Anna of the Five Towns

The Five Towns #2

by Arnold Bennett

1902. Anna of the Five Towns depicts the severe economic and moral pressures of life in the Staffordshire Potteries in the late nineteenth century. Against the vitality and harshness of the Five Towns, Bennett's narrative is a compelling delineation of his heroine's attempts to gain freedom and independence from her father and the repressive regime of Methodism. This is the first of Bennett's novels to mark out the province of the Five Towns where much of his later fiction is set.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Historical Fiction, British Literature, 20th Century, Novels, Literature

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1902

About the author

Enoch Arnold Bennett was an English author, best known as a novelist, who wrote prolifically. Between the 1890s and the 1930s he completed 34 novels, seven volumes of short stories, 13 plays (some in collaboration with other writers), and a daily journal totalling more than a million words. He wrote articles and stories for more than 100 newspapers and periodicals, worked in and briefly ran the Ministry of Information during the First World War, and wrote for the cinema in the 1920s. Sales of his books were substantial, and he was the most financially successful British author of his day.
Born into a modest but upwardly mobile family in Hanley, in the Staffordshire Potteries, Bennett was intended by his father, a solicitor, to follow him into the legal profession. Bennett worked for his father before moving to another law firm in London as a clerk at the age of 21. He became assistant editor and then editor of a women's magazine before becoming a full-time author in 1900. Always a devotee of French culture in general and French literature in particular, he moved to Paris in 1903; there the relaxed milieu helped him overcome his intense shyness, particularly with women. He spent ten years in France, marrying a Frenchwoman in 1907. In 1912 he moved back to England. He and his wife separated in 1921, and he spent the last years of his life with a new partner, an English actress. He died in 1931 of typhoid fever, having unwisely drunk tap-water in France.
Many of Bennett's novels and short stories are set in a fictionalised version of the Staffordshire Potteries, which he called The Five Towns. He strongly believed that literature should be accessible to ordinary people and he deplored literary cliques and élites. His books appealed to a wide public and sold in large numbers. For this reason, and for his adherence to realism, writers and supporters of the modernist school, notably Virginia Woolf, belittled him, and his fiction became neglected after his death. During his lifetime his journalistic "self-help" books sold in substantial numbers, and he was also a playwright; he did less well in the theatre than with novels but achieved two considerable successes with Milestones (1912) and The Great Adventure (1913).
Studies by Margaret Drabble (1974), John Carey (1992), and others have led to a re-evaluation of Bennett's work. The finest of his novels, including Anna of the Five Towns (1902), The Old Wives' Tale (1908), Clayhanger (1910) and Riceyman Steps (1923), are now widely recognised as major works.

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It had everything, men, moods and money and maybe murder, very melodramatic. What more do you want in a Victorian potboiler? It would make a wonderful Hollywood movie Plenty of opportunity for some thin, big-eyed, dark-haired beauty to lean out of a window and emote, panting fetchingly as her bosom heaves up and down and her eyes fill with glycerine tears.

This isn't a plot-based novel, but one that is full of detail and seems to be a realistic depiction of life for a young woman hemmed in by church, her tyrannical father, and what society expected from a young woman of means which allowed her very little freedom to follow her own path to happiness.

This isn't the upper class of Virginia Woolf and their despising of people "in trade", this is the Victorian England of the middle class where the Protestant ethic of hard work is key to the exploitation of the lower classes in the pursuit of money. The financial industry, banks and investment opportunities are now all respectable and no longer need to be thought of with disgust by Christians, who had previously banned it for themselves but allowed Jews to do it and called them, "money lenders".

If it was filmed, it wouldn't be able to be true to life because if there any two English accents many people find hard to understand, it is the Black Country first and Potteries second (Geordie third), and this is the Potteries. I'm British myself, so I don't know what an international audience would make of them.

It would be a good film though, a blend of drama, romance and how the middle classes lived and worked in a manufacturing Northern town where the factories belched out smoke covering everything with a veil of grime. The only relief being Church on Sunday, where the sermons preached holy misogyny and kept workers in their places, praising those who wore the fancy clothes that the exploitation of the labourers afforded them.

Totally rewritten 4 March 2018 after seeing the book on my shelves and remembering how much I liked it. I have over 2,000 books in my home so it can be years before I notice a particular title.

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

A plot summary would make this short, but perfectly formed novel sound parochial, unoriginal and maybe dull. It is not. Bennett is a wonderful observer and writer of the small-scale aspects that make life real and characters spring to life. He's also pretty good at writing female characters. In fact, by far the weakest character is male: the faultless Henry Mynors.

In many ways, my life is utterly different from Anna's, but in some key ways, I can identify with her more than I might wish to.

This book is rather like a factory Anna visits: "No stage of the manufacture was incredible by itself, but the result was incredible."

This isn't one of his lightly humorous books (The Grand Babylon Hotel and The Card).

Instead, it features a profoundly nasty man, who never lays a finger on anyone or commits any crime.

Setting and Plot

It's as simple as it says on the back of the book: it's set in the English potteries district, in the early 20th century. Anna Tellwright is about to come of age, and lives with her wealthy, miserly, twice-widowed father (Ephraim) and young half sister (Agnes) in a Methodist-dominated town. Ephraim "existed within himself, unrevealed" even to Anna.

Anna is dutiful, naive, lonely: "the peculiarity of her position... awe and pity were equally mingled" and unfamiliarity with social situations mean she is not "a facile talker".

She inherits money, is taken under the wing of the Suttons, is courted by up-and-coming Henry Mynors, still cares about the fate of the less fortunate (Titus Price and his adult son, Willie), and is very unsure of herself. When invited to a sewing party, she is baffled by the etiquette: "Should she arrive early, in which case she would have to talk more, or late, in which case there would be the ordeal of entering a crowded room?" Who of us has not felt a similar dilemma, even with more experience?

However, she is not mistress of her own destiny, and that is where the tension springs from.

What is love?

Anna's stirrings of love, her excitement and uncertainty ring very true: "the man whose arm she could have touched... She had felt happy and perturbed in being so near him... already she knew his face by heart."

She is afraid and excited, and everything looks different, "She saw how miserably narrow, tepid and trickling the stream of her life had been.. Now it gushed forth warm, impetuous and full." She is even tempted to neglect her duty to her family (only in trivial ways).

Henry calms many of her fears: he's wonderful with Agnes, and even with her father - teasing the former, and braving the latter (even daring to ask for more beef).

However, just when she should be happiest, she feels "no ineffable rapture, not ecstatic bliss." Despite her yearnings, Anna lacks passion, whether for a man or for God (see the Revival section, below). She tries to live as if she has it for both, hoping it will become true.

I also questioned Henry's love for Anna: he seems too perfect and, given his strong religious faith, oddly unperturbed by her lack of conviction (though her dedication is admirable).

Anna's love of her sister is unquestioned and unquestioning, but her feelings about her manipulative father are more complex: "The worst tyrannies of her father never dulled the sense of her duty to him."

Money

Ephraim Tellwright is a former Methodist preacher, but he's a very un-Christian emotional bully. The love of money is perhaps the root of his evil. He is a canny investor, a harsh landlord, and spends almost nothing, so his wealth has accumulated, and he's very proud of how well he's managed Anna's inheritance before she came of age.

He is shrewd and crafty. He simultaneously minimises his donation to the Sunday school and entraps his indebted tenant by promising to match the tenant's donation. He will also "promise repairs [only] in change for payment of arrears which he knew would never be paid". When he hands Anna's inheritance over, he really does no such thing. He makes her pay cheques in, forces her to write letters against her will, and ensures she daren't ask for a penny for herself. When she wants her cheque book, so she can buy a few clothes to go on holiday with the Suttons, he refuses.

Anna's own attitude to money is very different: she makes all her own clothes, has no servant or carriage, and uses nothing on her hair. "The arrival of money out of space, unearned, unasked, was a disturbing experience." "She wanted to test the actuality of this apparent dream by handling a coin and causing it to vanish over counters." The trouble is, she's now too rich to ask her father for any of his money, but she can't use her own, as he's tied her into a business agreement with someone. On holiday with the Suttons, she is startled by their "amazing habit of always buying the best of everything."

