The Enduring Fascination of Forsytes

The Enduring Fascination of Forsytes

(c) Copyright (2016) by Kathleen Spaltro

All Rights Reserved

Even though I love both of the TV series based on John Galsworthy's Forsyte novels and I have read the six Forsyte novels many times, I rank Galsworthy as a minor writer—that is, as a minor writer with a major talent. Galsworthy was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. Nevertheless, he possessed none of the genius of his friends Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, J.M. Barrie, Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Hardy. Without ever creating great literature, Galsworthy created four great characters: Old Jolyon Forsyte and his son, Young Jolyon, as well as Fleur Forsyte and her father, Soames—the central personage of the Forsyte Saga.

Aversion

Each of these characters becomes ever more vivid with familiarity. But the Saga fascinates both readers and viewers even more fundamentally because of the characters' enduring antipathy towards each other. As Young Jolyson comments, "aversion's deeper than love or hate because it's a natural product of the nerves, and we don't change them." The Saga begins with the ten Forsyte siblings, then traces their disunion and, in particular, the complete severance of Old Jolyon and his descendants from the family of his brother James that includes Soames and Fleur. The antipathy between Old Jolyon and James, between Young Jolyon and Soames, is never overcome, just further evolved.

And yet a countervailing force makes the Saga even more compelling. While the story depends on the perennial and increasing aversion felt by the two brothers and by their families, it also depends on the decreasing aversion felt by the reader or viewer towards Soames Forsyte. Depicted at first, in "The Man of Property," in highly unattractive terms, Soames continues to both repel and attract until, in "Swan Song," he finally distresses us by dying selflessly to save his beloved, spoiled daughter. Thus is the antipathy felt by both Galsworthy and us towards Soames gradually overcome.

  

Ambivalence

The greatness of this characterization results from Galsworthy's own ambivalence towards Soames. Noting that "The Forsyte Saga" constituted "the criticism of one half of myself by the other," Galsworthy set Soames up as a foil to himself but eventually used Soames as a mouthpiece. This ambivalence creates an artistic tension that keeps us interested.

Similarly, Galsworthy exhibited his ambivalence towards the values of the Forsytes, upper-middle-class tea merchants and solicitors and investors in house-property who embody what he deplored as "the possessive instinct." Tenacious, unimaginative, materialistic, self-centered, but also solid as well as reliable, Soames cannot understand the beauty of the paintings he collects except in terms of the paintings' investment value. Soames cannot understand the (absent) love of his wife except in terms of her spousal obligations. After all, he had purchased her love by paying for her keep.

"He had left his wife sitting on the sofa in the drawing-room, her hands crossed in her lap, manifestly waiting for him to go out. This was not unusual. It happened, in fact, every day. He could not understand what she found wrong with him. It was not as if he drank! Did he run into debt, or gamble, or swear; was he violent; were his friends rackety; did he stay out at night? On the contrary. The profound, subdued aversion which he felt in his wife was a mystery to him, and a source of the most terrible irritation. That she had made a mistake, and did not love him, had tried to love him and could not love him, was obviously no reason." "He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to the most fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he could do no more than own her body—if indeed he could do that, which he was beginning to doubt. If any one had asked him if he wanted to own her soul, the question would have seemed to him both ridiculous and sentimental. But he did so want, and the writing said he never would."

Foresight

Yet, even if Soames, as a true Forsyte, cannot reach beyond the limitations imposed by his values and worldview to appreciate beauty and art for their own sakes and to understand passion in its impetuosity, Galsworthy eventually appreciated Soames as the embodiment of "foresight." "Tradition, habit, education, inherited aptitude, native caution, all joined to form a solid professional honesty, superior to temptation—from the very fact that it was built on an innate avoidance of risk." Even the sceptical Young Jolyon, who half-hates his extended family, understands the value of Forsyte virtues. "They are ... half England, and the better half, too, the safe half, the three per cent. half, the half that counts. It's their wealth and security that makes everything possible; makes your art possible, makes literature, science, even religion, possible. Without Forsytes, who believe in none of these things … but turn them all to use, where should we be?"

While the Saga evolves, I greatly enjoy observing as Galsworthy worked out his ambivalence towards the Forsytes and towards Soames. Soames as a great character gave a great stage actor, Eric Porter, in the 1967 TV series the opportunity to craft a superb, brilliant performance. From detesting Soames for many episodes, the viewer eventually passes into a state of reserved affection for him--quite a tribute to Porter's skill. 

As for the rest of the Saga and its other characters, for Soames, and the Forsytes, as for all of us, deficiencies are the shadow-side of virtues. The prudent comprehend the "what" of life; the imaginative comprehend the "why." Few of us possess both foresight and insight. I keep thinking of the biblical saying "for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light."

 
The 1967 TV series dramatized the six novels of Galsworthy's two Forsyte trilogies, "The Forsyte Saga" and "A Modern Comedy." The 2002 TV series portrayed the first trilogy.

first published in The Woodstock Independent