Crime And Punishment In John Galsworthy's Justice

Theme Of Crime And Punishment In John Galworthy’s Justice
Introduction
John Galsworthy was born at Kingston near London on 14th August 1867. The son of a wealthy London solicitor and property owner, he was educated at Harrow and at New College, Oxford, where he studied law. He went on to Lincoln‘s Inn and in 1890 was called to the Bar. This legal training strengthened his natural tendency to judicious impartiality. For example, in Justice we note how he takes up the problem of the justness of criminal justice, in the way it is administered in the law courts of modern civilized societies . In spite of his sound legal training, Galsworthy hardly practiced law and preferred to travel round the world and gathered a rich experience of life . He

Allardyce Nicoll observes of these plays that Galsworthy possessed certain sterling qualities. He had a profound humanitarian outlook upon life and strove to the best of his abilities to adopt an objective attitude. Indeed, though his emphasis did not rest upon individuals, he had the power to give a living quality to the persons with whom he dealt. Each of his plays had a profound impact on the contemporary society. Sir Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary, was so moved with the human suffering represented in Justice that he abolished solitary confinement in prisons. This is one of the many instances how his plays exercised his strongest influence for social reforms. Nevertheless Galsworthy is essentially more an artist than a social reformer. Both John Galsworthy’s strengths and weaknesses as a dramatist derive from his commitment to the ideas and methods of realistic drama. He was neither a religious man nor a political activist, and his plays spoke for no specific ideology or orthodoxy, but he believed that “every grouping of life and character has its inherent moral; and the business of the dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to the light of day.” This meant, as he said in “Some Platitudes Concerning Drama,” “a drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of