Abstract
Max Saunders notes ‘the ethical intricacy and subtlety’ of Parade’s End, which he regards as ‘a massive exploration of the nature of virtue.’ ‘The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity all make their appearance,’ he observes, to which I would add the cardinal virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude. ‘Virtue and goodness themselves are explicitly invoked,’ he adds. ‘But Parade’s End does not flinch from the confrontation with [its characters’] weaknesses.’ Ford’s exploration of the possibilities for ethical endurance and regeneration is joined by an equal recognition of what Martha Nussbaum, calls ‘the fragility of goodness.’ Life is an ‘egg-and-spoon race,’ as Valentine notes, and virtue a thing to be ‘prized,’ in part because of how precarious and prone to fragmentation it is. As Nussbaum explains, this recognition of began to be made by ancient Greek drama in tandem with the recognition of virtue itself by ancient Greek philosophy. And as befits its status as the most humanistic of the primary schools of contemporary moral philosophy, virtue ethics has been the one most informed by dialogue with literature, with key figures like Elizabeth Anscombe, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor in addition to Nussbaum making frequent reference in their work to modern literature alongside modern moral philosophy.
In this essay, I extend that dialogue by placing Ford Madox Ford’s work in conversation with two crucial recent works of virtue ethics by Eric Silverman, each focused on terms vital to Parade’s End: chastity, which Ford invokes from the start, and love, which comes to predominate. In The Prudence of Love: How Possessing the Virtue of Love Benefits the Lover (2010), Silverman enumerates how love counter-acts the fragmentation, dislocation, and nostalgia Ford’s characters face. Using terms derived from Silverman’s conception of love as ‘a disposition toward relationally appropriate acts of the will consisting of disinterested desires for the good of the beloved and unity with the beloved hailed as final ends,’ I will argue that Tietjens’ and Valentine’s love for one another helps them integrate their psyches and acquire the epistemic goods of self-awareness, irony, and empathy, which foster eudaimonia or well-being, even in the midst of catastrophe. In Sexual Ethics in a Secular Age: Is There Still a Virtue of Chastity? (2021), Silverman answers ‘yes,’ explaining how the virtue helps solve problems resulting from the ‘unwise, imprudent, unjust, intemperate, or otherwise vicious expressions of sexual desire’ which are just as endemic in Tietjens’s and Valentine’s world as moral fragmentation, dislocation, and nostalgia. Using terms derived from Silverman’s conception of chastity as ‘an excellent personal disposition toward sex, sexual pleasure, and relationships that supports the flourishing of both the individual and those effected,’ I argue that both before and after they have sexual intercourse, Tietjens and Valentine are chaste in the philosophical sense and that their virtue in contrast to the violence and negligence of war and sexual vice is one reason they are forgiven for their legal infidelity and their union blessed at the close of Parade’s End.