Some aspects of the life and character of the author's brother Branwell Brontë correspond to those of Arthur Huntingdon in The Tenant. May Sinclair, in 1913, said that 'the slamming of bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England.' In leaving her husband and taking away their child, Helen violates not only social conventions but also the early 19th-century English law.īlake Hall photographed at the end of the 19th century Most critics now consider The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to be one of the first feminist novels. The depiction of marital strife and women's professional identification has also a strong moral message mitigated by Anne Brontë's belief in universal salvation. Ultimately she flees with her son, whom she desperately wishes to save from his father's influence. In the diary she gives Gilbert, sheĬhronicles her husband's physical and moral decline through alcohol and debauchery in the dissipated aristocratic society. Refusing to believe anything scandalous about her, Gilbert befriends her and discovers her past. Her strict seclusion soon gives rise to gossip in the neighbouring village and she becomes a social outcast. Contrary to the early 19th century norms, she pursues an artist's career and makes an income by selling her pictures. The novel is framed as a series of letters from Gilbert Markham to his friend about the events connected with his meeting a mysterious young widow, calling herself Helen Graham, who arrives at Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty for many years, with her young son and a servant. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication in England until 1854. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel written by English author Anne Brontë. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall at Wikisource

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