I recall intensely that The Old Wives' Tale had me weeping silently into my mug of tea on more than one occasion as I followed raptly the ordinary tedious lives of two more than a little irritating women from youth to addled toothlessness, whence are we all doomed, although, one hopes, these days, with more humane dentistry and superior bridgework. Ah, humanity! Is it ever thus? Yes, thus it was, thus it is, and thus is to be. Here is a symphony of domesticity, panopticon of disappointment, spouting jugular of forgiveness; and now, this novel sits on my shelf, long untouched but never to be donated to oxfam. It glows faintly and casts a golden deliquescent shimmer on the surrounding brattier volumes.

2 sisters, 2 separate lives : "I have been through too much, I cannot stand it." Yes, we're only concerned with our paltry selves, so why do some whine, Why did this novel not mention this or that war or crisis. Why? Cos outside events never matter . In his preface Bennett notes that ordinary people are never aware of history's dramatic events.

And talented Cyril, the child of one sis : so cute, so spoiled. At 33, his "habits were industrious as ever. He seldom spoke of his plans and never of his hopes. He was unexceptionable. He imagined that industry was sufficient justification for a life."

A classic tale covering 60 years by the underrated Arnold Bennett. I refer GRs to the fine review by Cecily for dets. Bennett's decades-long novel influenced authors like the plodding (and, for me, unreadable) Edna Ferber. It will put a lump in your throat, if you have a throat.

When I was about twenty pages through this I looked at the large number of pages remaining, and thought - do I really want to spend quite a few hours of my life immersed in this minute description of the dull lives of two dull women from a dull part of England and a dull social background? Like many here on GR I hate putting down a book once I've started it, so I continued. And suddenly - like the glorious unfolding of the hyacinth blooms with which my library is liberally decorated at this time of year - this revealed itself to me as a wondrously absorbing and fascinating novel.

The truth is that no-one's life is really dull, and everyone has a story to tell, if only they can find the right story teller. Bennett's genius is not only to tell the story well, but to make us meditate on youth and age, and the change and continuity of all lives, including our own. Absorption in the detail has the effect, after a while, not of making the reader feel bogged down, but of illuminating the wider framework of this engaging and moving work. This is curiously like looking through a microscope and a telescope at the same time.

And then you die…

Two sisters, Constance and Sophia Baines, grow up in the mid-19th century in the pottery towns in the north of England. This book is the story of their lives, from young womanhood to age and death. It’s just as exciting as it sounds.

Inspired by the vision in a restaurant of an old, fat, ugly woman (three adjectives he loves in conjunction with that noun), Bennett mused that once she must have been young and attractive, and probably had dreams (that presumably didn’t include being the inspiration for a book about inevitable physical decay and the pointless futility of life). Thus when we meet Constance and Sophia they are both young and hopeful, but Constance will grow fat, both will lose their attractiveness (he magnanimously restrains himself from calling his heroines ugly) and both will grow old. They will, in fact, live life.

I found this to be one of the dullest books I’ve ever ploughed through, all 615 pages of it. However, in a sense, that’s the point. Bennett takes two rather ordinary women from a middle-class background, allows them to live through all the events, large and small, of a long life, and shows that they are fundamentally the same people at the end. Constance lives the life her parents brought her up to live while Sophia rebels, but neither ever truly sheds the standards and values their parents and community instilled in them. As the world changes, they do not, so that although they seem to start out modern and end up old-fashioned, they are in fact unchanged. Speaking from the old-fashioned end of life, I found this very credible – my values undoubtedly haven’t changed much since I was a teen, although I’ve lived through a period of perhaps even greater social change than Constance and Sophia.

As we meet them in the mid-1860s, their father owns a prestigious draper’s shop in Bursley in the Five Towns, a lightly fictionalised version of the pottery towns that are now unified as Stoke-on-Trent. It is expected that they will work in the shop until they marry respectable local men, the middle-class sons of the town. Constance is content with this, but Sophia demands to be allowed to train as a teacher, and her mother eventually gives way. But this is not a sign of feminism in Sophia, merely rebellion. Her true hopes too centre on love and marriage at this early stage in her life. Constance marries Mr Povey, the assistant who has been running the shop since Mr Baines had a stroke, and settles down to be a wife and, she hopes, a mother. Mrs Baines is somewhat disappointed since she feels Mr Povey is beneath them in class, but it turns out to be a happy marriage despite the natural ups-and-downs of life. Sophia, on the other hand, scandalises her family and the town by eloping with a commercial traveller and running off with him to Paris! (This is all in the early part of the book and signalled from the beginning, so not really spoilers.)

