The Old Wives Tale

Spanning nearly half a century The Old Wives Tale is epic in scale and scope tracing as it does the effects of time on two sisters and their surroundings. The novel is a domestic story told with tenderness and is concerned not with heroic statesmen or soldiers but with small details of daily life in a way which demonstrates Bennett?s great debt to French realist writers. The action is concentrated mainly within the provincial town of Bursley a startling contrast to Paris where Sophia and Gerald elope.