Let Your Heart Be Your Guide

The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion is positively infected with references to the heart and its fickleness. Many of the characters appear to suffer from a physical ailment of their heart, which alerts the reader that the heart is not a reliable organ. Florence Dowell and Edward Ashburnham fake heart problems in order to facilitate their extramarital affairs. Although the hearts that beat in their chests are healthy enough, their emotional hearts—the passion that directs their decision-making—are diseased.

Florence knowingly enters into a marriage she has no intention of honoring. In fact, Florence is already in a sexual affair when she meets her future husband, an affair that continues for several years until she takes a different lover. The problem with Edward Ashburnham's emotional heart is that he suppressed passion too long in his youth. He does not...