The Good Husband was published by Ballantine in 1994 and examines marriage from the male perspective — unusual for Godwin, whose novels typically center on women’s consciousness. The novel follows two husbands in a small Virginia college town: Francis Lake, a gentle man devoted to his older wife Magda (a formidable literary critic dying of cancer), and Hugo Henry, a successful novelist married to a younger woman whose emotional demands are exhausting him.
The two marriages provide contrasting models of what it means to be a “good husband”: Francis’s goodness takes the form of selfless devotion — he has organized his entire life around Magda’s needs and career — while Hugo’s takes the form of endurance — he absorbs his wife’s demands and moods because he believes marriage requires accommodation. Both models are presented sympathetically, and both are shown to exact a price: Francis has no self outside his role as caretaker; Hugo has sacrificed his creative energy to domestic peacekeeping.
Magda’s dying provides the novel’s emotional center — Godwin writes about terminal illness with the same unflinching intelligence she brings to every subject — and her death forces both men to reconfront the question of what their lives mean without the defining relationship of marriage. The novel is Godwin at her most psychologically acute, and its exploration of male interiority extends her usual range in productive directions.
Collecting The Good Husband
First edition (Ballantine, New York, 1994): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- Without jacket: $5–$10