29 pages • 58 minutes read
John GalsworthyThe Japanese Quince
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1910A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: John Galsworthy
Galsworthy (1867-1933) was a British author and playwright, best known for his series of novels The Forsyte Saga, which follows the lives and relationships of a wealthy and influential family across several decades. Galsworthy was born into an upper-middle-class family and studied at Harrow and New College, Oxford. After a brief stint in law, Galsworthy turned to writing. In the first Forsyte novel, The Man of Property (1906), Galsworthy takes aim at the social pretensions of the class he grew up in, and the series is notable for its depiction of the changing social and cultural landscape of England in the early 20th century. This same preoccupation with social class is central to the portrayal of Nilson in “The Japanese Quince.”
Galsworthy’s first published work was a collection of short stories, From the Four Winds (1897), but it was not until the publication of The Man of Property that he achieved widespread recognition. The Forsyte Saga, which consists of three novels and two interludes, is considered a masterpiece of social realism. In addition to The Forsyte Saga, Galsworthy wrote several other novels including The White Monkey (1924), The Silver Spoon (1926), and Swan Song (1928). He also wrote several plays, the best known of which is Loyalties (1922).
Galsworthy’s works are known for their realistic portrayal of upper-middle-class English society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a keen observer of social customs and manners, and his work often dealt with issues of class, wealth, and morality. After being nominated six times, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932. He earned many other awards, such as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and election to the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Academy of Arts. Galsworthy rejected a knighthood, however, as he believed that writers should not accept titles.
At the time of his death in 1933 at age 66, Galsworthy was widely celebrated as one of Britain’s leading authors. His work quickly fell into disrepute, however, as literary tastes began to favor the more experimental style of Modernist writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. In contrast to the obscure style of the Modernists, Galsworthy’s style is generally straightforward, accessible, and direct. Galsworthy was rediscovered and reassessed a generation later when The Forsyte Saga was filmed by the BBC in 1967. Among his shorter writings, “The Japanese Quince” has maintained its status as one of his most popular stories and is frequently anthologized. Scholars now recognize Galsworthy’s work as presenting a uniquely insightful mirror on British society in the years before and after World War I.
Cultural Context: The Edwardian Era
The “Edwardian era” designates the period in British history corresponding to the reign of King Edward VII, from 1901 to 1910. During this time, the United Kingdom was a major world power, with a strong economy and a vast empire that stretched around the globe. Galsworthy’s early works, such as The Man of Property (1906) and “The Japanese Quince” (1910), were written during this period, and he continued to carry the same sensibility through his writings into the 1920s.
Edwardian culture can be seen in part as a reaction to the long Victorian era, which came to an end with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. With the turn of a new century, the decade was marked by a sense of confidence and optimism, as well as a focus on refinement and elegance that was spurred by England’s economic prosperity. British society during this time continued to be hierarchical and class-conscious, with a strong emphasis on tradition and respectability. Although these social strictures had characterized Victorian society as well, Edwardian intellectuals were willing to critique these social and political realities more openly. Many artists of the period, including Galsworthy, adopted a naturalist style of writing that had emerged on the Continent and was current in the United States as well. One of the dominant themes of naturalism is the power of the social and natural environment to shape one’s identity and destiny. Accordingly, both Nilson and Tandram in “The Japanese Quince” are the products of Edwardian material culture.
Victorian culture had witnessed a so-called “crisis of faith” (due in part to the work of Darwin) that continued to grow in the Edwardian period and challenged the authority of organized religion. Galsworthy largely rejected formal religion and adopted in its place progressive humanistic views. Nilson’s condition in “The Japanese Quince,” which seems to be both physical and spiritual, is described as a “feeling of emptiness just above his fifth rib” (Paragraph 1). He could be described as a “hollow man”—a term that Galsworthy’s contemporary Joseph Conrad had used in Heart of Darkness to describe the spiritual vacuum experienced by many people of that era.
This transitional age, when the foundations of society were aggressively questioned, was fertile ground for the arts as a new generation began to challenge and reject the styles and attitudes of the Victorian age. In addition to Conrad, other writers contemporary with Galsworthy include E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, and George Bernard Shaw. Though writing across many different styles, these authors shared an awareness of a culture that was in transition from one century to the next. This awakening to new possibilities is reflected in the setting of “The Japanese Quince,” in which the flowering tree suggests a different—and more vital and authentic—way of living. Despite these blossoming possibilities, the main character, Nilson, remains stuck in the old world of social convention and mindless habit.
