The Old Wives' Tale
by Arnold Bennett
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
First published in 1908, this is considered one of Bennett's
finest works. His breathtaking detail and description is something to behold.
The story begins around 1840 in the Stafforshire pottery
town of Burslem, where young sisters Constance and Sophia Baines work in their
parents' draper's shop. They are initially close but contrastingly different
girls, Sophie the younger considered incorrigible by the more proper Constance.
As they grow up the girls drift, mentally and geographically, apart. Later also
set partly in Paris, the tale tracks each sister, separately, into the full
bloom of adulthood, the prime of maturity and the frailty of their dotage. It
concludes in 1905.
The book divides into four parts. The first, 'Mrs Baines',
introduces the two sisters and those around them, in their bedridden father's
combined shop-cum-house overlooking the town square. With their father ill, the
sisters' primary parent is their mother. By the end of this section, rebellious
Sophia has eloped with a travelling salesman, while obedient Constance has
married her parent's shop employee, Mr Povey.
The second part, 'Constance', follows sensible Constance
through to her grey-haired retirement, when she reunites with her long-lost
runaway sister. Her unremarkable life is defined not by adventure or
outstanding accomplishments, but by deeply personal events, such as her
husband's death, her growing worries over her son's life decisions and social
behaviour.
The third part, 'Sophia', follows passionate young Sophia
after her elopement. Deserted in Paris by her husband, she survives the odds,
becoming a successful pensione proprietor.
The fourth part, 'What Life Is', sees the two sisters
reunite. Worldly old Sophia finally returns to her Burslem childhood home,
which plain old Constance has never left.
It's mindboggling that one man could have created so much
intricate detail in these wonderful Victorian characters. How on earth did he
achieve this?
In his initial published introduction, Bennett mentioned his
debt to Guy de Maupassant's Une Vie (that same introduction
originally included a nod to W. K. [Lucy] Clifford's Aunt Anne, but
her mention is intermittently omitted from various subsequent editions and is
permanently absent by the 1983 edition). Bennett's inspiration for the actual
story was triggered by a chance encounter in a Paris restaurant, as he
recounts:
'...an old woman came into the restaurant to dine. She
was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She had a ridiculous voice, and
ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see that she lived alone, and that in the
long lapse of years she had developed the kind of peculiarity which induces
guffaws among the thoughtless.
I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This
woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these
ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities.
Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel out of
the history of a woman such as she." Every stout, ageing woman is not
grotesque — far from it! — but there is an extreme pathos in the mere fact that
every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the unique charm of youth
in her form and movements and in her mind. And the fact that the change from
the young girl to the stout ageing woman is made up of an infinite number of
infinitesimal changes, each unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos.'
Perfect in every way, I have never read anything in this
category that surpasses this in literary quality or storytelling. Why this is
not more famously celebrated I can't imagine. No major updated screen adaption
has eventuated since the 1921 film The Old Wives' Tale starring
Fay Compton, Florence Turner and Henry Victor, other than the 1988 BBC TV
series Sophia and Constance starring Alfred Burke, Lynsey
Beauchamp and Katy Behean.
I adore this oft overlooked great classic. Everyone should
read it at least once in their life.
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