Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Laurie wrote: "Sara, I sometimes wondered when I read this this why Irene had such an aversion to Soames. I mean that it wasn't just the rape because her bad feelings began long before that. If I remember correc..."

It was difficult to understand, but (view spoiler)[when Jolyon writes the letter to Jon he tells him that he will understand better when he has a physical relationship and that she discovered her aversion after she was married and had sex with Soames. So, I am guessing that there was zero chemistry and that Soames (as would make sense considering his personality) just went for pleasing himself and never thought of her. Just used her like the property he thought she was. It obviously pre-dated the rape, because she had already asked for a separate bedroom before Bossiney even entered the picture. (hide spoiler)]

I enjoyed this trilogy enough that I bought the Forsyte Chronicles which is the three novels that comprise the Forsyte Saga plus two more trilogies. I don't know when I will get around to reading the next six novels, but the Kindle book was only $1.99 so I couldn't resist.

I am also planning to read the others. There are ten of them total. Hope the rest are as good as the original three, but since the original three are the ones that are lauded I'm prepared for the others not to hold up to them.

I had very similar feelings about this trilogy as Sara, and Sara puts them better in writing, so... ;)

At fist when I started reading this I felt that it was almost comical or ironical. But when I advanced it became more like drama.

I had forgot about the other books, I will probably going to look them up too.

I have the other books on my Kindle now and I'm hoping to get to them before I lose the details of the story in my head.

I have done a lot of thinking about these characters since I closed the book. It would be so easy to see some of them (Soames particularly) in a very one-dimensional way. He was a very complicated man. I'm afraid we see far too much of his love for "things" rampant in the world around us today. If the cell phone had existed, he would have been on his all the time checking his stocks and ignoring the people at the dinner table, and then wondering why he feels so lonely and lost.

I have paused this book after the first book so i could catch up on some other buddy reads. Will start back in May.

I am so glad I watched the TV series and the 2002 PBS adaptation. The book characters were brought to life. The books were rather dry reading without much dialogue--a struggle to get through. I couldn't see the attraction to Irene at all. She doesn't say much and I guess Soames wanted what he could not possess. I don't know why Galbraith provided such an extensive family tree when many of the cousins had barely a passing mention on the book save George, just because he called Bosinney a Buchanneer. I'm glad I embarked upon the exercise . Get the 2002 series as the actor that plays Soames did such an excellent job. The TV series Soames is a bit more human and likeable.

I have finished book.

I want to focus on just one point MARRIAGE.

In the Forsyte Saga we are dealing with a family. This was a family of property. Not only were they concerned about their public image but who would recieve their property when they died. Why was this important? I might not have given this much thought had i not read another book written in 1938 called Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man

I will quote from the book a little later....and keep adding to this post as i have time.

"But the heart is the center of creation.
Lovers have made a great fuss over the contrast between marriage in church and marriage by mutual private consent, yet there is little difference between them in actual fact. It is true, husband and wife can marry in public, with all the ceremonies and publicity of Church and State, or they can marry privately. But whatever the forms, heaven and earth must participate in the wedding. The whole body must rapt to its new calling, and the whole mind must be caught up into its new state of marriage. Then it is safe to say that something real happened; when the body and soul are completely dissolved and completely remade, you can be sure that this couple will become the founders of a new race, a new people, a new nation. After all every marriage is the nucleus of a new race . It is nothing but statistical idolatry to judge a nation by its fifty or hundred millions of population. Those are merely abstractions. The people that marry change the nation unceasingly, if and when they meet in the presence of heaven (private) or earth (public ceremony). Private relations or public ceremonies are both conventional disguises for the real story of marriage. The question is whether this man and this yound woman are going to be married under celestial ordination or by an "arbitrary power". Many marriages, it is true, represent nothing but personal chance or a personal whim. The few that are more regenerate there kind."

To be continued

"Let us try to read history as our own autobiography. Then out interest will centre equally on the future, the present, and the past.
...Real achievement must be based on the continuity of many generations.
....Every human being is endowed with the wonderful gift of speech. He can express his own secret better than anybody else. We rarely reveal our true selves in the market place if life. Words often seem you be made to hide our thoughts. But the more we try to avoid emphasis, or even truth, in our speech, the more the few moments stand out in which language had the full weight of self expression. A bride speaking her decisive "Yes" or "No" before the altar uses speech in its old sense of revelation, because her answer establishes a new identity between two separate offsprings of the race and may found a new nation. We are so dull that we rarely realize how much history lies hidden in marriage, and how the one word spoken by the bride makes all the difference between cattle-raising and a nation's good breeding."


I dont really feel enough sympathy for Irenne. I think she should have taken responsibility for herself. She should not have gone through with the wedding and once she did she should have made it work. You can use your imagination and make a bad situation better. You can also choose to make it worst. She did the latter.

She didn't just say yes at the altar. She said yes every time she accepted gifts and dates.