The Old Wives' Tale

The dominant theme of the novel concerns the transformations effected by time in a person’s life. Bennett was inspired to write The Old Wives’ Tale by an incident in which he saw an old woman and imagined how different she might have been in her youth: “This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous mannerisms. […] One ought to be able to make a heart-rending novel out of the history of a woman such as she” (31-32). This theme of outward transformations runs throughout the novel, as Bennett focuses on the girls’ youth and vitality in Book 1 and on their aged frailty in Book 4. The theme comes to a head in Sophia’s viewing of the body of her late husband, whom she hasn’t seen for decades, when she’s struck by the ravages of time upon his frame. Shortly thereafter, Constance is also struck by the disjunction between youth and old age when she views the sleeping form of the young Lily and then of her aged sister:

She was drenched, as she gazed at Sophia’s body, not by pity for herself, but by compassion for the immense disaster of her sister’s life. Sophia’s charm and Sophia’s beauty—what profit had they been to their owner? (585).

Bennett’s treatment of this theme, however, isn’t limited to outward transformations alone. Running alongside his theme of the outward changes of life is a counter-narrative about the unchangeableness of one’s inner life. The personalities of his characters develop and grow, but they remain perpetually themselves; in no instance does a person’s inner form undergo the same kind of utter transformation as the outer form. Constance remains calm, constant, and levelheaded, and Sophia remains independent, capable, and resolute: “Powerful individualities remain undisfigured by no matter what vicissitudes” (498). Even Sophia, who loses her youthful impulsivity, doesn’t radically change but simply develops other virtues more fully that had always been a part of her, a portion of the Baines family heritage of common sense and restraint.

This two-sided dynamic—of radical outer change and inner unchangeableness—adds to the tragedy of the book’s final section. Although Constance and Sophia are still the same people they always were, their outward aspect has been thoroughly altered by time, and no one relates to them with the admiration so commonly lavished on youth and beauty. Rather, they’re seen as relics of a bygone age, “old” and out of touch, which adds a note of unfairness to the story.