The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte: book review

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848, this edition 2014) is set in rural England in the 1820s in the Wildfell Hall mansion. The author, writing under the male pseudonym Acton Bell, is the youngest sister of Charlotte Bronte (who wrote Jane Eyre) and Emily Bronte (who wrote Wuthering Heights). Anne Bronte died in 1849 at the age of 29 of flu and tuberculosis.

The novel is in the form of letters. Gilbert Markham, a gentleman farmer, writes to his brother-in-law J. Halsford, about how he met his wife, Helen Graham.

Helen arrived at the Wildfell Hall mansion, next to Markham’s property, with her young son and maid, after her husband’s death. No-one has lived in the mansion for many years and no-one knows about the former life of the current tenant. Helen lives in strict seclusion. The local villagers gossip about her and are critical of her home-schooling her son Arthur, lest it turn him into a ‘girl.’

With his sister Rose, Gilbert is invited into the mansion, and sees Helen painting—not for pleasure, but to sell in London to ensure an income to live independently while raising her son as a single mother.

Her diary reveals the difficult life she left behind.

From independent verve to stoic calmness, extraordinary optimism, and domestic defiance, this novel is revolutionary for its time. Described as the ‘most shocking’ of the Bronte sisters’ novels, it was initially a big success. However, after Anne Bronte’s death, Charlotte refused to re-publish it. If she had published it, in my view it would have been a greater success than the work of her sisters.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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