Ephraim

It's not only money that makes him mean. Anna and Agnes live in fear of his temper. His "terrible displeasure permeated the whole room like an ether, invisible but carrying vibrations to the heart." The mindset behing his bullying misogyny are chillingly exposed: "The women of the household were the natural victims of their master" who had "certain rights over the self-respect, the happiness, the peace of the defenceless souls set under him." When she is engaged, he claims her suitor is only after her money.

Revival

Anna has been raised a Methodist and teaches in Sunday School, but feels like an outsider as she's never had a conversion experience. Guilt is not just a prerogative of Roman Catholics.

There is excitement at the prospect of a campaign, featuring a famous preacher with an "ineffably wicked" past: "the faint rumour of that dead wickedness clung to his name like a piquant odour".

In preparation, Anna visits the families of Sunday School children and "found joy in the uncongenial and ill-performed task", both as a penance and because Henry asked her to do it.

In the service, he "had two audiences: God and the congregation". The mesmerising techniques, Biblical exhortations, emotional pressure, guilt, and concern are carefully described: I didn't quite believe (in) him, but wasn't certain that he was a charlatan either: "he had an extraordinary histrionic gift and he used it with imagination".

Poor Anna "was in despair at her own predicament and the sense of sin was not more strong than the sense of being confused and publicly shamed... She heaped up all the wickedness of a lifetime... and found horrid pleasure in the exaggeration... She had never doubted... Jesus died on the cross to save her soul... What then was lacking?" She is tormented by whether to go forward as a penitent, and more, by the knowledge she can't.

When she most needs faith, it fails her. She can't turn to Henry, because he is too pure

I have been Anna. I know all those services, techniques and
feelings. I am now free (despite a painful glimpse back, via this book), and I wanted her to be too.

Consequences

The key part of the plot is a factory, now owned by Anna, that is rented by Titus Price, a feckless man, deep in debt, with a sweet but ineffectual son, Willie.

Ephraim is keen for Anna to keep squeezing them for the rent arrears - a task Anna is not comfortable with. Worse still, Ephraim adds further pressure and threats behind her back. When Titus commits suicide, Anna blames her father and herself - even though the inquest finds other factors, such as embezzling church money. From this, everything in Anna's life is jeopardised.

Ending

Gasp! I didn't expect or want a clichéd happy ending or a shockingly tragic one, but I wasn't expecting this, and I'm not sure how I'd describe it (a bit of both?), so I won't!

Anna believes "A woman's life is always a renunciation" (not necessarily of what the reader expects). I don't think Arnold Bennett believes it should be, though. He was a man ahead of his time.

Period Surprises

The men (some shirtless) working alongside women in the pottery works was a surprise. More surprising still, was good Christians deliberately providing opportunity for a couple (not even engaged) to spend time alone together. Mind you, she did wear a "skirt which showed three inches of ankle"!

Maybe my history is at fault, though; this was published in 1902, so it just sneaks into the Edwardian, rather than Victorian category.


Quotes - Scenery and Atmosphere

Most of Bennett's books are set in the area he knew well. He portrays small town politics, industry, rivalries, and even makes factories seem beautiful.

"Burning ironstone glowed with all the strange colours of decadence... unique pyrotechnics of labour atoning for its grime... enchanted air... a romantic scene"!

The towns are "forbidding of aspect - sombre, hard-featured, uncouth; and the vaporous poison of their ovens and chimneys had soiled and shrivelled the surrounding country" to a "gaunt and ludicrous travesty of rural charms". This then segues into something rather different: "embrace the whole smoke-girt amphitheatre... this disfigurement is merely an episode in the unending warfare of man and nature and calls for no contrition... Nature is repaid for some of her notorious cruelties."

Factories can be cruel, though. The women paintresses, a few "die of lead poisoning - a fact which adds pathos to their frivolous charm. One paints nothing but circles, the "summit of monotony... stupendous phenomenon of absolute sameness."

Of those visiting a new park, "people going up to criticize and enjoy this latest outcome of municipal enterprise... housewives whose pale faces, as of prisoners free only for a while, showed a naive and timorous pleasure in this unusual diversion; young women made glorious by richly coloured stuffs and carrying themselves with the defiant independence of good wages... a small well-dressed group whose studious repudiation of the crowd betrayed a conscious eminence of rank."

Other Quotes

* Leaving Sunday School, the teachers "gradually dropping the pedagogic pose, and happy in the virtual sensation of a duty accomplished."

* An ageing and charitable woman's "bodily frame long ago proved inadequate to the ceaseless demands of a spirit of indefatigably altruistic, and her continuance in activity was notable illustration of the dominion of mind over matter."

* A young woman of 20 "had the lenient curves of absolute maturity."

* A man of 30 had "the elasticity of youth with the firm wisdom of age."

* A spinster "was lovable, but had never been loved... found compensation for the rigour of destiny in gossip, as innocent as indiscreet."

* "It seemed a face for the cloister... resigned and spiritual melancholy peculiar to women who through the error of destiny have been born into a wrong environment."

* "unconsciously-acquired arrogance of one who had always been accustomed to deference."

* "the quiet enchantment of reverie. Her mind... ranged voluptuously free."

* An old dresser: "Seventy years of continuous polishing by a dynasty of priestesses of cleanliness" looked "as though it had never been new."

* "The double happiness of present and anticipated pleasure."

* Bad news spreads: "All knew of the calamity, and had received from it a new interest in life."

Old fashioned spellings:
connexion
manikin
to-day

[Jan-Maat]

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.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do I explain why this is so very good? I do not want to wreck the story for you, and thus not too much should be revealed!

This book is good at the beginning, but it gets better and better as you go. At the start, I made guesses about where the story was leading. Some of my guesses proved to be wrong!

Bleak and grim are the appropriate adjectives to be used when describing this book. This may not suit all readers; this is meant as a word of warning. The writing is so effective, so atmospheric and builds with such force that I do not mind the gloom and the imminent feel of tragedy. What is described feels real and honest and “this-is-how-it-would-be”, so for me, perfectly right!

Is it contemporary writing? No, absolutely not.

One must pay attention to every word. Each word is there for a reason; every word counts. Arnold Bennett’s writing is unsentimental. This makes what happens bearable. I like the sparsity of the prose. This forces you to pay attention and makes you think.

The setting of the tale is the late 1800s, middle England, Staffordshire. The towns spoken of in the title go by aliases in the novel. They are in reality Turnstall , Hanley, Burslem, Stoke, Fenton and Longton. You will exclaim—but that is six! Bennett eliminated Fenton because he felt the title sounded better with the word five rather than six. In this way Fenton has come to be known as “the forgotten town”. Anna, of the title, is of Bursley, the alias of Burslem. It is a pottery town.

The book wonderfully describes the town “potteries”, the area, the era, the people and the pervading social climate. How people, women and men and individuals of different social standing, were expected to behave is made clearly evident.

Should one read this story for plot or for character portrayal? For both or for either. Each character is well drawn. This makes you need to know what will happen to them, making plot equally important!

The eponymous Anna is the central character. Her mother is dead. She runs the household for her miserly father, and has a younger sister named Agnes to whom she is as a mother. Anna is of the marrying age and has inherited money from a grandfather. The problem is she does not know a thing about money. She has been taught to obey, to follow instructions, to do as told and certainly not to think. Her father is as much a central character as she is. If you want to read a book having a character on which to vent your anger, read this book. I immensely detested this man. For this reason alone, I rooted for Anna. There is an assortment of other characters, some kind, some pitiable, some a mix of good and bad attributes often circumscribed by their situation. A good spread of characters, giving a realistic picture of townsfolk in the time and geographical area depicted.

I thought a lot about Anna’s inability to feel the sentiments of love and passion. I view this an important element of the story. Why is she this way? Why did she feel as she did about her suitor? Why was she drawn to both him and then Willie? Isn’t it understandable that she should first feel motherly love and that only later could this be transformed into passion toward a mate? Was she even able to recognize love growing up alongside her father? So yes, character portrayal is an essential part of the story.

Caring for the characters as I did, I needed to also know what would happen to them and how the story would end.

