The Futility of Revolt in Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale

Abstract

 This research paper deals with Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale  (1908). It aims at showing how meaningless and futile it is to revolt  against the iron grip of circumstances , whether social or economic , that shape or determine people's lives and precisely speaking the lives of the Baines sisters , the heroines of the novel . It sheds light on the differences between those sisters and the gap in the degree of their consciousness of the world they live in . It also points to the destructive effect of time upon them and their great effort to adjust themselves to their  environment .