Dave's Book Blog: "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Bronte

The following review incorporates comments from my Eastbourne Central U3A group.

This story, written in early Victorian times, is about a woman trapped in a marriage to an alcoholic and womaniser and the 'nice boy' who wants to marry her not knowing she is already married: these are the days before easy divorce and before the Married Women's Property Act so that all the wife's property, including her son, are deemed to be the property of the man. The book stirred up controversy in its time for its no-holds-barred (for its time) portrayal of dissolute wickedness. The husband of the heroine indulges in verbal and physical abuse of his wife, he offers her sexual services to his friends, he indulges in coercive control; for her the final straw comes when he encourages their son to sweat and rink alcohol. Unlike the high Gothic extravaganza of Wuthering Heights and the ultra-romantic Jane Eyre of Anne's sisters, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, this book's realism and lack of sensationalism has led to it being overlooked. To modern sensibilities its narrative pretences, its length, and its moralising make it a sometimes difficult read. Nevertheless, there is plenty to enjoy.

Anne Bronte chose a story-within-a-story format for TWH. The frame narrative purports to be a letter written by Gilbert Markham to ‘Halford’, inside the frame are journal entries by Helen Huntingdon. But neither works properly: both letters and diary entries are long and too well conceived; there are neither digressions nor irrelevant details as there would be in genuine letters and journals. And the diary entries are so selective; huge periods being missing (including her marriage and the conception and birth of little Arthur!)

Pre-Victorian novelists commonly used letters and diary entries, though the fashion had been for more straightforward narratives for many years prior to TWH. The big advantage of these formats is that the narrator (and therefore the reader) does not know what is going to happen next. This maintains suspense (theoretically the narrator could even die, which is not possible with a traditional past-tense narrative). But Markham’s letters are clearly written some time after the events in question, so this advantage is thrown away in the case of the frame narrative.

The other advantage to the author in this structure is that she is able to use two different narrators, and to some extent this works although the ‘voices’ of the narrators don’t seem particularly different. AB should be able to show Gilbert learning to become less impetuous ... but he doesn’t; his character at the end of his reckless rush to the wedding at the end of the book is much the same as it has been throughout the book. Helen, on the other hand, does change from a headstrong and impulsive girl (while she is being courted) to a rather censorious and scripture-quoting wife who is so obsessed with conforming to social canons of respectable behaviour that she won’t even unbend enough to propose to Gilbert at the end (she will only drop some rather coded hints).

Despite the story-in-a-story structure, the fundamentals of the pacing conform to the classic four-part plot with major turning points at the quarter-marks:

The 25% mark just follows Gilbert’s attack on Lawrence and just precedes the start of Helen’s diary.
The 50% mark is when Helen realises that her marriage is a bad one
The 75% mark is when Arthur reads Helen’s diary and demands from her the keys, effectively imprisoning her.
Helen’s diary ends at the 80% mark.

The book seemed overlong to modern eyes. One of my fellow U3A members admitted wishing, during a prolonged death-bed scene, that 'he would just get it over with'. For me, the most artificially protracted part of the story for me was at the end with the narrator throwing endless obstacles into their own way of achieving marital happiness.

The difference in expectations between women and men in upper class Victorian society is blatant in this novel. Most of the men are portrayed as impetuous, proud, and aggressive, many are also dissolute, hard-drinking and womanising. This has been described as what we would now call 'toxic masculinity'. The proffered ideal of womanhood is puritanical: the maintenance of one’s reputation is all-important. And it is respectability that seems to matter. Helen must have known that her husband was womanising when he was away from home; it was only when the affair was taking place under her nose that she gets upset.