The book then splits into two lengthy sections, the first following Constance’s life in Bursley, and the second following Sophia’s life in Paris, with a final section bringing them back together in old age.

There is no doubt Bennett has created two authentic and well-drawn characters and he shows the various stages of life well. But Constance’s life is so incredibly dull! She and Sam marry, keep the shop, have a son, and get along well for the most part. There is one dramatic incident – a murder in the town – and this is done very well, showing the motivation and the impact of the event. But then it’s over and we go back to the routine of Constance’s life as wife, mother, and then as widow. At this point I was desperately hanging on in the hope that Sophia, the renegade, was having a wonderful time in gay Paris and that we would soon be transported there to join her.

Indeed we are, and the background events there are much more exciting than in poor old Bursley. There’s the Siege of Paris and the Commune! Unfortunately Sophia is uninterested in politics so we learn nothing about either of these events, except how to profiteer by stockpiling food prior to emergencies. (Oddly, there is no mention of her stockpiling toilet paper – an opportunity missed, surely!) Unlike Constance, Sophia temporarily experiences passion with Gerald, her commercial traveller, and again Bennett handles this well in that Victorian/Edwardian way of saying things without actually saying them. There is a scene of an execution by guillotine which is highly dramatic, and which Bennett uses to great effect to show the differences between Gerald, excited and thrilled by the hoopla surrounding the execution, and Sophia, horrified and scared, not so much at the killing as at the profound feelings it arouses in her, almost (but obviously not quite, since it’s in Victorian times) sexual in nature.

But sadly, passion is soon spent. Sophia gets herself rigidly under control and lives just as dull a life in the midst of all the French excitement as Constance is living back in England. But it does give Bennett a chance to ruminate on how English people are full of initiative, open and basically trustworthy, while French people are incompetent, childish, immoral and basically disgusting. Except for maids – maids in England are just as slatternly and untrustworthy as French people. And Frenchwomen, too, become old, fat and ugly in the end, even the courtesans, so thank goodness for that! (Gotta love the Englishman abroad, eh?)

I’m conflicted. It’s certainly well done, in that style of strict realism that seemed so popular around the start of the 20th century. But well done isn’t enough. Bennett shows in the few exciting events – the murder, the execution – that he has the ability to create drama and tension when he wants to, so the dullness of the sisters’ characters and lives is obviously a choice. Not, in my opinion, a good one. I find unremarkable people unremarkable, however well-drawn they may be.

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I just loved this book and really enjoyed the way it was read by Andy Minter.

3.5 stars

Interesting Edwardian novel by an author who has fallen into relative obscurity. Arnold Bennett was a well-known novelist in the early twentieth century, but when I came to this all I knew was that Virginia Woolf took a dim view of him, arguing in the essay “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown” that his characters lacked complexity and interior life.

This story spans the lives of two provincial sisters from adolescence to death (spoiler?). On the face of it, it seems to contradict Woolf’s view, for there is a great deal of interiority in the portrayal of sisters Constance and Sophia and their mother, Mrs. Baines. We see Mrs. Baines grapple with the ingratitude of a teenage daughter (the modern reader would likely be on the daughter’s side; she aspires to be a teacher). Strikingly, we see Constance in labour:

She wept; beaten, terrorized, smashed and riven. No commonsense now! No wise calmness now! No self-respect now! Why, not even a woman now! Nothing but a kind of animalized victim! And then the supreme endless spasm, during which she gave up the ghost and bade good-bye to her very self….
In the afternoon the doctor returned, and astounded her by saying that hers had been an ideal confinement. She was too weary to rebuke him for a senseless, blind, callous old man. But she knew what she knew. “No one will ever guess,” she thought, “no one ever can guess, what I’ve been through! Talk as you like. I KNOW, now.”

