The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories — Themes and Context

A Local Celebrity and Tea-Leaf Prophecy

In 'The Fortune-Teller,' a later story, Bennett introduces a woman who paints green leaves on yellow wash-basins at Stephen's earthenware manufactory. She is described with unsparing physical detail: 'fat, unfair (in the physical sense), and untidy,' her hands best left unmentioned. She speaks the dialect of the people and has never heard of Christian Science, bridge, or osprey plumes. Yet the whole house is agog because she is a reputed fortune-teller, hired for a Christmas party after a fashionable palmist's prosecution in Hanbridge made the topic prominent.

The story's comedy turns on the tension between polite disbelief and genuine unease. No one admits to believing in fortune-telling, but when the fortune-teller insists on receiving the sexes separately, her reputation only grows. Bennett notes that her mother and grandmother were also fortune-tellers—'that statement seemed to strike everybody full in the face; it set a seal on the witch's authority.' The excerpt ends with a young woman emerging to say, 'She's very good,' as a group forms at the foot of the stairs.

The Narrator's Position and the Five Towns Voice

Throughout the excerpts, Bennett employs a first-person narrator who is both participant and observer. In the opening story, he is a guest at the Brindley table, able to report their reactions from within. He notes that he 'could have imagined either of them saying to the other: "Here's a funny thing! The house is on fire!"'—a speculative insight that reveals his familiarity with their temperaments.

This narrator does not claim omniscience. He gathers that grandmamma's birthday 'could not be neglected with impunity' and that she is 'a continual fount of rich presents in specie.' The voice is wry, precise, and slightly detached, offering observations rather than judgments. The Five Towns themselves are named—Hanbridge is 'our metropolis'—and the dialect of the people is mentioned but not reproduced at length, keeping the focus on social dynamics rather than phonetic transcription.

Structure: From Domestic Crisis to Social Comedy

The collection's range is suggested by the table of contents: twenty-two stories with titles like 'The Heroism of Thomas Chadwick,' 'The Widow of the Balcony,' and 'Why the Clock Stopped.' The excerpts show two distinct modes. The first story is a tight domestic scene—a forgotten birthday, a dash for a train—while 'The Fortune-Teller' expands into a social comedy involving a whole household's reaction to an unconventional guest.

Both stories share a structural pattern: an initial incident (the forgotten birthday, the arrival of the fortune-teller) generates a series of reactions and complications. Bennett builds suspense through small details—the timetable, the separate consultations—and releases it through understated punchlines. The narrator's dry asides ('Of course no one in the house believed in fortune-telling. Oh no!') keep the tone light even as the characters' anxieties are laid bare.

Recurring Motifs: Timetables, Manners, and Material Life

Two details recur across the excerpts: the railway timetable and the precise cataloguing of social and material markers. The timetable appears in the first story as a gesture of 'habit'—all businessmen carry one. In 'The Fortune-Teller,' the list of things the woman has never heard of ('Christian Science, bridge, Paquin, Panhard, Father Vaughan, the fall of consols, osprey plumes, nor the new theology') serves a similar function, defining her by what she lacks.

Bennett's eye for the physical is unsparing: the fortune-teller's 'atrocious dress of linsey-woolsey,' her 'commodious' boots, her use of a hat-pin for an unintended purpose. These details ground the stories in a specific, tangible world. The manufactory where she paints leaves on wash-basins is named—Stephen's renowned earthenware manufactory—tying the fiction to the industrial geography of the Potteries.

These excerpts reveal Bennett's method: he builds stories from small, concrete incidents—a forgotten birthday, a hired fortune-teller—and lets character emerge through reaction and detail. The narrator's wry, observant tone invites the reader to share in the comedy without condescension. As you read the collection, watch for the way Bennett uses objects (timetables, teacups, hat-pins) to anchor emotion, and how the Five Towns themselves become a character through recurring place-names and social textures.

Arnold Bennett understood how birthdays slip past and trains must be caught. There is a similar patience, a fondness for small, earnest strivings, in that old chronicle of knights. Both books seem to know that our quiet duties—dentist visits, forgotten dates, a boy’s first quest—carry their own gentle heroism. It is a kinship I have long treasured, side by side on my shelf. Three Young Knights — Inside the Classic shares that honest, unhurried heart.