long tale is no scientific study of a period; it is rather an
intimate incarnation of the disturbance that Beauty effects in the lives
of men.

The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed,
present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion
of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world.

One has noticed that readers, as they wade on through the salt waters of
the Saga, are inclined more and more to pity Soames, and to think that
in doing so they are in revolt against the mood of his creator. Far
from it! He, too, pities Soames, the tragedy of whose life is the very
simple, uncontrollable tragedy of being unlovable, without quite a thick
enough skin to be thoroughly unconscious of the fact. Not even Fleur
loves Soames as he feels he ought to be loved. But in pitying Soames,
readers incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they
think, he wasn't a bad fellow, it wasn't his fault; she ought to have
forgiven him, and so on!

And, taking sides, they lose perception of the simple truth, which
underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is utterly and
definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or
reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit in
Nature. Whether it ought to, or no, is beside the point; because in fact
it never does. And where Irene seems hard and cruel, as in the Bois de
Boulogne, or the Goupenor Gallery, she is but wisely realistic--knowing
that the least concession is the inch which precedes the impossible, the
repulsive ell.

A criticism one might pass on the last phase of the Saga is the
complaint that Irene and Jolyon those rebels against property--claim
spiritual property in their son Jon. But it would be hypercriticism,
as the tale is told. No father and mother could have let the boy marry
Fleur without knowledge of the facts; and the facts determine Jon, not
the persuasion of his parents. Moreover, Jolyon's persuasion is not
on his own account, but on Irene's, and Irene's persuasion becomes a
reiterated: "Don't think of me, think of yourself!" That Jon, knowing
the facts, can realise his mother's feelings, will hardly with justice
be held proof that she is, after all, a Forsyte.

But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a
possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it
cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the upper-middle class.
As