ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on impressionism in fiction; and specifically on how Fordian impressionism construes the notion of trust. Trust is a central theme in the novels of Ford Madox Ford. A key characteristic of Ford's version of literary impressionism is to synthesize two positions that might seem antithetical: what Ford described as a form of psychological and epistemological realism on the one hand - a belief that the minds and hearts of others are inevitably unknowable - and on the other hand, the view that sees us all as trapped in the prison-house of fictionality, according to which we think we know those minds and hearts, but all we know are fictional constructs of them. Indeed, part of the pleasure of reading impressionist or modernist fiction comes from recognizing the skill with which it produces its impressions. Fordian Impressionism may begin in a rejection of classic realism's claimed omniscience, and a concomitant scaling down of aspirations and possibilities.
