Denov state university of department of english language and literature course paper

"The Forsyte Saga"

"The Forsyte Saga" is a history of three generations of the the Forsyte family from the eighties of the 19th century up to the twenties of the 20th century. "The Man of Property" shows two successive generations of a rich upper middle class family at the end of the 19th century. It is a social novel: the author shows the Forsyte family as a small unit of English upper middle class society of his own time. The Forsytes possess all the features typical of their class as a whole, and they have to obey the laws which govern it. He who dares to disobey these laws is ostracized by society.
Characteristic features of the Forsytes are: extreme individualism, egoism, an ability never to give themselves away, contempt for
everything foreign, a strong sense of property, money worship, tenacity, snobbery, practicality.
“The collision between the sense of property and money worship on the one hand, and true love and a keen sense of beauty on the other hand, motivates the plot of the novel Soames Forsyte- the man of property- is the main character of the novel. He is an embodiment of the spirit of society where the cult of property rules the world. He is sure that everything in the world can be bought with money. He regards not only his pictures, houses and investments as his property but even his wife.
Soames is unable to comprehend that all his property, large as it is, cannot make Irene love him. The other members of the family are unable to understand it either. In their opinion the very fact that Irene has no fortune of her own is enough to make it her duty to love and obey her rich husband. That is the Forsytes' conception of love and marriage.”⁹
Only when Irene left him and he realized that she was penniless, that she had taken nothing that he or his people had given her, he came to understand how deeply she hated him In Galsworthy's opinion property is "an empty shell". Soames' fate confirms this idea: rich as he was, he was not happy.