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 You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827 to meet Helen Huntington and learn her secret sorrows April 30, 2008
How explain literary genius? How pinpoint the DNA which made three Yorkshire girls living in a rundown parsonage world famous authors? "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" author is Anne the youngest of the Bronte sisters. This novel is little known but is still an excellent example of Victorian fiction at its best. The novel is set in the Regency period and deals with a mysterious widow who becomes the tenant of the rundown estate called Wildfell Hall. She is the subject of gossip in the small town close to the old estate. Gilbert Markham falls in love with her.
The book begins with a glance backward to 1827 by the first person narrator Gilbert Markham who is a farmer. We meet Gilbert, his siblings Rose and Fergus as well as their grumpy mother. This first 115 pages show us social comedy as Gilbert is the romantic beau ideal of a fatuous preacher's daughter. He sees Markham becoming friendly with Helen and her young son Arthur. Gilbert sees Helen with a man thinking she is proving untrue to their burgeoning romance. Later we will learn that the enigmatic stranger is none other than her brother! Helen gives Gilbert a diary which consists of about 300 pages in the novel. In this diary she tells her sad tale. After his all night perusal of the diary the fiery Gilbert is convinced Helen is worthy of his love and protection.
Helen was wed to a rakish, drunk named Arthur Hunington who takes her to his home at Grassdale. Arthur lives a dissolute life. He is lazy, unkind to animals and socializes with sleazy aristocrats. He carries on an affair with the stupid Annabella leading to Helen's leaving him.
The novel is a love story, an indictment against alcoholism and a story well told with well sketched characters to hold your attention.
I thought it interesting that "Wildfell Hall" has the same "WH" as does Emily Bronte's more famous "Wuthering Heights." I also noted that the heroine of Anne's novel is "Helen". Did this remind the youngest Bronte of elder sister Charlotte's memorable tragic child "Helen Burns" a student at Lowood School in Jane Eyre? The novel is also influenced by the 1700 page eighteenth century letter novel "Clarissa" by Samuel Richardson.
Anne Bronte died at the young age of 29 with her potential unrealized. She did produce this fine book and her other classic "Agnes Grey." She is worth a read! A good book to curl up with on a dark and stormy night!
Surprising December 8, 2007
I loved this story. I was a bit surprised by the content, considering the time the book was written. The story went deeper than I had thought it would, very enjoyable read. If you like Charlotte's books, you will love this one.
Loved this. September 18, 2007
The romantic ending was much too brief after the long story leading up to it, but it was a good read.
 A Victorian tale for the modern reader July 15, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The elaborate Victorian prose style of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall does not obscure a story that is recognizably modern--that of an idealistic young woman who wants to save her brutish, alcoholic husband from himself.
Reviled for its "morbid love for the coarse, not to say the brutal," The Tenant of Wildfell Hall continues the theme Bronte began in Agnes Gray--that nurture's role in shaping in a person's character and future is more important than parents and other authority figures realize or take responsibility for. As Helen says of Arthur, she wants "to do my utmost to . . . make him what he would have been if he had not, from the beginning, had a bad, selfish, miserly father . . . and a foolish mother who indulged him to the top of his bent . . . doing her utmost to encourage those germs of folly and vice it was her duty to suppress."
Helen's background is also revealing. Raised by her uncle and aunt, she exemplifies the modern concept of the adult child of an alcoholic--self-righteous and controlling. Knowing that Arthur is flawed, she marries him with the objective of changing him and saving him for God. It can be speculated that Arthur, intrigued by Helen's youth, beauty, passion, and apparent demureness, envisions making her a more worldly woman. Neither knows the other beyond the surface, and each seems to want to transform the other into his or her own image. This is not the basis for a happy or durable union, as Helen learns.
Failing to control the father, Helen turns her attentions to her son. Quite rightly, she is horrified when Arthur makes his son a pawn in their marital battle, teaching him the manly Victorian arts of sport and predation, love of drinking and carousing, camaraderie without friendship, and disrespect for and the subjugation of women. Even Bronte seemed to be aware that Helen's approach is also disturbing in its own way, for the child-rearing debate between Helen and her new neighbors is the basis for an entire chapter before we learn her history. While many of Bronte's contemporaries would have agreed with the vicar's argument that experience builds character, Helen slowly reveals how experience of the wrong kind without a moderating influence can destroy character.
The structure of the novel is undoubtedly awkward; it is unlikely that anyone would share such intimate details and thoughts as well as another person's entire personal journal with even the dearest friend without a compelling reason. Gilbert, who is introduced, perhaps symbolically, as a hunter of predators (hawks), disappears from the story as he reads Helen's tale. This diminishes him, relegating him to Helen's redemption and reward. On occasion, for example, in "Domestic Scenes," Bronte's tense changes and irregularities make Helen's journal lose its currency and distract the reader with lapses into a novel-like tone.
The structure does, however, allow the reader (and Gilbert) to meet the reclusive, protective, guarded, almost-grim Helen before we find out about the life that has shaped her and her inflexible opinions. The revelation of her character, and the strength she has to flout convention when her conscience and sense of duty require it, helps to complete Gilbert's growth from sarcastic village wit to the kind of mature man more worthy of her.
Bronte's stated purpose was "to tell the truth, for the truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it . . . Let it not be imagined, however, that I consider myself competent to reform the errors and abuses of society, but only that I would fain contribute my humble quota towards so good an aim . . . ." Helen's story, like that of Agnes, reveals the uglier aspects of Victorian family life, usually idealized, that resulted when women had few rights, men abused theirs, parents did not take responsibility for instilling healthy values (such as respect for life) in their children, and divorce was out of the reach of most. Beyond the impressive gates and parks, within the stately estates, behind the closed doors, lurked family and social problems that could not be hidden or denied away. Helen's story was disturbing not because of her depiction of Arthur's demeaning, childish, and amoral behavior, but because she exposes the falseness of the idyllic family life her society held dear and because she is willing to abandon what society considers her duty to her marriage to perform her real duty to herself and her son.
Anne Bronte's work has been compared unfavorably to that of her sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Yet its psychological insights, including the very coarseness and brutality of which contemporary critics complained, make up for Bronte's lack of literary finesse. Her portrayal of Arthur, the fun-loving, amoral, pettish, selfish hedonist, and his boorish social circle resonates today. Despite his country gentleman status and his debt-supported wealth, Arthur is recognizable in all times and classes. Helen, too, is familiar as the long-suffering wife who finally takes action when her child is threatened.
Although much has changed since Bronte's time, her characterizations and insights on family life hold true today, making The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a classic in its own right.
A good attemp May 21, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I agree, having read the book, that Gilbert was brutish and at times overyly "girlish" in expressing his emotions. The ending was rather abrupt. But because it's just from letters, that's to be expected.
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