Comedy and desire: Revision in Galsworthy's 'The Forsyte Saga'

This study focuses on the revisionary aspects of Galsworthy's trilogy. The permutations of the objects of desire within the work itself and in Galsworthy's life as a writer produce subtle changes evident in the plot development and the comic resolutions of the work as it progresses from novel to novel.;Galsworthy's original desire for his cousin's wife is responsible for his misreading of Richardson's Clarissa. In his attempt to revise Richardson's tragedy into a comedy, he reincarnates the character of Roger Solmes as Soames Forsyte. The extent of Galsworthy's indebtedness to Richardson for the character of Soames Forsyte and the degree to which The Man of Property is the result of an agon with Richardson is the topic of Chapter 1.;Chapters 3 and 4 explicate the triangular structure of the plot in each of the novels. In The Man of Property the love triangle of Soames/Irene/Bosinney duplicates the Francis/Jolyon/Helene triangle that exists in Forsyte family mythology. The myth of a happy ending offered by this parallel triangle opposes Richardson's tragic dissolution of the Solmes/Clarissa/Lovelace triangle and suggests the possibility of alternate resolutions of triangular desire. The mutability of desire perpetuates the triangular structure throughout the saga, where the objects of desire become increasingly more socially acceptable and the character of Soames gradually more sympathetic.;The changes in Soames's motivations are largely responsible for the revised comic vision of the saga as a whole. Chapter 2 argues for a comic, rather than satiric, reading of The Man of Property on the basis of plot development and a comic allegiance to perpetuation of the life of the tribe. The extension of the single novel into a trilogy produces a new kind of comedy, one that offers consolation through compromise. This emancipated comedy that privileges the individual's reconciliation to the vagaries of life become the topic of Chapter 5.;Galsworthy continued writing trilogies after 1921, but the refinement of his comic vision and meaningful revisions of triangular desire never extended beyond the completion of The Forsyte Saga.