Violating the Domestic

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article explores the writing of home within John Galsworthy's (1867–1933) novel The Man of Property. The novel appeared in 1906 and was heralded by The Times Literary Supplement as a new kind of novel that wrote the world in a new and challenging way. Today, however, Galsworthy is rarely seen as an original or inventive writer and is more frequently considered to follow in the tradition of Victorian realism. Yet in The Man of Property there is evidence of stylistic and formal developments that differentiate Galsworthy from Victorian realism. It is a novel that focuses on the homes and home life of Soames and Irene Forsyte, but theirs is not an idealized or sentimentalized relationship; rather, it is one that is expressed through marital rape, megalomania, and the threat of divorce. Taking these themes as a starting point, this article explores how The Man of Property writes home, as both idea and space, in new ways that differentiate it from Victorian realism.