The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
Plot summary (with spoilers): This story is told in the form of a letter from Gilbert Markham to his brother-in-law Halford. It tells the particulars of how Gilbert came to fall in love with Mrs. Graham, a widow who recently moved into the neighborhood as a tenant at Wildfell Hall, a dark and gloomy residence. Though she is a widow, Mrs. Graham is not the elderly kind that needs wrinkle lotion and creams. She’s still quite young. And because of Mrs. Graham’s perceived aloofness and her overprotective disposition toward her child Arthur, it’s not long before tongues start to wag. Mrs. Graham is subsequently the subject of much gossip among the other folks in the area, and even Gilbert doesn’t like her too well at the beginning.
But Gilbert strikes up a friendship with the boy, and gradually comes to know Mrs. Graham a little better. Indeed, Gilbert finds himself falling in love with her after a time, much to the chagrin of Eliza Millward, who thought Gilbert would soon propose to her. But Mrs. Graham, though she seems to feel the same about Gilbert, continually puts him off. Gilbert thinks this is due to the fact that Mr. Lawrence, another young man in the neighborhood, shows a great deal of interest in Mrs. Graham as well. But instead of telling Gilbert her story, Mrs. Graham lets him read it on his own through her diary.
It turns out that Mrs. Graham is actually Helen Huntingdon and is still married to Arthur Huntingdon, who lives in a distant county. In the diary, Helen recounts her courtship and marriage to Huntingdon. They were in love at first, but it didn’t take long for her feelings to change. Huntingdon became restless at being married and living away from his friends in London, so he frequently went for months-long sojourns in the city, leaving Helen all alone. He drank too much, and had numerous affairs — even brazenly inviting his mistresses to stay in the house with them. Huntingdon also hurled endless streams of verbal abuse at Helen, and didn’t care that his friends followed suit.
Helen, not wishing to have little Arthur grow up under this terrible influence and perhaps turn out like his father, decides to run away. She enlists the help of her brother Mr. Lawrence(!), who gets Wildfell Hall ready. Mr. Lawrence also secures painting supplies, by which Helen means to earn a living to support herself and Arthur. Helen and Arthur make their escape, bringing the action up to the present time.
Gilbert despairs at the news because now there’s no way he can marry Helen. But she tells him they simply have to wait until Huntingdon dies. It turns out they didn’t have to wait very long, as that man’s bad habits finally caught up with him. He succumbed to illness, leaving Helen free to marry Gilbert — which happens after a decent interval has passed.
Liked:
- I enjoyed the basic love story between Arthur and Helen. I was completely fooled by Helen’s behavior and her relationship to Mr. Lawrence, so I liked that reveal very much.
- I loved that a book published in 1848 highlighted the problem of domestic violence and abuse. Surely this kind of thing must have gone on a lot behind closed doors, but there wasn’t any public discourse about it or anything. I read somewhere that this book pretty much blew the lid off hidden Victorian vices, and was talked about quite a lot in its day (not all the coverage was favorable, of course).
Disliked:
- It took a heck of a long time for this story to unfold, and there were lots of boring scenes along the way. I think a fair amount of the narrative could have been cut (particularly some of the repetitive passages from Helen’s diary), which would have made the book more appealing as a whole.
Rating:
Overall, I appreciated a few of the elements contained in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, especially the historical significance of the subject. Nevertheless, this is not the kind of novel that stands up to the test of time, as Huntingdon’s transgressions don’t seem so outrageous these days and Helen’s escape doesn’t seem quite so dramatic and unheard of. I think most modern readers will be bored by many sections in the book, just as I was. I give it 3 stars out of 5.
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