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A review by brughiera
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
5.0
After many years, I reread this over the holidays, an ideal time for relaxing with a long family chronicle. While most of the story is set in the late Victorian age, it was written and published in the 1920s and, in fact, I have an edition originally belonging to my grandmother, given to her in 1924. I appreciated the relaxed pace and chronological development of the story after having become somewhat weary of repeated flashbacks and changes of tempo which seem an essential feature of many recent novels. The extension of the story over forty odd years from the mid-1880s to 1920 allows the reader to become close to the characters and have a real sympathy for the evolution of this large family through their deaths, marriages and births.
Interestingly, the main character, Soames, the 'man of property', is not someone easily sympathized with and his essential unattractiveness is at the root of the main incident in the novel around which the story revolves. Yet, this does not prevent the reader from appreciating the depth of his passion for Irene, and, later, for his daughter, Fleur, and his bewilderment at the depth of the hatred of the woman who became his wife. In Victorian times, infidelity of women and divorce, especially among the upper middle class, was scandalous, which is why Soames never considered divorce initially, when he had the grounds, and why young Jolyon's decision to provide him with those grounds, to protect Irene was such a huge step. The repercussions of the disastrous marriage between Soames and Irene, their subsequent divorce and the rift between the two main sections of the Forsyte family extend to the next generation. Initially there is young Jolyon's son Jolly's challenge to Val Darty, son of Soames' sister, which leads to their both enlisting to fight in the Boer war and Jolly's death. Then there is the tragic impossibility for Jon, young Jolyon's and Irene's son, of going through with a union with his adored Fleur because of his love for his mother.
The atmosphere of the Victorian period is successfully conveyed through the focus of the Forsyte family on property and making money and the institutions of the meetings at the old Aunts and their gossip. The Boer war, although remote, has a more significant impact on the family than the first World War, whose consequences are revealed in lamentations about the change in customs of the new Age and the prevalence of smelly motor cars. The demise of the family itself, or rather all that it stood for, is aptly symbolized by Fleur's union with a member of the landed gentry and Jon's emigration to British Columbia. As Soames ponders:
"To Let" - the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul, his investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the State had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and God knew who had his soul.....The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms only when their destructive flood should have passed its full.
Interestingly, the main character, Soames, the 'man of property', is not someone easily sympathized with and his essential unattractiveness is at the root of the main incident in the novel around which the story revolves. Yet, this does not prevent the reader from appreciating the depth of his passion for Irene, and, later, for his daughter, Fleur, and his bewilderment at the depth of the hatred of the woman who became his wife. In Victorian times, infidelity of women and divorce, especially among the upper middle class, was scandalous, which is why Soames never considered divorce initially, when he had the grounds, and why young Jolyon's decision to provide him with those grounds, to protect Irene was such a huge step. The repercussions of the disastrous marriage between Soames and Irene, their subsequent divorce and the rift between the two main sections of the Forsyte family extend to the next generation. Initially there is young Jolyon's son Jolly's challenge to Val Darty, son of Soames' sister, which leads to their both enlisting to fight in the Boer war and Jolly's death. Then there is the tragic impossibility for Jon, young Jolyon's and Irene's son, of going through with a union with his adored Fleur because of his love for his mother.
The atmosphere of the Victorian period is successfully conveyed through the focus of the Forsyte family on property and making money and the institutions of the meetings at the old Aunts and their gossip. The Boer war, although remote, has a more significant impact on the family than the first World War, whose consequences are revealed in lamentations about the change in customs of the new Age and the prevalence of smelly motor cars. The demise of the family itself, or rather all that it stood for, is aptly symbolized by Fleur's union with a member of the landed gentry and Jon's emigration to British Columbia. As Soames ponders:
"To Let" - the Forsyte age and way of life, when a man owned his soul, his investments, and his woman, without check or question. And now the State had, or would have, his investments, his woman had herself, and God knew who had his soul.....The waters of change were foaming in, carrying the promise of new forms only when their destructive flood should have passed its full.