The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett
Published 1908 · 562 pages · 192,328 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Old Wives' Tale to read?
The Old Wives' Tale scores 43 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
- Bennett writes plain English appropriate to his provincial subjects. The vocabulary reflects middle-class Midlands speech and experience. Accessible throughout.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Clear, functional prose. Bennett constructs sentences to convey information and atmosphere, not to display technique. The style serves the documentary purpose.
- Abstraction: 42 out of 100
- Bennett stays concrete—the shop, the bodies aging, the domestic routines. The large themes of time and mortality emerge from accumulated particular.
- Information density: 50 out of 100
- Two complete lives across decades. Bennett paces the material carefully, but there's substantial ground to cover. The density is temporal rather than conceptual.
- Narrative indirection: 40 out of 100
- Bennett tells his story directly, with authorial omniscience and editorial guidance. What happens and what it means are clearly presented.
- Symbolic density: 38 out of 100
- The shop, the square, the siege of Paris—settings carry meaning, but Bennett doesn't insist on symbols. The effect is realistic, not allegorical.
- Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
- Bennett observes his characters' limitations with gentle irony. Their provincial narrowness, their missed opportunities—all seen clearly but not unkindly.
- Resolution withholding: 40 out of 100
- Both sisters' stories complete fully. Bennett traces their lives to the end with documentary thoroughness. Closure is provided.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Parallel structure following two sisters whose lives diverge then reconverge. The symmetry is clear. Some temporal compression in the middle sections.
How The Old Wives' Tale is regarded
The Old Wives' Tale holds a literary regard score of 60 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.