I read this book for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021.
Classic by a new-to-you author. What made me want to read this book is the fact that I’m getting to the age at which it’s embarrassing to admit that I’ve not read novels as respected as The Forsyte Saga. I think what always put me off this one in particular is I assumed because it has been adapted for the screen for every generation that comes down the pike, it must be merely higher level soap opera. Again, with age, however, I find my tolerance for soap opera stand-bys increasing. The emphasis on family life in comfy domestic interiors, troubled personal relationships, sexual dramas, emotional and ethical conflicts – bring Dream of the Red Chamber on, baby!
The Forsyte Saga – John Galsworthy
This book is composed of three novels and two interludes. Set in the prosperous eras of Victoria and Edward in London, Galsworthy packs the Forsyte’s material world full of stuff. Like in novels by Edith Wharton, there are many descriptions of the living rooms and other interiors of this closely-knit family of backbiters. They like wealthy bourgeois stuff like Boucher and Dresden figurines. Each of the numerous important Forsytes is described in a fashion as detailed as possible as to their clothing and finishing touches.
The skulls of the family members are full of upper-middle-class stuff too. Galsworthy examines the bourgeois mentality, not sympathetically but not as if he expected it to ever change. That is, wealth in real estate, chattels, and the different types of money, station and professions, and honor and prestige all underpin self-respect and contentment. In the spirit and prevailing conventions of the era, they fear scandal like peasants fear sorcery.
Regarding the uncomplicated unfolding of the story, it take a little time to get moving because all the puppets had to be put their places. Like the family in Dream of the Red Chamber, the Forsytes do their utmost to ignore problems, looking through fingers at the possibility of scandal, and saving the family's good name at all cost.
The first novel is an ironic satire on heartless bourgeois ways and in the next two novels the saga turns into what I rather feared for 30 years - soap opera. The melodrama is readable and diverting; the saga won Galsworthy the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932 so who the heck am I to sneer? Even at this late date in 2021, my inner teenager is still outraged by the hypocrisy of the oppressors, the cult of money and possession, keeping up appearances and the petty fretting over reputation. But when I recall that I better be my age, I figure it’s not like people are going to change their human nature that was forged in millions of years of living in honor-bound and gossip-ridden cultures fearful of being shunned by the group, a sure ticket to not surviving on the savanna and not passing one's genes on the the next generations
The first one is the best, isn't it? And actually pretty good, in a delightfully snarky way. The next two are fine but as you say, soap-opera-ish. The quality of the first one got me to carry on even further--I've read two in the second trilogy--a distinct falling off. I suppose I'll finished the second trilogy someday, but haven't yet.
ReplyDelete