MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Decline of Corsetry in The Forsyte Saga Bachelor Thesis Brno 2013 Supervisor: Written by: Mgr. Jaroslav Izavčuk Hana Pavlisová Annotation This thesis deals with the transition of Victorian society to a modern society as it is perceived by the characters of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. But as the turn of the century was revolutionary in many areas, my main focus is the social aspect with special regard to the traditional Victorian virtues, family and women. This thesis is divided into seven chapters. The first two provide general information about the novel and Victorian England and the rest of the thesis is divided into chapters dealing with Family, Divorce, Fashion, Freedom of movement and New Women; the very last chapter Youth and sentiment describes the generation gap between the first and last generations of the Forsytes. The aim of this thesis is to document general knowledge about the change with quotations and further interpretations of the novel. Key words Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga, transition, Victorian England, Victorian virtues, corsetry, corset, family, divorce, fashion, movement, New Women, sentiment Anotace Tato práce se zabývá přeměnou viktoriánské společnosti na společnost moderní tak, jak tuto změnu vnímají postavy románu Sága rodu Forsytů od Johna Galsworthyho. Jelikož byl však přelom století převratný v mnoha směrech, zaměřuji se především na tradiční viktoriánské hodnoty, rodinu a ženy. Práce je rozdělena do sedmi kapitol. První dvě stručně popisují zápletku a všeobecné historické zasazení románu do Viktoriánské Anglie. Zbytek je rozdělen do kapitol, které se zabývají konkrétními tématy: Rodina, Rozvod, Móda, Svoboda pohybu a Nové ženy. Poslední kapitola Mládí a sentiment popisuje generační rozdíl mezi první a poslední generací Forsytů. Cílem této práce je doložit všeobecné informace o změně ze sekundární literatury citacemi a intepretacemi románu. Klíčová slova Galsworthy, Sága rodu Forsytů, přerod, viktoriánská Anglie, viktoriánské hodnoty, korzet, rodina, rozvod, móda, pohyb, Nové ženy, sentiment Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou (bakalářskou, diplomovou, rigorózní, disertační práci) vypracoval/a samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů. Declaration I declare that I have compiled this bachelor thesis independently, using only the sources listed in the bibliography. Brno 19 April 2013 Hana Pavlisová _________________________ Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Jaroslav Izavčuk for his kind approach, patience and constructive criticism. Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 6 1. The Forsyte Saga .................................................................................................................... 9 1.1 The Plot ................................................................................................................................ 9 1.2 Who is a Forsyte? ........................................................................................................... 10 2. Victorian England ................................................................................................................ 14 2.1 Victorian virtues ............................................................................................................. 16 2.2 A decline? ....................................................................................................................... 17 3. Family ................................................................................................................................... 19 4. Divorce ................................................................................................................................. 24 5. Fashion ................................................................................................................................. 28 6. Freedom of movement and the New women ....................................................................... 30 7. Decline and sentiment .......................................................................................................... 34 7.1 Sentiment ........................................................................................................................ 36 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 38 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 40 Introduction In this thesis I focus on the transition of Victorian society to a modern society, as it is perceived by the characters of The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy. I have decided to choose this topic because I have always fancied reading family sagas for the visible shift there is among the first and last generations of a family. The elders always feel that modern times are a decline as compared to their own youth (which, naturally, by their elders was also perceived as a decline). The aim of this thesis is to document general knowledge about the period with quotations and further interpretations of the novel. Because the turn of the century was revolutionary in many areas (such as technology or politics), my main focus is the social aspect, with special regard to the traditional Victorian virtues, family and women. Sometimes it can be hard to draw a clear line among the topics, because they are all interconnected as one aspect affects all the others. My thesis is divided into seven chapters. The first one deals with the novel itself and presents its plot and characters (for the sake of understanding the complicated family relations, I enclose the family tree). Then I continue by characterizing a typical Forsyte, who serves in the novel as a prototype of an upper-middle class member. The second chapter briefly describes general features of Victorian England and the Victorian virtues. This chapter serves only as a general overview, as further details regarding each particular topic are outlined at the beginning of each chapter. Its subchapter A decline? briefly discusses the economic aspects and the question, whether the decline on economic scale was actual. This sequence of chapters is important as in the chapter Victorian England I already refer to characters from the novel, and thus prior knowledge of the plot is fundamental. The next chapters deal with specific topics, which had undergone some vital changes: Family, Divorce, Fashion and finally Freedom of Movement and New Women, which is dedicated mainly to women and their emancipation on the social scale. And the last chapter Youth and Sentiment comments on the generation gap between the old and the young generations of the Forsyte family, together with the indispensable sentiment continuously expressed in the novel. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy comprises three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921. They depict three generations of an upper-middle class family of the Forsytes during the years of 1886 to 1920. Ancestors of the Forsytes were farmers, however, generations discussed in the novel are already keenly aware of their social position and of their nouveau riche status. Because publishing of the novels coincided with Modernism, Galsworthy‟s traditional storytelling, concentrating rather on content than the 6 form, was soon overshadowed by authors such as Virginia Woolf or Joseph Conrad. Nevertheless, he was awarded Nobel Prize for literature in 1922 and remains one of the greatest English writers for his satirical yet faithful image of the class of his time. Some aspects of the novel are clearly autobiographical, such as the social position and origins of the Forsytes, or the relationship of Jolyon and Irene, strikingly similar to Galsworthy‟s own relationship with his cousin‟s wife. The secondary literature used can be divided into three main groups. The first one is general literature about Victorian England, such as Perugini‟s Victorian Days and Ways or Bédarida‟s Social History of England 1851 – 1990. The second group covers literature with more specific content: Mason‟s The Making of Victorian Sexual Attitudes or Himmelfarb‟s De-moralization of Society. The last group contains various internet sources, dealing mainly with fashion. Fashion is also the area from where the term corsetry, used in the name of this thesis, comes from. “Corset – a piece of women‟s underwear, fitting the body tightly, worn especially in the past to make the waist look smaller.” This is the Oxford Dictionary definition of the term. However, there is much more hidden under these plain words. The legendary Victorian corset is today perceived as one of the symbols of its time. But corsetry is not merely the act of producing or wearing a corset; the term incorporates all the historical and social significance the garment had to its time and to morals of that time. The corset symbolically and literally restricted freedom; in this thesis corsets and corsetry are used as a metaphor for the social restrictions, necessity of respectability,