I've just finished watching The Forsyte Saga S1 (the one from the 2000s, with Damian Lewis), it's something I've been looking for, actually--dysfunctional family/marriages at that time period--but I also struggled with who the hell to root for. I have questions: 1. why is everyone so obsessed with Irene and 2. why is everyone so obsessed with Irene? She moves like a zombie in a haze. Normally I would like an unhappy wife or even a tragic character, under some circumstances, but idk, she's just... so nothing. Soames at least makes for an interesting character, whatever else he is. And I don't get why she didn't try to co-operate with him regarding the divorce, did she want to spend the rest of her life married to him??? What is her thinking process... woman, it would benefit you to be free of him... like they could have made an agreement with Young Jolyon to act as Irene's lover so that there would be grounds for divorce in the first place, and that is what happened anyway!!! As for Young Jolyon, he lost me right at the start when he abandoned his wife and daughter for a fucking governess, but at least he won me over later. Old Jolyon was a dear. I like Winnifred and Monty in a dysfunctional marriage way. June I would like best had she not been so hung up on that architect dude (girl, he dumped you for Irene), though it seems she at least managed to get over him. I'd like to have seen more of the various aunts bc I like aunts and also George--I dig his dynamic with Monty. The second generation seems okay, so let's see what S2 will bring.
I'm re-listening to the audiobook of The Forsyte Saga right now, and this is actually pretty true to the way that Irene is depicted in the novel - she's very remote and very mysterious and you're right, we don't get a lot of insight into what her thought process is. I wonder if some of that is just...the writing, and some of it is...a sort of background assumption that you'd just know if you were someone reading this in 1922?
Throughout the whole series, there's a big push and pull between the desire for property (as exemplified by Soames) and the desire for beauty (as exemplified by Phil Bosinney and the Jolyons, both older and younger. ) Time and time again in the book, we're shown the Forsytes looking at paintings, or china, or houses, and always evaluating them in terms of how much they can be sold for, not whether they find them beautiful or they bring them joy. Irene, too, is one of these things, constantly being evaluated but never really consulted. It's Old Jolyon, and later Young Jolyon, who both find her beautiful and appreciate her as a person capable of having her own opinions on things, whereas Soames wants only to possess her, and spends a significant amount of time moaning about why she won't just love him back.
I think this might one of those things that doesn't translate quite as well to the screen. But I do love Gina McKee. I think she does Irene's broken-winged bird expressions so well.
I hope you enjoy season 2!
I feel like there's something in Irene that maybe translated better in 1922. Like maybe we are meant to understand she doesnt want the stigma of divorce even though she doenst want her husband. But that doesnt add up well with anything else about her. Novel!Irene always seemed a touch archetypal instead of accessible to me- as if she's less her own character than a plot device sometimes. Which is ironic considering the point of her plot.
I may not love the new Forsytes but I dont hate that they give Irene a much more relatable nature.
Though they did seem to forget a huge chunk of Soames' and Jolyon's motivations and general pathos so far. 🫠
