Delightful classic. Sad ending but the story was enjoyable nevertheless.

Mi peor lectura de este año con diferencia

Un buon romanzo tipicamente vittoriano dalla prosa essenziale che, nell'intreccio, risente dell'influenza d Balzac e Turgenev, ambientato in un distretto industriale che l'autore descrive cercando di infondergli, paradossalmente, una certa bellezza. Anna è una figlia sottomessa ad un padre avaro, meschino e tirannico, una ragazza sensibile, che vive con disagio anche una difficile conversione. Sente molto la sua miserevole situazione, sebbene abbia ereditato una cospicua dote, sopratutto in contrasto con il tenore di vita della famiglia Sutton che nonostante tutto la tratta con molta simpatia ed affetto, favorendo anche la sua relazione con un giovane e intraprendente imprenditore. Suo malgrado rimane coinvolta in una tragedia della quale si sente in parte in colpa e per questo ha un moto di ribellione verso il padre e cerca in tutti i modi di aiutare il povero Price di cui si scopre alla fine innamorata. Il finale forse è un po' scarno di elementi e deduciamo a stento la triste fine di Willie mentre Anna passivamente accetta di sposare Henry...

It was ok

I don’t usually read books that are this old, so I can’t say it was an easy read since it took me a while to get used to the writing style. Once I got into it though, I quite enjoyed the simplicity of Anna’s life and I feel like I learned a lot about the lives of women in the early 1900s.

Here are some of my thoughts I jotted down whilst I was reading ‘Anna of the Five Towns’

• Like Bridgerton but more legit
• I feel like I’m living it through the writing and the story feels more realistic than I expect a Bridgerton novel would be
• It’s actually quite fascinating reading about how women lived in the early 1900s - Anna’s priorities as a woman are quite basic and sometimes quite shocking, but also very modern, e.g. her father teaches her how to become a landlord and I found that so refreshing to read about - I wonder if that was common for the times, or if Anna would have been a rare case
• It also struck me that women were basing their social worth on the quality of the bakes they took to the markets/ fayres - I’m glad women have evolved to understand the value of their worth a lot more deeply!
• At times, Anna was so fickle as to let the words/ perceived thoughts of a man/ love interest prevent her from doing things that would bring her joy - I found this infuriating
• I found Anna’s relationship with her sister very poignant, the two of them and their mother must have formed extremely strong bonds of companionship with one another whilst being left by the men to keep the house
• When Anna left for the Isle of Man it must have been extremely scary for her, on a new type of transport over a seemingly endless mass of the deepest water they had ever crossed - it must have taken so much courage to step on that boat
• The emotional and hormonal response to the parentally controlled match making perfectly punctuated Anna’s personality as a young woman, showing her spiky and less “proper” tendencies - I liked this, it gave Anna more character and it was a large contributor to my liking of her as the protagonist
• Anna and Mynors’ courting was nothing short of awkward and forced. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for both of them the whole time, for Anna was trying so hard to become a “good wife” and do what she was told to maintain the good reputation of her family, whilst Mynors knew that Anna’s heart lat elsewhere yet still pursued the match
• I welcomed the scandal at around 85% - it was almost too little too late though! A scandal was next on the list for this kind of story, so I can’t say I was surprised to be reading about Anna’s straying from the life of a “good wife-to-be” but it was entertaining and set up the ending of the story well

Overall enjoyed it
⭐️⭐️⭐️

One of my O-level (GCSE) novels which my sixteen year old self did not fully appreciate! There are long passages of description which still don’t appeal to me but the story is well told and the character development is convincing.

There was a moment about half-way through 'Anna' when I thought this was going to be a 5-star read, but I felt let down towards the end - other readers may feel the same when they reach the last couple of chapters - but I finished up thoroughly enjoying the novel for its parts rather than its whole.

In particular I liked Bennett's characterisation, his descriptions of middle-class life, his depiction of patriarchy (I wonder if it was exaggerated for dramatic effect, or whether it was truer to life than I care to believe), and his insight into what is for me a lost world of Wesleyanism.

