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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
~life to let~,
By
This review is from: The Forsyte Saga: To Let (Paperback)
The Forsyte Saga, Book Three
Galsworthy writes about the primitive and driving all desire of a human being: to possess and to belong. But the harsh irony of life is that we come into this world naked and alone, and we leave it in the same way. During the great journey called life we can feed the illusions of fullness of ownership, but we cannot own our dearest "possessions": spouses, children and even what we think is rightfully ours. People we love - or want to control for their own good, as we think - have the mind of their own while the government's eye tirelessly watches our bank's statements and belongings' worth. There is no one to pity or blame. Soames loves his daughter Fleur, and while she was a tiny baby he felt she belonged to him. She grew up and fell in love with -- of all people! -- Irene and Jolyone's son Jon. Soames almost likes the idea of theatrical "balance" of life: he and the passion of his life, Irene, WILL unite through their children and through them they WILL live in the house he had built for Irene decades ago. Jon and Fleur are so different: he is the son of an artist and a woman who treasures beauty in everything; she is a daughter of a man of property and a highly practical French woman. The exchange that happens between the kids made me think that if not for the secrets, if not for the Shakespearean arrangement of things: they might have pulled away from each other... Jon needs to believe in things; he needs to love people and help them while Fleur's point of view is: "But you can't help people, Jon; they're hopeless. When you pull them out they only get into another hole. Look at them, still fighting and plotting and struggling, though they're dying in heaps all the time. Idiots!" While her father Soames HAD to have Irene because she was his wife, his "property", Fleur has to have Jon because she is used to having what she wants. And who knows, if not the circumstances, the unlucky timing, the devoted love of the son to his parents, the never explained to us from Irene's point of view disgust to Soames... it could all be different. Through the book we see the decline of property: in the changing of the generations, ideals, and old believes proved to be wrong. "The young are tired of us, our gods and our ideals. Off with their heads, they say smash their idols! And let's get back to-nothing! And, by Jove, they've done it! Jon's a poet. He'll be going in, too, and stamping on what's left of us. Property, beauty, sentiment all smoke. We mustn't own anything nowadays, not even our feelings. They stand in the way of Nothing." Jon listened, bewildered, almost outraged by his father's words, behind which he felt a meaning that he could not reach. He didn't want to stamp on anything! "Nothing's the god of to-day," continued Jolyon; "we're back where the Russians were sixty years ago, when they started Nihilism." "No, Dad," cried Jon suddenly, "we only want to live, and we don't know how, because of the Past that's all!" "By George!" said Jolyon, "that's profound, Jon. Is it your own? The Past! Old ownerships, old passions, and their aftermath. Let's have cigarettes." Soames feels the fall of the property and old ways through his own lenses: "The sight of her with that fellow had brought all memory back. Even now he could not understand why she had been so impracticable. She could love other men; she had it in her! To himself, the one person she ought to have loved, she had chosen to refuse her heart. It seemed to him, fantastically, as he looked back, that all this modern relaxation of marriage though its forms and laws were the same as when he married her that all this modern looseness had come out of her revolt; it seemed to him, fantastically, that she had started it, till all decent ownership of anything had gone, or was on the point of going. All came from her! And now a pretty state of things! Homes! How could you have them without mutual ownership? Not that he had ever had a real home! But had that been his fault? He had done his best." ""Tell them to hold on!" old Timothy had said. But to what were they to hold on in this modern welter of the "democratic principle"? Why, even privacy was threatened! And at the thought that privacy might perish, Soames pushed back his teacup and went to the window. Fancy owning no more of Nature than the crowd out there owned of the flowers and trees and waters of Hyde Park! No, no! Private possession underlay everything worth having. The world had slipped its sanity a bit, as dogs now and again at full moon slipped theirs and went off for a night's rabbiting; but the world, like the dog, knew where its bread was buttered and its bed warm, and would come back sure enough to the only home worth having to private ownership. The world was in its second childhood for the moment, like old Timothy eating its titbit first!" The last of the old Forsyte, Timothy, eating the yummiest pieces of his dinner first, the old man who stopped thinking even of the future which was two minutes from now is the symbol of the collapse of the old traditions, the symbol of the new generation which wants to have all and now. The past is now "to let": to try on like a carnival outfit, for the goal is to never settle in, to keep on moving. But such a desire is temporary, and in due time the society will come back to the natural instinct of owning its homes and lands and loved ones; after all it is the natural instinct of people, the one that makes the progress possible, the one that in a way lets Love flourish its lessons of life onto those, who are still "in caves" of their instincts to seize and control. For to Love is to let - to let one free. To let the loved one free and to own one's own life as much as it is possible in the world of being tied with ropes of relationship, partnerships, feelings and emotions to all the human beings in one's life. I think it is redundant to say that I have enjoyed reading the third volume of the Saga, its language and all the emotions, so effortlessly expressed by Galsworthy in 1921 and so relevant to us, humans, in 2011. Victoria Evangelina Belyavskaya
5.0 out of 5 stars
Certain things can never be buried,
This review is from: The Forsyte Saga: To Let (Paperback)
The first two books of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga were concerned primarily with Soames Forsyte, and his obsession with the woman he married but could never own.
