John Galsworthy as a Tragic Dramatist
Introduction:
Galsworthy cast all plays in the tragic mould. Shaw made his mark as a writer of comedies. He was a laughing philosopher. Galsworthy, on the other hand, specialized in tragedies. Five of his plays end with the death of the principal character. These art are Justice, The Fugitive, The Bob, Loyalties, and Old English.
Other plays of Galsworthy in which the principal character does not die but there is tremendous suffering are The Silver Box, Skin Game, Strife, The Pigeon, A Family Man, Windows, The Eldest Son, The Forests and A Bit of Love. Even his comedies, such as Joy, and Foundations are not wholly free from the tragic atmosphere.
Earlier Tragedies: The Greeks:
The earlier writers of tragedies were the Greeks. These tragedies introduced a hero who was a man having an outstanding personality and character. He incurred the wrath of the gods by some conscious or unconscious sin.
The gods meted out some terrible punishment to him. The hero fought bravely but was ultimately crushed down by the mighty gods. Thus, Oedipus in complete ignorance killed his own father and married his mother. He, thus, broke the divine law which prohibits patricide and incest. The gods, therefore, crushed him down.
In these plays, tragedy was caused by Destiny or the angry gods. We admire the hero for his heroic struggle and we are filled with awe and terror when this outstanding personality is crushed down by Fate.
Shakespearean Tragedy:
In Shakespearean tragedy, the character took the place of Destiny as the cause of the tragedy. The hero was a king or an outstanding personality. He had all the noble qualities but had one weakness which was called the tragic flaw. Thus, Othello is a great General and a very noble person.
He has all the fine qualities of character but he has one weakness. He has all the fine qualities of character but he has one weakness. He is jealous by temperament and he readily believes the villain, Iago, who tells him that his noble wife Desdemona, is unchaste.
He suffers terribly but does not think coolly whether this could be true of his saintly wife. He is a man of quick action and so without proper investigation, he kills his wife. When he comes to know about the deception practised on him by Iago he kills himself. Hamlet is a noble prince and has all the qualities under the sun.
But he has one great weakness: he thinks too much and cannot act. If he had been a man of action like Othello, he would have immediately killed his uncle who had murdered his father and there would have been no tragedy. If Othello had thought out the issues coolly like Hamlet and investigated the whole case he would have realized that his wife was the noblest lady alive and there would have been no tragedy.
In this tragedy, the hero suffers terribly and dies at the end only because of a flow in his own character. We admire the heroic struggles of the hero and are filled with awe and terror at his downfall.
Social Tragedies of Galsworthy:
The tragedies of Galsworthy are quite different from the classical tragedy as well as the romantic tragedy. He eliminates the supernatural agencies completely. He also eliminates heroes. His chief character is a weak individual who is overwhelmed by powerful social forces which grind him to bits.
As Coates has said, "To focus attention on an outstanding individual of high rank or noble character would be to divert it from the communal group whose struggles are primarily to be studied. Even when eminent personalities represent the groups, it will be in their representative rather than in their personal capacity that they assume importance. It is vowedly in the social relationships binding ordinary people, and not in the breast of some star personages, that the tragic conflict is supposed to take place."
The Real Villain: The Invisible Force:
Along with the hero the villain is also eliminated from social tragedy. Galsworthy would agree with Meredith when he says:
"In tragic life, God wot.
No villain need be; Passions spin the plot."
The sufferings of individuals in modern society are caused by persons who are not wicked. They have the best of motives but they are moved by the passions and prejudices of the class to which they belong. They cause misery to their fellow men when they enforce the laws and conventions of society without imagination and sympathetic understanding.
The real villains of modern society are the invisible social forces which ruthlessly crush down weak individuals in the same way as the gods did in Greek tragedy and the villains did in Shakespearean tragedy.
Conflict Between the Individual and Social Institution:
In this social tragedy, the conflict is between the individual and a social institution. It is an unequal fight and the puny little human being is easily overwhelmed by the powerful social force. The tragic characters of Galsworthy-Jones, Falder, Dancy, Ruth, Freda, Chloe, Roberts etc. are weaklings and they are easily crushed when strong social forces confront them.
In The Silver Box, the rolling engine of law crushes down the Jones family. "The real villain is neither Jones nor Jack Borthwick, but the judicial system for which we are all responsible. The audience is in the docks confronted with the crime of having approved the system." In Strife, the conflict is between capital and labour. In Skin Game, the conflict is between the landed aristocracy and the manufacturing classes. In Loyalties, there is a conflict between different loyalties. In all the plays the conflict is between powerful institutions and social forces.
