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: The Forgotten Sister
Review: Anne is the Bronte we never read in school and most of us don't read afterwards, which is a big loss for those who don't, because she's at least as talented as her two older sisters. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" can hold its own against "Jane Eyre" or "Wuthering Heights" any day in the week, but it was panned in its own time, in large part because of its "unladylike" topic of alcoholism. Anne Bronte knew alcoholism first hand through her brother Bramwell who drank himself to death, and her revulsion of the alcoholic personality is central to this book. The heroine of "Tenant", Helen Graham, is a headstrong and independent young woman, who marries Arthur Huntington against the advice of her family. She is one of those who loves not wisely but too well, because Arthur, a selfish and irresponsible womanizer, cares about nothing but satisfying his own wishes and desires. Helen wants to help Arthur turn his life around, which Arthur couldn't care less about, and his drinking and adultery right under her nose eventually repels her to the point where she despises him as much as she once loved him. It is only when she sees him attempting to influence her young son to become a chip off the old block, that she realizes her responsibility as a mother to save her son from his father trumps her duty as a wife to stand by her husband. With the help of her brother, she runs away with her son to the anonymity of life in a small village. Here she meets Gilbert Markham, who falls in love with her, but realizes that their relationship has no future as long as her husband is alive. Arthur's ultimate death from alcoholism not only frees Helen from an abusive and degrading marriage, it also leaves her free to find happiness with Gilbert. Anne Bronte pulled no punches in writing this book and that is probably what so perturbed readers of her own era; too bad for them, because they were unable to appreciate this book for what it is, one of the unrecognized classics of English literature.