I recently read about John Galsworthy's life; rather than trawling through his epic Forsyte Saga which I remember being on British Telly when I was a child, mixing it up with the almost interchangeable (and the interminable?) "The Flambards" by K M Peyton, and god, lest I forget , the class obsessed "Upstairs, Downstairs" because they all had that period-drama ethic, the result made me weary -either that or wary- of the genre. It made these all these roughly coinciding Edwardian-era melodramas one long, big turn-off to me (well, I was a typical boy, please bear with me)....
I was generally so bored (is that the start of disgust?) that there was little focus on the catclysms of World War One if it ever did, it was fleetingly so, as described by The War Poets like Rupert Brooks and Wilfred Owen and a Comic magazine of the 70-80's (no, not that sort of comic[!], to borrow a crap running-joke from "Hotel New Hampshire") mainly of writer Pat Mills' and artist Joe Colquhoun's work for what I knew as 'Battle Action!', mainly because of the deeply touching Charley's War:
I think it is important to remember that the early-fascistic Art movement called Futurism was contemporary with Galsworthy's; the era couldn't be expressed more differently by the fetishistic exhilaration and addiction to 'Speed', the 'Fusing' of Man and Machine, and faux-revolutionary 'Iconoclasm' to the world of Forsyte.
Nowadays, the futurists are 'fondly remembered' for their 'eccentricities', what is forgotten is quite how awful the consequences, for instance, was what they were proposing really so dissimilar to a draft for the actual Nazi bombing of Guernica just a few years later? And then there's the closely related Modernist/Anti-Semitism of Wyndham Lewis and T S Eliot.
It is a relief to see that John Galsworthy didn't bury his head in the sand - unlike the originally patronising picture that I had as a youth of my elders:
He founded International PEN with Joseph Conrad, George Bernard Shaw, and HG Wells, to lobby for writers under threat of imprisonment, Orhan Pamuk is a recent case.
Now I'm much more tolerant of 'period dramas': rather than 'charmed' by the quaintness, the writing is just as relevant as it was — it astonishes me how the pressures applied by others on an individual are so damnably the same as now. How clearly this was percieved all the way back then is so impressive to me. The protagonists have become metaphors to us in the 21st century, yet the relevance is somehow constrained again, this time in an "Empire line frock".
But they always were.
3 comments:
I think you have put your finger on the pivotal point between covert subversion and radical subversion. When I was working on my Odyssey paper, I read many articles where feminists wanted to claim female authorship for The Odyssey or attempted to show how the female characters in The Odyssey were subverting the patriarchy, etc. I wanted to support that and be one of those feminists. However, as I combed through The Odyssey over and over I could not find any feminist subversion. Every strong female character simply ended up supporting the patriarchy. Athena is the worse. Coincidently on Athena’s shield is a picture of the head of Medusa, another sign that she is nothing but a patriarchal supporter. So I elected to argue that The Odyssey is one big patriarchal propaganda. Perhaps a big duh but a duh I don’t think everyone truly gets.
The problem with radicalism is the common person does not like to be clobbered over the head. However I can see the merits in radicalism because often a problem needs immediate attention, one that does not come quick enough while the polite is waiting for the masses to wake up. i.e the war in Iraq. I know before it started my opinions about not going into Iraq was seen as radical, however, now it is simply one voice of many. Why did we have to waste so many lives before the masses woke the fuck up?
What I see with Galsworthy and even Austen is a covert subversion. For instance in Austen’s Mansfield Park she states how Sir Bertram had business in Antigua that kept him there for long periods of time. For the time everyone would know that, he was in the slave trade. If she had come right out and said he was in the slave trade, perhaps her novels would not have been accepted for publication. Sir Bertram’s oldest son is an alcoholic and is wife is an indolent with a daily dosage of opium. Both signs that they are coping with their father dealing in the slave trade. I don’t know if this was the 1999 Mansfield Park movie ending or in the book (I will need to look) but supposedly, when Sir Bertram was guilted out of the slave trade he turned to tobacco. That is some good irony and it still criticizes. Because guess what, Sir Bertram may have not been trading slaves anymore, but who in the hell harvested the tobacco in America that he dealt with?
In Trollope’s “The Way We Live Now”, one of the young maidens who are looking for a husband is willing to marry an oldest Jewish man because he has money. She will put up with him in the city as long as he can promise her a house in the town and in the country. When he says he will need to cut back because his bank lost a lot of money, she says, “Do you expect me to live in the country year round with your Jew children?” It is these small bits of subtlety that makes the mind think. Not so much the clobbering over the head. Or at least it works for intellectuals.
Anyway, I will have to come back because I am worried about the time and losing my train of thought. Sorry.
"it astonishes me how the pressures applied by others on an individual are so damnably the same as now. How clearly this was perceived all the way back then is so impressive to me."
Yes - although then I think, why should they not perceive it as we do, or perhaps even better...?
"So I elected to argue that The Odyssey is one big patriarchal propaganda."
CM I may have said this before, but I am pretty sure this is why we had to read it so many times in school - indoctrination, LOL!
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