His Characters: Ordinary living Beings:
Galsworthy takes his characters from the life around him. He does not think it necessary to introduce kings and great personalities in his tragedies. According to him, the life of an ordinary labourer is as important as that of the king or a prince. The labourer or any individual in the plays of Galsworthy does not stand as an individual.
He stands as a representative of a group or class of people and this fact enhances his importance as a character. He knows life well and he draws his characters with tremendous insight and penetration. They are ordinary living beings in whom we can recognize ourselves. Most of them are ordinary mediocre persons. We share their feelings and we are greatly touched when we find that they have become victims of circumstances and we ourselves suffer in their sufferings.
Tremendous Waste In the conflicts between social forces small individuals are crushed. This causes tremendous waste. Poor Chloe is crushed in the conflict between the aristocracy and the class of industrial magnates. Thousands of families of labourers starve and shiver in the cold and Mrs. Roberts dies when there is a clash between capital and labour.
The senseless legal system which does not differentiate between a hardened criminal and a social weakling and the cruel prison system which keeps human beings in solitary confinement, ruins and wastes poor Falder's life. Galsworthy's tragedies all depict the waste of precious human lives caused by the working of inhuman and invisible social forces.
Themes of his Tragedies:
For the themes of his tragedies, Galsworthy only looked at the life around him. Galsworthy was intimately connected with law courts and so ten of his plays are connected with the system of justice. The problems of capital and labour are dealt with in Strife.
The evils of shelter homes and poor law are presented in The Pigeon. He also finds material for his plays in family relationships loyalty or antagonism between husband and wife, the struggle of a woman to escape from an unhappy marriage, and the revolt of youth against parental authority.
He also wrote tragedies to present the plight of drunkards, criminals and prostitutes whose lives have been wrecked by the laws and conventions of society. He also finds themes for his plays, in the clash of different castes, groups, religions and classes. In all these themes he finds materials for poignant tragedies.
Dramatic Irony in His Plays:
Galsworthy uses dramatic irony with telling effect in his plays. It is ironic that the machinery of justice which was devised to protect the poor and the weak only protects the rich and the strong and crushes down the poor and the weak. In Strife after five months of strike which causes starvation to the workers and losses to the employers, an agreement is arrived at.
It is ironic that this agreement is the same as had been worked out before the fight started. In Escape a man who evades the demands of justice and escapes from prison before his time, is received by the world with open arms, while a person who remains in prison for his full term is punished by the world still more.
It is ironic that in spite of man's inherent nobility and sense of justice and fair play, a large number of people come to sorrow, suffering and tragic death. It is ironic that the persons enforcing the laws of society are generally honest, sincere and dutiful and yet their actions result in the wastage of thousands of innocent lives every day.
Tragic Appeal:
Some of the critics feel that Galsworthy's tragic appeal is not so great as that of Greek tragedy or Shakespearean tragedy. They say that while the earlier tragedies moved the spectators and readers to awe and terror, the tragedies of Galsworthy move us only to pity and compassion. Other critics say that the struggles of modern man against unjust social forces are as moving as the struggles of the heroes of the past, against the gods.
In this connection, we cannot do better than quote Prof. Nicoll. He says, "Judged by the standards of Grecian and Elizabethan art Galsworthy's plays are not high tragedies. There is then no single hero who stands forward as a dominant figure, rising to loftier heights than his fellow men.
But we cannot judge the art of the present day by the standards of the past. That was the error of the pseudo-classical critics of the Augustan period. If we come to essentials we find that Mr. Galsworthy's plays do not fall, as Sir Arthur Pinero's fall, into pathos. The author possesses despite his kindliness of heart, a genuine tragic firmness.
We do not feel pity for the fate of Falder so much as we feel awe in contemplating the mighty millstones of justice, ruthless and fateful in their silent power. The tragic atmosphere dominates the play: tears are useless and vain. The heroes of Galsworthy's dramas are the unseen Fates of modern existence, against which we poor mortals can but pitifully cry out in moments of desperation and horror."
Spectacle of Human Suffering and Remedy:
In his social tragedies, Galsworthy depicts the tragic social conditions in different walks of life. He shows the sad spectacle of tremendous human suffering in the lives of a vast majority of ordinary human beings. They do not die but lead lives of terrible agony. The collective suffering of ordinary individuals assumes a tragic importance.
There was no remedy for a tragedy which was caused by the working of Fate or the anger of the gods. A victim of the wrath of the gods has to suffer in silence. He must continue to pray to the very gods who are punishing him. But social tragedy is caused by human folly and so there is hope that it can be avoided. Most of the troubles of life can be avoided if there is human understanding and a sympathetic approach to the problems.
