Forsyte Chronicles:-
This work developed over a lifetime and began with a simple theme, that of individual's right to life and love, especially those of a woman. The first trilogy, Forsyte Saga, is the most famous of all. There are three trilogies, Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter being the second and the third. The Forsyte 'Change was written as separate stories about the various characters and spans the time from migration of Jolyon Forsyte the original, referred to usually as Superior Dosset, the paterfamilias of the Forsytes, to London from border of Devon and Dorsetshire, onwards well into the time connecting it to the beginning of the second trilogy. The first two trilogies have interconnecting interludes between each of their two parts.
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The Forsyte Saga:-
The Forsyte Saga was not planned as such but developed over years with sequels coming naturally as they did, and human heart and passion and minds within settings of high society of a Victorian and post Victorian England - chiefly London - and its solid base in property.
When it was published it was revolutionary in the theme - a woman is not owned by her husband, and love is not a duty she owes but a bond that is very real however intangible, that cannot be faked.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008.
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The Man of Property:-
The Man Of Property, with its very apt title, begins with Soames Forsyte, the man of property who not only inherited but is very good in acquisition of property and taking care of it. As such he has virtues necessary to society, honesty and prudence and more, but lacks in those that cannot be taught and must be developed by sensitivity - those dealing with heart. He has no comprehension of those, and proceeds to acquire the object of his passion, his first wife Irene, pretty much like he would any other property - with steady and unrelenting pursuit and some crafty methods that make it difficult for her to stay the course of not acquiescing. In this however he is wrong, and the marriage goes sour long before he would acknowledge it, with his total bewilderment and lack of understanding of his beautiful and sensitive, artistic, intelligent wife - he expects her to settle down and do her duty, and be happy with all that he can provide for her in ways of house and clothes and jewellery and stability, but she is made of a different mettle and is not one to see herself or any other woman as an object of male property.
She might have continued the slow death within, forced to do so by her husband reneging on his promise of letting her go free if she were not happy, had it not been for the architect Bosinney, fiance of her niece by marriage June Forsyte the daughter of Young Jolyon, first cousin of Soames. Bossinney has sensitivity to match and recognise and appreciate Irene, and more - he falls in love with her, even as he is contracted to design and construct a house for the couple far away from the city where Irene may find solitude and peace and come to terms with her lot, or so her husband Soames plans mistakenly. The house is beautiful, but the love of the architect for the woman who the house is meant for is not to be bought or killed, and tragedy begins to unravel the lives involved, Irene and June and Bosinney - and Soames.
Young Jolyon, the son of Old Jolyon who disapproves of his son's second marriage and has not till date seen his new grandchildren by the woman who used to be in employ of his first wife before they fell in love, is a presence that comes to fore slowly in this, with art - he is an artist, and Irene appreciates beauty as much as he appreciates her in all her qualities - and the relationship and a recognition mutual to both. She seeks his help in the support and strength that his daughter needs from him now, with June too proud to be friend of Irene any more after the revelation of Bosinney and Irene being in love.
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Interlude: Indian Summer of a Forsyte:-
Indian Summer here refers not to unbearably hot 45-50 degree centrigrade summer but the soft warmth of India of post rains in September - October that here the author uses as a silent metaphor for the beautiful life of Old Jolyon in his old age after he has bought the house Bosinney built for Irene, after Bosinney is dead, where he now lives with his son Jo, Young Jolyon, and his three children from his two marriages, June and Jolyon "Jolly" and Holly. Jo with his second wife is traveling in Europe when Old Jolyon discovers Irene sitting on a log in the coppice on the property where she had been with her love, Bosinney, and invites her to the home that was to be hers and is now his. This begins his tryst with beauty that is Irene, in the beauty that is Robin Hill, his home, and the surrounding countryside of which his home includes a good bit.
Jolyon employs Irene to teach music to Holly and invites her for lunches at Robin Hill, and listens to her playing music; they go to theatre, opera and dinners in town on days when she is not teaching Holly, and meanwhile he worries about her situation of barely above penury that her separation has left her in, her father's bequest to her amounting to bare subsistence. He decides to correct the injustice she is meted due to her husband not providing for her (this being the weapon to make her come back to him) and makes a bequest to her for lifetime, settling a good amount that would take care of her reasonably, and let her independence from her husband supported well.
He comes to depend on her visits, and she realises this, returning his silent affection and appreciation - and he dies when waiting for her one afternoon, in his armchair under the large old oak tree, with beauty coming to him across the lawn.
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In Chancery:-
In Chancery continues with young Jolyon and Irene and Soames, the beautiful new house designed and constructed for Irene being now put up for sale by Soames who is tenacious in his not giving up on her in spite of her leaving him. Irene connects with Jolyon, partly due to Soames bringing an action against him for alienation of his wife's affections and then far more due to their being well matched, and they are together in spite of Soames trying various tactics - threat of divorce (a far more lethal weapon in that era), refusal to give a divorce when they wish for it, and so forth. Finally the divorce goes through and two children are born, Jon to Irene and Joyon and Fleur to Soames and Annette, a French young woman he finds in an inn and marries.
The new house is in chancery as are the people in this interim period and old Jolyon has bought it partly due to James, his brother and father of Soames, telling old Jolyon he owes it to Soames and to the Forsytes, seeing as how young Jolyon is responsible for the quandary Soames is in. Old Jolyon however is as much in love with Irene as most of the clan, and when once he finds her sitting in a corner of the property he assures her of his lack of disapproval of her finding refuge in the home built for her by her lover.
