The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

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Summary: 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' - a review
Review: 'Sick of mankind and its disgusting ways' Anne Bronte once scribbled on the back of her prayer book. Her evident harsh view of life, coupled with her moral strength as a woman, are beautifully interwoven to produce this novel; her masterpiece. Although never enjoying the popularity and success of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' - her sisters' books - 'Wildfell Hall' is quite fit to join any bookshelf of classic English literature. The themes include utter despair and the tragic consequences of a young woman's naivety; Helen felt that, although she could see Arthur's faults, she would be able to somehow change him once they were married. In reality, her marital experience was a disaster.

Anne Bronte creates a world in which the drunken, immoral behaviour of men becomes the norm and this may have been startling to contemporary readers - perhaps a reason for the book's panning at the critics. The narrative is built up delicately; first Gilbert; and then the racier, more gripping diary of Helen as she guides us through her married life; before returning again to Gilbert, whose tale by this time has become far more exciting as we know of Helen's past. Helen's realisation of the awful truth and her desperate attempts to escape her husband, are forever imprinted in the mind of the reader as passages of perfect prose.

One of the earliest feminist novels, the underrated Anne Bronte writes in this a classic, and - defying the views of her early (male) critics - a claim to the position of one of England's finest ever female writers.

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Summary: Better than Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights
Review: Anne Bronte's description of the married life of Helen and Arthur Huntingdon in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall shocked me with its abuse and wanton cruelty like no other book from the 19th century has. Taken in an historical perspective, the feminist view of this book is impressive. Helen Huntingdon defies the conventions of her, and Bronte's time, by leaving her dissolute husband and living independently. This gives Bronte the opportunity to criticize village life with its nosy neighbours and petty gossip, and aspect neither of her sisters achieved in either Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, where the characters exist in vacuums. I enjoyed the book immensely and recommend it highly. I also recommend the PBS movie version starring Tara Fitzgerald and Rupert Graves.

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Summary: Unusual for its Time
Review: Anne is not the most well-known of the Brontes, but perhaps she's the most forthright of the three. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the story of an independant woman of infinite strength. A woman who, after making the seemingly fatal mistake of a bad marriage (a mistake that might doom other women of her age to depression and ) manages to set herself free. It is not a haunting story, nor a frightening one but it is one filled with alcolism, abuse and great misery in a marriage, all issues that were (and are in the novel) swept under the carpet, politely ignored. A woman was to be pitied, but not helped. Helen helps herself.

The novel's single confusing and disruptive aspect is the fact that it is in two sections, the beginning and ending the letter Gilbert Markham writes to his friend, and the middle Helen's own diary. Both stories are part of the same narrative; Gilbert's beginning just before Helen's ends, and are inseperable, but this forces the reader to 'begin' again.

The story itself, and the boldness with which Helen's life and Gilbert's careful uncertainty are addressed, is near perfect. A masterpiece, and by no means any less great than Anne's sisters' works.

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Summary: A must read classics
Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a riveting novel by the "least famous" Bronte sister Anne. The main character is Helen Huntingdon, who also uses the assumed name Helen Graham for part of the book.

Narrated in part by Mr. Markham, the gentleman farmer who falls in love with her, and partly by herself in diary form, the Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a sad portrayal of the miseries Helen Huntingdon endures at the hands of an immature self-centered husband.

The story starts out with Helen, an intriguing beautiful "widow" who comes to live in a deserted moorland mansion called Wildfell Hall with no one but her maid and young son as companions. She excites the gossip of the local townspeople by her refusal to mingle in the town's social life, her strong opinions on the upbringing of her 5 year old son, and by working to support herself as a landscape painter. Mr. Markham, the gentleman farmer, rather than being repelled by her fiercely guarded independence is intrigued by her and determines to learn more about her, falling in love with her in the process. Helen becomes the butt of sinister gossip when it is discovered that she and Mr. Lawrence, her landlord, are not the strangers to each other that they pretend to be in public, and it is rumored that something is going on between them romantically.

It is in response to this falsehood that she turns over her diary to Mr. Markham, who at last learns within its contents her true identity, why she is at Wildfell, and why she can not marry him. He also learns the astonishing identity of Mr. Lawrence. Helen's diary traces her life from a naive girl of 18 to a courageous woman of 26, and the sorrow and trials she endures in her marriage to a wretch of a husband, the womanizing, alcoholic Arthur Huntingdon.