Christopher Tietjens Quotes

Christopher Tietjens is a 26-years-old man, who “entitles to be the best,” is an intelligent, wealthy gentleman. Christopher himself believes in old-fashioned Edwardian values, disapproving of the current values. Among his peers, he is an anachronous and a nostalgic person because he refuses to compromise these values at any cost- resigning from his job as a government statistician when asked to manipulate the facts, and remaining faithful to his wife. His adulterous wife Sylvia always said that he didn’t have the guts to live by his own beliefs. In the novel, Ford Madox Ford makes its crystal clear that Christopher the importance he has to the eighteenth century. He upholds the thought that England is living in a great time, on a political

level to a social and cultural level. For him, recent literary works are not that worthy: “there has been nothing worth reading written in England since the eighteen century except by a woman.” One day, while playing golf he met Valentine and after a short time, he falls in love with her. However, he is a gentleman that believes that his wife should ask him for a divorce. In Sylvia’s case she is a Catholic, so they are a couple that is stuck together until death.
Sylvia Tietjens (née Satterthwaite), is a beautiful, selfish, manipulative and a heartless woman, but also mesmerizing, who remains attracted to her husband.

Sylvia enjoys her stream of affairs, but she's hurt by the fact that her husband won't notice her. She enjoys manipulating people when she’s bored and rejecting men. Sylvia uses sex as a way to control men and gain power. However, some of these had consequences; referring to Brownlie, the banker, whose obsession with her led him to bounce two of Christopher’s checks, causing him disgrace to the army Mess and his club. The only person that she can’t control and is desperate to is her husband. He’s able to resist her attractiveness, something that other men can’t. Christopher did have an attraction to her, but it did not last after he realized that she used him by making him marry her quickly because she was with child, which might not be his. Sylvia usually gets bored of her affairs, but she comes back to Christopher because she knows that he is superior versus her other suitors. At some point, we learn that Sylvia wants a dominating husband, who satisfies her sexual needs while at the same time playing the role of the secret puppet master. “If, you had once in our lives said to me: You whore! You bitch! […] you might have done something to bring us

together.”
Valentine Wannop is a 22-year-old young suffragette who lives with her mother, a novelist.

Valentine is forward thinking, vibrant, and brilliant-minded. She has her own set of morals not influenced by society, like Christopher. Out of all of the characters, she knows how hard it is to be a woman earning her own income working as a maid and a gym teacher. Valentine is the type of woman that doesn't view marriage as her priority in life but unintentionally falls in love with Christopher. Valentine is thankful that she got to experience love and tries to do everything she can to make him happy without damaging his

reputation.
Any book reader would love for Christopher and Valentine to end up together. As a book reader, you can sense the electrifying chemistry between them comparing his communication with Sylvia which is entirely opposite. Christopher and Valentine are more compatible with each other: two intelligent Latin speakers who are opposed to the current values their society had. But their love is similar to Romeo & Juliet, it’s a type of forbidden love, even when Valentine decides to be Christopher’s mistress they do not consummate the relationship. For Christopher it’s important to have a “Gentleman’s Honor,” he lives by a strict code of honor which influences most of his actions in the story.