The Flame that Failed by Christopher Ward
Maurice marries Eleanor, a thirty-nine-year-old music teacher, nineteen minutes after turning nineteen himself, and they honeymoon by a river under a locust tree. They move in with Maurice's Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary, along with the couple's eleven-year-old daughter Edith, while Maurice looks for work. Edith and Maurice play together constantly, to Eleanor's visible jealousy, and Maurice, unsettled, takes up raising chickens and concludes from the hens' calm behavior that Eleanor is not "an old hen." He takes a real-estate job and prospers by a method of pointing out his houses' minor flaws to distract buyers from their major ones, earning the nickname "G. R. Q. Wallingford." Housekeeping fails when a deaf cook ruins the food, so Maurice and Eleanor move to a boarding house, where Eleanor spends her evenings lying on the bed moaning with jealousy over everyone around Maurice, from Edith to the stenographer to the landlady. One night, after a quarrel in which he throws their card table at her, Maurice storms out. He meets Lily Dale, a warm, capable, unglamorous young woman who cooks him a fine steak and coffee and becomes his mistress. Maurice proposes bringing Lily into the household as a cook, telling her his wife is "broad-minded," but Lily refuses and sends him home. He continues visiting her for her coffee and company. Eleanor eventually learns of Lily's six-year-old son, Jacky, and lapses into blank, listless days by the window, watching the bare trees and the river. After two years she has her first idea: to buy Jacky from Lily for six hundred dollars, so as to keep Maurice from someday marrying Edith. Lily refuses to sell. Eleanor then reasons that she must die so that Maurice will marry Lily instead, since Lily will long outlive him and so keep him from ever marrying Edith. She returns to the river of their honeymoon to drown herself but finds the water merely wet and unpleasant, abandons the attempt, and instead succeeds by contracting pneumonia. After Eleanor's death, Maurice considers marrying Lily to provide for Jacky, but his aunt and uncle object. He then considers not marrying at all, praising Lily's cooking. Edith, now grown, interrupts to declare that he will marry her instead, dismissing the objection about his past relations, and proposes that they adopt Jacky and keep Lily on as cook.
By Christopher Ward · Genre: Satire, Dark Comedy, Farce · 9 chapters · 2,337 words
First lines
"We have been married exactly fifty-four minutes," said Maurice, "and I still love you."
"I can't believe it! " answered Eleanor.
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Genres
- Satire — The entire narrative systematically mocks romantic ideals and marriage conventions through exaggerated scenarios: a nineteen-year-old marrying a thirty-nine-year-old woman, success through honest admissions of flaws, and the absurd resolution where Maurice marries Lily after Eleanor's death.
- Dark Comedy — Tragic elements including infidelity, suicide attempts, and death are presented with comedic detachment and ironic tone, creating deliberate tension between the serious plot events and their humorous treatment.
- Farce — The plot escalates through increasingly ridiculous situations and absurd complications: Eleanor's repeated failed suicide attempts, Maurice's affair, the revelation of an illegitimate child, and the contrived final resolution.
- Ironic Fiction — Irony permeates the narrative voice, characterization, and plot development, from the narrator's contradictory observations about Eleanor's intellect to the inversion of expected outcomes and character motivations.
Tags
satire · dark comedy · tragicomic · psychological fiction · domestic fiction · irony · boarding house · river · void · jealousy · marriage conflict · infidelity
What this Textopian page supports
The Flame that Failed is listed on Textopian as a short story by Christopher Ward, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Short story
- Author: Christopher Ward
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Satire, Dark Comedy, Farce, Ironic Fiction, Tragedy
- Length: 2,337 words
- Structure: 9 chapters, 61 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for The Flame that Failed by Christopher Ward
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
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