What's it all about?

The Man of Property was published in 1906. It was Galsworthy's second novel published under his own name. He'd published one earlier under the name of 'John Sinjohn'. The year before, Galsworthy had married Ada Pearson, the divorced wife of his own cousin Arthur. Galsworthy had had a decade-long affair with her before the divorce. The character of Irene can be regarded as a sympathetic portrait of Ada, and The man of property an attack on middle-class Victorian morals, marriage law, and social convention. It's also something of a justification of Ada's behavior in her first marriage. This basis in personal life is the strength of the first novel in the trilogy, and the weakness of the other two. This need to justify Ada's behavior without examining it is both the impetus for the novel and the handicap that damages it. [repetitious]

The author of TMoP is a man who's angry about something. He allows the anger to propel him through a satiric novel. He's not so angry when he writes In chancery.

In TMoP, Galsworthy is specifically concerned with fighting the societal pressure to keep unhappy marriages intact. He disapproves of hypocritically continuing loveless marriages. He wants society to be more accepting of divorce as a solution. He explores this by describing the loveless marriage of Soames Forsyte to Irene Heron. Soames is a middle-class Victorian solicitor who thinks of his wife as just one kind of property. His wife doesn't like having sex with him. She has an affair with an architect who's engaged to one of Soames's cousins. The affair ends with the death of the architect and Irene's apparent return to slavery in the now openly hollow shell of a marriage.

Sex is a major concern, but it's addressed indirectly. The reader is to deduce, from various hints about childlessness and Soames's wish that he could touch his wife, that Soames and Irene are not having sex. We further see this when Irene commences her affair with the architect and locks her bedroom door against Soames. And it explodes into the foreground when Soames rapes her. Galsworthy shies away from discussing sex, whether because the era forbid direct discussion of the issue or because of his own nervousness about it.

The rape takes place off-stage, described only indirectly by Galsworthy as a guilty and shamed Soames attempts to go through his business day the morning afterwards. Consider this piece of nervous underlining:

This might have been his only way of dealing with the issue when he wrote in 1904, but it feels a bit like authorial cop-out.

[Galsworthy wrote in 1904. He set his novel in 1886. Implications of the distance?]

Let's return to this issue of Irene as a portrait of Ada. Galsworthy can't explore her motives too directly. So he gets around this by never entering Irene's point of view. She's only seen from the viewpoint of others. This is a terrible burden on the reader, who's supposed to sympathize with an unknown character. And worse, she is passive and acted upon, instead of acting. Readers tend to sympathize with characters who want something and try to get that something, even if the characters are objectionable. Irene never seems to want anything or to try to get anything. She just sits. The reader flings up his hands-- what's with this woman? At least we know what Soames wants.

We also have a modern impatience with her passivity. If she didn't love him, why did she marry him? Why didn't she just tell him she didn't like him? Why didn't she leave? Why not sell her jewels and run away with Bosinney? (Why did Ada remain in an unhappy marriage for 10 years while having an affair with Galsworthy?) These questions might be answered if we knew more about her, but what we know of her we know from Soames. She hasn't chosen to reveal herself to Soames. So we remain in the dark.

The problem of justifying Irene to justify Ada crops up again in the third novel of the first trilogy, To let. Irene's son by Young Jolyon, Jon, is in love with Soames' daughter Fleur. Irene and Young Jolyon attempt to dissuade their son from continuing the relationship, which they object to because Fleur is Soames' flesh and blood. That's the whole of their objection to Fleur, whom they do not know. (Though they assume she is exactly like her father.) Young Jolyon writes a long letter to Jon explaining the history of Irene's marriage to Soames. In this letter, Jolyon describes Soames' marriage to Irene as enslavement, and his attitude toward his wife as a property owner's. Jolyon is merely reiterating Galsworthy's point in The man of property. But it doesn't work: we're told over and over again that Soames is treating Irene as property, but we do not see it. He did not interfere with her affair with Bosinney; he did not prevent her departure; his attempt to get her back consisted of two brief interviews spread out over six months.

The truly selfish behavior in To let is Irene's, in demanding that her son not marry Fleur. Soames has managed to display selfless love for his daughter, in accepting her choice.

(In a creepy moment, Jolyon asks Jon if he loves Fleur "more than his mother". What else are sons to do but love their partners more than their mothers? How strange it is to be told not to leave one's parents and cleave to one's wife.)

To a modern reader, there are two reprehensible actions depicted. The first is Irene's in choosing to marry Soames without love. The second is Soames' rape of his wife. Galsworthy can't examine the first without examining his own wife's choices too closely. And he's too nervous and squeamish to examine the second.

The television series, which has a decent script, deals with these novelistic weaknesses in two direct ways. First, it makes Irene much more active and talkative. She's still a passive character, still more likely to sit helplessly and weep than do something, but we know far more about what she wants. Second, it presents the rape directly, on screen. Soames acts before us. The act isn't surreptitious. It's violent. It also provides a motivation for Soames that's lacking in the novel: Soames has perceived his wife as frigid, not allowing anyone to touch her. ("Nobody could touch her, she was cold-hearted!")