Review: Possession and Obsession
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 28, 2010
John Galsworthy (1867-1933) was a very popular writer at the turn of the 20th Century.  He was the son of a wealthy lawyer and studied law at Oxford. He became a solicitor in 1890 but never practiced law.  Instead he used his father's wealth to travel and learn about writing fiction from talented authors including Joseph Conrad.In the Forsyte Chronicles, Galsworthy created the history of an extended family that begins in the Victorian era in Britain in the early 1800s, extends through the Eduardian Era in the latter decades of the 1800s, and ends after World War I during the British social and economic turmoil of the 1920s.The Chronicles, now called the Forsyte Saga, is a trilogy of novels: The Man Of Property (1906), In Chancery (1920), and To Let (1921).  The fist in the series sets the stage with wealth earned through the driving motivation of land ownership by the founding fathers of the Forsyte family.  The actors on the stage have landed riches and establish social networks as cohesive as the royal family in England.  Even their relationships are governed by the limits of ownership.  Women are the property of their husbands and accept their roles with the reward of financial security.In Chancery describes the continued accumulation of wealth of the family obtained through careful management of money increasingly independent of private property. There is an unwritten family rule of 4% return on all investments. Social conventions begin to change in the story with the problems brought on by allowing outsiders into the family's closed system through marriages. The women become somewhat rebellious refusing to accept many of the subservient roles that were accepted in the early generation Forsytes.To Let traces the family's fortunes through the turn of the 20th Century as the newer generations begin to consume rather than generate family wealth. This is a time of social and legal conflicts for the family that disrupt the order of their traditional lives.  The focus gradually changes to the youngest members of the family who, because of the devastating effects of the World War, believe that there is more to life than hoarding of riches, commodities that can disappear quickly.  These Forsytes pursue artistic and social justice activities and use the family money to go their own ways. The 4% rule is not forgotten, but rather never known by the youngsters.I first read the Forsyte Chronicles paperbacks in the early 1970s as a young man just out of the U. S. Army after the Vietnam War.  I enjoyed reading and experiencing the stability of the family and social structure of British society in the novels, a real contrast to my life then in California.  I identified with the last generations of Forsytes in To Let, focusing on their individual self actualizing choices.After rereading the trilogy on my Kindle1, I now identify with the more conservative earlier generations of Forsytes described in The Man of Property and In Chancery. I appreciated the change of perspective as I approach retirement, and I gained insight through a life review by proxy. I can relate the work to other great generational novels depicting the turn of the 20th Century, such as Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks.The world is much more interactive now than it was in the Forsyte's mystical Great Britain, and social stress has taken on global proportions.  But the activities of making a living, maintaining family stability, and attempting to reach personal satisfaction remain great themes for the turn of the 21st Century.  I highly recommend the Forsyte saga to readers (especially Kindle readers) who will see that the endless cycles of social life continue and personal development is a product of these social rhythms.