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Forsyte Saga<-John Galsworthy<-novels<-chapter 8<-contents<-position





The Forsyte Saga
    As a novelist Galsworthy was chiefly known for The Forsyte Saga. He enjoys a high reputation as an outstanding successor to the realistic tradition. He writes following the tradition of his favorite writers such as Thackeray, Dickens. It traced the fortunes of three generations and detailed the disintegrations of the property-owning middle-class from the mid-1880s to the 1930s. Galsworthy was a representative of the literary tradition which has regarded the novel as a lawful instrument of social propaganda. As most of Galsworthy's work, the Saga may be seen as social commentary, focusing especially on the British class system. The first novel of this vast work issued in 1906 was a harsh criticism of the upper middle classes into which he was born. He resumed working on the other two novels almost fifteen years later. Meanwhile, he had written a considerable number of novels, short stories and plays.
a. Man of Property
     The novel begins with the Forsyte family gathering at Old Jolyon Forsyte’s house to celebrate the engagement of his granddaughter, June, to Philip Bosinney, a young architect. June is the daughter of the young Jolyon Forsyte who has broken away form the family his marriage with a former governess, which is considered by the Forsytes as scandalous misalliance. The protagonist, another Forsyte, Soames Forsyte, is an avaricious, merciless man who epitomized the materialistic, grasping side of society that Galsworthy despised. He marries beautiful but rebellious Irene. Architect Bosinney is invited by Soames to build his wife a country house, Robin Hill. As time goes on, Irene falls in love with the architect. Soames sees everything and everyone as a possible possession and investment. His wife despises him for she has known that in her husband’s eyes she is just an estate, but not a human being with feelings. Irene leaves the house and later Bosinney dies in a car accident. Soames Forsyte is modeled by Galsworthy’s cousin, while Bosinney the writer himself.
     In Chancery, Soames still tries to win Irene back after many years of separation. But Irene has made up her mind to divorce Soames. During these years, Soames’s cousin, Joylon and Irene gradually falls in love with each other. Soames goes to the court, but he loses the case and has to agree to divorce. Joylon and Irene marry happily and have a son named Jon. Soames marries his second wife, Annette Lamotte, who bears a daughter, Fleur. In the third book, To Let, Jon and Fleur meet each other and fall in love. Joylon writes Jon a letter to reveal his son the relationship between the two families and soon dies of a sudden heart-attack. Fleur and Jon react to the affair differently. Knowing the relationship, Fleur is still determined to marry Jon and promises that there will be no scandal. She tries to persuade him into a hasty marriage, but Jon is greatly shocked and refuses to marry Fleur. Fleur finally marries a man she dose not love in desperation. Irene and her son go back to her country house, which is now empty and ready to let. When the last of the old Forsytes dies, Soames realized that the Forsyte age has passed.
     In the first book, Soames represents the possessive nature of his class, while Irene symbolizes beauty and the longing for love. Here is an excerpt paragraph, which is the typical representation of English Bourgeois morality and social attitude. Young Joylon, an outcast of the family, is thinking what the Forsytism has meant to him in his life.
    “He knew that if he had not possessed in great measure the eye for what he wanted, the tenacity to hold on to it, the sense of the folly of wasting that for which he had given so big a price—in other words, the ‘sense of property’-- he could never have retained her (perhaps never would have desired to retain her) through all the financial troubles, slights, and misconstructions of those fifteen years; never have induced her to marry him on the death of his first wife: never have lived it all through, and come up, as it were, thin, but smiling.”
    But a subtle change in the author’s attitude toward his hero appears in the last two novels. The villainous Soames became a more sympathetic character. This turn occurred partly because ages had made the author more wise and human. In the meanwhile, although Galsworthy tries to justify the wife’s right to refuse to be her husband’s subject, Irene impresses readers as a selfish character for her incapability to love. The obscurity of Galsworthy toward his characters was severely attacked by some critics, but what holds the interest of his readers.

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