on her bed or died another way. Only the ignorant would have believed that she accidentally drank prussic acid and then arranged herself on the bed. Ford leaves the true method of Florence’s death up to the reader, but if she died of prussic acid poisoning or a true heart attack, she was cleaned up and “arranged.”