At the heart of the novel is the romance between Anna Tellwright, the miser's daughter, and Henry Mynors, self-made pottery magnate and pillar of the Wesleyan church in Hanbridge (or was it Bursley? - I got muddled with the 'five towns'). But this is a tale that refreshingly lacks the trappings of hackneyed romance. Henry is 30, and is looking sensibly for a sensible wife. He has the manner, perhaps of a Wilcox from 'Howard's End', although he is given a rather greater emotional intelligence than that other family: practical (he takes a two foot rule with him when looking over a property to rent), a good businessman (he manufactures cheap everyday crockery, rather than 'swagger ware', because it will sell), comfortable with his respectability and readily able to book railway carriages. This does not make Henry any the less dashing a figure, nor does it make him unromantic, either as the object of affection or in himself. He is, simply, aware of the basis on which a successful marriage may best be made. To a modern reader, the shades of patriarchal presumption emerge disquietingly towards the end, and this gives, perhaps, an unresolved edge to a story that stops short of where some readers might want it to go.

Anna, by contrast, is a woman of limited experience and no knowledge of the masculine world of money. In this respect, though I wanted her to break away from the paternal yoke and evoke the spirit of the suffragettes, Bennett maintains his course in presenting her as a woman cowed by her upbringing into believing herself incapable of exercising any autonomy in the management of her money, to the extent that her not inconsiderable fortune she hands over to Henry for managing when they shall be married.

Drama is added to this otherwise rather ordinary romance by the apparent rivalry between Anna and her friend Beatrice, and by the disaster attendant on the Prices' failing manufactory exacerbated financially by miser Tellwright's 'screwing' money out of them. Episodes involving a cornet-playing revivalist, a Wesleyan children's outing, meals at the Suttons', and a holiday in the Isle of Man complement this story of a romance in a late 19th century West Midlands town. The whole piece impressed me sometimes as a literary equivalent of a Victorian narrative painting.

And Miss Dickinson is a minor character whose brief appearances nevertheless afforded me enormous pleasure.

Insight into the dire position of women, even with independent means. Depressing.

I am not sure about some parts in the novel but overall it was great. I just hope more would be put in to talk about Ana and Willie as their love seemed out of a sudden at the end. Yes, you can expect that she would love him but due to insufficient details about their relationship, you would find it odd and hasty. I do not like to feel that the author is getting bored with his novel and wants to finish it as dramatically as possible. However, I am grateful to the closure in Anna's relationship with her father and feel that it holds the weight of the novel. Mynors character's practical approach to life while at the same time appearing charming and humble is one of the component that makes this novel a masterpiece. It is funny but the fact that the only person able to tell us of Mynors's greed is actually the miser creates disillusionment to the reader rather than Anna. We battle as readers with our realization of his aspirations but that only proves to us the hypocrisy of that society and how we blind ourselves to it. It is all about the masks that we put to hide our true beliefs.
The theme of religious hypocrisy is also evident and important yet it wavers at the end and the concentration is more on Anna's alteration and life changes.

La historia me ha gustado y las situaciones que describe son normales en la época, pero se me ha hecho muy pesado las descripciones tan exhaustivas de todo, incluido el tiempo o por ejemplo lo que ve por la ventana. El padre, va de acuerdo con la época, pero es realmente una mala persona, porque le deja los marrones a la hija y tiene en cuenta lo que le puede sacar algo. Una cosa que me choca es que le deje a ella esos marrones, porque normalmente en esa época todos los negocios, fueran cual fueran, se hablaban entre hombres. Tampoco me ha gustado el tema de la religión pero básicamente porque no me ha gustado mucho las explicaciones que daban.
También me ha chocado para ese época que les dejaran solos a la pareja sobre todo en casa y que para estar comprometidos no tuviese que pedir previamente el consentimiento al padre. El final es claramente típico de la época, donde los matrimonios no eran casi nunca por amor.

As everybody knows there are just two types of people in the world, however as many suspect, there is some disagreement as to who they are. Some say the rich and the poor, others the hungry and the fed, a few with a touch of whimsy might suggest women and men, or old and young. If however you've a sense of the depth and breadth of the division between the reserved and the expansive, then you can appreciate the muted tones of this book.

This is a novel in which small things said, or not said, count for a lot. It is a novel of small, tight, gestures. Every action, every word is braced under the weight of the everyday lives of the characters. Even the geographical scope of the novel is muted from the five towns, Bennet's fictionalised version of the six towns which eventually and, reluctantly, became Stoke-on-Trent, to the Isle of Man  almost spitting distance if that geography is exotic to you. Our heroine is so locked in by the spirit of self-denial that no amount of money can ever allow her meaningful freedom from herself which is ironic given the course of the plot .

