Anna of the Five Towns

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Leaving Sunday School, the teachers "gradually dropping the pedagogic pose, and happy in the virtual sensation of a duty accomplished." Anna of the Five Towns is a 1985 British television drama series which first aired on BBC 2. It is an adaptation by John Harvey of the 1902 novel of the same title by Arnold Bennett. [1] Cast [ edit ] duty and good works as an unspoken piety. Anna’s spiritual odyssey mirrors this exactly: Unable to respond to the fervor of the revival meetings, she consciously chooses good works, obedience, and duty, and this she believes includes marriage to Henry, the epitome of the good Christian leader. Anna’s choice is one of powerlessness. In feminist terms, she trades the control of father for that of husband. Although the situation may be sanctioned by religion, Bennett does not see it as having been caused by it. The irony is that neither Anna’s religion nor her money ever becomes a source of empowerment for her. She remains the poor little rich girl.

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). How Anna longed to tell Mr Price that he could forget the rent! And yet she had a duty to her father, who she knew would not relent on even a half-penny of what he was owed. 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. 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. On her 21st birthday, Tellwright unceremoniously hands over to Anna an unexpected inheritance from her grandmother: several parcels of shares along with rented residential and industrial property that he has carefully hoarded and re-invested over the years. Anna is now a rich woman but she has no experience in business and financial dealings, save the management of the household expenses her father reluctantly hands her every week.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. 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. Anna lives with her young step-sister Agnes and her twice-widowed father, Ephraim Tellwright, in Bursley. Once an active preacher and teacher in the Methodist movement, her father has become a domestic tyrant and, through his miserly attitude to money, a fairly wealthy man. 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."

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! Dato che il romanzo trae libera ispirazione da "Eugenie Grandet" di Balzac, quest’ultimo è uno dei prossimi in lettura.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. Victorian households who were destined never to find happiness, often sacrificed so the older siblings could marry and forced to live out 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.

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. 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." 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.

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