Jolyon helps Irene as his father's wish, and his own, having been appointed executor to the bequest of his father for her, and in the process comes to not only protect her from the husband who wishes her to return (so she can give him a son and heir, after all they are still married twelve years after she left), but also comes to be her friend, her companion and more. He does not admit his love, but she understands it, and their days together are spent in the same beauty that she did with his father until they are thrown together far more due to the persecution of her husband who would divorce her and marry a young woman he has fixed his sights on so he can have a son after all - he is now near fifty and his father James is dying, hankering for a son for Soames. But divorce laws were then difficult and Soames is unwilling to pretend an affair, so his choice is to name Irene and Jolyon, which neither of them oppose irrespective of facts.
It is the news of death of Jolly, son of Jolyon, that throws them together finally when both younger children of Jolyon along with Val Dartie the son of Winifred have gone to Boer war and June has joined Holly as nurse, and Jolyon in his grief for his son that he thinks he did not give enough of the love in his heart for him to has only Irene to console him with her compassion.
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Interlude: Awakening:-
Little Jolyon, Jon, awakens to the beauty that surrounds him, the beauty that is his mother, and the love personified that is his father, even as his days are spent in play about the home Robin Hill that is now his parents' in more than one sense - his grandfather bought it from her ex-husband the first cousin of Jo, Young Jolyon, the father of Jon, after the architect Bosinney who was her first love died and she fled from her husband. Jon knows nothing of the history, and his blissful life is carried on the wings of imagination where he plays out every possible scenario from every book he reads, so his half sister Holly returning with her husband and second cousin Val from South Africa (where they married during Boer war and stayed to raise horses) finds him painted blue head to toe, playing by himself in the garden.
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To Let:-
To Let goes on with lives of the various families, and chiefly of young Jolyon and his now wife Irene and their home at Robin Hill, with his other children and their various cousins and uncles being part of the story. Soame's nephew Val Dartie falls in love with young Jolyon's daughter by his second marriage, Holly, and the two second cousins manage to marry and be happy in spite of an initial lack of acceptance by the clan due to their being not only second cousins but also related to parties feuding majorly about Irene's divorce of one and marriage to other cousin.
This has the unfortunate consequence of encouraging the other pair of second cousins, Jon and Fleur, in thinking they may make it a success as his sister and her first cousin did. This time however things are very different, and Jon's parents are as unlikely to approve of this match as Soames initially is. Soames gives in due to his heart being completely ruled by his daughter, and goes so far as to plead with Irene for his daughter's happiness, offering to never interact in their lives for sake of overall peace. But Irene cannot risk it, and Jon is sensitive to her and his father's point of view when he comes to know of their history.
He would be in a quandary but for the similarity of Fleur with her father in claiming him as her father had claimed his mother, and this repels him. Fleur's lack of comprehension in her loss is matched by her father's when he lost a wife he had a very slim chance to have a life with. And the beautiful home of Irene is now to let even as they leave to go as far away as they can from this place and this history.
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On Forsyte Change:-
On Forsyte 'Change is a collection of stories about various members of the clan, children and grandchildren of Jolyon Forsyte ("Superior Dosset") who came with his ten children to London, immediately post death of his wife in her tenth childbirth, spanning a time from their coming to London to well into the first world war. Galsworthy wrote these pieces after the second part of the Forsyte Chronicles, that is, Modern Comedy, to connect through time lapse between the Forsyte Saga and Modern Comedy, but it really covers far more.
The lyrical beauty of countryside and awakening of various Forsytes to beauty and to individual rights along with their occasionally coming into contact with public and their trials and secret joys or escapades form part of most of this, some delightful and some poignant. The success of it all is, having finished all that Galsworthy wrote about the Forsytes one wants more.
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A Modern Comedy:-
The second part of Forsyte Chronicles begins - with The White Monkey, first volume of the Modern Comedy - where the Forsyte Saga left off, with a six years gap that includes what was then called the great war and is now known as the first world war. The story here continues with Fleur at the centre and her father, Soames, close to her, with Jon and his mother Irene far away in US.
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The White Monkey:-
The White Monkey is both a painting - by a Chinese artist, to go with the Chinese drawing room Fleur has designed for her house in London - and an allegory for the life of that time and place, upper middle class England and specifically London, with homes in the city and additional houses in the surrounding countryside. The society is in quest of culture, advance of civilisation, of art and literature and other pursuits of mind and heart - social works, politics, et al - that those who do not need to toil for survival may busy themselves with could indulge in if they so aspire. This society uses much, and throws away much, pretty much as the monkey in the painting does, and is not far different at heart from the uncomprehending disconsolation in the monkey's eyes, with Fleur at the centre of the tale and her father close.
Fleur like her father before her is disconsolate at loss of object of her passion, and like him is collecting, with one difference - he collected paintings and objects of art, she collects people. Neither of them was then or is even now unusual in this. But the difference is critical in that the career of a salonniere depends on the people one collects, the ambient society, and its acquiescence in being thus collected. Works of art are paid for and do not strike back, while people might even as they are guests in one's home.
Soames won't take anyone speaking ill of, much less hurting, his beloved daughter - she is the one occupying his whole heart, a heart injured by loss of his first wife Irene and his total lack of comprehension of why he lost one he hankered after and thought he had rights to - after all he had done everything in terms of marrying her respectably and giving her all the financial security she never had had, and more - so all the more he is passionate in his taking care of his daughter while being sensitive and delicate with her, qualities he acquired perhaps due to loss of Irene with whom he was neither.
So he chooses to confront rather than let go and kill by ignoring a treacherous behaviour directed at his daughter in her quest of a life of salonniere in society. She as her loving and patient aristocrat husband know well he was wrong in choosing that path, and try to stop him in his defence of his daughter - but in vain. And the course is thus set for an expose of society that acknowledges moral right but avoids those right, while preferring beauty and entertainment and lack of confrontations.