I visited the Wedgwood Factory-Museum in Stoke many a year ago and was very pleased to see the that the young woman who was doing the painted hand-finishing to the crocks was as finely and brightly dressed as the women doing the same work are described in this novel. And I particularly like the offhand manner in which the end of a character is wrapped up appropriately for a book in which the characters are over shadowed by the power of money.

This is a proper hard novel. Compromises are the best a character can hope for, happiness is not to be achieved in the five towns, leastwise not by the characters we are shown, though as the author's life demonstrated - sometimes it is possible to leave.

Read this on recommendation of Sheila Hancock on tv programme exploring the Trent through Stafford with Gyles Brandreth. Such a sad book and a reminder that the 'good old day's were not that good particularly for woman who did not conform to religion and males around them. On the other hand things have not changed - the drive to be upwardly mobile, the love of money and status, the malicious/fatuous gossip passing as quickly amongst town folk as social media today. The impact of industrialisation and associated technology on the characters lives has parallels today, changing relationships and status. Loved Bennett's use of adjectives, some of which I had to look up in dictionary as not in current usage. The psychology of the characters in the five towns was captured to great and moving effect. I don't know the Potteries and it has inspired me to want to visit.

With the completion of Anna of the Five Towns, I have now read at least one book by all of the three Edwardians, as Virginia Woolf called them. The term refers to three writers of the early twentieth century who were very popular then, but not so much now – Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy and H G Wells (while the early sci-fi of Wells continues to be much loved, his social novels have fared less well).

Woolf used the term in a pejorative sense. The Edwardian period had already ended, and she felt that the writers were old-fashioned. Compared to the complex and character-based Modernist novels, the works of the Edwardians were, in Woolf’s judgement represented an "age when character disappeared or was mysteriously engulfed".

I studied a course on early twentieth-century English Literature which essentially endorsed the idea that the Modernists were the great novelists of the period, and the Edwardians were not worthy of a lecture or seminar. As a result, I did not read Galsworthy or Bennett for over 30 years (I had already tried some of Wells’ social novels).

Now that I have tried them, what is the verdict? Were the modernists fair to the Edwardians? Are academics correct in dismissing them as minor writers?

One of the temptations is to dismiss the Edwardians as being part of the ‘establishment’ in contrast to the innovative Modernists. This is not without a grain of truth in it. Galsworthy and Bennett in particular were writing in a manner that recalled Victorian literature, and made few concessions to modern trends.

Still were the modernists really such outsiders? In some ways, yes. Joyce and Lawrence came from humbler backgrounds. Woolf was a feminist, a bisexual, and a woman suffering from appalling mental health problems that would eventually end her life.

Still in some ways the modernists represented the elite, developing a new and less accessible manner of writing at precisely the point when working class people had learned to read. T S Eliot looked back to a golden age that never was, and Woolf was a snob.

Part of the dismissal of Bennett, Galsworthy and Wells was on this ground. Bennett wrote about proletarian issues such as running a factory. His sympathy lay with poor people and not with the powerful. As Woolf put it, he had “a shopkeeper's view of literature".

Galsworthy, though a member of a privileged middle class, rebelled against his upbringing by becoming a writer and giving away half his wealth to good causes. All the thanks he got from Woolf was her relief when the ‘stuffed shirt’ died. As for H G Wells, he was a socialist.

The subject matter of the Edwardians was certainly more subversive than that of the Modernists. You will find nothing in the works of Woolf, Joyce or Eliot that challenges the establishment. Lawrence is the honourable exception here.

By contrast all of the Edwardians are concerned with social justice. All of them portray a complacent middle class whom they despise. All show compassion for working people, and all have some limited sympathy with the rights of women.

Still what of characterisation? Did characters disappear as Woolf suggested? Is it true that the writers "ignored the complex internal life of characters" and portrayed "an orderly existence populated with characters typical of their social station, but little else” as Woolf said?

I think to some extent we are talking about two different literary philosophies of character. For Woolf, character was enigmatic and oblique. Humans were the sum of their stream of conscious thoughts, a series of subjective impressions rather than something solid and enduring.

By contrast the Edwardian characters were built of bricks – they belonged to their social class and status. They had firm opinions and personality traits. It is not true that the internal life of the characters is neglected. We often hear their thoughts. It is only that they are not expressed in a Modernist manner.