Younger sister Sophia rejects the constraints of their hometown and runs away to Paris. Bennett captures the emigrant mentality beautifully: Sophia loves and admires the French, is exasperated by them, in some way considers herself superior to them – she has that tendency of many foreigners abroad to ascribe situations, history and idiosyncrasies of character… to national characteristics.
For the reader Sophia’s storyline is something of a treat. Not for her the child’s birthday parties of Constance’s life. We are given an execution by guillotine, the siege of Paris and the Paris commune, a hot air balloon.

Even so, I tired a little of Bennett’s shoehorning meaning into his heroines’ lives. With both sisters, all the significant action of their lives takes place within ten years of their early marriages, and later years are hurried through, before we rejoin them as old women. This rang somewhat true for Constance, living in the house in which she was born, but struck me as a missed opportunity for Sophia. And why this missed opportunity? It seems designed to enforce a moral of some kind, and quite a dreary one.  On the one hand Bennett is smart enough to acknowledge that a traditional life may not be fulfilling (Constance has a somewhat unsatisfactory son who neglects her), but he insists Sophia’s is the greater tragedy (as she had no children or higher purpose; nonetheless, she builds a successful business for herself in Paris).

Overall I enjoyed reading this, and don’t quite understand why the Modernists disliked Bennett so much. He seems to take an empathetic and intelligent stab at creating his characters. They didn’t feel entirely real to me, because of the shoehorning, but this was balanced by the pleasures of reading such evocative writing of both a small English town and nineteenth century Paris.

This book is an intriguing life story sisters beginning when they are children and seeing their father run a drapery shop and continuing through their lives of love, life and struggles.

This book was a joy to read. The characters of Sophia and Constance were excellent. There lives chalk and cheese. I was not sure what to expect, and aside for some incredibly long sentences it was a great novel of the day to day lives of the two sisters.

The contrast between the two sisters is incredible. The first part describes the two sisters growing up in their fathers drapers shop. Constance is constant while Sophia has a wild streak and elopes with a traveling salesman. In contrast, Constance marries Mr Povey who works at the shop. The story covers her life at the drapers shop and the death of her husband and the spoiling of her son.

Sophia in contrast is abandoned by her husband in Paris where she goes in to establish a successful pensione. Later the two now elderly sisters are reunited. The story is a masterpiece covering 1840-1905 and the technology and political changes.

Bennett captures the poignancy of two different lives in a time of change with strong woman characters.

A momentary self-congrats: with this novel, I finished the Modern Library top 100.
Only took me about 5 years, but I did it.

This novel was a worthy finale being quite a tome, 620 pages, and since written
in the early 1900s, was worried it might be difficult.

However it was a pleasant read, the story of the Baines family, primarily
Constance and Sophia from their teens through old age and death. Starting
around 1860, you get a look at the working class districts of England,
a view of middle class life with attention to money and running a shop.

A book in which one might say 'nothing happens'. Constance lives the
conforming life, marries, runs a shop, has a son, a fairly, happy
pedantic life.

The author tells most of Constance's story, then pauses and starts all over
with the wild child Sophia, who runs off with a salesman. She ends
up making her own way in life in Paris. Various historic
events provide a backdrop, but these pass her by, like they would
most of us, as she is busy making a living, struggling along.

After many years fate takes Sophia back to her small town and Constance,
where they lovingly live together, or is it get in each others way?

One could say they have lives of little imagination, as they
are carefree money-wise, and a world is out there to explore,
but they choose to stay in the town where they were born.

This is by far one of the richest English novels of the early twentieth century, uniting in its plot the Victorian interest with material affairs and the Modernist emphasis on the inner workings of the human mind. The combination might seem paradoxical, but Bennet had achieved it with a great amount of success, and a view to show the world the futility of past literary traditions in comparison with the ever increasing importance of portraying the existential and psychological states of humanity.