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Interlude: A Silent Wooing:-
Wilfrid Desert, poet and friend of Michael Mont, is in love with Fleur, and she is not in love with her noble, cheerful, silent husband who is in love with her, so she is missing a passion that she had in her love for Jon. But Wilfrid is not willing to let her dangle him beyond a point and she must decide between going away with him or letting him go, and much as she is unwilling to let this interest go she must, and he leaves for east.
Jon meanwhile has married Anne whom he met in US, and her brother who is a distant cousin of Mont and owns a sizeable property in south visits England, and falls in love with Marjorie Ferrar who is unwilling to declare her engagement with an aristocrat of formidable financial status from Scotland, since he is simple and she has been a woman of modern character and passion for Society, life et al. Marjorie would rather dangle them all indefinitely as long as she has not found another play, but it won't do.
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The Silver Spoon:-
The Silver Spoon, the second volume of this trilogy, continues with Soames's defence of his daughter against her treacherous guest that he threw out of her home, and the defence of the case this guest brought against Fleur. Much is brought to light delicately as Galsworthy does in his expose of the society, their thoughts and morals and sensitivities and attempts to understand the time and the world they live in. This society is mostly those born with a silver spoon, and some of them deal with those in more perilous or dire circumstances - chiefly Michael Mont, Fleur's aristocratic husband with his quest to do good and to take on politics as a career in an honest way - while others are less caring about those in lesser circumstances, whether honestly as Fleur is or otherwise.
Michael attempts to help various people who appeal to him in his various capacities, and has mixed results in return, some success and some not quite so much. One couple he helped before his political career began managed to stay together despite delicate problems to negotiate and even managed to migrate to a better climate in Australia, but is not as immediately well off as they thought. Another is a disaster partly, with a third doing all right.
Fleur is unable to face her loss of face in society post winning the case brought against her by a badly behaved guest, and is taken for a long travel around the world by a caring and concerned father who would do anything for her. He has tried to stop the case from getting to court by offering to pay, but the intractable stupidity of the aristocratic guest who demands an unqualified apology along with a hefty payment (she needs the money to pay her bills) makes it necessary he defend his daughter and he does so only too successfully, with the prosecuting Marjorie Ferrar losing her rich aristocrat fiance and her newly found status along with her newly announced engagement, but not her place in society!
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Interlude: Passers By:-
The general strike and its concerns and effects on various people is the next, with Jon and his wife arriving in England with intentions to settle down. The first, the strike, has a good effect in that Fleur manages to shine in a new role, running a canteen at the railway station for the volunteer workers, and very successfully, at that. But she is then again in contact with her various second cousins, the descendants of young Jolyon from his three wives, and here are possibilities for stability or fall of Fleur.
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Swan Song:-
If only she could have equanimity or at the very least prudence and control of her passion for her lost first love, Jon, she would do well. She cannot, however, give up what she considers her rightful claim to his heart, and to his love. She is aware of his love for his lovely wife, and so engineers situations to where it is possibly disastrous for all concerned. Jon and his wife survive it, she not so much, and is saved only by the timely intervention of her father at heavy cost to himself, and by the true nobility of the husband who won't indulge in theatrical relinquishing or violence but will wait quietly for her to heal and to return to him in her heart. In this he hears a swan sing when he strolls out on grounds of Soames's house in the last part, and this is a fitting image for one just as silent and noble as a swan.
Monday, August 12, 2013.
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End of the Chapter:-
In the third trilogy of Forsyte chronicles the story centres on cousins of Michael Mont, mainly on his mother's side, the Charwells who are socially somewhere bordering on landed gentry and aristocracy, unlike Forsytes who made their way up from farmer to various money making professions (solicitor, investment manager, builders, stockbrokers and more) to artists and gentry of leisure. Being upper caste in England amounts to being bred and brought up to notions of service to the country and accordingly the Charwells are occupied with work dealing with law, church, and so on, when not with actual landownership including caring for the tenants and other residents of the land. Mostly the three parts focus on Dinny, Elizabeth Charwell, an attractive young woman of Botticelli beauty with a sensitive heart and capable mind who cares for not only her own family and clan but anyone around who might need her, and does the care taking actively with initiatives, meeting people and speaking to them, and more.
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Maid In Waiting :-
In Maid in Waiting, Dinny who is the person the title is after, is busy rescuing her brother and an uncle and other related people from various tangles to do with love, empire, standards of behaviour to do with scientific expeditions and treatment of people and animals, love, mental illness and more. She is unable to consider a brighter prospect for herself with either of the two very suitable beaux who fall in love with her, and would not make a match yet.
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Flowering Wilderness:-
In Flowering Wilderness she meets and falls in love with Wilfrid Desert, a friend of her cousin Michael who had fallen in love with Fleur in the White Monkey and left for east to disentangle himself, and Wilfrid is in love with her just as much, except that unfortunately he has been in a circumstance where forced to choose between life and conversion he had chosen life and thus disgraced all of his countrymen, endangering them to future kidnappings and disdain from those under British rule. This cannot be considered suitable for Dinny by her family and clan, and the story cannot be kept quiet, not the least due to the pride and sense of uncertainty Desert has about his own actions, and it ends up in her heart breaking with him leaving for east once again.