In one sense both views of character are literary constructs not concerned with reality. Hence the Edwardians and the Modernists are both right and both wrong in their view of character. Dare I say it, perhaps Woolf liked to dismiss the social station of her characters as a way of avoiding confronting the political realities of the class system.

Nonetheless the Modernists have won the battle for respect in literary circles, and in spite of my reservations I have to agree with that view. The best Modernist writers are artists, whereas the Edwardians are craftsmen, still building fiction up out of the accretion of background detail.

When Modernism came to an end, fictional characters could return to a simpler form, but the writers of the next age were freed from the need to provide pages and pages concerning the characters’ histories, and could simply tell the stories. Bennett, Galsworthy and Wells were still tied to this dated model.

So much background and nothing about Anne of the Five Towns, the book in question. Bennett’s story is based in Staffordshire, and concerns the oldest daughter of a miserly businessman, Ephraim Tellwright.

As with the Forsytes in Galsworthy’s most famous trilogy of books, the name here is ironic. This is not a man who tells anything right. Ephraim is blind to the world around, and exists in self-imposed misery, which he then inflicts on his two daughters, Anna and Agnes.

Anna lives under her father’s tyranny and penny-pinching. Life is ordered to the smallest degree. Meals must be on the table at a particular time.

Even the news that she has inherited a fair sum of money does not liberate Anna. Cowed by years of domination from her father, she does not feel free to spend any of it, and lives as poorly as ever. Anna hands over all her bank books to her father.

For good measure, Ephraim enters into a deal with up-and-coming businessman Henry Mynors, who is starting a new profitable enterprise. This means that all of Anna’s new-found wealth is tied up in supporting that business.

Henry clearly shows an interest in Anna – I cannot call it a romantic interest. As Ephraim cruelly tells her at a late point in the novel, Henry’s main interest in her is for her money. Nonetheless the spiritless Anna will clearly enter into marriage with Mynors at some point, and all her money will pass from her father’s control to her husband’s control without her ever having power over it.

One side-effect of Anna’s new fortune is that her father now expects her to pressure the family’s debtors. Titus and Willie Price run an earthenware manufactory, and pay rent to the Tellwrights. However Titus is always short of money and behind on his rent.

This arrangement suits Ephraim, as he does not need to spend money on the Prices’ property since they have not paid his rent fully. However he forces Anna to squeeze and squeeze Titus for more of the money that he owes them.

Anna is better at this than we might expect, but Bennett clearly wishes us to see what an unethical business it is to be gouging struggling workers of their money. Technically the creditors are in the right because they are owed money. Nonetheless it is an ugly business pressuring desperate people for money that the Tellwrights could live without.

The reader will sense quite early on that this will end badly. It does lead to Anna’s one act of rebellion against her father. However this is hardly Washington Square (the Henry James novel) where the heroine will find more freedom by defying the people who crushed her soul, albeit at a great cost.

No, Anna cannot directly confront her father, and must perform her deed in an underhand way so that her father is presented with a fait accompli. This is done for the benefit of Willie Price, a man who would be a better husband for Anna, but not a man she can marry because she has made her promise to the grasping Mynors, and has not enough initiative to rescind it.

Bennett tells the story with great poignancy. He clearly feels compassion for the fate of his heroine who will be sacrificed to patriarchy and middle-class respectability, her own needs never met. She will be under the influence of her father, whose mercenary methods kill a man, and her husband who takes pride in mass-producing cheap products for the masses.

Nonetheless I imagine most modern readers will find Anna exasperating. We wait in vain for her rebellion. Instead she is passive to the end, and simply does what she is told. This may be understandable given her upbringing, but it will not endear her to anyone.

It does not help that Bennett is always using unflattering expressions in relation to her: “She had contrived only to make herself ridiculous; “ignorant”; “she said, pleasantly, with a determination to be meek and dutiful”; “she said foolishly”; “Anna lamely replied”; “she murmured stupidly”; “she said foolishly”.

How can any heroine gain the respect of the reader when the author himself constantly shows such contempt for her judgement? There may be good reasons why Anna is a goose, but her lack of spirit and intelligence is emphasised a little too often.

Overall though Bennett, like Galsworthy, is a better writer than I imagined. Anna of the Five Towns may not be a great work of literature, but it is an interesting social document of its time. The story has pathos and meaning, and it deserves to be remembered and read for many years to come.