The silver spoon
The Silver Spoon is a socially critical novel by John Galsworthy from 1926 and part of his trilogy A Modern Comedy .
action
Exposure
The novel is set in London in the early twenties of the twentieth century.
Michael Mont and his wife Fleur are a newlywed couple who are just about to establish themselves in the London upper class. Michael has just been elected to parliament and is busy preparing his first speech there, while Fleur has the ambition to set up a leading salon in her London house and to compete with her supposed friend Marjorie Ferrar.
Bulk
One day a scandal breaks out in Fleur's salon when her father believes that his daughter was insulted by Marjorie, whom he points out in front of everyone in the house. The plot and the character ensemble of the novel is built around this smear affair and its consequences.
As a result, more and more friends and relatives of both parties are involved in this affair, which takes on legal dimensions and begins to have a negative impact on Michael's political career, as Marjorie has influential friends. She is suing Fleur for defamation. Fleur's father, Soames, a retired attorney with assets, is making various efforts to prevent libel lawsuit and reach settlement. However, the parties cannot agree. Finally, Marjorie becomes engaged to MP MacGown, a political and personal opponent of Michael, on the one hand to be freed from her debts and on the other hand to take a socially secure position before the trial. In the process, however, her moral integrity is so shaken that, in order to prevent worse, she is forced to be compared to Fleur. She cancels her engagement to MacGown.
Enough
Fleur has now won moral victory, but is cut after the trial in society precisely because her attitude is considered "musty". Socially isolated and therefore in a marital crisis with Michael, she decides to go on a trip around the world. She leaves Michael and her two- or three-year-old son Kit behind; She is accompanied by her father, who gives up his habits and comfort for her sake.
When Michael enters the child's room after their departure, he sees Kit squirting his porridge with a silver spoon (the proverbial symbol of being born into prosperity) while the nanny calls him a "spoiled child". Michael sees in this picture a parable on England: "'England, my England', thought Michael", are the last words of the novel.
Subject
The story gives an insight into the life of the British upper class at the beginning of the twentieth century and depicts, with irony and often between the lines, their superficial and decadent life, that of the social problems of the society of the time, such as urban pollution and mass unemployment marginally takes note. Michael's lack of political principles is illustrated by the fact that, while he is preparing for his speech, he never knows which political side to take in parliament. At one point he tends towards the liberals , then towards the conservatives , then towards the Foggartists, a fictional political tendency that wants to solve the problem of mass unemployment by evacuating the working class children to the colonies. It becomes clear that his decision is ultimately irrelevant, because one way or another he will only look after the interests of his class, even if he occasionally thinks about the situation of the unemployed and tries on a small scale to help some of them. (So he causes three unemployed people, who asked him for financial help, to set up a chicken farm near his country house in the sense of a practical “foggartism”. However, the project fails due to the inadequacy of planning, the means and the people involved; one of the three commits desperate suicide). People from the lower classes only appear marginally in the novel and are portrayed ambivalent and not consistently positive.
expenditure
- The silver spoon , German first edition by Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Berlin Vienna Zurich, 1927