And that obsession carries over into the lives of their children, almost twenty years later. The first trilogy of Galsworthy's Forsyte books ends with "To Let," an intricate and painful look at a first love tainted by the loathing and obsession of their parents -- and of the noveau riche Forsytes, who have finally had to bend to the passing of time, but haven't let go of their old grudges. Soames and his spirited daughter Fleur are at a modern art exhibition when they accidentally brush by Irene and her loving son Jon. Despite their parents' attempts to keep them from meeting -- and learning of their sordid, shameful past -- Fleur and Jon are intriguing by one another, and start ferreting out clues about the other's identity. The two meet again at the house of mutual relative Val Dartie, and strike up a romance -- soon Soames is furious, and Irene and the dying Jolyon are dismayed at the thought of Jon discovering their past with Soames. An aristocratic suitor for Fleur, mysterious letters and a secret love affair all bloom to the surface, as Fleur and Jon discover that love isn't always enough to overcome the bitterness of the past... With "To Let," John Galsworthy propelled the Forsytes into an entirely new, post-World War I era, when women had gained their rights, cynicism has replaced any romanticism, and a rapidly changing culture has left the stodgier members of the family (aka Soames) half-living in the last century. Only one member of the eldest generation is left, and the "young" Forsytes are now middle-aged or elderly. But despite dragging the Forsytes forward into the Jazz Age, with its flappers and modern art, Galsworthy's writing maintains the stately, lush flavor of the late 19th-century. And though he tosses in a few references to this artist or that war, especially in the beginning when Soames is touring June's "lame duck" gallery, the Forsyte family remains apart in a little timeless bubble. And Galsworthy's writing has not lost its vividness. He paints this dramatic little story with colorful words and vibrant dialogue ("... over the lush grass fell the thick shade from those fruit trees planted by her father five-and-twenty years ago"). He can even spin a description of a person -- such as the still-vibrant June -- that gives a quick flash of their personality. But at heart, "To Let" is a sort of a realist's version of "Romeo and Juliet," if Juliet's dad and Romeo's mom were exes. All the affairs, nastiness, former marriages and old grudges come to the surface all at once, and begin to rot away the young lovers' involvement. At a certain point, you know things aren't going to turn out well and someone is destined to be hurt -- all because the older Forsytes can't let go of the past. Galsworthy also does an excellent job giving Fleur and Jon their own personalities. Fleur is passionate, cynical and free-spirited, while Jon is more quiet and introspective, and full of love for his parents. But time has not softened Soames -- he still treats his female relatives as property, and can't cope when one of them defies him. You'd think after two wives who have affairs because he "kills something in them," he would figure out that the problem isn't all them. "To Let" rounds off a story of obsession and bitterness, by taking the elder generation's problems down to their children. A painful, passionate little story -- and the Forsyte Saga is not over yet.
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