An Interpretation Of The Forsyte Saga From The Perspective Of Spatial Criticism

John Galsworthy was a famous critical realism novelist and dramatist in Britain in the 20 th century. He created fifty-five works in his life. The Forsyte Saga, with the clue of changes in the Forsytes family, depicts the British social conditions at that time. This paper tries to apply spatial criticism theory to analyzing physical, social and mental space in this work and to explore the contradictions and conflicts between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.Spatial factors penetrate into all aspects in The Forsyte Saga. The contradictions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the influences of the proletariat embody in every dimension of space. Through the introduction to the traditional space concept, the main theories of this paper are Lefebvre’s spatial criticism and Foucault’s power-space criticism. Lefebvre’s space can be divided into physical, social and mental space. Especially in the capitalist society environment, physical and social space influence people’s mental space; mental space changes the behaviors of people in physical and social space. Foucault thought space is the basis to implement the power and people have different powers to implement in different space.This paper analyzes The Forsyte Saga from physical, social and mental space respectively. It takes London and houses in this work as examples in physical space. London filled with different classes is the heaven for upper-middle class and the hell for the lower class who suffer from intangible oppression. It is houses that are the space in which the bourgeoisie implement their powers to the proletariat. In houses, Soames exercised his power as the husband of Irene and the old exercised their powers to the young; houses are the space in which the Forsytes family gathered to talk about their matters. There are contradictions and conflicts between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in social space. All kinds of contradictions exist in the whole Forsytes family, the marriage of Soames, Irene and Annette, the old Jolyon’s family and so on. In mental space, the changes of Soames’ s sense of property and possessiveness, Irene’s pursuit of love and freedom and the maturity of June embody the influences of the proletariat and the changes of the bourgeoisie.All in all, using spatial criticism theory to analyze spatial factors in The Forsyte Saga can see the contradictions and conflicts between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat more clearly, also reveal the theme that the proletariat is influencing and changing the bourgeoisie quietly, and see the hope that the author left us.