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Over the River :-
In One More River Clare, the younger sister, returns home from Ceylon after a brief duration of married life, determined not to suffer any more her husband's sadist behaviour. Since she is young and beautiful, there is the expected entanglement with a young man falling in love with her, only she is unable and unwilling to consider any physical contact for now, and is not in love for a while until her own status is clear. But her husband is more than willing to take all possible steps including a divorce court where she is accused of adultery while she is unable to go into why she left him due to her delicacy about exposing her married life and its unsavoury character, and she comes to appreciate her young lover only when threatened with possibility of losing him. Dinny and the clan stand by her, and in the meanwhile another suitor appears for Dinny, who she is able to accept only post news of her first lover being dead and buried in far east on an expedition up a river, a news that makes her seriously ill. It all ends well with both sisters set well with their respective men and the clan at peace, and Fleur has been of borderline help at crucial moments, not the least with her father's money coming in handy to pay for legal costs of the divorce.
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One of the major beautiful things about Forsyte Chronicles - all three trilogies, but the first and third in particular - is the love of the author for beauty of England in general and countryside, nature in particular. Very lyrical. The other, more subtle, is the depiction of society in general, upper middle class of English society in particular and the times they lived in in the background, empire on distant horizon until the third trilogy where it is still in background but a bit less distant.
The society changes from the first to the third trilogy but not radically, and in this the author is successful in portrayal of how things might seem radically different superficially but are closer to where progress began, and progress being slow in steps that various people pay heftily during their lives for.
Wednesday, August 28, 2013.
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The Dark Flower:-
The dark flower as a concept used in the title and elsewhere in the work by the author is symbolic of passion, not represented by any particular flower but by the dark colour representative of the dark area where a person's reason and other sights of consciousness fail to guide one, and a dark force pulling and pushing one takes over.
Galworthy here takes stages of an artist's life, symbolised by three seasons (he refrains from exploring winter as a season for passion, leaving one to imagine that one is finally settled into one's marriage and not available any more for passion outside it), and the passion is of the variety not likely to come to a happy solution all around, hence dark all the more.
Over and over there is characterisation of English life as that bound by "good form" when freed from other bindings such as those of religion, and thus not allowing the freedom one speaks of or assumes for a person and especially an artist or thinker when it comes to passion.
The tale begins with an involvement of spirit between young Mark Lennan and his teacher's wife Mrs. Stormer whose husband, a don at Oxford, is far too dry and intellectual to answer his wife's needs of love and adoration but is rather more likely to deal with it by humour and standing aside in spite of awareness of it. Sylvia, the young fair girl Mark has protected and known since his childhood, solves the dilemma for the older woman (who is really young by the standards of today but was a century ago looking at her last chance for romance, passion, beauty in life at mid thirties), by simply coming to her attention as a younger person on the horizon who might not be an equal opponent but is simply younger.
Mark is not involved with Sylvia romantically yet, and goes on to become an artist, and happens to subsequently meet and become involved deeply with a young married woman desperately unhappy in her marriage in spite of wealth and respectability, with most of the involvement consisting of an innocent - by today's standards - togetherness and a passionate awareness of one another that is clear to everyone around. With a husband who is just as passionately in love with the wife as Mark being in the picture, and violently jealous one at that, it is bound to end in a separation, and one expects a chase when the young woman in question make sup her mind to go away with Mark. But the end of this part comes rather suddenly and shocks one, being so at odds with what generally one is led to expect of an English spirit. Then again, of course, the husband is characterised long before that by the wife's uncle musing about his being an adopted heir to his father and hence an unknown factor, unlike Mark whose very deep propriety in his following the form is observed and satisfactorily so by the uncle.
The autumn chapter brings a stormy turmoil of an involvement with an illegitimate daughter of a schoolmate to Mark's life and threatens to destroy the peace of his now wife Sylvia's life and mind, and while he is tossed about in this storm seemingly far more, the concern and responsibility for Sylvia who is more than only a wife but rather the innocent person he is used to protecting since she was small, brings him to port to safety. The end is abrupt, since one is rather led to expect a chapter on winter, but perhaps the author could not imagine passion in winter and made subtle allusions to Sylvia asleep by fire to indicate that would be the winter of life of Mark Lennan.
A slight lessening of quality of Galsworthy comes about by the usual excuse to the passion inappropriate to age being led by the woman in question, and while it might be likely in the first it is a very transparent excuse in the last, a bit reminiscent of the far more unpleasant Nabokov. It is always possible of course, only, with the striking beauty of the young girl in question, one wonders if it is due to her being an illegitimate and therefore hidden daughter of a not very high caste English man that she is thrown on the society of a man in his mid forties and being the one to take a lead in the affair, declaring her passion and holding on and so forth rather than being one to be surprised by his declaration of love and considering it for reasons of her situation in life. It does not quite fit except as an excuse for his passion to be reconciled with his status - he cannot offer her marriage and a safe home and respectability, being married - and thus must be propositioned rather than the one to lead. Thin excuse, at that.
Spring and Summer are haunting parts, with autumn rather more troublesome and stormy with one wishing he would sooner come to his senses. Perhaps it could not be otherwise in any way, but with quality of Galsworthy's works in general one goes in expecting him to do better, and is a bit disappointed. Still, all in all perhaps it forms a work preparatory for the far more satisfying and wonderful Forsyte Saga and Forsyte Chronicles, and perhaps it ought to be read before them, not after.
Monday, October 21, 2013.
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The Freelands:-
Galsworthy, amongst other worthy intellectuals of the day -such as George Bearnard Shaw - realised all too well the economic and social questions of the day, and caste system of the European continent was one, land and its ownership and usage towards luxuries of the owners detrimental to the general populace of the land and the world on a larger scale being one of the chief keys of the problems, with attitudes of those in power in dire need of change, conscience and consciousness of rich and poor alike in dire need of light being a factor such intellectuals could do something about. So they, in general, and Galsworthy in particular, wrote about it. Freelands is centred on this question, the very title and the name of the upper caste landowner family or clan telling us of the issue and its importance.
