Review: The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
This review was originally published on my personal blog in June 2020.
John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga tells the story of three generations of an upper-middle class English family. The trilogy begins in 1886 and ends in 1920 with the death of the last of the older generation. In his preface, Galsworthy describes the novel as “ an intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives of men” (iv). This theme is expressed through the relationship between the central characters– Soames Forsyte (the eponymous “man of property”) and his wife Irene.
Soames is the quintessential example of a “Forsyte”. His cousin Young Jolyon (who has been exiled from the family for leaving his wife for their daughter’s governess) describes the type thus: “what I call a ‘Forsyte’ is a man who is decidedly more than less a slave of property. He knows a good thing, he knows a safe thing, and his grip on property–it doesn’t matter whether it be wives, houses, money or reputation–is his hall-mark” ( 151). As reflected in Young Jolyon’s diagnosis, Soames believes that Irene belongs to him, just as his house belongs to him. In fact, the first book of the saga (“The Man of Property”) revolves around Soames’ plans for a country house that he is having constructed for himself and Irene, partly because he aspires to the lifestyle and partly because he believes moving his wife out of London will allow him to control her better. However, Irene–who is in a loveless marriage with Soames– ends up falling in love with the architect. She locks Soames out of her bedroom and in a fit of jealousy, he commits marital rape (which was not considered criminal at the time the story is set). After Irene’s lover finds out about this, he gets run over in an accident (it is ambiguous if this is suicide) and Irene subsequently separates from Soames–though they are not divorced by the conclusion of Book 1.
Book 2 (“In Chancery”) revolves around Soames’ efforts to convince Irene to come back to him. He is reluctant to go through the scandal of a divorce trial and is also still in love with his wife. Irene turns to Young Jolyon for help and eventually the two fall in love. When his efforts to win Irene back fail, Soames accuses her of having an affair with Young Jolyon and is thus able to get his divorce. He eventually marries a French shop girl and has a daughter with her. Irene and Young Jolyon marry and have a son. They also end up living at Robin Hill, the house that Soames had intended for himself and Irene.
The final part of the trilogy (“To Let”) is focused on the romance between Soames’ daughter Fleur and Irene and Young Jolyon’s son Jon. The two young people are unaware of the family history and fall in love at first sight. Given the tortured history between their parents, the families are extremely reluctant to allow this relationship to develop. Young Jolyon eventually reveals the truth about Irene and Soames’ relationship in a letter to Jon and tells him that any potential children of Jon and Fleur would be grandchildren not only of Irene but also of the man who once owned Irene like a slave. He subsequently dies of a heart attack and Jon decides to renounce Fleur. Fleur eventually marries someone else and Jon and Irene leave England.
It is to Galsworthy’s credit that Soames– despite his reprehensible actions– does not come across as a one-dimensional villain. He genuinely cannot understand why Irene doesn’t love him. He sincerely loves her and his belief that she belongs to him was typical of the era. In fact, there are several cultures where the belief that a woman belongs to her husband continues to this day. Marital Rape was criminalized in the UK as late as 1991. There are several countries where it is still not a criminal offense. In the world of the novel, the Forsyte family believes that the fact that Irene wants a separate bedroom is a scandal and they cannot understand why she is so averse to Soames, who has provided her with an excellent standard of living. Thus, Soames was perceived as acting entirely within his rights and it is Irene who was seen as being in the wrong. Galsworthy’s sympathies are of course with Irene and Young Jolyon (their relationship is based on his own marriage to a woman who was previously unhappily married to one of his cousins). As he writes in the preface:
But in pitying Soames, readers incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think, he wasn’t a bad fellow, it wasn’t his fault; she ought to have forgiven him and so on!
And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth, which underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit in Nature. Whether it ought to, or no, is beside the point; because in fact it never does (iv).
Irene’s tragedy then is that she married Soames without being in love with him and was not capable of returning his feelings.
I found the first two parts of the trilogy compelling, even on re-reading the novel after several years. “To Let” however seemed a bit too melodramatic. It seemed too contrived that the children of the doomed couple would fall in love and the parents’ sins would come to haunt the children. Additionally, the thought of a potential marriage between second cousins (whose parents were once married) may strike many readers–especially those in the West– as incestuous.
In conclusion, I would recommend The Forsyte Saga to those who are fans of family dramas and to those who are interested in social history–in this case the transition from the end of the Victorian era to the beginning of the Edwardian Age.