The book dwells on many crucial and more or less controversial issues that had preoccupied the English intelligentsia by the turn of the century. The rigidity of gender roles is one such topic, and is distinctly discernible in the strict upbringing of Sophia and Constance Baines by their old fashioned mother. The two girls would act like little boys whenever Mrs. Baines is absent, and would at last break free from the stiff mold of the respectable maidens into which she had forced them.

This antiquated reasoning of the mother had practically contributed to the chaos that befell her family shortly afterwards. Mrs. Baines had solemnly refused to allow her youngest daughter to pursue a teaching career on the ground that such a course was against the guidelines and standards of respectability. This led ultimately to the rebellion of Sophia against such absurd conventions, and culminated, at last, in her subsequent flight with Gerald Scale, and the unhappy matrimonial experience she shared with him.

In its early chapters, the novel dwells upon the double oppression of women in the midst of a male-dominated community. For, the women who dared dream and be ambitious, at the time, did not only suffer the oppression of their male counterparts, but had also been victims of the prejudice of conventional women. Within the Baines family, the lively Sophia, by means of illustration, was even forbidden to go out on her own. Miss Chetwin is another example. As a schoolmistress and an independent woman, she was alienated from her community, and regarded by Mrs. Baines, and by many other matrons, as dangerously modern.

In this claustrophobic atmosphere, Bennet resorted to symbolism in order to convey the true state of affairs in England. Accordingly, the mid-Victorian age and all its absurdly conventional norms were likened to an old paralytic man and a dead elephant. Like the old and helpless John Baines, the regime of the era had been gradually sinking into inertia and infirmity. Even its most faithful champions, like Constance and Mrs. Baines, were drawn away from it towards pitiful spectacles like the perverse shooting of an elephant, which reflects the increasing decline of morals at the time.
The moral state of the age is further referred to by means of the comical cry of Constance's baby: "There is no God." Such a statement is in truth a reflection of the fall of religion, the rise of secularism, and the decadent mental state of a generation that sought nothing but the satisfaction of its immediate needs and basic drives.

In its treatment of social issues, the novel emphasizes the fatality of mismatched unions, and mourns the absence of divorce as a practical way out from disastrous marriages. Such unfortunate experiences include that of Daniel Povey and his alcoholic wife. For years, Daniel had done his best to keep up appearances, and shield his family from public disgrace. In the course of time, however, his marriage had ended tragically, for he had murdered his wife in a fit of anger, and was executed himself for the crime. Sophia and Gerald are another unhappy pair, and though the former had lived in financial ease for the most part of her life, she was all the same unable to build a new life with a different man.

In a philosophical reading of the novel, the progress of Sophia symbolizes the balance between pleasure and meaning. For as long as she had sought a life of pleasures with Gerald, Sophia was utterly wretched. It was only when her life had acquired meaning through the agency of work that she became contented and happy.
Constance, on the other hand, had remained faithful to the old regime, seeking meaning in her old house. As long as she felt useful within her domestic establishment, the absurdity of her position in the world was driven away from her notice.

maybe 4.5 but !! i rly enjoyed this

I consider Arnold Bennett to be the most underrated of all English novelists, and The Old Wives’ Tale to be one of the great undiscovered (or ‘underdiscovered’) masterpieces of twentieth century literature. Bennett was despised by the Bloomsbury group, particularly Virginia Woolf, who thought him conservative and vulgar; his popularity made him a figure of envy and ridicule amongst the Modernists. Obviously he’s got much more in common with Trollope, Thackeray and Dickens than he does with Joyce or Woolf herself – but he was also very much influenced by French writers, particularly Maupassant, and this is the ‘Frenchest’ of all his books, with some of the most powerful sections set in Paris. The Old Wives’ Tale is the story of two sisters, Sophia and Constance Baines, their contrasting characters and destinies, their estrangement and final reunion in old age. In the course of the book they run the whole gamut of experiences open to women of that period, and the final section is deeply moving. The prose is breathtakingly good, the characterisation powerful and the subject matter (particularly in the Paris sections) unflinching. Bennett will never be fashionable: he represents a type of prosperous, worldly-wise English gentleman, and obviously that’s just not very cool. But only a fool would dismiss him for that –and it’s worth pointing out that Bennett, unlike the pampered denizens of Bloomsbury, actually wrote to make a living.