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It is autumn of 1827 when a woman named Helen Graham moves into the deserted, stately moorland manor Wildfell Hall with her young son. The neighbors take immediate notice of this awkward circumstance, and she is subjected to their jealousy and the idle rumor they spread. They discover she is escaping a brutish marriage and has taken an assumed name to prevent her husband finding her. She must unchain herself and her son physically and emotionally from his roguish influence and earn a living. The imaginative power and realism of these characters involved in marital hostilities urge the reader to view the far-reaching aspects of their struggle with a more compassionate understanding. The husband she left, Arthur Huntingdon, was a selfish womanizer who only wanted to satiate his own desires. Even though Helen offered to help him turn his life around, he had no wish to give up his drunkenness or adultery. At last Helen grew to despise him as much as she once loved him. But when she witnessed his attempts to make his son a chip off the old block, her motherly duties overrode her responsibilities as a wife, and with the help of her brother she runs away to the obscurity of a small town. Here she meets Gilbert Markham who falls in love with her and requests her hand in marriage. She refuses him and offers an explanation by supplying him with references to her journals and letters that will eventually convince him of the desperation of her married life. As the plot advances and mysteries unwind, what Gilbert and Helen say--and also what they don't say--gives the reader access to Bronte's scourging accusation of the sexual ambiguities of 19th century Britain. And even though they are often unaware of their insensitive reactions to their own beliefs, they realize they love each other. When Arthur Huntingdon dies, they are finally allowed to marry.
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Subjects
Fiction, Married women, Landlord and tenant, Alcoholics, Social life and customs, Alcoholism, Domestic fiction, Literature, Separated women, FICTION / General, British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author), Married people, fiction, England, fiction, Fiction, family life, Fiction, general, Fiction, family life, general, Large type books, Readers, Manners and customs, Women authors, Biography, General, Romans, nouvelles, Femmes mariées, Alcooliques, English literaturePeople
Anne Brontë (1820-1849)Places
EnglandShowing 12 featured editions. View all 546 editions?
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The tenant of Wildfell Hall
2015, CreateSpace Independent Publishing
in English
1517144884 9781517144883
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The tenant of Wildfell Hall
2013, W F Howes Ltd
in English
- Large print edition.
1471241211 9781471241215
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Tenant of Wildfell Hall
2012, Emereo Publishing Pty Limited
in English
- The original classic edition.
1486147127 9781486147120
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The tenant of Wildfell Hall
1997, Modern Library
in English
- Modern Library ed.
0679602798 9780679602798
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The tenant of Wildfell Hall
1996, Wordsworth Editions
in English
- [Complete and unabridged]
1853264881 9781853264887
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Book Details
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Librarian note: Alternate cover editions for this ISBN are: "Woman in white dress" (with the title on white and black background), "Woman at the easel" on a black and blue background, and "Furniture, easel and window".
Anne Brontë's second novel is a passionate and courageous challenge to the conventions supposedly upheld by Victorian society and reflected in circulating-library fiction. The heroine, Helen Huntingdon, after a short period of initial happiness, leaves her dissolute husband, and must earn her own living to rescue her son from his influence. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is compelling in its imaginative power, the realism and range of its dialogue, and its psychological insight into the characters involved in a marital battle.
While I acknowledge the success of the present work to have been greater than I anticipated, and the praises it has elicited from a few kind critics to have been greater than it deserved, I must also admit that from some other quarters it has been censured with an asperity which I was as little prepared to expect, and which my judgment, as well as my feelings, assures me is more bitter than just.
It is scarcely the province of an author to refute the arguments of his censors and vindicate his own productions; but I may be allowed to make here a few observations with which I would have prefaced the first edition, had I foreseen the necessity of such precautions against the misapprehensions of those who would read it with a prejudiced mind or be content to judge it by a hasty glance.
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- Created June 22, 2010
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February 17, 2024 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
May 15, 2021 | Edited by Lisa | Merge works |
October 3, 2012 | Edited by VacuumBot | Updated format 'eBook' to 'E-book'; Removed author from Edition (author found in Work) |
April 27, 2011 | Edited by OCLC Bot | Added OCLC numbers. |
June 22, 2010 | Created by ImportBot | Imported from marc_overdrive MARC record |