The ending. As stated before, you must pay attention. If you do not, you will miss what has happened. Don’t read the next spoiler if you plan on reading the book! Anna’s love for Willie is transformed by a look, by one brief moment of eye-to-eye contact. Also, in one sentence right at the end, readers are told that Willie is found dead at the bottom of an abandoned pit shaft, implying he committed suicide. Of this Anna remains incognizant. I listened/reread the end several times. Much happens as one approaches the end. The ending is not confusing, but it pushes you stop and think. Is it necessary to reevaluate the conclusions one should draw? Not all is spelled out. I love such endings.

The villagers speak in a brogue that was at times difficult for me to comprehend. I always wanted to understand, so I always listened again. The words are made more difficult by the over-dramatization by the audiobook’s narrator. I hesitate to recommend the audiobook narrated by Peter Joyce. I am fine with enhancing a book’s ambiance through authentically replicating spoken brogue, but only if every word can be clearly deciphered. I often went back and listened several times. A good narration should not demand this. Furthermore, Joyce exaggerates the intonations of the wicked and mean and even some of the elderly, making them sound like witches. Children are not properly intoned either. Only those who want an audiobook read with lots of dramatization could possibly like this narration. In a generous mood, I am willing to give the narration at the most two stars.

I will be reading more by Arnold Bennett. In his youth he lived in the area described here. This shows. My next book by the author will be The Old Wives' Tale.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first experience with Arnold Bennett’s fiction; I’d previously read his Literary Taste. (He is not to be confused, as I’ve done in the past, with novelist and playwright Alan Bennett (An Uncommon Reader, etc.)!) Bennett (1867–1931) was from the Potteries region of Staffordshire and moved to London in his early twenties to work in a law office. Anna of the Five Towns (1902) was his second novel and first moderate success, but it was The Old Wives’ Tale (1908) and the Clayhanger trilogy (1910–16) that truly made his name.

Bennett was a contemporary of D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce and Thomas Hardy (though Hardy had given up on novels by that point), and Anna reminds me of each of these authors to an extent – but particularly of Lawrence, what with his working-class Midlands roots. I also frequently thought of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (religious angst) and Far from the Madding Crowd (a heroine who faces romantic entanglements and financial responsibility for the first time).

Twenty-year-old Anna Tellwright is a Methodist Sunday school teacher and lives with her twelve-year-old sister, Agnes, and their ill-tempered father, Ephraim, in “Bursley” (Bennett’s name for Burslem, now part of Stoke-on-Trent). The family is well off thanks to Ephraim’s canny property investments and inheritances he and his late wife received. Yet Anna is still dumbfounded to learn, on her twenty-first birthday, that she’s worth £50,000. Ephraim, generally referred to as “the miser” – there’s no nuance here; he’s typecast and never rises above the label – is happy to turn over certain aspects of the business to Anna, like hounding their tenants the Prices for late rent, but doesn’t give her autonomy over her daily spending. She must meekly approach her father each time she wants to purchase something for herself.

Anna has a suitor, Henry Mynors, whose business Ephraim supports as a sleeping partner. She loves the idea of being loved – and the suspicion that she has unwittingly wrenched a desirable prospect away from pretty Beatrice Sutton. But she doesn’t seem to be truly in love with Henry, just like her heart isn’t fully committed to the local revival put on by the Methodists. After all, she hasn’t had the emotional conversion experience that would prove irrefutably that she is saved. Much as she beats herself up over her so-called sins, the desired transformation never arrives. Instead, the closest thing she has to an epiphany comes when she’s standing atop a hill on the Isle of Man on her first-ever holiday:

She perceived that the monotony, the austerity, the melancholy of her existence had been sweet and beautiful of its kind, and she recalled, with a sort of rapture, hours of companionship with the beloved Agnes, when her father was equable and pacific. Nothing was ugly nor mean. Beauty was everywhere, in everything.

The Prices take on unforeseen significance in the novel, and in her dealings with them Anna is caught between a wish to be Christlike in her compassion and the drive to act as the shrewd businesswoman her father expects. Though she is eventually able to wrest back something like financial independence, she remains bound by the social convention of marrying well.

Anna is more timid and introspective than your average heroine; I felt great sympathy for her not in spite of but because of those character traits. I recently took the Myers-Briggs test for the first time, and wondered if Anna could be an ISTJ like me – she dreads having to visit her pupils’ homes and make small talk with the parents, comes across as curt when nervous, and can’t seem to turn her brain off and just feel instead.

There’s a lack of subtlety to Bennett’s writing, something I particularly noted in the physical descriptions (“She was tall, but not unusually so, and sturdily built up. Her figure, though the bust was a little flat, had the lenient curves of absolute maturity”) and some heavy-handed foreshadowing (“It was on the very night after this eager announcement that the approaching tragedy came one step nearer”). But I can let him off considering that this was published 115 years ago. It’s an excellent example of regional literature (can you think of another book set in Staffordshire?), with Anna’s visit to Henry’s pottery works a particular highlight. Bennett takes an unpromising setting and rather humble people and becomes their bard:

Nothing could be more prosaic than the huddled, red-brown streets; nothing more seemingly remote from romance. Yet be it said that romance is even here—

Several miles away, the blast-furnaces of Cauldron Bar Ironworks shot up vast wreaths of yellow flame with canopies of tinted smoke. Still more distant were a thousand other lights crowning chimney and kiln, and nearer, on the waste lands west of Bleakridge, long fields of burning ironstone glowed with all the strange colours of decadence. The entire landscape was illuminated and transformed by these unique pyrotechnics of labour atoning for its grime, and dull, weird sounds, as of the breathings and sighings of gigantic nocturnal creatures, filled the enchanted air.

The tea, made specially magnificent in honour of the betrothal, was such a meal as could only have been compassed in Staffordshire or Yorkshire—a high tea of the last richness and excellence, exquisitely gracious to the palate, but ruthless in its demands on the stomach. At one end of the table … was a fowl which had been boiled for four hours; at the other, a hot pork-pie, islanded in liquor, which might have satisfied a regiment. Between these two dishes were … hot pikelets, hot crumpets, hot toast, sardines with tomatoes, raisin-bread, currant-bread, seed-cake, lettuce, home-made marmalade and home-made jams. The repast occupied over an hour, and even then not a quarter of the food was consumed.

I enjoyed this for the pacey plot, the religious theme, the sympathetic protagonist, and the loving look at an industrial area. I’ll certainly be looking out for copies of Bennett’s other novels in secondhand bookshops; meanwhile, Project Gutenberg also has a good selection of his writings.

Originally published with images on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Sergio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pubblicato nel 1902, “Anna delle Cinque Città” è un romanzo di Arnold Bennett [1867-1931] che ha come protagonista Anna Tellwright, figlia di Efraim un vedovo, intraprendente affarista senza scrupoli, genitore severo incapace di provare sentimenti d’amore verso le sue due figlie, Anna la maggiore e Agnese ancora in età scolare.

La vita di Anna, che fino allora si è svolta essenzialmente tra le mura domestiche, dove il pugno di ferro del padre fa sentire quotidianamente la sua avarizia con la scelta di una vita ritirata, parca, essenziale, subisce una svolta quando Efraim Tellwright, suo malgrado, è costretto, al compimento dei 21 anni di lei, a svelarle di essere destinataria di una piccola eredità lasciatale dalla madre morta subito dopo il suo parto e abilmente aumentata da lui fino a renderla davvero cospicua, contando di continuare ad esserne lui il gestore oculato dietro le quinte.

Da questo momento, l’entrata in società di Anna, grazie all’altolocata famiglia Sutton che l’ha presa a benvolere e a Enrico Mynors, un giovanotto che si sta distinguendo per le sue capacità imprenditoriali e che prova discrete attenzioni verso di lei, porteranno a una migliore visione della vita e della società da parte della giovane donna e l'inevitabile conflitto tra la sua bontà e generosità e l’intransigente, inappellabile avarizia e cattiveria del padre Efraim.

Romanzo forse poco noto ormai eppure un’opera meritevole di lettura che ancora oggi manifesta molti pregi nella scrittura e nel racconto non limitandosi a narrare l’emancipazione personale della protagonista e il suo coinvolgimento nella società che le permettono di usare le sue doti umane di pietà e solidarietà ma presentando un interessante racconto delle difficoltà per chi all’epoca cercava di resistere in ogni modo agli inaspettati cambi della fortuna e degli affari.