It is not that easy when most rich won't give up their privilege for sake of betterment of the poor, and most poor cannot afford even a peaceful strike, is the reality now as it was then. It is not easy to change the minds and attitudes, to wake up the power of the populace, and more. Power and energy of youth is needed, but it is sacrificed easily and blindly by those in power and blamed by the powerless for the consequences of the heavy handed and expected retaliation of power against poor hapless.
Blossoming of young, of love and consciousness, of waking up to the light and to realities of life under easy circumstances is not easy; under such struggle that needs one's life's blood it is life threatening unless there are enough caring and understanding elders who would act promptly.
The questions discussed here are mentioned elsewhere, in second part of Forsyte Chronicles (sequel to to Forsyte Saga) for example, where it is a bit more macroscopic view and from the point of view of upper caste and its exemplary behaviour along with the obligations inherent in being upper caste, and this latter takes a larger stage in the third part of the Forsyte Chronicles. In the Freelands the point of view is from an intellectual of the upper caste and centre stage is given to those in tune with land, nature, poor, in spite of being of the upper caste. Here the author can deal with the problems in their more dire nature.
Monday, November 4, 2013.
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Beyond:-
Reading Galsworthy brings a kaleidoscope effect after a while with themes and characters familiar yet not quite the same, and of course the every living beauty of countryside.
In Beyond he centres it on the father and daughter duo, the daughter born of love and claimed jealously by the father post death of the mother and the husband of the mother, with great care to avoid any blame for the mother but only until he could claim the daughter. The theme explored is love and marriage, togetherness and solitude, in marriage and in a live in situation.
A virile male might corner a young woman as a great serpent would a rabbit, and gain her hand in marriage or her body for his pleasure, but love is another story. If she is not in love with him, all the social propriety and financial security and all her compliance with his needs will yet not make him happy; nor will another younger woman with all her beauty and her being desperately in love with him if he is not in love with her.
Gyp's father is able to live on his memories of the only love he ever had, Gyp's mother, whom he saw but rarely during the one short year they had together; his life is devoted to his daughter and he is happy in his memory of his love, his integrity and faith with his love and his creed, his utter love for his daughter.
Gyp has inherited the integrity and the nobility of character, and the immense capacity for intense love, but love has its own life and cannot be summoned like water on tap. She is cornered and unable to escape the attentions of the handsome artist Fiorsen, but with all her will to go forth is still unable to love him, and is only able to comply with his needs and take care of him and home. This is not good enough for the artist who knows what love is and knows too that the wife does not quite love him, he does not have her heart. His dalliance with a beautiful young dancer brings danger and shame to the women and no solution for him, either, until it is too late for him to have another option - and even then it is a falling backward into something available rather than appreciation of what he has or had.
Gyp finds love unexpectedly after she has left her husband for sake fo protecting their daughter - the husband couldn't care less for anyone other than Gyp, and not only antagonises her relatives and what few friends she might have, but is callous enough that he terrorises their daughter and hurts her physically while she is still a baby - and Gyp lives in an era when separation was social stigma enough, divorce difficult and often impossible if the partner did not comply. She realises her love is all to her, is fortunate enough to be given her daughter back after being kidnapped by the husband to blackmail her into returning, but the interlude of her bliss with love is short lived albeit as deep and complete as her father's.
It is not that the man who loves her is short of courage to love, or any the less in love, or likely to tire of her, or any of the possible dire disturbances to love and bliss whether marriage is possible or not. It is that even with the best of all circumstances - her father supports her socially, she cares not a fig for other society, she is financially independent, they live in seclusion in country and he works three days a week in town - still, there are other possibilities of a wedge, and he is young enough to not avoid it soon enough.
As the author clarifies, the distant cousin is familiar enough that her society is not avoided before it is too late and not close enough to be a sisterly repugnant association, and while Summerhay sees the justice of Gyp's need of him avoiding the cousin and other such temptations, he does not see how he can or why he should, since his love and faithfulness are entirely with Gyp, the love of his life.
This tragedy could in life draw on and exhaust the people concerned; the author's narrative turns to another twist reminiscent of Summer part of The Dark Flower, and Gyp remains the fortunate tragic heroine albeit not quite as artificially forced so as Anna Karenina - she has read it and cannot understand why Anna is unhappy due to social stigma and forced reclusion status, she is all too happy to be not required to be social and to comply with necessities of formality, happy to be with her love and with nature, books, music, and her daughter. She thinks unhappiness of Anna Karenina is forced as moral lesson to comply with social need, and in this she is not incorrect. But life and love and one's nature is another story, and such happiness or love as one may find might be disturbed by a thousand factors in as may ways, albeit it has little to do with being married or single or living together in perfect situation where only the two people matter.
One keeps being reminded of various other works of the author, and the similarity of characters or their situations - Soames and Fleur of Forsyte Saga and its sequel, Charwell sisters of Forsyte Chronicles, Summer part of The Dark Flower, and bit of The Country House as well, with a ghost of Irene in background (art, music, taste, integrity of a sort, passive softness, ...) - and yet here too the characters and their story do manage to make a mark individually.
Monday, November 11, 2013.
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Villa Rubein:-
Villa Rubein seems to be an early work of Galsworthy, with Tyrol rather than England as the background. He attempts to write characters and families more cosmopolitan European than purely English, but it is more halfway than successful an attempt, and other than a few mixed dialogues - chiefly from the stepfather to the main female the story centres on - it amounts to a caricature of the said stepfather who is only good enough to bluster and really neither commands love nor respect from his stepdaughter or her maternal relatives whose house he lives in, nor at that much from his own daughter who is much younger, except as a matter of duty taken for granted.
