Quote of the Day (John Galsworthy, on the Hypocrisy of a Loveless Marriage)

“Most people would consider such a marriage as that of Soames and Irene [Forsyte] quite fairly successful; he had money, she had beauty; it was a case for compromise. There was no reason why they should not jog along, even if they hated each other. It would not matter if they went their own ways a little so long as the decencies were observed — the sanctity of the marriage tie, of the common home, respected. Half the marriages of the upper classes were conducted on these lines: Do not offend the susceptibilities of Society; do not offend the susceptibilities of the Church. To avoid offending these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings. The advantages of the stable home are visible, tangible, so many pieces of property; there is no risk in the status quo. To break up a home is at the best a dangerous experiment, and selfish into the bargain.” —Nobel Prize-winning English novelist and playwright John Galsworthy (1867-1933), The Man of Property (1906), Part I of The Forsyte Saga (1922)

With June being the month for weddings, I felt the urge to write about marriage—but somehow, couldn’t resist writing about the unsuccessful kind.

In literature, few are as calamitous as the one between “man of property” Soames Forsyte and the alluring, aloof young woman who, despite her overwhelming misgivings about their difference in temperament, yields to his marriage proposal, Irene Heron. Their misalliance leads to adultery, scandal, death, and even complications in the following generation.

Every generation or so, it seems, has to rediscover John Galsworthy and his magnum opus about upper middle class Britain and its conventional (and continually violated) pieties.

Even by the time of his death, Galsworthy—who himself defied convention by conducting an affair with (and subsequently marrying) the wife of a cousin—was coming to be regarded as out of step with literary modernism.

That Forsyte Woman, the 1949 MGM adaptation of The Man of Property with Greer Garson as Irene and a cast-against-type Errol Flynn as the emotionally constricted Soames, reminded a mass audience of his work.

But the 26-episode 1967 BBC adaptation spurred sales that even exceeded what Galsworthy enjoyed in his lifetime.

Another miniseries, from 2002, starring Damien Lewis and Gina McKee as the mismatched couple, brought Galsworthy’s work to a wide audience yet again.

I find fascinating not only the debates about the relative merits of the latter two adaptations, but also in viewers’ perceptions of Irene’s responsibility for the collapse of the marriage. Even 20 years ago, to my astonishment, many were unsympathetic to her situation (even Soames’ assault on her when she declines his advances).

Evidently, certain notions about keeping up appearances did not go out the late Victorian Era.

(The image accompanying this post comes from the 1967 adaptation, with Eric Porter and Soames and Nyree Dawn Porter as Irene. Physically, Nyree Dawn Porter—no relation, incidentally, to Eric—is a closer fit to what Galsworthy had in mind for her character than McKee: “The gods had given Irene dark brown eyes and golden hair, that strange combination, provocative of men's glances. The full soft pallor of her neck and shoulders, above a gold-colored frock, gave to her personality an alluring strangeness.")