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A Re-Evaluation of Arnold Bennett This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights and duplication or sale of all or part is not permitted, except that material may be duplicated by you for research, private study, criticism/review or educational purposes. Electronic or print copies are for your own personal, non- commercial use and shall not be passed to any other individual. No quotation may be published without proper acknowledgement. For any other use, or to quote extensively from the work, permission must be obtained from the copyright holder/s. Beyond the Five Towns: a re-evaluation of Arnold Bennett Hannah Louise Scragg PhD English Literature March 2020 Keele University Abstract ‘I have a great deal to say, and I mean to say it. As for my work being taken seriously, we shall see about that’. Arnold Bennett, 19091 Arnold Bennett occupies a somewhat anomalous position as an Edwardian realist in a century dominated by modernist aesthetics. Pigeonholed by critics who have tended to adopt an overly formalist approach when considering his fiction, Bennett’s critical acclaim has predominantly been restricted to his Five Towns novels and has been advocated through readings which arrogate to him a slavish homage to nineteenth-century French naturalism and a quasi-documentary representation of particular locales. This dissertation aims to challenge Bennett’s categorisation as a merely provincial author, and as an Edwardian deserving of the canonical segregation initially proposed by Virginia Woolf, which separates his work from – and subordinates it to – that of his early twentieth-century or early Modernist contemporaries. To this end, I will demonstrate that Bennett was in fact, readily incorporating early twentieth- century themes and techniques, and actively engaging with various aspects of individual, social and national politics in comparable ways to other Modernists. I will also contend – contrary to critics who have regarded the war as having killed Bennett’s creativity – that the war occasioned a shift in Bennett’s agenda that, though not appreciated in his time or in the years after his death, is now in need of re-evaluation. With respect to methodology, this dissertation contextualises Bennett’s artistic strategies in light of early twentieth-century aesthetic concerns, and it demonstrates that his prose techniques serve social and/or political purposes. The thesis is divided into three 1 Bennett, letter to Pinker dated 17 May 1909, in Letters, Vol. I, p. 123. 2 chapters, each of which explores a stage of Bennett’s literary career. Chapter I covers 1898, the year of publication for Bennett’s first novel, The Man from the North, to 1913, also analysing A Great Man (1904) and Buried Alive (1908). Chapter II attends to Bennett’s fictional and non-fictional writings of the War years, including The Roll-Call (1919) – which begins in 1901 and culminates in 1914 – Liberty (1914), and Over There (1915). Chapter III examines Bennett’s writing from 1919 onwards, focusing on three novels: Riceyman Steps (1923), Lord Raingo (1926), and Accident (1929). 3 Contents Introduction 5 Existing Bennett Scholarship 5 Bennett’s Writerly Development and the Structure of this Thesis 27 Chapter Content: Bennett and Modernisms 33 Chapter I: The Early Years, 1898-1910 45 1 A Man from the North 52 2 A Great Man 74 3 Buried Alive 95 Chapter II: The War Years 117 4 The Roll-Call ‘Part I’ 119 5 The Roll-Call ‘Part II’ 137 6 Liberty: A Statement of the British Case 151 7 Over There: War Scenes on the Western Front 171 Chapter III: The Post-War Years, 1919 onwards 196 8 Riceyman Steps 200 9 Lord Raingo 223 10 Accident 246 Conclusion 267 Bibliography 270 4 Introduction Existing Bennett Scholarship Broadly speaking, existing Bennett scholarship can be organised into three phases: the first appeared in the years leading up to and immediately following Bennett’s death (the mid- 1920s through to the end of the 1930s); the second, in the 1960s through to the 1990s; and the last, as it stands today – from the year 2000 onwards. The first book on Bennett was written by F. J. Harvey Darton. It was published in 1915 and re-released with minor alterations in 1924, as part of the collection ‘Writers of the Day: Studies of Modern Authors by Modern Authors’. Darton’s book illustrates the general attitude towards Bennett by the time of his death in 1931. Darton portrays Bennett as a ‘fluctuating artist’, citing the Five Towns novels as his highest achievements and his ‘non-Staffordshire works’ as ‘all written for pleasure and for profit’.2 He contends that Bennett’s worth lies in his ability to describe ‘the very middle’ of a middle-class society that ‘belongs to a marked epoch of industrial evolution’3 and anticipates Bennett’s literary classification as a provincial author, whose worth lies in his ability ‘to present this passionless panorama of life’.4 When asserting that Bennett’s non- Five Towns works are ‘novels of ideas vigorously worked out, but not of great ideas’,5 Darton reflects the fact that the novel of ideas was less valued than a formally unified one in the early twentieth century. However, this initial dismissal of any formal experimentation which deviates from capturing ‘reality’ in a dispassionate manner remains an enduring presupposition in approaches to Bennett. The second book on Bennett, written by L. J. Johnson and published in 1924, closely echoes Darton’s sentiments: there is the ‘conviction’ 2 Darton, Arnold Bennett, pp. 6, 62, 52, 54. 