There is portrayal of beauty of country and nature here too that blooms so very much through his later works, the latter being mostly of English countryside, but here the portrayal falls very short of how very beautiful Alps surroundings generally can be. Galsworthy truly belongs to England and does not quite flourish elsewhere.
Here the central theme is young love and art vs money, business vs career of vocation, work vs life assured with inheritance, and again it seems he tried it out first in this and later developed it into various other works. One surprising declaration and admission here is of the fact that it is those that have made money that care for it far more than those who have chosen to work for a living in a career of art due to a spiritual need of working for art. It is but logical that this be so, since one that makes money does not do so by a couldn't-care-less attitude towards money but only with great devotion of time and spirit towards earning and saving it, and while it is a fact perhaps known in life to all, it is but hardly ever admitted so in most works of literature in so matter of fact a way, refreshing in its simplicity.
Most different from his other works however - other than the placing out of England - is the little more explicit mention of the happenings of the time. Galsworthy is so given to love and beauty of nature and satirical portraying of upper caste England that one tends to almost forget he lived in an era of tumultuous happenings and thinking, when old traditional castes and their hold was not merely being questioned as in England but was elsewhere being violently rocked and even thrown away, and here one gets a glimpse of a character involved in past in a movement that shapes his life and endangers his love, even though the mention of the movement and its actual facts is left only to be guessed at by the reader familiar with history of the times. All very tangential and elusive, but still, it is there unlike his other works.
Monday, November 18, 2013.
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My Father Man of Devon:-
Love is a much used and little understood reality, with various people experiencing perhaps different things and in attempting to identify the beautiful yet terrifying mystery seek to give it a known name.
Not so Pasience, whose name is really Patience but pronounced and spelt in an original way from times before English language got uniform spellings due to print - (although, for that matter, accents and diction and entire dialects differ still across the small nation, and even more so through the rest of the English speaking world, evidence of George Bernard Shaw's witty truth casually given in his Pygmalion as description of US and Britain being two nations separated by a common language - and who encountering a York accent for the first time has not been baffled?) - Pasience who is young, restless, talented at playing violin that she makes sing her heart's music, spirited, and without a woman's guidance or a father's stronger protection or even company of her own age, so that she is eager to experience life beyond what is known to her in her grandfather's company. When she meets men, she has no mysterious veil over her heart, only a yearning for she knows not what, world, life, and she chooses that man amongst all that she sees - she has more than one choice, and young males with varying prospects that are confronted with her are all alike under her spell so she really has her choice of those around - she chooses not the one that is likely to give her all she wishes but one that promises the adventure, lacking the wisdom and guidance to see the difference.
A marriage so made in haste can end in any number of good or bad ways, or mediocre as most unfortunate marriages do anyway. Here the tragedy is partly due to times and rest spurred on by the youth of the girl who has only an old grandfather to look after her and to guide and contain her vital spirit.
As usual Galsworthy treats readers to beauty of the surrounding country, this time the land and coast and sea at Devon. It must be a hard heart that reads this and won't wish to see it for oneself and experience the beauty so hauntingly portrayed here.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013.
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A Knight For My Mother:-
One is reminded of the prelude to the film Gone With The Wind as one reads this - not due to any possible similarity, which there is none, but the spirit of the central character (not the protagonist) of this story that is celebrated in that prelude, about gentlemen and code of conduct.
A man may be a soldier all his life, and unable to find employment, with starvation to death a real possibility that is avoided only by an ex comrade of a way of yore - and here is a real connection with Gone With The Wind, that particular war in the life of this gentleman from South Carolina happens to be the Civil War in US - and a chance encounter with such a comrade who happens to be English meeting and saving his life in London, and giving him a partnership in a business suited to both, a shop selling equipment related to - and a training school attached to the shop, training people in - fighting.
It is love that brings him down, and what is more love for the daughter of his partner, not due to opposition of the father or unwillingness of the young girl, but far more complex. And this is where Galsworthy excels, in bringing our ways of youth, love, passion and complications thereof. The young wife strays to a young stranger who is a student of the school, elopes with him, and the gentleman can only let her be. She comes to grief, the young man having left her and the childbirth taking her life.
And the gentleman, having lost his business due to his partner being cheated, and almost all his money too, is now living in penury because he is supporting the young daughter his wife died after giving birth to, struggling to send her half his income every year and living the life of a gentleman the best way possible to him without money. It is the taste and the code that are paramount.
And it is the code that he follows to the end of his life.
Saturday, November 23, 2013.
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To My Brother Hubert Galsworthy
Salvation of a Forsyte:-
Forsytes have been connected to the Villa Rubein story with the business partnership of a Forsyte (James, the father of Soames?) with Nicholas Treffery, in a way the hero of Villa Rubein what with his nightlong ride to rescue the love of life of his niece from her stepfather's threat of setting police on him.
Now, the connection is via a passion of Swithin, twin of James Forsyte, for a young Hungarian girl when he himself is not quite young, and having never been social or charming or attractive, is no great catch either. But the girl is young, and generous and sincere as youth will be when encountering someone who is attracted to one, and this is her great fault and reason for downfall. If only she were grown up or knew in some other way that the way to secure respect for herself is to be less generous, less caring of someone else's pain or any feelings, she might have had a different and perhaps safer life. Then again, it might have led to Swithin marrying her and perhaps she escaped the deadly boredom of a Forsyte clan life by being herself, young and sincere and natural as a flower.
Swithin cannot help his own passion, and goes after her when her father has taken the family off for a return to his country from Salzburg where they met, but then has a typical Forsyte moment - of an indignation that perhaps her family intends that he marry her, which he finds is quite unnecessary and out of the question, especially since she is not only without a dowry (it goes without mention here but is a silent factor in all dealings of Forsyte with the family) but has also "yielded to him".
