Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was my Classic Read for the month of February.

This was an interesting examination of the role of women both as wives or mothers, in the early Victorian era. Written in an epistolary format, it also details extramarital affairs, alcoholism and the all too often false conception of a good woman reforming a bad man. Considered shocking in its day, present-day readers are likely to be more shocked by the fact that Anne's sister Charlotte (Jane Eyre, Villette) prevented this book's publication in new editions after Anne's death at age 29. The reasons for Charlotte's dislike for this novel were complex but the decision greatly impaired Anne Brontë's reputation as a writer and appreciation of her work.

Written some fifty-one years before The Awakening by Kate Chopin, which is widely considered a landmark of early feminist writing, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in its now fully restored version (vide infra) is considered to be one of the earliest feminist novels, especially in the context of a woman refusing to conform with social expectations of her lot after a bad marriage. It was shocking in its day because Helen Huntingdon slams her bedroom door and locks her drunken, unfaithful and abusive husband out of her bedroom and subsequently, leaves him, taking their young son, and hides in a country house owned by her brother, making a humble living as an artist. The latter was considered illegal in an era where women, their children, and all their assets were considered their husband's property. Before 1870 and passage of the Women's Marriage Property Act, women had no legal existence separate from their husband, were unable to own property, control custody of their children or control their lives by suing for divorce. The former act, of excluding a husband from her bedroom, was considered scandalous since wives were expected do their sexual marital duty no matter what their husband dished out at them. Anne's depiction of this rebellion did not occur in a vacuum. In fact, her progressive parson father reportedly advised a parishioner who was being abused by a drunken husband to leave him and make a new life for herself and her children. The lady actually took his advice and was much happier thereafter, returning to tell Patrick Brontë of her change of fortune in life. (Reference the OUP edition of the novel mentioned below.)

While the religious overlay of Helen's life and character gets a bit tiresome (Anne was, after all, the daughter of a clergyman), the actual plot points of the story are quite notable for an understanding of early Victorian family culture. Detailing the immense pressure placed on women to get married, whether the marriage had the potential for happiness or not, in order to remove the financial burden placed on their parents and relatives, we also see how the pressure to accede or resist is proffered in sibling relationships. Older sisters who are stranded in sad circumstances are seen to advise younger sisters to take caution in accepting a proposal of marriage. Helen's aunt, Mrs. Maxwell, cautions Helen repeatedly about taking care to choose a good husband and is beside herself when Helen wishes to accept Arthur Huntingdon's proposal. Brontë's account of dissolute behavior of many upper social class young men was likely informed by the life of her brother, Branwell, who engaged in an affair with a married lady and died of tuberculosis aggravated by his alcoholism and laudanum addiction, and that of his friends. This painful connection may have formed part of Charlotte's resistance to the novel, as it echoed their family's shame in their brother's life and demise. Reportedly Charlotte also felt that the novel's frank and detailed depictions of unhappy marriage and infidelities were unseemly for the image of the virtuous Brontë sisters that Charlotte tried to curate. How could shy and retiring Anne, a spinster, come to have known these terrible things? Critics of the day thought Acton Bell (the male pseudonym under which this novel was published) had witnessed shocking strife and that young ladies should be "protected" from reading this biased book. It is due to the poet Algernon Charles  Swinburne that we owe the book's resurgence in the 1880's. He commended it in an essay about Emily Brontë, saying it was more realistic than anything Jane or Emily ever wrote and making the direct connection to Branwell's life and fate. (Swinburne, Algernon Charles (June 16, 1883), "Emily Brontë". The Athenaeum. John Francis, 2903.)

Readers should be aware that Charlotte's publisher issued a bizarrely edited edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall around the time of Charlotte's death and that edition excised many passages and shifted chapters around to compensate for this desecration. Not labeled an abridgment, this bowdlerized edition of the novel is still in circulation. Readers wishing to read the full and correct, original version of Anne Brontë's opus should look for the Oxford University Press, Clarendon edition of the novel. Likewise, those seeking an audio edition should make sure the narration is from the OUP edition of the book.

For next month's Classic Read, I'll be reading a classic science fiction novel, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.

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