[Dolors · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this novel because, as I heard somewhere, it raised the ordinary to extraordinary.
And that's exactly what makes this a thrilling novel. Nothing exceptional goes on, just what life for a young woman in an industrial village at the end of the XIX century might have been like. Unadorned and real.

Anna is an ordinary girl, who leads a simple existence with her tyrannical father and her younger half sister. She performs her duties without complaint, without any fuss or expectations. She is humble and austere and shy and not sure of what religion or love means, even though society imposes them on her.
When she turns 21, her oppressive father announces that she 's come into a great inheritance left to her from her deceased mother which makes her a wealthy and eligible woman. But that doesn't change anything, she is still depending on her miserly father.
Although Anna consents into everything imposed to her, she kind of starts making her own decisions to thread her future. While receiving constant attention from Henry Mynors, a young promising businessman, who wants to marry her, she can't help thinking of poor and humble Willie Prince, one of her tenants who is in deep debt. Her first own decision might change life as she had known it.

The end of the story left me breathless, so many emotions in such a few lines, without great passion, only with open sincerity, only with the pouring hearts of two people who are destined not to be together, and their cold acceptance to take life as it is. Hard, unfair and sad.

Great first experience of Bennett's writing. I'll read more by him definitely!

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

On this occasion, judging a book by its cover worked out very well for me. My eye was initially caught by the title – I still have a childish fondness for characters with my name. Then the arresting self-portrait by Gwen John on the cover convinced me to buy it for 50p from a charity shop. I’d maybe half-heard of the title ‘Anna of the Five Towns’, without having any specific preconceptions. In form and content it reminded me of The Rector's Daughter and The Post-Office Girl, both sensitive and beautifully written portraits of young women constrained by circumstance. The titular Anna acts as housekeeper for her wealthy miser of a father and her younger sister. Like The Rector's Daughter, ‘Anna of Five Towns’ has a relatively sparse plot, as it concentrates on Anna’s inner life. I found her a sympathetic and involving protagonist as she deals with her domineering father, her faith, and a suitor. Her calm, caution, and competence are admirable.

Bennett is clearly a writer of skill and the rural Victorian (possibly early Edwardian?) setting is shown in exquisite detail. There’s an extended scene in which Anna tours a pottery works and sees the step by step process of clay becoming a new dinner plate which especially stood out. It may not sound particularly compelling, but I was rather beguiled by the whole thing. The book feels like a window into a previous age, not sparing its darker sides. Indeed, the treatment of indebtedness was very powerful and reminded me of Zola. Although ‘Anna of the Five Towns’ is much gentler than Germinal, one of least gentle books I’ve ever read, it throws rural poverty into stark relief. Anna herself is in a paradoxical situation: her family are landlords and very well-off, while she personally has no access to any of this wealth. Thanks to her father, she has no servants, shabby home-made clothes, and a strict housekeeping budget. This position allows her to feel considerable empathy with tenants unable to pay their rent, although she isn’t an unrealistic paragon. On this theme:

The elaborate mechanism by which capital yields interest without suffering diminution from its original bulk is one of the commonest phenomena of modern life, and one of the least understood. Many capitalists never grasp it, nor experience the slightest curiosity about it until the mechanism through some defect ceases to revolve. Tellwright [Anna’s father] was of these, […] But to Anna, who had some imagination, and whose imagination was stirred by recent events, the arrival of moneys out of space, unearned, unasked, was a disturbing experience, affecting her as a conjuring trick affects a child, whose sensations hesitate between pleasure and apprehension. Practically, Anna could not believe that she was rich; and in fact she was not rich – she was merely a fixed point through which moneys that she was unable to arrest passed with the rapidity of trains.

As well as such commentary, the writing also imbues the settings with a wonderful level of texture. My favourite example was the page-long description of a sideboard, of which this is only a part:

In it was reflected the conscientious labour of generations. It had a soft and assuaged appearance, as though it had never been new and could never have been new. All its corners and edges had long lost the asperities of manufacture, and its smooth surfaces were marked by slight hollows similar in spirit to those worn by the naked feet of pilgrims into the marble steps of a shrine.

I loved ‘Anna of the Five Towns’ and would certainly read something else by Bennett. It was also pleasant to read an older novel for the first time in a little while; I think my fiction choices have been too modern recently. Anna is a protagonist who will linger in my mind long after this brief insight into her life, along with Mary Joyceln and Christine Hoflehner.

[Dafne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sconosciuto. Fino a pochi mesi fa, per me, questa parola rispecchiava questo romanzo e il suo autore. Avevo già sentito nominare o avevo letto questo titolo da qualche parte, ma non sapevo qual’era la sua trama. Complice un’interessante recensione che ho letto proprio qui su internet, in cui si diceva che l’autore si fosse ispirato al libro di Balzac, “Eugenie Grandet”, mi è venuta una voglia matta di leggerlo. È capitato che proprio in quei giorni abbia trovato il romanzo all’usato e così l’ho preso al volo.
Anna delle cinque città è forse il romanzo più famoso dello scrittore inglese Arnold Bennett. Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1902, dopo sei anni di elaborazione, fu accolto positivamente dalla critica; racconta la vicenda della giovane Anna Tellwright, insegnate della scuola domenicale metodista, che vive con il padre e la sorella nella cittadina di Bursley, una delle cinque città (in realtà sono sei), unite da un’unica strada che le attraversa tutte, che compongono il distretto di Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire) conosciuto con il nome di “Potteries”, a causa della numerosa presenza di aziende dedite alla produzione di ceramiche e vasellame.
La famiglia Tellwright, vive in uno dei quartieri più benestanti della cittadina. Anna e la sua sorellastra Agnes sono entrambe orfane delle loro madri, morte di parto, e sono cresciute senza amore da parte del padre. Le due giovani ragazze sono molto vicine e si vogliono molto bene.
Il giorno del suo ventunesimo compleanno, Anna è chiamata dal padre nel suo studio per comunicarle che, essendo diventata maggiorenne, ha ereditato il patrimonio materno (composto da denaro liquido e immobiliare) che fino a quel momento aveva gestito lui in sua vece. Ephraim Tellwright, infatti, ha effettuato investimenti spregiudicati e speculazioni su numerose fabbriche della zona, accrescendo così il patrimonio fino a farlo arrivare alla cifra di cinquantamila sterline. Anna, che non ha mai avuto neanche un penny di sua proprietà, non può neanche comprendere l’esatto ammontare del suo patrimonio. Il denaro arrivato in modo così improvviso fa poca differenza nella vita di Anna, abituata da sempre che l’aspetto patrimoniale e finanziario fosse gestito dal padre, così deposita i soldi in banca fino a quando il padre non gli dice come investirlo. L’arrivo di questa ingente somma di denaro, porta anche infelicità nella vita della ragazza. Fra i suoi affittuari vi è Titus Price, proprietario di una fatiscente fabbrica di ceramiche a buon prezzo, continuamente indietro con l’affitto da pagare. Ephraim Tellwright obbliga sua figlia ad occuparsi dell’affittuario, forzandola a chiedere perennemente almeno una parte della somma dovuta. Anna, contro la sua stessa volontà, riesce a farsi dare almeno una parte della cifra ma non sa che facendo così rischia di far precipitare il suo affittuario nel baratro del fallimento. Anna, a questo punto, si trova combattuta tra la lealtà verso suo padre e la compassione verso i suoi locatari…

