The work that set the pattern for all subsequent multi-generational family sagas in English, John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga, comprising three novels and two short interludes, covers a period from the late Victorian to the late Edwardian age in Britain, beginning in 1886 and ending in 1920 when the last surviving member of the older generation has died. Galsworthy published the first Forsyte novel, The Man of Property, in 1906, just a few years after Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, the great German family chronicle with which The Forsyte Saga is often compared. It was twelve years before Galsworthy published the short interlude “Indian Summer of a Forsyte,” but that seems to have jump-started the author’s interest in expanding his first novel, and in 1920 he published the second novel, In Chancery, followed in rapid succession by another short interval called “Awakening” that same year, and then the final novel, To Let, in 1921. The installments were collected and published in a single volume and entitled The Forsyte Saga in 1922. Though over the next decade Galsworthy continued to publish additional sequels and even prequels to the Forsyte family chronicle, it is on this single comprehensive 1922 volume that his reputation chiefly rests, and it was on the strength of this volume that Galsworthy was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize for Literature, just a year before he died (and three years after Thomas Mann won his).
Focusing as it does on an upper middle class nouveau riche British family—a family that mirrors Galsworthy’s own—adjusting to the changing times at the turn of the twentieth century, The Forsyte Saga has always been more popular in Britain than in the U.S. On the BBC list of the “100 Greatest British Novels,” The Forsyte Saga was ranked as number 91. And on Penguin Books’ list of the “100 Must Read Classics” as chosen by their own readers, the novel came in at number 64. And of course, it’s listed here as book #37 on my own list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language.”
Though the story concerns the entire Forsyte family, its central protagonist is Soames Forsyte, considered within the family as the prototypical Forsyte. According to Soames’ cousin Young Jolyon, “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.” In the first volume of the trilogy, The Man of Property, Soames proves to be just this, even down to considering his wife Irene (largely based on Galsworthy’s wife Ada) to be his own property. He is thus jealous of any relationships Irene has outside of the marriage. Much of this book is centered on Soames’ elaborate plans for a large country house at Robin Hill, where he and his wife can live the rich lifestyle he wants outside of London, and where he can more closely control Irene, who will be far from her friends and anyone else she cares about. Irene, however, who entered into this relationship as a marriage of convenience, ends up falling in love with the house’s architect, Philip Bosinney. Bosinney is already engaged to June Forsyte, daughter of Young Jolyon (who is himself estranged from the family because of his own unorthodox marriage). Bosinney returns Irene’s love, and Irene, finally rebelling against Soames’ tyranny, locks her bedroom door against him. But Soames asserts what he believes is his right to his own property, and forces himself upon her. Bosinney, distracted by news of the rape, is killed by a bus trying to get to Irene. Irene ultimately separates from Soames, seeking a divorce.
The first short interlude, “Indian Summer of a Forsyte,” was published twelve years later. In it, Irene befriends “Old” Jolyon Forsyte, who now owns the house Soames had built for her. He winds up leaving Irene a good sum in his will, and dies under an oak tree on the Robin Hill estate.
In Chancery (1920), the second novel of the trilogy, focuses on two divorce cases (the Chancery was the court that dealt with divorces). Soames’ sister Winifred wants to divorce her drunken, womanizing husband, Montague Dartie, and Soames encourages her to go through with the legal hassle, though he is reluctant to do so himself, and tries to convince Irene, whom he still loves, to come back to him. He stalks her and tries to convince her to have a child with him. Irene, having inherited 15,000 pounds from Old Jolyon, and turns to Young Jolyon to manage her finances. They become very close, especially after Young Jolyon’s son dies in the Boer War. Soames confronts the two of them at Robin Hill, where Irene now lives, and accuses them of having an affair. Though the accusation is false, they tell Soames it is true, giving him the excuse he needs to divorce Irene. She and Young Jolyon eventually marry, and she gives birth to a son Jolyon “Jon” Forsyte. Soames marries a young shop girl named Annette and she bears him a daughter whom they name Fleur.
The second short interlude, “Awakening” (1920) essentially just lets us get to know Jon Forsyte as a young boy of eight who has his every whim indulged by his doting parents. A bit older, he takes center stage in the third and last novel of the saga, entitled To Let (1921). In this concluding volume, rather predictably, Jon Forsyte meets his second cousin Fleur and the two fall in love at first sight. I won’t include any spoilers here since I truly hope you’ll be inspired to go out and read this classic story yourself, but I will say that the whole Capulet-Montague thing you’re probably imagining will not disappoint you in this novel.
There are numerous lesser Forsyte characters in this saga, but the main thread of the plot is what I’ve outlined. If nothing else, you’ll find a lot of things to think about in the Forsyte Saga. While it goes without saying nowadays that Soames’ actions put him in the wrong consistently, it is educational to remember that when Galsworthy created him, he was not simply a villain. His attitudes toward his wife were conventional and would have been seen as perfectly understandable in the early twentieth century. That Irene belonged to him was taken for granted. That she wanted her own bedroom would have been as scandalous a demand in reality as in the novel it seems to be to all the other Forsytes, and as for her wishing to leave him after he provided her with so enviable a standard of living, that was simply incomprehensible. And the notion of marital rape? It would have seemed an oxymoron at the time in most places, though the concept was not unknown: the Soviet Union criminalized marital rape as early as 1922, the same year The Forsyte Saga was published as a single volume. But it was not criminalized in the U.K. until 1991, and it was not until 1993 that it was a criminal offense in all fifty U.S. states. This is how far ahead of his time Galsworthy actually was.
The overarching theme of The Forsyte Saga, then, can probably be said to be the importance of marriage and the necessity of love. In his preface to the Saga, Galsworthy, who had lived a similar life, discusses those readers (of whom he must have met a number) who sympathized with Soames and blamed Irene for not taking him back:
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.
There is a classic film of the first volume of the saga, entitled That Forsyte Woman (1949), which starred Greer Garson, Errol Flynn, Robert Young, and Walter Pigeon. In 1967, the BBC ran a 26-episode serial of the entire Forsyte Saga plus Galsworthy’s sequel trilogy, A Modern Comedy. It was quite popular and, in an interesting bit of trivia, was the first British television production sold to the Soviet Union. A later, 2002, television series was produced by the ITV network and PBS. So you can find adaptations of the books available from media outlets, though all take a good deal of liberties with the story, and I recommend reading the book first to get the real experience of the novel. It is a most lovable one.