The moral limitations of Parade's End

The final chapter in Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End brings us a surprisingly "happy" ending - after this sometimes very grim and cynical novel - well, a happy ending for some at least: In the final scene, Mark Tietjens, who had been silent and immobile for years in protest of the British failure to pursue the Germans at the end of the World War (I) - speaks to his brother's wife-to-be, Valentine - remembers a song lyric from his childhood - what he's really trying to say to her is that he accepts her into his narrow world, into his family, despite her lack of "noble" blood and her living out of wedlock w/ brother, Christopher. Valentine herself had been pleasantly surprised earlier in the day, in the chapter, when Christopher Tietjens's nasty estranged wife shows up and, out of character or at least unexpectedly, defends Valentine against an onslaught of visitors - there had been sense that even the presence of the ex could harm Valentine's pregnancy. Ok, they all accept her, well and good - but what are they protecting her from, exactly? Mostly, those pernicious Americans (and Jews) who are buying up all the old British furniture, renting the estate (Groby), have no sense of history or decorum, cut down the 300-year old giant cedar (and in the process damage the estate mansion), and so on - so to me what FMF may wish to seem like a rallying of the British in support of old values of land, status, culture, is also a very narrow-minded and xenophobic attack and anything and anyone different - the idea that Americans (and Jews - FMF makes quite a point of this) could acquire wealth and stature through their own accomplishments seems abhorrent, world-shaking to them. This is a theme that Henry James had developed and examined in many novels - in James, the general thought being that Americans could accumulate great wealthy but still felt innocuous in the face of European royalty, no matter how debased - the American search for legitimacy through alliance with European (not always English) nobility, at great cost. Parade's End is a fantastic, detailed, unusual examination of an entire culture through a tumultuous and critical period in British history - yet it also is full of class prejudice, racial prejudice, ethnic prejudice - all of which I'd like to believe is there only because FMF is accurately conveying the sensibilities and biases of his characters, but I'm not completely convinced of that, I worry that some of these prejudicial opinions may be his own - or he may not have even realized the moral limitations of his consciousness.