Fleeting Furniture

Abstract

In the last novel of the Parade’s End-series, Last Post (1928), Ford Madox Ford depicts the aftermath of the First World War, and the cataclysmic social, cultural, and material changes it caused, from the perspective of the Tietjens brothers’ rural home in Kent. The novel’s position in the tetralogy has often been questioned, as its setting as well as form differs significantly from the previous three novels. However, as this article will show, the novel also offers Ford’s most substantial examination of the consequences of war. This article looks at the importance of things in Ford’s depiction of post-war reconstruction, arguing that by foregrounding furniture and other domestic objects as a thematic concern, Ford seeks to evade a homogenising narrative of reconciliation and patriotic celebration. The novel participates in a modernist rejection of empirical, objective representation, where things rather than events serve as nodes of reference for the psychological as well as material transformations of the Post-War period.

Keywords

• Ford Madox Ford
• Last Post
• modernism
• First World War
• furniture
• style