3 Ibid., pp. 113-15. 4 Ibid., pp. 115-16. 5 Darton, Arnold Bennett, pp. 6, 62, 52, 54. 5 that Bennett’s Five Towns novels are ‘his best literary creations’ as ‘they reveal the essential Bennett’ or the ‘real Bennett’,6 and the greatest of these are Anna of the Five Towns (1902), the Clayhanger Trilogy (1910-1916)7 and The Old Wives’ Tale (1908). This thesis challenges this assumption: Bennett is not merely provincial, not merely dispassionately realist, and most certainly not lacking in social ideas. His novelistic craft and his sociopolitical interventions are interdependent. Scores of reviews, general articles and studies published both prior to and immediately following the second edition of Darton’s book and the initial publication of Johnson’s readily adopt the idea of multiple Bennetts. In The Problem of Arnold Bennett (1932), Geoffrey West writes that ‘upon one hand we had the author of the Five Towns tales, on the other we saw existing side by side with him, that other Mr. Bennett once so perfectly, lovingly, and damningly portrayed by “Low” – the author of the fantasias, the pocket philosophies, and the lighter novels’.8 The conception of ‘Low Bennett’ books as signifying those produced solely for profit – as opposed to ‘High Bennett’ books which signified Art – is an enduring critique which over time would become substantiated through the perception that Bennett decided to sacrifice his artistic integrity in order to serve a mounting desire to be wealthy. West’s essay addresses what he perceives to be the ‘problem’ of Arnold Bennett, which is the ‘unprecedented’ decline of his creative talent following the publication of The Old Wives’ Tale.9 Like Darton and Johnson, West asserts that the Five Towns novels are Bennett’s most brilliant and then, by extending this observation and using The Old Wives’ Tale as a marker, divides Bennett’s literary career accordingly into three stages. The first stage, a period of ‘prolonged apprenticeship’, lasts from 1896 to 1907 ‘when the writing of The Old Wives’ Tale was commenced’, the second, a period of ‘brief mastery’, ‘may be said 6 Johnson, Arnold Bennett of the Five Towns, pp. 7, 9. 7 The Clayhanger trilogy comprises Clayhanger (1910), Hilda Lessways (1911) and These Twain (1916). 8 West, The Problem of Arnold Bennett, p. 73. 9 Ibid., pp. 17, 16. 6 to end with the beginning of the war’ and the third, a period of ‘prolonged decline’, spanned the remaining years leading to his death – a time which West asserts, was one of ‘spiritual discontent’.10 This thesis also divides Bennett’s career into three stages. Unlike West, however, I argue that Bennett’s literary abilities underwent a distinct development – from diagnostic scientific detachment to an impetus to promote social awareness and ultimately improvement. This by no means diminished the quality of his output. In addition, as a substantial proportion of scholarship has addressed Bennett’s Five Towns novels, I will focus on Bennett’s metropolitan fiction. West closes by effectively dismissing much of Bennett’s post-1908 work, and praises Bennett’s fidelity to the ordinary, writing that ‘[Bennett’s] writing at its finest induces this feeling of the stream of life flowing majestically, relentlessly, from eternity to eternity’.11 He posits that, following the publication of The Old Wives’ Tale, Bennett’s internal struggle between artistic integrity and commercial success ended, so that the latter triumphed at the expense of the former. It is possible that a degree of antebellum nostalgia influenced these early critical attitudes, resulting in praise for texts which presented a pre-war, traditional way of life, and condemnation for those that include social unrest, class rebellion and reminders of the horrors of war. Nevertheless, this differentiation of ‘High’ and ‘Low’ Bennett was to persist for decades to come. Criticism had followed a familiar pattern in the years leading up to and immediately following Bennett’s death: general appreciation and shorthand evaluation (classification as either ‘High’ or ‘Low’ Bennett), as opposed to close scrutiny which evaluated each novel on its own terms. In the words of James Hepburn, when providing an overview of this early criticism, ‘all was plain and readable, and what more was there to do than to describe and admire, describe and scorn, or describe and select? (No matter that there was often extreme 10 Ibid., pp.
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