The Man of Property by John Galsworthy

Nothing is so exciting to a book lover as to read the first novel of a series, to love it, and to be able to look forward to several more. This is the first of the three-book Forsyte Saga, and six additional novels feature members of the extended Forsyte family, so I have eight books to anticipate. And anticipate them I certainly will, because this one captivated me.

To my knowledge, Galsworthy is not much celebrated these days, even though he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. Perhaps he is not exciting enough for today's sensation-hungry audiences or perhaps he was not enough of an innovator. Maybe I just didn't take the right classes to learn much about him in college. For whatever reason, I've come upon him late, but I'm so glad I have because he is an extraordinarily good writer. His prose is graceful, measured, and elegant; his humor is subtle and tongue-in-cheek; his people are lifelike and treated sympathetically; his picture of upper-middle class England at the beginning of the 20th Century is fascinating. He reminds me of Anthony Trollope, only better, and of George Eliot, only not quite as good.

This novel principally concerns the unhappy marriage of Soames and Irene Forsyte, including the actions and reactions of other family members to the situation. Like the other males in his family, Soames is extremely protective and prideful about his "property," which in his mind includes his wife. When she asks to be released from the marriage, he refuses. When he "asserted his rights and acted like a man...." the reader realizes that he has raped Irene, although the word is never used.

Surely Galsworthy was very progressive in his sympathy for the plight of women of the time, who essentially had no rights of their own. Indeed, many decades would pass before society would admit that it is even wrong for a husband to force sexual activity on a wife.

This is a slow-paced, thoughtful, and highly entertaining read, one that I highly recommend.