The Fugitive

The Fugitive
By John Galsworthy
The play The Fugitive, in four acts, differs from the social dramas. It centres round anindividual. Plays that deal with purely domestic problems of a universal and permanent significance without introducing any immediate social questionsare very few. Joy, A Family Man, and The Fugitive could be included inthis group. The playis the tragic story of a beautiful woman, Clare,who leaves her husband because she does not love him anymore, and is driven to desperate suicide. Social and religious issues are involved in this family breakdown. According to Leon Schalit:This central figure is a woman; Clare, George Dedmond‘s wife unhappily married, so that involuntary recollections arise of Irene in The Forsyte Saga, Olive Cramier in The Dark Flower, Andrey Noel in The Patrician. And Clare, like those other three, is hunted. This recurrent hunting theme in Galsworthy‘s writing has already been repeatedly alluded to. It is inherent, of course, in the work of a man whose main theme is ‘The individual versus society’; the theme which gives the epic quality to his work.