Needless to say he, like most males before and since, does not see that the "yielding" on her part implies he was a thief and an attacker that she fell prey to, rather than looking at it as her gift of love to his passion; he assumes - like most males before and since - that it is his birthright to so take advantage of a woman or girl however young and innocent, and that he therefore is free of any need or obligation to marry her.
That he thereby forfeits any possibility of a future of a life for himself does not occur to him either then or until perhaps the very moment of his death, perhaps not then, but so it is. He lives - and dies - alone, attended only by his valet, never mind the huge clan and daily visits by his twin brother, and recalls on his deathbed the love he escaped by literally running away from it. He closed all possibilities of opening his heart to love ever after when he did that, and became a fossil of a Forsyte prototype instead of allowing love in his life and blossoming.
Thus do one's own choices make for rewards or otherwise of one's own.
Monday, November 25, 2013.
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To My Sister Mabel Edith Reynolds
The Silence:-
Galsworthy in this last offering to his family, this time for his sister, tells a tale about a world of mostly male endeavours of yore, although it is difficult to imagine even a century later that it would have changed much in that, and gives a glimpse of a world partly changed in that the colonial era is no more, but largely still the same in that while men do the work of the gritty sort and other men must manage not only the work but the men that do it, their thoughts and feelings taken into account as much as their living and working conditions for the betterment of the place, and yet make a profit for the shareholders of the company, all the while also writing as copiously to the bosses as they might desire to maintain the myth that they too care and have a hand in the day to day welfare and management of the work and the men.
It is this last bit, the writing and pretending, that the Cornishman central to the tale cannot abide, and his reluctance to do so that they won't let be, never mind he has turned the mines from desolate vacant bleak place to thriving glamourous place to be and paying a whopping twenty percent for the company at that, and managing all sorts of trouble single handedly on the paltry salary of a manager - paltry compared to the men who pay him and dictate his terms, certainly. When finally forced to do so he obliges with a lengthy missive and snaps.
This tale is told sensitively through a childhood friend of the manager who visits him occasionally in course of his own work, and to emphasise the sensitivity of it all, there is the oblique connection to Forsytes - who symbolise the moneymaking trade and industry caste of England and indeed of Europe - with the sensitive Old Jolyon Forsyte on the board of the company, refraining from the badgering of the manager who excels at his work but not at kowtowing to the bosses.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013.
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Saint's Progress:-
Galsworthy touches real ground of the time and place in this work more than his usual - which is beautiful dreamy landscapes and problems of heart, of individual travails of love, and of individual rights, especially those of women, and conflicts thereof with social norms and rules. All of which appears here too, in a central way and surrounding every character, every other problem. But the main theme is something we all are familiar with - the devastating and at the same time liberating effect of the first world war on lives, especially in Europe.
The first and foremost effect was the growing awareness amongst the young who paid the greatest price for the war with their lives and love and marriages and more, of future and children and limbs and lives disrupted, that one really could not trust norms of expectations any more, one could not trust time and social rules and life, and life was to be snatched here and now whatever way possible. Young people refused long engagements and if they did not, often they paid the price with the boy dead and the girl left alone for life. Lucky were the brides that conceived before their men went to the war. Not so lucky were everyone else.
So young couples denied a quick marriage could part with death looming, or snatch a few moments of love before that, and the latter resulted in what the then society stupidly called war babies. Babies and innocent no matter what and in this situation so were the parents, and the real guilt of stupidity lay with those elders that refuse to let them marry before the boy went to the war. Young were correct in this and the elders wrong in every way.
This work is about the devastating effect of just such a situation on a family and other people related one way or another to it - the young girl in love and the young boy about to leave for the war in a couple of weeks, the priest father of the girl who considers a quick marriage unwise and refuses to consider it and expects them to come to their senses and wait, the death of the boy very soon in the trenches and the pregnancy of the girl (who is wisely pointed out by a cousin that this means she has not lost her love after all, and has him with her as the child), the effects of this on the girl and much more so on her father the priest who is the titular saint that progresses from refusal to see facts and horror of the situation to fierce protective attitude for his daughter and her baby son, to more.
Nature's beauty here is not missing, but rather more of London in wartime than of English countryside, the usual favourite of Galsworthy. And he shows his mastery in this too, with poignancy of the story reflected in the moonlit Thames and the dark parks and the flowering trees of London.
Monday, December 16, 2013.
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The Island Pharisees:-
Richard Shelton is an unusual young man for his milieu of the upper class English at the height of wealth and power of British Empire - he questions the assumptions, not as a philosophical exercise to be conducted when one is at the study table or a conference for a debate or a lecture or posing at a gathering of intelligentsia, but simply as and when they are challenged by life, by meeting someone outside one's own circle or social connections or general caste.
So he meets poor, indigent, during his normal course of travel and life, where he is not even gone out of his way, and notices others of his social level or caste avoiding looking at them, and understands them thinking "really one should not be put upon like this, these people should know better than to force themselves on conscience of decent people, they should work and save ..." or something along those lines. He however hears them, listens and understands them as fellow humans in a difficult situation, temporarily or otherwise, through circumstance and fate, but not necessarily their own fault.
In this he is setting forth on a path that would take him away from them - his caste and circle, that is - and their approval, and more. He does not limit himself to thinking silently, and behaving like others of his caste so as to not alarm them, to do them some justice - he helps the poor, the indigent, and meets them in his own or their rooms, and carries on a dialogue that does take him away from his own.
