The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Review

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë

The first section of the book was written from the perspective of a young man called Gilbert Markham, in the form of a letter to his friend Halford. It spoke of the recent gossip of the town, which was that the local manor house Wildfell Hall had a new occupant called Helen - and she was a mysterious, reclusive, young single mother, who surely had some dastardly secrets to spill. Gilbert had been trying to get to know her a bit, (everyone, really, was trying to find out where she had come from and why she was so secretive) and had found himself falling deeply and irrevocably in love.

The whole middle section of the novel then, which really was the bulk of the book, was a long chunk from Helen's diary: a flashback to her previous life and all the events that led up to her arrival in Wildfell Hall. Here we learn that she was trapped in a dreadful marriage, and that she had eventually managed to take her situation into her own hands and escape in the night.

In the end (spoiler alert, sorry), once Helen has allowed Gilbert to learn the full truth about her past, she and Gilbert marry and everything is fine and dandy.

So my question, and my approach with this review, is: was 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' a feminist novel in favour of women? It's a more ambiguous debate than you might first note, and that's why I like the book so much - because it has given me food for thought.

Helen's recount undeniably had some feminist oomph. Brontë's construction of Helen's marriage to Huntingdon was an outright criticism of a society and system that disempowered women and legitimised men. The way the marriage gradually fell apart was brilliantly written: at the start, Huntingdon was presented as just a bit of a lively rascal - perhaps he was not the most 'proper' husband, but there was nothing majorly concerning about his behaviour. But he got progressively worse, always drinking too much, then going away for long stretches of time (undoubtedly living a life of hedonism in London), then actually having an affair, and eventually he was doing things that would seriously be classified as domestic abuse today. It was surprisingly distressing by this point (far more painful than the rather tame ideas of scandal and impropriety one often finds in novels of this era), and I was just urging Helen, willing her, to run away.

But she couldn't. Because socially, Huntingdon was a man and therefore in charge. It pained me when she tried to retaliate, only for Huntingdon to exercise his male power as a retort: '"You are breaking your marriage vows yourself ... you promised to honour and obey me, and now you attempt to hector over me ... I won't be dictated to by a woman, though she be my wife."' Huntingdon's villainy is legitimised by the patriarchal system. And yet Brontë shows us another marriage, a very different marriage, which is also falling apart; this wife is meek and submissive, unlike Helen, but still ends up at the behest of her husband: '"how can I help teasing her when she's so invitingly meek and mim, and when she lies down like a spaniel at my feet and never so much as squeaks to tell me that's enough?"' It seems neither the feisty brave woman nor the more typical unassertive woman can escape the cruel men, whose power over them goes unchallenged by society. Brontë is giving a voice to these subjugated women.

It is therefore very pleasing when Helen finds the courage to run away, finally challenging convention, overcoming her husband and becoming a self-sufficient woman at her new home Wildfell Hall. She even fixes the other failing marriage, by the way, by talking to the man and making him aware of the consequences of his actions. She is without doubt a laudable strong female character.

But the ambiguity in the debate arises when we consider the overall structure of the book. Because Helen's powerful, striking, female narrative is sandwiched between two sections from a male perspective. In his defence, Gilbert Markham is not a villainous, cruel, advantage-taking man like Huntingdon - he's actually a lovely guy, and he is never prejudiced against Helen in the same way as everyone else in the town.

But is there some irony in the way Helen's story must be framed by a man? Is it a shame that we have to meet Helen through male eyes first, before we are allowed to hear Helen's voice and know the real her? Or is this in itself a criticism of the patriarchy - is Brontë deliberately giving us Gilbert's story first, to make a point about how the female narratives are so often hidden away? And is it ironic that the story ends with Helen marrying Gilbert - after all her strength and independence, why is her only legitimate happy ending a marriage to another man? Can't she just be a person in her own right, free from the shackles of the patriarchy? Or is her marriage to Gilbert a poetic righting-of-wrongs, finally giving Helen the life she wanted when she mistakenly married Huntingdon? Perhaps it's justice, and a fair reminder that not all men are heinous criminals?

Anyway, there is so much more I could say, but I think I'd better wrap it up. If I were to start analysing the other female characters, like meek Millicent who arguably upholds the patriarchy, and the perpetrator Annabella whose cattiness is very un-feminist, this post would go on forever. There is just so much in this book about gender representation. The characters, the relationships, the perspective, the structure, all of it. A feast for a feminist literary critic (which I occasionally am!). I enjoyed it very much.