The Old Wives' Tale [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The Old Wives' Tale Has three claims to fame. It is one of the most successful attempts, if not the most successful, to rival in English the achievement of the French realistic novel from Balzac down through Flaubert, Zola and Maupassant. It is one of the most complete and satisfying novels of English provincial life. And it is a standing proof that a writer of the male sex can write with real perception about the imaginative and emotional lives of women. As time hastens by, this rich and bountiful book takes on added benefits. Bennett was an historical novelist, not in the sense that his characters wear period costume and utter strange oaths, but in the sense that the main subject of his important works is the effect of time on human lives. Above and beyond his chosen human subjects, there is always the goddess History herself, benign, sardonic, accusing, according to her mood. "The Old Wives' Tale,' the young J. B. Priestley noted, 'has two suffering heroines, Constance and Sophia Baines, and three conquering heroes. Time, Mutability and Death.' Knowing that History must be the over-arching presence, Bennett planned his story to begin in the misty distance of the 186os and to finish at the moment he took up his pen to write it, in 1907. He wanted it, that is, to span the immense gulf from Ancient to Modern. But to us, who see the modern of 1907 as separated from us by seismic upheavals and long, slow marches, its historical patina is enriched. The up-to-date, progressive elevation from which Bennett viewed mid-Victorian England is now further behind us than mid-Victorian England was behind him. Which means that his novel must either be forgotten, hopelessly out-dated and flung aside, or must survive as a classic - that is, an abiding statement, a work of art that speaks for its time so effectively that it will be read as long as that time has any place in the collective memory. Of these two alternative fates for the book, the reading public has already chosen the second. Hence this edition.