Quest’anno, nel mese di maggio, ricorreva il 150 anniversario della nascita dello scrittore inglese; per celebrare quest’avvenimento in Inghilterra, si sono svolte commemorazioni, celebrazioni e anche una trasposizione teatrale di questo romanzo.
Arnold Bennett, durante la sua vita, non è stato solo uno scrittore di romanzi ma anche di racconti, saggi, opere teatrali, è stato impiegato nel ministero della propaganda durante il primo conflitto mondiale, e anche giornalista, critico, conferenziere, memorialista, insomma una vita abbastanza impegnativa e frenetica.
Forse a causa del suo decennale soggiorno in Francia, il suo stile realista si avvicina e risente molto del naturalismo francese. Anna delle cinque città è paragonato da molti al romanzo Eugenie Grandet, dello scrittore francese Balzac, forse a causa delle protagoniste tiranneggiate da dei padri gretti che pensano solo al denaro. Secondo me, invece, più che dell’influsso degli autori francesi (che Bennett amava molto), questo romanzo risente molto dell’influenza della prosa dello scrittore russo Turgenev, cui si avvicina molto soprattutto nella caratterizzazione dei personaggi.
Anna delle cinque città è il primo di numerosi romanzi ambientati nel distretto di “Potteries”, un mondo che lo scrittore conosceva bene, poiché era originario della zona.
Arnold Bennett grazie ad uno stile asciutto e scorrevole, ci regala il ritratto della società inglese, in un distretto altamente industrializzato a cavallo di due secoli (1800/1900), colpita nelle relazioni personali dagli effetti dell’industria e del lavoro.
Il narratore inglese ha un modo meraviglioso di catturare il modo in cui le persone pensano e parlano; brillante osservatore della società ci descrive le cose del quotidiano senza mai scendere nel melodramma ma sempre con semplicità, riuscendo a coinvolgere, vivamente e totalmente, il lettore nelle vicende dei suoi personaggi, tanto da farle provare la sensazione di essere lì al loro fianco o viverle in prima persona.
Le figure descritte sono totalmente credibili e realistiche, poiché sono narrate le forze, le debolezze, i successi, i fallimenti, le speranze, le difficoltà, le gioie e i dolori d’ogni singolo.
Anna, la protagonista del romanzo, non è proprio un’eroina nel senso letterale del termine, ma è il personaggio che viene analizzato più a fondo. È una ragazza umile, introversa, di grande integrità, ascetica, impetuosa, insicura, conciliante, concreta, impassibile, che fino all’età di ventuno anni non era mai stata toccata dall’amore. Cresciuta quasi esclusivamente nella sfera domestica della casa paterna, ha assunto il ruolo di madre surrogata per sua sorella, occupandosi della casa e dei lavori domestici. Compie il suo dovere senza mai lamentarsi, senza fare scenate o avere delle speranze.
Educata secondo principi d’austerità e dotata di una forte coscienza, si è sempre inchinata al dovere e ai desideri del padre e non ha mai sognato di ribellarsi, fino a quando non entra in possesso dell’eredità materna. L’arrivo dell’eredità cambia la sua vita. Improvvisamente si ritrova catapultata in due mondi, per lei, fino allora sconosciuti: quello degli affari e dell’amore, dove le sue decisioni avranno conseguenze anche nelle vite di altre persone.
Nonostante abbia una vita limitata, Anna non riesce ad accettare la rigidità della chiesa metodista Wesliana (che vuole avere il dominio sulla vita dei suoi adepti), né a dare per scontato il modo di fare affari di suo padre o di altre persone della comunità. Segue i suoi principi e le sue idee nel fare ciò che è giusto, anche scontrandosi con il padre quando gli nasconde di aver bruciato il documento che avrebbe rovinato il suo affittuario, pur sapendo che ciò può scatenare la sua ira e farle perdere la fiducia che lui ripone in lei.
Un padre, Ephraim Tellwright, crudele, testardo, orgoglioso, autoritario, la cui unica gioia è il denaro; rigido metodista ed ex predicatore, elargisce donazioni alla chiesa locale Metodista solo per avere un qualche tornaconto economico; si comporta con le figlie e con i suoi debitori nella stessa maniera: vale a dire dimostrando poca carità cristiana, mettendo in evidenza che tali precetti religiosi fanno in lui poca presa. È una vera autorità nel campo degli affari, uno degli uomini più ricchi della città ma vive in maniera semplice e dimessa, proibendo ogni più piccolo lusso, tirando su la propria famiglia in maniera frugale e governando la casa con pugno di ferro. Un padre dominante, astuto e dispotico, che non ha mai manifestato amore o attenzione per le due figlie, cui non dona niente tranne l’essenziale. Un uomo veramente odioso e taccagno, che continua ad avere il controllo denaro della figlia e la forza a scrivere delle lettere ai suoi affittuari contro la sua volontà, e inoltre si assicura che lei non oserà chiederle soldi per sciocchezze. Quando Anna, le chiede il suo libretto degli assegni per comprare degli abiti per andare in vacanza con la famiglia Sutton o per acquistare il corredo per il matrimonio, si rifiuta categoricamente di darglielo.
Ho letto di altri padri nella letteratura ma di uno str…o così proprio mai.
Come dicevo prima, la vita di Anna è sconvolta dall’arrivo dell’eredità; la sua vita cambia: è accettata fra la crema della società cittadina, è invitata a trascorrere due settimane di vacanza presso l’isola di Man con i Sutton (una delle famiglie più benestanti della cittadina) e trova anche l’amore, lei che non è mai stata oggetto dell’interesse di qualcuno.
Anna è corteggiata da Henry Mynors, un uomo di trent’anni dalle impeccabili credenziali. È lo scapolo più ambito della cittadina; bello, intelligente, affabile, rispettabile, ambizioso, astro in ascesa dell’industria e pilastro della chiesa metodista locale. Membro di una delle famiglie più importante del distretto, possiede una moderna fabbrica di ceramiche, ben avviata e molto produttiva. Insomma sembra essere l’uomo perfetto.
Henry corteggia Anna, con l’intenzione di sposarla, prestandogli attenzioni cui lei non è abituata. La ragazza è attratta da lui, e prova a raggiungere e ad unirsi al suo fervore religioso ma, essendo troppo insicura e non avendo fiducia in se stessa, non riesce a redimersi o accettare pubblicamente Dio nelle assemblee religiose metodiste.
Mynors mostra ad Anna i vari processi di produzione che si compiono all’interno della sua azienda, e attraverso l’efficienza del suo processo produttivo, l’autore ci mostra il suo status sociale e il suo successo nella vita grazie alla sua ambizione ed efficienza in tutto quello che fa.
Henry, simbolo di correttezza e di successo, è meraviglioso con la piccola Agnes e anche con il padre; infatti, ottiene l’approvazione del signor Tellwright per corteggiare Anna, ma dimostra, quasi al termine del romanzo, tutta la sua ipocrisia quando, dopo aver saputo della somma di denaro posseduta dalla giovane ragazza, non vede l’ora di metterci le mani sopra per usarli come investimento in qualche affare in modo da diventare l’uomo più importante di Bursley, fregandosene se la sua futura moglie possiede un’opinione diversa su come investirli.
Il lettore capisce a questo punto che la dolce Anna, dopo il matrimonio, passerà nelle mani di un tiranno all’altro, e non può far altro che rattristarsi per il suo destino.
Come ho detto l’autore inglese ci descrive il processo produttivo delle ceramiche, mostrandoci la pratica moderna e proficua (quella di Mynors) e quella antiquata e svantaggiosa (quella di Titus Price). Questo contrasto, tra i due diversi sistemi produttivi, mette in risalto l'opposto status economico ed esistenziale dell’altro uomo presente nella vita di Anna: William Price.
William è figlio di Titus Price, metodista anche lui, sovrintendete del pomeriggio della scuola domenicale. Quest’ultimo è un affittuario (sfortunato) di Anna continuamente indietro con l’affitto da pagare, poiché la sua azienda di ceramiche non va molto bene e rischia la bancarotta da un giorno all’altro. Pur di salvare la sua azienda, Titus, da uomo irresponsabile che è, arriva a sottrarre una somma di denaro dai conti della scuola, divenendo un ladro; nonostante ciò la sua azienda fallisce e lui, divorato dal rimorso e ormai dedito alla bottiglia, decide di mettere fine alla sua esistenza.
La sua tragica fine colpisce tutta la comunità ma soprattutto l’esistenza di suo figlio William, detto Willie. Quest’ultimo è un giovane di ventuno anni, timido, umile, dagli occhi azzurri pieni di melanconia, che spesso appare goffo e pretenzioso (solo in apparenza). Egli è segretario della scuola domenicale, un gran lavoratore nella fabbrica paterna ma inadeguato per gli affari e l’aspetto amministrativo.
Anna prova per lui amicizia, un’innata simpatia e un istinto di protezione molto forte; prova ad aiutarlo come meglio può, arrivando perfino a bruciare un documento che può causargli dei guai legali. Quando Willie scopre che suo padre ha rubato del denaro, decide di partire per l’Australia e iniziare una nuova vita lì.
Proprio poco prima che lui parta, Anna capisce di provare per lui sentimenti molto forti che vanno oltre l’amicizia, ma è incapace di opporsi alla promessa di matrimonio fatta a Mynors. Il loro è un amore puro ma la loro relazione è impossibile nel ristretto mondo in cui vivono, perché appartenenti a due diverse classi sociali.

