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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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