There were times when the Bible quotes meant the ‘novel’ was more like a tract. It was suggested in the group that this reflected Victorian sensibility but it was written in 1848, only 11 years after Victoria's accession, and is mostly set in the 1820s so it is actually late-Georgian. In some ways it therefore reflects the change from the dissolution of Regency bucks to the later Victorian primness. Or is this telling us that the days of moral respectability began earlier than the name 'Victorian' suggests? The rise of Methodism was in the mid-1700s. Our group considered suggestions that the fundamental theology was post-Calvinistic and this would have been connected with Methodism, furthermore the naming of the villain 'Huntingdon' might be linked to the Countess of Huntingdon, an important Calvinistic Methodist of the mid-1700s. Wesley condemned alcohol abuse in 1743 but the Temperance movement in the UK didn't really get started till 1829. The Band of Hope, which made its members swear to total abstinence and attempted to educate children away from drinking alcohol (what would they have made of Helen putting poison into little Arthur's wine as a form of aversion therapy?) was founded in 1847, so TWH caught the zeitgeist there!

Although Christian doctrine always has to have the last word, AB did include other points of view:

“You choose rather to leave us miserable, and you coolly tell me it is the will of God that we should remain so. You may call this religion, but I call it wild fanaticism.” (Ch 37) Said by a frustrated Mr Hargrave
“To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups of basking on their sunny petals. If those little creatures knew how great a change awaited them, no doubt they would regret it.” (Ch 45) Said by Helen Huntingdon
“It’s an act of Christian charity, whereby you hope to gain a higher seat in Heaven for yourself, and scoop a deeper pit in Hell for me.” (Ch 47) Spoken by a magnificently bitter Arthur Huntingdon

Was it the first feminist novel? The debate ranged around what was meant by 'feminist'. It was decided that a book narrated by a woman but written by a man couldn't count. It was proposed that if a book with a strong female protagonist was 'feminist' this would include the novels of Jane Austen and these romantic comedies, no matter how well written, didn't seem very 'feminist'. But it was thought probably, given the large numbers of female novelists at work pre- and post-Austen, that there must be earlier feminist novels. 'Mary: A fiction' by Mary Wollstonecraft was proposed but the only person in the group who had read it couldn't remember the details so we couldn't decide.

This topic was also debated in a BBC In Our Time programme broadcast in 2021 in which it was agreed that is embodied the feminist concerns of the day but it might not be the first.

Certainly TWH seemed to be pushing a feminist agenda, although in her Preface to the Second Edition, AB states: “I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read.”

Despite atrocious reviews, which criticised the novel's 'coarseness' and said it was unfit to be read by ladies and girls, the first edition was sold out in six weeks.

Selected Quotes:

“She was barely civil to them, and evidently better pleased to say ‘goodbye’ than ‘how do you do’.” (Ch 1)
“When a lady does consent to listen to an argument against her own opinions, she is always predetermined to withstand it - to listen only with her bodily ears, keeping the mental organs resolutely closed against the strongest reasoning.” (Ch 3) And not only ladies!
“If abstinence be an evil ... no one will deny that excess is a greater.” (Ch4) Compare this with the view of Dickens, reported as "The widespread assertion that drunkenness was the cause of many evils rather than a result of already existing ones angered him, as if eradicating a symptom in any way dealt with the disease." in the biography by Fred Kaplan
“I was wearied to death with small-talk - nothing wears me out like that. I cannot imagine how they can go on as they do.” (Ch 9)
“I almost wish I were not a painter ... instead of delivering myself up to the full enjoyment of them [the effects of nature], I am always troubling my head about how I can produce the same effect upon canvas.” (Ch 9) It's a common trope. But in my experience, dissecting and critiquing a novel, even just reviewing it with more than 'I liked it' or 'I hated it', invariably leads one to a deeper appreciation of the book. Once I had learned a little about how jazz is structured, I enjoyed it more. So I disagree with the sentiment.
“A light wind swept over the corn; and all nature laughed in the sunshine.” (Ch 15)
“Beauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men, and, therefore, it is liked [sic] to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.” (Ch 16)
“By the bright azure of the sky, and by the warm and brilliant lights, and deep, long shadows, I had endeavoured to convey the idea of a sunny morning.” (Ch 18)
“Spring just opening into summer - morning just approaching noon - girlhood just ripening into womanhood - and hope just verging on fruition.” (Ch 18) Lots of pathetic fallacy here!
“The media-via, ni-jamais-ni-toujours plan - not to kill himself like a fool and not to abstain like a ninny - in a word, to enjoy himself like a rational creature.” (Ch 22)