Il ritratto di Anna, che Bennett ci regala, mostra tutta la tenerezza che lo anima e porta l’impronta del grande Turgenev. Al contrario di Eugenie Grandet, Anna è molto più brillante, più moderna, più abile, insomma molto più reale e complessa. In lei ho rivisto molto di Lisa (la protagonista di Nido di nobili): la stessa aspirazione al bene e lo stesso impulso che le porta a volere bene al più vulnerabile tra i due uomini da cui si sentono amate; ma forse, anzi soprattutto, nella scelta che compiono cioè quella di perseguire risolutamente e senza esitazioni il proprio dovere.
Anche l’aspetto paesaggistico – ambientale e sociale gioca un ruolo ben marcato all’interno del romanzo. Il narratore inglese sta al distretto di Potteries come Hardy sta al Wexess. Bennet, infatti, è originario della zona, che conosce molto bene e che qui descrive magnificamente; delinea fin nei minimi particolari il ritratto di un paesaggio sporco, tetro, devoto unicamente agli affari. Le città che compongono la contea industriale di “Potteries” sono squallide, cupe, dalle strade strette, con case annerite dai fumi emessi dai forni e dalle ciminiere che hanno disseccato la campagna circostante. In un certo passaggio, la descrizione delle scintille di fuoco che fuoriescono da alcuni forni industriali e che illuminano il cielo della città, mi ha ricordato l’intensa descrizione fatta da Dickens in un capitolo del romanzo La bottega dell’antiquario.
La penna dell’autore inglese riesce a catturare le attitudini lavorative e il sistema di classe della città, regalandoci un quadro dettagliato ed evocativo di come dovevano essere le città del distretto all’inizio del XX secolo. Bursley è una città manifatturiera dalle forti tradizioni religiose, soprattutto quelle di stampo metodista di cui Bennett ci mostra l’altra faccia della medaglia rispetto a George Eliot nel romanzo Adam Bede. Uno dei contesti principali della novella è la forza della chiesa Metodista Wesliana, i cui principi sono alla base del vivere comune; una comunità austera che vuole cercare comandare e influenzare la vita delle persone, dove le donne sono schiave del dovere, obbligate a negare qualsiasi moto dell’anima, mentre gli uomini si occupano delle industrie. La religione sembra solo un abito sociale, un simbolo da indossare e niente di più. L’autore ci mostra, con beffarda perspicacia, il materialismo, l’ipocrisia di alcuni dei pilastri della comunità metodista e come la congregazione si occupa e reagisce al suicidio di un importante membro della società.

L’autore inglese, in un libro di poco più di duecento pagine, tocca molti argomenti (anche se solo in modo abbozzato) di carattere sociale, economico, morale, in particolare le limitate opportunità per le donne; la relazione tra Anna e suo padre è usata proprio per esporre lo status delle donne (anche di donne apparentemente indipendenti nei mezzi, come in questo caso) alla fine del 19mo secolo. Bennett affronta temi universali ancora oggi, dopo poco più di cent’anni, quali: lo scontro tra metropoli e provincia, le differenze generazionali, la minaccia della massiccia industrializzazione subita dalle piccole comunità, la pietà religiosa e i suoi limiti, le dispute tra stato sociale e chiesa, tra affari e moralità, facendo riflettere il lettore sull’etica del capitalismo e sull’ipocrisia dei metodisti locali nel salvare la propria coscienza riguardo quest’aspetto; poi ancora il ruolo della donna nel mondo, i doveri dei genitori, gli effetti del lavoro, dell’industria e del capitalismo sulle relazioni personali con effetti molto spesso devastanti. L’impatto degli affari e dell’industria nella vita personale dei personaggi è uno dei temi chiavi della novella; infatti, l’autore illustra e parla delle relazioni sentimentali da un punto di vista economico, quasi mercenario, come se l’amore fosse solo una mera questione economica.
In Anna delle cinque città, Bennett esegue un mirabile ritratto della vita provinciale nell’Inghilterra vittoriana, realizzando uno straordinario ritratto di una società dove il denaro o la sua mancanza gioca un ruolo nella vita delle persone; cattura l’atmosfera di una piccola cittadina e racconta i drammi e gli accadimenti d’ogni giorno a persone normali.
Uno degli aspetti che più mi è piaciuto nel romanzo è come l’autore inglese riesce a scrivere delle donne con eccezionale umanità, porta alla vita le vite delle donne del periodo, comprendendone le loro paure e la loro vita quotidiana; capisce come può essere dura per una donna vittoriana essere indipendente dagli uomini, che controllano la società mentre le donne sono delegate ad un ruolo di subordinazione sia in questioni finanziarie sia nei semplici impegni quotidiani.

È stato il primo lavoro di Bennett che io abbia mai letto, perché qui in Italia è caduto un po’ nel dimenticatoio e certamente meriterebbe di essere riscoperto al più presto, poiché è uno scrittore abile e avvincente.
In Anna delle cinque città l’autore riesce, magnificamente ed umanamente, ad entrare nella mente di una ragazza di vent’anni e a trasporla su carta. Un’opera che è incentrata essenzialmente sulla storia di una donna in lotta contro la repressione di un padre dispotico, la rigida morale, le convenzioni religiose, la società benpensante, la sua personalità, che alla fine causeranno effetti fatali per la felicità della protagonista.
Un romanzo incantevole, toccante, scorrevole, di gran comprensione e sensibilità, realistico, evocativo e piacevole (nonostante la traduzione dei nomi in quest’edizione, una cosa proprio fastidiosa, almeno per me); dalle descrizioni dettagliate che ti trasportano in quei luoghi e in quel periodo, facendoti desiderare che il libro fosse un po’ più lungo.

Nella fine del romanzo ho trovato qualcosa che, inevitabilmente, mi ha ricordato Thomas Hardy. Ci sono così tante emozioni in poche frasi, nessuna grande passione, solo la sincerità di due persone che sanno che non potranno stare insieme e la loro consapevolezza di dover accettare e prendere la vita com’è: dura, ingiusta e triste.
Arnold Bennett termina il libro con una sola frase che si stampa nella mente del lettore e su cui quest’ultimo ritorna a rimuginare nei giorni successivi; una frase che mi ha ricordato quella finale di Martin Eden, per il suo effetto inaspettato.

4,5*

Nulla è più prosaico di quelle strade rosso mattone; nulla è più lontano da ciò che è romantico. Eppure il romantico esiste ovunque: chi ha l'occhio per scorgerlo, lo rinviene anche fra i banchi di una fabbrica industriale, dove addolcisce ciò che è rozzo e trasfigura lo squallore delle potenti operazioni chimiche.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1902 novel and its author were unknown to me, about a young woman's life in Staffordshire, an area known as the Potteries. Anna, her younger sister Agnes and their father (Ephraim, or 'the miser') are among the wealthiest families in the five towns, but one wouldn't know it from the way they live. Anna's clothes are shabby, meals seem to consist of a piece of bread and cheese. Her father more than earns his nickname and is rather a domestic tyrant. That said, he's an interesting character, not evil or abusive but impossibly rigid. Anna is so used to it she only partly realizes how spartan her life is, and she is modest and sober by nature anyway. The novel follows her life, in particular her sympathy for the Prices, a father and son who are tenants of her father in a hopelessly impoverished situation, and her eventual engagement to Henry Mynors, an up-and-coming young man who seems to live a charmed existence.

A very accessible read with a subtle humor and understated themes of small town mores and parent/child relations, I thought I knew where it was headed and then it pulls an astonishing, jaw-dropping ending I did not at all see coming. I had liked it well enough up to that point, but the deft, assured wrong-footing of the last few pages raises it to a solid four stars. A real discovery for me, recommended.

