So The Forsyte Saga is over almost at the same time with the New Year. My first impressions are here, but In Chancery and To Let have changed accents.
Galsworthy does not mock the past any longer, as the actions move to the writer’s lifetime. You can see fear of the destructing forces of the civilizations, which have devaluated the past values. When Jolyon accuses Jon of Nihilism, the latter replies, “…we only want to live, and we don’t know how, because of the Past”. The author’s solution is obvious, “The last generation thought of nothing but property, and that’s why there was the War”.
The plot however paradoxically denounces that conclusion. The Saga begins with an unhappy marriage and ends in the same. The vicious circle. Nothing’s changed. Even the modern views of
Is it the property to blame? The novel doesn’t convince that it is what the Baronet thinks about. Neither did Jon think of it, nor Soames at his second marriage. We know that the interwar skepticism failed to protect against a new war between totalitarian countries, each of the latter allowed private property but on conditions.