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Books Stodgy Romance

Clayhanger

Arnold Bennett Penguin

Bennet's warm approach to writing (seen especially well in this novel) does a lot to make 'Clayhanger' easy and enjoyable reading for the most part. Life, to Bennet is kindly, warmly and observable in the setting Bennett portrays.

The story is set in the later Victorian years and reflects the drab, perhaps sterile quality of life in a small semi-industrial town. Industrial as in two clay factories and two printing shops as the centres of business. The setting is a picture of Bennett's own life so that the lesser characters with their mannerisms and quaint turns of speech, constantly add actuality to Bennett's personal narrative.

With his realist approach Bennett deals with Edwin (main character) on a touching if sometimes unsympathetic note, Edwin forfeits his desire to be an artist in order to take over his ailing father's printing business. He becomes entwined with the Orgreaves family and through them, with Hilda Lessways, a penchant widow. While Bennett attempts to give a picture of Edwin's beloved, it proves a disappointment, not because it contains less detail, but because scenes from Clayhanger hold the romantic charm of the unsolved and so becomes a key to what baffles and enchants young Edwin. Yet, in a cruel move, Bennet removes the romance. The charm is gone and The Five Towns setting is in abeyance: emotion has been lowered to nil.

Emotion rises again with the final meeting of Hilda, yet it is a cold emotion so is gone forever. Hilda never divined the tortures which she had inflicted in his heart!

The narrative deals with the majestic Auntie Hamps, Mr Shushians (whose outstanding characteristic is his immense age). Edwin's sitter Maggie, the Orgreaves family, the strange and explicable Hilda, Big James the printer's foreman, and many more. Above all is Darivs Clayhanger, Edwin's father, with whom his struggle in Darjus' health and sickness produces not only torment, but the reserves of character which help make Edwin's personal development dear to us.

The book, in short, centres around young Edwin; his vocation, his love, his freedom and his start in life. It is the portrait of civilisation, the revelation of a young man belonging to that civilisation and yet apart from it; overawed by his father, struggling for independence, making and keeping his friends, learning to think, falling in love.

If 'Clayhanger' has any faults it is that it tends to become a little 'stodgy' in parts with revelations to Edwin that are now small and unimportant in our present times. Yet, then it was a revelation and should be read as such. A nice book if one likes Victorian novels and D. H. Lawrence overtones.

Kathryne Fleming