The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel written by the English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it was an instant success, but after Anne's death, her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication in England until 1854.
The novel is framed as letters from Gilbert Markham to a friend. In them he describes meeting a mysterious young widow, Helen Graham, who arrives with her young son and a servant to Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty for many years. Contrary to early 19th-century norms, she pursues an artist's career and makes an income by selling her pictures. Her strict seclusion soon gives rise to gossip in the neighbouring village and she becomes a social outcast. Gilbert comes to understand that she has fled with her son from an abusive relationship, to save him from his father's influence. The novel is notable for its depiction of marital strife and women's professional work. It also expresses Anne Brontë's belief in universal salvation.
Most critics now consider The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to be one of the first feminist novels. In leaving her husband and taking their child, Helen violates not only social conventions but also early 19th-century English law.
Background Some aspects of the life and character of the author's brother Branwell Brontë correspond to those of Helen's husband Arthur Huntingdon in The Tenant. He resembles Branwell Brontë in three ways: physical good looks; sexual adventures (before his affair with his employer's wife, Mrs Robinson, Branwell is believed by some to have fathered an illegitimate child who died at birth) and especially in his alcoholism. Another character in the novel, Lord Lowborough, has an association with opium that may also reflect Branwell's behaviour.
Another possible source is the story of Mrs Collins, the wife of a local curate, who in November 1840 came to Anne's father Patrick Brontë seeking advice regarding her alcoholic husband's abusive conduct, and was advised by him to leave her husband. Mrs Collins returned to Haworth in the spring of 1847, while Anne was writing The Tenant, and told how she had managed to build a new life for herself and her two children.
Locations
The Brontë biographer Winifred Gérin believed that the original of Wildfell Hall was Ponden Hall, a farmhouse near Stanbury in West Yorkshire. Ponden shares certain architectural details with Wildfell, including latticed windows and a central portico with a date plaque above.
Blake Hall at Mirfield, where Anne had been employed as a governess, was suggested as the model for Grassdale Manor, Arthur Huntingdon's country seat, by Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte Brontë, to Edward Morison Wimperis, an artist commissioned to illustrate the Brontë sisters' novels in 1872. However, neither Blake Hall nor Thorpe Green, another house where Anne was employed as a governess, corresponds exactly with Grassdale.
Linden-Car, the village that Wildfell Hall stands close to, is in Yorkshire. Car in northern dialect means pool, pond or low-lying and boggy ground. Also mentioned is Lindenhope, where hope in Northeastern English means a small enclosed valley.
Plot summary The novel is divided into three volumes.
Part One (Chapters 1 to 15) is narrated by farmer Gilbert Markham as a letter to his friend Jack Halford, beginning with an account of how a mysterious widow, Mrs Helen Graham, arrives at Wildfell Hall, a nearby mansion. A source of curiosity for the small community, the reticent Mrs Graham and her young son, Arthur, are slowly drawn into the social circles of the village. Initially, Gilbert casually courts vicar's daughter Eliza Millward, despite his mother's belief that he can do better. His interest in Eliza wanes as he comes to know Mrs Graham. In retribution, Eliza spreads (and perhaps creates) scandalous rumours about Mrs Graham. With gossip flying, Gilbert is led to believe that his friend Frederick Lawrence is courting Mrs Graham. At a chance meeting on a road, Gilbert strikes the mounted Mr Lawrence with a whip handle, causing him to fall from his horse. Though she is unaware of this confrontation, Mrs Graham still refuses to marry Gilbert, but when he accuses her of loving Mr Lawrence, she gives him her diaries.
Part two (Chapters 16 to 44) is taken from Helen's diaries, in which she describes her marriage to Arthur Huntingdon. The handsome, witty Huntingdon is also spoilt, selfish and self-indulgent. Before marrying Helen, he flirts with Annabella Wilmot, and uses this to manipulate Helen and convince her to marry him. Helen, blinded by love, marries him, and resolves to reform him with gentle persuasion and good example. After the birth of their only child, also called Arthur, Huntingdon becomes increasingly jealous of their son and his claims on Helen's attentions and affections.
Huntingdon's pack of dissolute friends frequently engage in drunken revels at the family's home, Grassdale, oppressing those of finer character. Both men and women are portrayed as degraded. In particular, Annabella, now Lady Lowborough, is shown to be unfaithful to her melancholic but devoted husband.
Walter Hargrave, the brother of Helen's friend Milicent Hargrave, vies for Helen's affections. While he is not as wild as his peers, he is an unwelcome admirer and Helen senses his predatory nature. Mr Hargrave informs Helen of Huntingdon's affair with Lady Lowborough. When his friends depart, Huntingdon pines openly for his paramour and derides his wife, but he will not grant her a divorce.
Huntingdon's corruption of their son – encouraging him to drink and swear at his tender age – is the last straw for Helen. She plans to flee to save her son, but her husband learns of her plans from her diary and burns the artist's tools with which she had hoped to support herself. Eventually, with help from her brother, Mr Lawrence, and her servant, Rachel, Helen escapes and finds a secret refuge at Wildfell Hall.
