'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' by Anne Brontë - A Review

Think before you marry.

Rating - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Genre - social realism

Themes - marriage, community, misogyny, religion, domestic abuse

Similar Books - 'Pride and Prejudice' - Jane Austen, 'Wuthering Heights' - Emily Brontë 

'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' by Anne Brontë begins with the mysterious Helen Graham moving into Wildfell Hall with her young son intriguing the nosy, gossiping community she moved into, especially Gilbert Markham who is quick to offer her his friendship. Her reclusive behaviour sparks gossip and rumours until Helen provides Gilbert with her diary, revealing the disastrous marriage she left behind. 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' is a feminist novel exploring a woman's pursuit for domestic independence, as well as a morality novel showcasing the disastrous and destructive effects of abundance.   

This book took me a month to get through. It's not incredibly difficult to read, but it is tough to understand the relationships between characters and some passages are a bit difficult to decipher. I did have to look up how exactly one character is related to the other, resulting in a couple of spoilers but oh well. 

I find Helen Graham an interesting character. Despite her strong character, resisting her aunt's calls to find a better husband and her adamance to marry Arthur, she's quick to assume the role and the expectations brought when she becomes a wife and then a mother. Perhaps this shows how women were expected to mould their character according to societal expectations, forced to adapt for the good of others, an expectation so drilled into Helen she does it instantaneously the moment she gains these titles. But then again Helen's strong sense of morality seems essential to her character, loyally following out her duties as mother and wife as not only is it a societal expectation but god given. The novel is laced with Biblical references, and I think Brontë is acting as a moral guide through Helen, educating the reader on the destructive effects of over indulgence through religion. Gilbert is also an interestingly constructed character. As the narrator he seems like an unreliable one as his opinions inevitably influence our ideas about characters, he sometimes choses to not to go into detail and his presentation of events his influenced by how he perceives them, although he gives weight to his narrative by using journals, letters and diary entries as evidence to recount the tale. Yet Gilbert's hyper - self consciousness and insecurity makes him quite a relatable character, placing him in contrast to Arthur Huntingdon, Helen's first husband, who's sure of himself, living a life of pleasure and ignorant towards his wife. In fact pretty much all his friends are horrible husbands, referring to the cycle of abuse and the mistreatment of women in marriage, but also the possibility of redemption and fixing the unstable power dynamic between men and women in marriage if husbands acknowledge their ignorance and accept the necessity for change. Again the religious idea of redemption.

'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' is very similar to Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'. Both explore the importance of marriage and the motivations behind pursuing matrimony, many that don't include love. Both heroines, Helen Graham and Elizabeth Bennet, are vocal in their desire to marry whom they love rather than whom they are expected to marry, portraying both women as powerful female protagonists. Both even have the enigmatic opening of someone new moving into the neighbourhood, immediately destroying the balance and creating intrigue. I think this is a trope we should bring back to Literature. Arthur Huntingdon is redolent to Heathcliff, the Byronic hero of Anne Brontë's sister's Emily Brontë's  'Wuthering Heights', in the sense that both characters are manipulative and immoral, although Heathcliff has more redeemable qualities than Arthur. 

Overall, I give 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' 5 stars. There's a lot of interesting ideas communicated through it, particularly from a feminist point of view. It is a bit difficult, but honestly a rewarding read with a fulfilling ending.