The Old Wives' Tale

Constance and Sophia reunite. Constance is making her house ready to receive Sophia, assisted by her domestic servant, Amy. Constance meets Sophia at the train station and has a first impression of her as “a beautiful and aristocratic woman” (497). They quickly perceive, however, the commonalities between them, particularly in the unchanging Baines heritage that they both see in each other. As they ride back into town, they spot an elephant along the way, standing in a circus yard. Back in Bursley, they confer with Mr. Critchlow, who has managed a portion of the estate left to Sophia in her absence. She and her sister are both sufficiently well-off from estate money and their own business ventures to be entirely self-sufficient for the rest of their lives. The status of Sophia’s husband, Gerald, might bear on such matters, but she has had no knowledge of him since their parting. Although Sophia enjoys returning to the scenes of her youth, she’s struck by Bursley’s smallness and shabbiness: “She thought: ‘It would kill me if I had to live here. It’s deadening. It weighs on you. And the dirt, and the horrible ugliness! And the way they talk, and the way they think!” (511).

The difficulties of some minor affairs at the Bursley house, along with Constance’s chronic health condition (sciatica), push Sophia toward suggesting an alternative arrangement. It begins with tension between the servant, Amy, who tends to make careless errors, and Sophia, whose experience running a guesthouse makes Amy’s conduct seem intolerable. After Sophia rebukes Amy in front of Constance, Amy submits a notice of resignation, and they begin looking for a new servant. Meanwhile, Constance’s sciatica flares up again, and when the local doctor comes by, he reveals his belief that a change of residence would help Constance’s issues: “She needs to be jolly. Why doesn’t she go to some seaside place, and live in a hotel, and enjoy herself?” (531). This idea forms the kernel for Sophia’s plan, which she proposes to Cyril when he’s pressured into a visit.

The next scene opens with Sophia and Constance at a luxury hotel, having left the Bursley house empty while they awaited their new servant. Unfortunately, a letter arrives from the servant relating that she has changed her mind, which sparks a crisis for Constance: “Constance felt that this actually and truly was the deepest depth of her calamities. There she was, far from a dirty home, with no servant and no prospect of a servant” (550). Sophia takes the opportunity to suggest that rather than returning to Bursley, they go on a permanent holiday and live in hotels. Constance resists this idea, unable to imagine life anywhere but her home in Bursley. She breaks down in tears, and Sophia is left regretting having pushed so hard for a change of which her sister was incapable.

The narrative moves nine years past the events of Chapter 3. Sophia has resigned herself to Constance’s intractability in where to live, so the two have continued living together in Bursley. Sophia resents having to stay there, which adds an undernote of tension to the household: “Buried at the root of the relations between the sisters was Sophia’s grudge against Constance for refusing to leave the Square” (560). One day, while the doctor is calling on Constance, Sophia receives a telegram from Manchester that her husband, Gerald, is there and is dangerously ill.

Dick Povey (the son of Samuel’s executed cousin, Daniel) and his fiancée, Lily, offer to drive Sophia to Manchester. Once there, she’s greeted by one of Gerald’s distant relatives, who recently became aware of Sophia’s presence in Bursley. The relative tells Sophia that Gerald has already died, and when she goes to see his body, she’s shocked at the ravages of time upon his frame: “What affected her was that he had once been young, and that he had grown old, and was now dead. That was all. Youth and vigor had come to that. […] Everything came to that” (577). Profoundly struck by this experience and the pain of recalling of memories from a life that now seemed to her terrible, she accepts Dick and Lily’s offer of a ride back to Bursley. On the way, however, she suffers an incapacitating attack and is unresponsive when they get back. She lies comatose for several hours in Constance’s house and then passes away. The following morning, Constance observes the young Lily sleeping there and, seeing Sophia’s body, is struck by the cruel transformations of age and the emptiness of Sophia’s fate: “A brief passion, and then nearly thirty years in a boarding-house! […] And she had ended—thus! This was the piteous, ignominious end of Sophia’s wondrous gifts of body and soul. Hers had not been a life at all” (585).

One year after Sophia’s death, Constance’s health continues to deteriorate, as she experiences repeated bouts of sciatica and rheumatism. Dick and Lily have grown closer to Constance and are kind to her in person, but in private they reveal that they’re humoring her, treating her as an “old lady” who doesn’t understand the modern world: “The secret attitude of both of them towards her was one of good-natured condescension” (614). Constance, is fond of them but, likewise, regards them as blind to the realities of life.

Two major disruptions occur in the Bursley house. First, Maria Critchlow (the former Miss Insull) attempts death by suicide, having been driven to depression by the growing losses of business at the draper’s shop. Mr. Critchlow allows a business selling premade clothes, Midland Clothiers Company, to take over the shop and hang its own sign out in the square. As they need more space, Constance is notified that she must leave her home. The second major disruption is a push for federating Bursley with its surrounding communities into a single city. Constance is against the proposition: “Her hatred of the idea was intensified into violent animosity; insomuch that in the result she died a martyr to the cause of Bursley’s municipal independence” (601). When the day for the referendum comes, Constance ventures out, ignoring her frail condition, and walks all the way to the town hall and back again. Constance’s health is so broken that she never recovers. She dies, and Cyril doesn’t make it to the funeral. Despite the referendum on federation not passing, Bursley officials find a way to press forward in joining the Five Towns into one city.