Voyage Into the Inferno explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Possessiveness and the Sense of Property

  Soames's assertion of his 'rights' over Irene as his lawful wife, and his view of the act as sustaining the 'sanctity of marriage,' reflects his possessive attitude toward her as property.

• Gender and Power

  Soames's use of force to overcome Irene's resistance highlights the power imbalance in marriage; Irene's silent suffering and withdrawal underscore her lack of agency.

• Love vs. Marriage as a Contract

  Soames's legalistic view of marriage as a contract is contrasted with Irene's emotional and physical resistance, illustrating the conflict between love and marital duty.

Characters to notice

• Soames Forsyte

  Haunted by guilt after forcing himself on Irene; tries to suppress the memory through work and reading the news.

• Irene Forsyte

  Returns home silently after a mysterious outing in the fog; refuses to come down to dinner.

• Philip Bosinney

  Seen by George Forsyte at Charing Cross station in a state of violent emotion, muttering 'Oh, God!' and wandering through the fog.

• George Forsyte

  Follows Bosinney through the fog after seeing Irene in his train compartment; feels sympathy and eventually loses him.

• Montague Dartie

  Plays billiards with George Forsyte at the Red Pottle; George withholds the identity of the woman involved.

• Mrs. Macander

  Mentioned as having provoked Soames's jealousy by commenting on Irene's friendship with Bosinney.

Key passages

• “He was strangely haunted by the recollection of her face, from before which, to soothe her, he had tried to pull her hands—of her terrible smothered sobbing, the like of which he had never heard, and still seemed to hear; and he was still haunted by the odd, intolerable feeling of remorse and shame he had felt, as he stood looking at her by the flame of the single candle, before silently slinking away.”

  Soames cannot forget Irene's tear-streaked face and the muffled sobbing that followed his assault; he feels an unfamiliar and unbearable remorse and shame as he recalls slinking away from her in the candlelight.

  Soames's guilt and the emotional aftermath of his marital rape are central to his psychological state in this chapter.

• “He read that a Recorder had charged a grand jury on the previous day with a more than usually long list of offences. He read of three murders, five manslaughters, seven arsons, and as many as eleven rapes—a surprisingly high number—in addition to many less conspicuous crimes, to be tried during a coming Sessions; and from one piece of news he went on to another, keeping the paper well before his face. And still, inseparable from his reading, was the memory of Irene’s tear-stained face, and the sounds from her broken heart.”

  Soames tries to distract himself by reading the crime statistics in the Times, but the memory of Irene's crying and her broken heart persists, mingling with the news of rapes and other violent crimes.

  The juxtaposition of Soames's reading about rapes with his own actions underscores his attempt to normalize or rationalize his behavior.

• “He went straight up to the greatest treasure of them all, an undoubted Turner, and, carrying it to the easel, turned its face to the light. There had been a movement in Turners, but he had not been able to make up his mind to part with it. He stood for a long time, his pale, clean-shaven face poked forward above his stand-up collar, looking at the picture as though he were adding it up; a wistful expression came into his eyes; he found, perhaps, that it came to too little.”

  Soames contemplates his prized Turner painting, unable to decide whether to sell it; he stares at it as if calculating its value, but a wistful look suggests it no longer satisfies him.

  Soames's relationship with art reflects his materialism and emotional emptiness; the Turner, like Irene, is a possession that fails to bring him fulfillment.

• “Down the long avenue of his man-about-town experience, bursting, as it were, through a smirch of doubtful amours, there stalked to him a memory of his youth. A memory, poignant still, that brought the scent of hay, the gleam of moonlight, a summer magic, into the reek and blackness of this London fog—the memory of a night when in the darkest shadow of a lawn he had overheard from a woman’s lips that he was not her sole possessor.”

  George Forsyte recalls a painful youthful memory of overhearing a woman admit he was not her only lover, a moment that brings the scent of hay and moonlight into the foul London fog.

  George's memory of romantic betrayal mirrors Bosinney's anguish and adds depth to his sympathy for the man he is following.