[Doreen Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Sherrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this once I got used to the stilted writing style, which was quite contemporary for the time. I found Anna quite naive and timid, living in the shadow of her miserly father. But her life changed when she inherited a fortune. A sad and unexpected ending.

[Griselda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anna Tellwright is one of my favourite heroines, coming a close third after Emma Bovary and Tess Durbeyfield. Arnold Bennett, like Hardy, depicts his heroine with warmth and affection, compassionate in her suffering and tolerant of her faults. Writing this novel before D.H. Lawrence's Brangwen novels were published, but working with similar settings, characters and themes, Bennett puts before us poor, narrow-minded and bigoted communities, but he never loses his sense of fun, exaggerating Ephraim's accent, drawing our attention to idiosyncracies of dress and behaviour in his characters and letting, with some enjoyment, those in the wrong arrive at their just desserts. Only at the end is there a wistful sense of his inability to change the course he has plotted for Anna... but I won't give that away.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great story. First contrary to the page numbers totalling 506 the novel is 176 pages long. Anna is a lovely lass who lives with a miser grumpy father. A wealthy woman who is introduced to a new side of life on a holiday to the Isle of Man. Intertwined is the tragic story of the Prices her tenants. The ending is a powerful one and the novel captures eloquently the filth and the beauty of the Pottery towns.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arnold Bennett's powerful story of love, tyranny and rebellion set against the vitality and harshness of life in the Staffordshire Potteries in the late nineteenth century, dramatised by Helen Edmundson.

Brought up in the repressive tradition of Methodism by her miserly father, Anna Tellwright dreams of independence and freedom. On coming of age she learns that she is to inherit a fortune and realises that she is loved by the charismatic Henry Mynors. But with the money comes responsibility and a growing bond with one of her tenants William Price.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qfz6

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never read anything by Arnold Bennett before this, but now definitely want to read more of his. It's a powerful turn of the 20th century novel set in the Potteries, which is said to have been influenced by Balzac and has a similarly grim, closed-in feeling. The heroine, Anna, is the daughter of a rich but miserly businessman, who delights in controlling every aspect of her life, and wants to turn her into someone in his image - but she yearns to escape. The whole community is compellingly drawn, and the novel makes it clear how unbearable a society ruled by her father, and men like him, is for Anna.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book in a used bookstore in Preston, England, knowing nothing about Bennett. And while I enjoyed the writing and particularly some of the family portraits he lays out, the crux of the book -- Anna's relationships with men -- doesn't quite work for me (don't worry, no spoiler alert needed).

Anna lives in one of the "Five Towns" near Liverpool renowned for their pottery making and coal mining, and Bennett does not spare the cityscapes from caustic descriptions. Her father is a miser and a tyrant, having outlived both his daughters' mothers and now making his money through real estate and investments. If dinner is not served precisely, an explosion and a night of shunning ensues.

Anna learns from him that she is coming into an inheritance that makes her a wealthy woman, yet she must still beg him for shopping money (until a fateful act of rebellion late in the story). Meanwhile, she is being pursued in an oh so decorous fashion by one of the most eligible bachelors and up and coming entrepreneurs in the city.

Anna's particular cross to bear, though, even more than the gossips of the Methodist church society, is that one of her inheritances is a disheveled piece of property owned by the Sunday School superintendent, a lugubrious and hypocritically moralistic man who is always behind on the rent, and whose shambling, awkward son is often sent down to deliver what payments he can.

This becomes the basis for what will pass for a crisis at the conclusion of this book, and I leave it to you to decide whether Bennett makes that work. For me, the careful development of his characters and descriptions never built up a solid foundation for the dramatic ending, so I couldn't end up giving this raves, even though I think the portrait of Anna's father is one of the most disgustingly compelling ones around.

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read a little about Arnold Bennett and knowing, roughly, the story of Clayhanger, I decided to give this a go. I have had this book for years having bought it as a part of a set of 3. Brighton Rock being the book I bought the set for originally. I couldn't believe how great this slight novel is. I couldn't put it down. Bennett counjours up the grim beauty of Stoke-on-Trent at the turn of the century really vividly. His characters are extremely vivid, especially Ephraim Tellwright and of course Anna herself. I would certainly count this as one of my top 10 books of all time. If anyone has has thoughts on further Bennett reading, please give me a shout.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna of the Five Towns is a short, potent story about the working class of Victorian England. Bennett writes with a simple and effective flair, bringing his characters to life in a way that evokes real sympathy. The tragedy that befalls one of the factory-owners and his son, harrassed by mulitple debts, is pretty heartbreaking. All in all, I found this generally unheard of story to be something I will remember well.

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over recent years, I’ve been catching up on some Arnold Bennett’s I haven’t read. I still think he’s the most underrated of English novelists.
Once again, the setting is the Potteries and also, once again, the novel focuses on women. Only Bennett could feature a set piece at a women’s sewing afternoon and make it both interesting and plausible. Anna’s fraught relationship with her miserly father is at the centre of the novel and superbly captures the emerging strength and independence of some middle class women while showing the difficulties that still existed for them. In the end, it is Anna’s romantic attachments to two very different men that sum up the dilemmas that women like her faced at that time.

[Antenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, this seemed wooden and dated, a pale imitation of Trollope or Eliot, who had been writing in a similar vein two generations earlier. Initially, I found the main source of interest in the detailed descriptions of the industrial landscape of "The Five Towns", a kind of verbal Lowry, if the latter had painted the Potteries rather than Manchester.

Then, I became hooked by Bennett's portrayal of the main characters, which in time seemed to me more realistic and telling than his more celebrated Victorian forerunners. We know that Anna's relationship with the suave and capable Mynors will not follow a simple and happy path, since the author begins to hint at future tragedy, but will this be dramatic or subtly understated?

Competent, self-contained but inexperienced, Anna has been understandably dominated by her miserly tyrant of a father who has been punctilious in growing the fortune left her by her deceased mother, but cannot bring himself to give her free access to the money, only arbitrary duties such as his brutal insistence that she pursues rent arrears on one of her properties. Denied a normal, loving upbringing, it is hardly surprising that Anna find it difficult to establish a spontaneous romantic relationship with Mynors. She admires him, even imagines him in her bed, but it is only a matter of time before she comprehends that life with him means exchanging one tyrant for another, admittedly more benevolent than her father. It is easier for her to extend the maternal love she feels for her young sister to a weak, inept man who needs her support.

Bennett also proves clear-eyed over the materialism and hyprocrisy of some of the pillars of the local Methodist community, which exerts as great a domination on poor Anna as does her father. He describes with wry insight how the community deals with the suicide of a leading church member , "an abject yet heroic surrender of all those pretences by which society contrives to tolerate itself. Here was a man whom no one respected, but everyone pretended to respect - who knew he was respected by none, but pretended that he was respected by all..... If any man could have been trusted to continue the decent sham to the end and so preserve the general self-esteem, surely it was this man. But no! Suddenly abandoning all imposture, he transgresses openly....snatching a piece of hemp cries, `Behold me; this is real human nature. This is the truth; the rest was lies. I lied;you lied. I confess it, and you shall confess it.'"
Comment Comment | Permalink

[mi.terapia.alternativa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tenía la intención de empezar a leer este libro poco a poco, sin devorarlo, tomándomelo con calma y disfrutando de la preciosa edición a la que nos tiene acostumbrados la editorial .
Pero.... No ha podido ser.
Ha sido empezarlo y no querer dejarlo. Os voy a decir los motivos :

La ambientación. Bursley, una de las cinco poblaciones que forman las Cinco Villas, famosas por la porcelana y la industria alfarera en torno a la que gira la vida de la zona. Describe maravillosamente la zona, las alfarerías de la ciudad, la sociedad de la época, la vida diaria, la familia, el trabajo, la educación de los niños o la religión de sus habitantes. Y también el comportamiento de las personas que era diferente según su posición social.


