Anna of the Five Towns

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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. Drabble, Margaret. Arnold Bennett. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. The most readable of the biographies on Bennett. Helps relate the complicated nexus that held him to the Five Towns, even when physically and culturally far removed. Bibliography and index, including a full list of Bennett’s published works. Mynors was deeply touched by her servitude. "You clearly know your place," he said. "Allow me to do the honour of becoming your husband."

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. 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.

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.

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

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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.

You are the meekest of angels," said Willy Price. "Thy soul is pure. My father killed himself because he had forged Mr Sutton's promissory note and was to be exposed." 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. 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. 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. 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.

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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).

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. 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. a vacation, and Anna thinks there can never again be such luxurious living. It was necessary for her to take ten pounds of her own money to get clothes for the trip, but her father berated her violently when she told him what she did. Her time spent with Henry and the Suttons, however, helps her forget his anger. When the vacation is marred by Beatrice’s serious illness, Anna wins a permanent place in the Suttons’ affection by her unselfish and competent nursing. Bennett situates us immediately with Anna's character in the small industrial town in the Midlands, a bright, attractive girl protective of her close sister, liked by the socially respected neighbour, Mrs. Sutton, and friends with her daughter. She often spends time at social evenings with the Suttons, but at home her time is spent serving her miserly and miserable father, Ephraim.

The separation from the tight paternal grip lightened Anna's mood on holiday and she nearly ventured to initiate a conversation before thinking better of it. Fortunately Mrs Sutton's daughter caught influenza and Anna was able to stay indoors and nurse her. "Tis far better that someone dull should risk infection," she thought, "than that Mrs Sutton should be put in jeopardy." 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. 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?