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Hilda Lessways
The story primarily revolves around the character Hilda Lessways, a young woman struggling against the constraints of her domestic life and her complex relationship with her widowed mother.
"Hilda Lessways" by Arnold Bennett is a novel. The story primarily revolves around the character Hilda Lessways, a young woman struggling against the constraints of her domestic life and her complex relationship with her widowed mother.
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Read a passage
The Lessways household, consisting of Hilda and her widowed mother, was temporarily without a servant. Hilda hated domestic work, and because she hated it she often did it passionately and thoroughly. That afternoon, as she emerged from the kitchen, her dark, defiant face was full of grim satisfaction in the fact that she had left a kitchen polished and irreproachable, a kitchen without the slightest indication that it ever had been or ever would be used for preparing human nature's daily food; a show kitchen. Even the apron which she had worn was hung in concealment behind the scullery door. The lobby clock, which stood over six feet high and had to be wound up every night by hauling on a rope, was noisily getting ready to strike two. But for Mrs. Lessways' disorderly and undesired assistance, Hilda's task might have been finished a quarter of an hour earlier. She passed quietly up the stairs. When she was near the top, her mother's voice, at once querulous and amiable, came from the sitting-room:
There was a pause, dramatic for both of them, and in that minute pause the very life of the house seemed for an instant to be suspended, and then the waves of the hostile love that united these two women resumed their beating, and Hilda's lips hardened.
Contents
- 01Book I Her Start in Life
- 02Chapter I an Event in Mr. Skellorn's Life
- 03Chapter II the End of the Scene
- 04Chapter III Mr. Cannon
- 05Chapter IV Domesticity Invaded
- 06Chapter V Mrs. Lessways' Shrewdness
- 07Chapter VI Victor Hugo and Isaac Pitman
- 08Chapter VII the Editorial Secretary
- 09Chapter VIII Janet Orgreave
- 10Chapter IX in the Street
- 11Chapter X Miss Gailey in Declension
- 12Chapter XI Disillusion
- 13Chapter XII the Telegram
- 14Chapter XIII Hilda's World
- 15Chapter XIV to London
- 16Book II Her Recovery
- 17Chapter I Sin
- 18Chapter II the Little Room
- 19Chapter III Journey to Bleakridge
- 20Chapter IV with the Orgreaves
- 21Chapter V Edwin Clayhanger
- 22Chapter VI in the Garden
- 23Chapter VII the Next Meeting
- 24Book III Her Burden
- 25Chapter I Hilda Indispensable
- 26Chapter II Sarah's Benefactor
- 27Chapter III at Brighton
- 28Chapter IV the Sea
- 29Book IV Her Fall
- 30Chapter I the Going Concern
- 31Chapter II the Unknown Adventure
- 32Chapter III Florrie Again
- 33Book V Her Deliverance
- 34Chapter I Louisa Uncontrolled
- 35Chapter II Some Secret History
- 36Book VI Her Punishment
- 37Chapter I Evening at Bleakridge
- 38Chapter II a Rendezvous
- 39Chapter III at the Works
- 40Chapter IV the Call from Brighton
- 41Chapter V Thursday Afternoon
- 42Chapter VI Mischance
About this edition
- Author
- Arnold Bennett
- Language
- English
- Era
- Modern (c. 1800–1945)
- Reading level
- Intermediate: some philosophy helps
- Formats
- EPUB, PDF
- Length
- 456 pages
- This edition
- Modern Philosophers
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