The title of the play is a deliberate choice of
Galsworthy who intends to make it sound ironical. In fact, the main tune of the
play deals with the crux of justice, or rather the edifice of justice that
appears majestic and awe-inspiring, but in the name of justice it crushes the
poor under its wheel. The title is an impassioned commentary on the legal
system and the prison administration in a commercial society in which hypocrisy
and false values heap injustices on the Falders and make them find peace in
death.
Falder and Ruth are two representatives of those who
are outcasts in a society only because they are poor. Neither the court of
justice nor the inhuman society comes forward to protect them from the
humiliating experiences and helplessness. Falder’s heart is large enough to
bleed for Ruth who suffers all humiliations, miseries, ignominy, and atrocities
of an unhappy life. His sympathy for her develops into passionate love and he
is prepared to do anything to help her out of the hell, promising her a new life
and a happy home away from that hell. But a poor clerk is too poor to realize
this dream. So in his desperate bid to get money he commits forgery which is an
immoral act in the eyes of the society and the custodians of law. Nobody pays
any heed to the plea that to save Ruth Falder could not but forge the cheque.
James How does not accept the plea of his son, Walter that Falder should be
given a chance. In his blind adherence to the moral values of a decadent,
oppressive society he hands Falder over to the guardians of Justice.
Ironically the judge and the jury find Falder guilty
of two offences – forgery and immoral relation with a married woman, and
sentence him to a solitary imprisonment. The society and the legal system have
little interest in human passion and sympathy for suffering; the wheel of
justice has no eyes to see the wounds it inflicts on the trapped. Nobody is interested
in knowing what led Falder to forge and why Ruth found her life with her
husband unbearable. In fact, Justice puts the judge and the jury in the dock
because they never cared to stem the rot in the system.
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The title of the play actually sneers at the law
that only too often nurtures the forces of injustice and hurls Falders down the
precipice to their death. Falder wants to save Ruth from hell, but he finds himself
in hell when he is thrown into prison. The frustrating experiences leave Falder
demoralized and desperate, and failing to clutch at the straw he loses faith in
life itself. Even in the prison cell the fate of Ruth haunts him, for he knows
that there is none to help his Ruth. But then Falder is a human. James How and
the judge do not see thing in his light. They, in their anxiety to save the
majestic edifice of law and society forget to temper their judgment with mercy,
though they are very much keen in praising the Christian piety. The consequences
of all these are extremely horrifying.
With Falder we all are prisoners in our cells and we
all suffer and share the shame of the victims, for we are all equally helpless
before the majestic institutions that hold our world to ransom. As Falder is
bewildered in his defeat, he despairs of a future, for his alienation of the
society and his nightmarish experiences make him stray even from Ruth. And it
is in that angle of this the significance of the title should be read. When he
comes out of the cell and finds himself free, he still clings to life and tries
once again to share it with Ruth. But ‘Justice’ doesn’t give him respite. So he
jumps to his death and gives law the slip, saving himself from further onslaught
of ‘justice’. Thus the circle of irony is complete.
~~~~~*~~~~~
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