It would be revolutionary enough if it were not for the engagement he has recently entered into, with a young pretty girl of his own caste. And she firmly belongs to where she is and has been brought up into. This is normal, natural, and one cannot fault her for not willing to step out of the comfort of her wealth and the thinking that keeps it rather than endangering it by admitting poor as equal humans.
Shelton has attempted to do his best along her requirements - not meeting until the wedding is one, which he can hardly stand, so he visits her parents' home instead, so as to see her in environment where she is safe in reputation if not necessarily from her own or his desire. But his strange behaviour meanwhile has become known, and her family including her are alarmed, and she as they question his behaviour, his thinking, his deviation from what "everyone" considers normal, and so forth. Each one of her set has a different approach in this, they are not of a mould, but of a set enough in that he does stand to incur disapproval if not changed in a hurry. and he is divided at best, uncomfortable in a deep way, not in accord with them.
Or her. And while she does not bother with philosophy or politics or psychology or meeting fellow humans of poorer castes, she understands all this, and that he or his poor friend whom her family has tried to help are really looking down on her set.
The limit of her fortitude and discomfort - which she is battling increasingly closer at border of - she reaches when a woman in the neighbourhood who happens to be object of disapproval of everyone else of her set - everyone who is decent, as far as Antonia goes - is sympathised with by Shelton, instead of the cold disapproving distant manner appropriate; it is a difference of demeanour, not offer of help or physical details, but it is enough for her to realise the distance is unbreachable.
The woman so disapproved of has committed the social sin for the time or until the time, of leaving her own husband and coming to live with another of the set, and this is unforgivable even if there has been a divorce and a fresh marriage - her set is discussing how the new man in her life stands to lose everything for certain, and can only hope to read and write, rather than meet people and make any use of his excellent horses.
So Antonia breaks up with him and then recants on grounds of her not breaking her promise, but he on his part cannot envisage a miserable life with someone pretty and young whom he desires with no meeting of minds, and assures her in writing that she need not worry - the break is mutual. It is the beginning of his losing caste.
Island Pharisees, because theirs is an unspoken code that goes to preserve their own welfare and wealth, let the world pay for it all - the local poor, those of Europe, or of colonies; misery take the hindmost is only natural for the set.
There is a breathtaking subtlety about this that matches that of his - the author's - best work, although it is his characteristic in general. The protagonist's journeys on foot across the English countryside and his travails parallel his tremendous journey of thought that takes him much further but without his noticing it quite so much, much like a fast plane or a ship on still water with infinite horizon will lull one into not noticing quite how far one has come. The author refuses to give extreme colours to the contrasting circumstances, or extreme behaviour - it is all very civilised, but nevertheless the young man at the centre of it all manages to discern undercurrents, understand what he is supposed to, and the dawn of his consciousness is as silent, as subtle and yet swift as dawn of a day.
Thursday, May 1, 2014.
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The Country House:-
One reads The Forsyte Saga trilogy, and wants more, and goes on to search out the rest of the tale about the characters one is so involved in by now, Irene and Jon most of all. Irene remains elusive and if anything more so than through the first trilogy, but one gets more of people related to Forsytes, and of beauty of England and some insights of social life and political state of the country and the world of that era. One finishes Forsyte Chronicles, three trilogies, nine books each of which is further three parts, and two in each trilogy connecting the parts. And one wants more. So one goes on to other writings of Galsworthy.
And one is not disappointed. Only, rather than go forth, one gets a view, an insight into how Forsyte Saga and Chronicles came to be the finished, polished, elusive portraits of the time and life veiled with a very English poetic mist wafting over the whole tale.
The Country House is set as the title would tell one in a country house, primarily, and the village life in general of that time, the mindsets still entrenched in the traditions and caste system of that time and place, but the people evolving at their own speeds of comfort.
A woman unwilling to live with her husband is at the centre of this work, with the peripheral people vivid as usual with the author. How her decision to separate affects people, how her involvement impacts on them, how they deal with the questions of divorce and involvement and questions of whether a woman may leave her husband and still be respectable, is the work.
There is the rector who is unable to deal with his wife's tenth confinement and the question of whether she will survive it, and with her contempt and pity for him hidden well until her moment of agony when she still smiles at him and tells him to go for his usual walk - and he never connects it in his conscious mind to his condemnation of the woman divorcing her husband for moral reasons. The opposite are the squire and his wife and son, each of whom deals with the same woman in a different way, but more humane and more civil. And the heartening part is, the husband she separated from is not automatically held up as free of guilt and full of innocence - rather, everyone including the rector is quite honest about how he is no better than the wife but merely has more rights to possess the woman since he is the man.
This admission of the skewed basis therefore makes them able to look at the whole question in a more honest way, and to go as far as he or she might with comfort with one's inner core, into the question of a woman's being a person in her own right rather than a mere possession and chattel bound and branded by her husband's right to her.
Not that these questions are now universally solved to satisfaction of justice much less satisfaction of everyone, especially those not willing to grant a personhood of a woman, but that era was the beginning of such questioning and thought in Europe. Tolstoy solved it by having Anna Karenina miserable with her choice of going away with her lover, unable to love her daughter by her lover, pining for the son she has by the husband she is unable to live with, and unable to feel secure in her love, committing suicide at the end symbolic of her choice of love over respectability of unhappy marriage stifling her heart - the choice that was a social suicide for her.
Galsworthy is kinder and more honest in that he does not attempt to satisfy all regressive or closed minds, much less authorities of the kind that attempt to rule personal lives by impersonal laws same for all, but rather shows a whole spectrum of people that deal with these questions in different ways, thus freeing the reader to think and feel and explore one's own heart and mind and thought, while looking at the portrayal by the author.
Thursday, October 17, 2013.
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Monday, October 21, 2013.
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Thursday, May 1, 2014.
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