La historia. Anna Tellwright es una joven sencilla, que lleva una vida sencilla con su tiránico padre Ephraim y su media hermana menor Agnes. Cumple con sus deberes sin quejarse, sin expectativas ni grandes esperanzas en nada.
Cuando llega a la mayoría de edad , su padre le anuncia que ha recibido una gran herencia que le dejó su madre fallecida, lo que la convierte en una mujer rica. Pero eso no cambia nada ya que sigue dependiendo de su avaro padre.
Anna consiente todas sus imposiciones pero.... Empieza a tener relaciones sociales y empieza a tomar decisiones.


Los personajes. Anna, personaje femenino que representa la vida de una mujer joven acorralada por la iglesia, su padre tiránico y lo que la sociedad esperaba de una mujer joven con muy poca libertad para seguir su propio camino hacia la felicidad.
Henry Mynors, el soltero más codiciado de la zona, empresario y pretendiente de Anna.
Titus y Willie Price, inquilinos de Anna, pobres y endeudados y que tienen un papel muy importante. Los Sutton, Agnes... Todos representativos de los distintos estamentos sociales de la época.


Como lo cuenta . De una forma sencilla, detallista, pausada pero con un tono crítico. El costumbrismo que tanto me gusta, el espacio que dedica a las gentes, la descripción de las mujeres que desafiaban lo establecido... El hecho de que parece que no pasa nada pero todo pasa sobre todo las emociones y los sentimientos. Y el final.... Un final que espero que me comentéis que os ha parecido porque teneis que leerlo.


En conclusión, una lectura maravilosa que he disfrutado muchísimo y que recomiendo enormemente. Una auténtica delicia.

[Pauline Montagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna of the Five Towns is an example of an intrinsically Victorian genre, the Industrial Novel, and as such can be read on the political as well as the personal level. Bennett’s novel was published in 1902 when industrialisation was firmly entrenched in British society. The Five Towns are a fictionalised Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, centre of the English ceramics industry known as ‘the potteries’.

Bennett grew up in Staffordshire, but left it for London as a young man. Although no doubt he continued to visit, he never again lived there. However, we can see from this book that his childhood home left a deep impression on him. Bennett describes the Five Towns in loving detail. By day it might be a dirty townscape of pottery works and coal mines, but by night it is lit by distant fires which give it a fairyland glamour.

We see the Five Towns through the point of view of Anna Tellwright, who comes of age during the course of this novel. Anna is the daughter of a hardhearted miser who exacts total submission from his daughters. Unlike other Industrial Novels, this book is not about the relationship between owners and workers, with the working class forming merely a backdrop to the action.

Anna’s own development and her relationships are very much the focus of this book, but in the background Bennett explores the workings of the middle class and especially how its subtle economic gradations are acted out within the unifying force of evangelical religion. All the characters co-operate as stalwarts of the church, but their relationships on the economic front are very different. When one of their number is facing ruin none of them lifts a finger to help him while Tellwright gleefully pushes them to the wall. They see the laws of economics as being as inexorable as the laws of God. Anna alone has pity on them and tries to help, but her efforts come to nothing and their fate is inevitable. However, along the way she quite unexpectedly finds love.

In a way, Anna of the Five Towns is about the damaging effects of capitalism on the human soul, but while we the readers see its inhumanity, it is not acknowledged by the characters, but disguised behind a veneer of evangelical piety.

[Gwynplaine26th · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un po’ terra natale del realista inglese Arnold Bennett, Le “Cinque Città” sono quella parte dello Staffordshire chiamata “Potteries” (Terrecotte), in relazione alle sue fabbriche, oppure proprio “Five Towns” (appunto le Cinque Città).

Cresciuta dove le angherie morali del dispotico padre erano all’ordine del giorno, Anna Tellwright si trova tout après al centro dell'interesse di Henry Mynors, bello, intelligente, nonché pilastro dell’industria locale.

L’universo malinconico, grigio e fumoso della regione industriale dello Staffordshire ricorda un po’ il Nord del bellissimo “North and South” di Elizabeth Gaskell (aww, John Thornton..*sospiri d’amore*) e “Shirley” di Charlotte Bronte e nella mia libreria questo bel volumetto di Bennett ha trovato il suo spazietto vitale proprio accanto a questi due altri capolavori.

Dato che il romanzo trae libera ispirazione da "Eugenie Grandet" di Balzac, quest’ultimo è uno dei prossimi in lettura.

“Aveva succhiato col latte materno la profonda verità che la vita della donna è sempre una rinuncia, più o meno grande: la sua, per caso, era stata grande”.

[Vic Heaney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Arnold Bennett has such a wonderful way of capturing the way people think and speak - or rather as they thought and spoke 100 years ago.

I used to live in the Stoke on Trent area and am at home with the dialect words and phrases. Also with the area. Arnold Bennett uses slightly fictionalised names for the towns (Bursley instead of Burslem, for instance) and streets (Trafalgar Street instead of Waterloo Road) so anybody familiar with the area knows exactly where his characters live, where they tread.

During my recent walk from SW France to NW England (Vic's Big Walk, followed by the book of the same name)I walked the length of Trafalgar/Waterloo and also had a nostalgic mosey around Bursley/Burslem.

Anna of the Five Towns is an enjoyable and informative read and also helped me to continue last year's experience.

[Sylvester (Taking a break in 2023) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The further I got into this book, the more impressed I became. Not just by the novel itself, but by the fact it was written by a man. It's such a sensitive and powerful portrayal of daughter-to-father obedience/loyalty vs. the struggle of personal conscience and sense of justice. Anna is such an appealing woman, similar to Jane Eyre in her strong sense of individuality and resistance to pressure from any quarter. I loved the revival scenes - how often do you get to see the negative side of good peer pressure? And her frank assessment of Mynors - ! She got more complex as the novel continued. I wasn't crazy about the ending, only because it didn't seem like the end yet. This is one of those rare books (like Jane Eyre was for me as a teen) that is just full of insight applicable to real life. Wish I had read it long ago. I highly recommend it.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the last year I have read two powerful novels by Arnold Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns and The Old Wives’ Tale. Both books are first rate, and I wonder why Bennett is not more widely known. Anna of the Five Towns tells the story of the struggle of a young woman to gain independence from her miserly and controlling father at the end of the nineteenth century. (She succeeds but pays a price) The Old Wives’ Tale tells the intertwining stories of two sisters over the space of a lifetime and is really a masterpiece. However, I find myself wondering how it is that Bennett chose to work with female protagonists in these novels and whether this is typical or atypical of his work. I suppose I will have to keep reading more Arnold Bennett to come up with an explanation.

[Carey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this and despite the fact she had a pretty unhappy life - tyrannical father, loveless marriage, death of the man she loves - I still think it is an uplifting story as even while she is pragmatic she never really let go of her morals and values and I think she will be strong enough to survive on her own terms. So loved this.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I had previously read and admired stories by Arnold Bennett, this is the first time I’ve read one of his (numerous) novels, and I have to say I found it as involving and enjoyable as his shorter fiction. First published in 1902 it captures Bennett’s home territory of the Staffordshire Potteries (actually comprised of six towns, but for his fictional purposes, he felt five sounded better) at their creative and productive peak; as well as the world famous ceramics companies, coal and iron ore mining and metal foundries made the towns a veritable hive of industry. Anna of the Five Towns shows us a world of industry and ordinary lives lived against a backdrop of hard work and hard money. Its titular heroine, Anna Tellwright, lives with her miserly and misanthropic father, a life both controlled and curtailed by his meanness and joylessness. When she comes of age and inherits a small fortune she intends to use it to win more independence, although her father has other ideas. Friendship with the loving and outgoing Sutton family and a slowly developing romance with the eligible bachelor Henry Mynors show her another way of living, but her father’s conniving and the tragedy that ensues as a consequence seem destined to inhibit her attempts to break free. This is a subtle, lovingly-observed slice of real life where moral choices and the desire to do good are hemmed in on all sides by financial and family realities.

[hebinha · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprisingly pleasant read! I went into this book having no clue as to what it was about. The prose is simply beautiful. I think one of its only downsides is that a couple of the chapters are pretty slow paced, but the slowness is nevertheless necessary in many ways. But what stood out to me most is how nicely characterised Anna Tellwright is; she makes a great protagonist with very human flaws and human strengths.
I loved this book and would love to read more of Bennett's Five Towns novels.