SOURCE: "Marriage and Sex in the Novels of Ford Madox Ford," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 23, No. 4, Winter, 1977-78, pp. 586-92.

In the following essay, Webb observes the pessimistic attitude toward a "search for personal satisfaction through sexual relations" portrayed by Ford in his fiction.

"Ford's best novels," according to Kenneth Rexroth, "are concerned with the struggle to achieve, and the tragic failure of, sacramental marriage."¹ Marriage as a sacrament, as an especial sexual relation dignified by custom, law, and religion intrigues Ford; but while he is attracted by the vision of a sanctioned sexual happiness fully in harmony with social tradition, he is equally, if not more, attracted by the kinds of extravagant relationships dramatized in the troubadour lyrics he loved and in the accounts of the Courts of Love. His stories of wordly men and women contain within them the wilder passions of troubadour romance.² Set...