Part Three (Chapters 45 to 53) continues Gilbert's letter to Mr Halford after reading of the diaries. Helen bids Gilbert to leave her because she is not free to marry. He complies and soon learns that she has returned to Grassdale because her husband is gravely ill. Helen's ministrations are in vain, and Huntingdon's death is painful since he is fraught with terror at what awaits him. Helen cannot comfort him, for he rejects responsibility for his actions and wishes instead for her to come with him to plead for his salvation.
A year passes. Gilbert pursues a rumour of Helen's impending wedding, only to find that Mr Lawrence, with whom he has reconciled, is marrying Helen's friend Esther Hargrave. Gilbert goes to Grassdale, and discovers that the wealth was Helen’s originally as Huntingdon was penniless. She lives at her estate in Staningley. He travels there, but is plagued by anxiety that she is now far above his station. By chance he encounters Helen, her aunt and young Arthur. The two reconcile and marry.
Characters
Helen and her family
Helen "Nell" Huntingdon (née Lawrence), known also under her alias Helen Graham (Graham is her mother's maiden name), the protagonist of the novel and the tenant of the title. Wildfell Hall is the place where she and her brother were born. After their mother's death she goes to live with their aunt and uncle at Staningley Manor, while her brother, Frederick, remains with their father. In spite of their separation, Helen has maintained an affectionate relationship with her brother and later he helps her to escape from her abusive and dissolute husband. The character of Helen Graham may have been inspired by Anna Isabella Milbanke, the wife of Lord Byron. Like Anna, Helen firstly believed that reforming her husband's behaviour was her religious obligation. Despite disillusionment, both women retained their Universalist faith. Master Arthur Huntingdon, five years old at the beginning of the book, the son of Arthur and Helen Huntingdon. He has a resemblance to his uncle, Frederick, which gives rise to gossip. He is grown up by the time of Gilbert's letter to Jack Halford, and is residing at Grassdale Manor with his wife, Helen Hattersley (the daughter of Milicent Hargrave and Ralph Hattersley). Mr Maxwell, Helen's wealthy uncle, dies near the end of the novel and leaves Staningley to Helen. Margaret "Peggy" Maxwell, Helen's aunt, tries to warn her against marrying Huntingdon. She dies several years after Helen's and Gilbert's marriage. Frederick Lawrence, Helen's brother, helps her to escape from Huntingdon and lends her money. As he and Helen grew up apart and only met in Staningley or Grassdale, no one in Linden-Car village guessed that the secretive Mrs Graham is actually Frederick's sister. Eventually he marries Esther Hargrave. Being in mourning for her husband, Helen is forced to miss her brother's wedding.
Huntingdon and his circle Arthur Huntingdon, Helen's abusive and alcoholic husband, is a Byronic figure of great fascination but also of barely concealed moral failings. His abusive behaviour impels Helen to run away from him, but nevertheless when he becomes ill (after the injury from falling from a horse when drunk), Helen returns to Grassdale to take care of him. Unwilling to stop drinking alcohol, Huntingdon deteriorates in health and eventually dies. He is widely thought to be loosely based on the author's brother, Branwell, but some critics have argued that they have very little in common. Along with Lord Lowborough, Huntingdon bears far stronger resemblance to two types of drunkards outlined in Robert Macnish's The Anatomy of Drunkenness. Annabella Wilmot, later Lady Lowborough, Arthur Huntingdon's paramour, is flirtatious, bold and exquisitely beautiful. She has an affair with Huntingdon for several years. Helen is forced to put up with the affair, but when Annabella's husband discovers it, he obtains a divorce. Gilbert says he hears that after Annabella moves to the continent, she falls into poverty and dies destitute and alone, but stresses he cannot be sure if this is true or merely a rumour. Lord Lowborough, a friend of Huntingdon's and Annabella's husband, is apathetic but devoted. Melancholic, dour and gloomy, he is in complete contrast to Huntingdon. He used to gamble and drink too much alcohol and developed an addiction to opium, but, after his financial ruin, gradually reforms himself. Lowborough truly loves Annabella, and her infidelity brings him such suffering that only his Christian faith and strong will keep him from suicide. Later he divorces her and after some time marries a plain middle-aged woman, who makes a good wife to him and a stepmother to his children with Annabella – a son and a daughter (who, it is implied, is Huntingdon's). Lord Lowborough also has some resemblances to Branwell, such as a life of debauchery, periods of remorse/religious torments, and opium, as well as moral weakness. Ralph Hattersley, a friend of Huntingdon's, marries Milicent Hargrave because he wants a quiet wife who will let him do what he likes with no word of reproach or complaint. He mistreats his wife. "I sometimes think she has no feeling at all; and then I go on until she cries – and that satisfies me," he tells Helen. But after he reforms himself he becomes a loving husband and father. Mr Grimsby, another of Arthur's friends, is a misogynist. He helps Arthur to conceal his affair with Annabella.
Inhabitants of Linden-Car Farm Gilbert Markham, a twenty-four-year-old farmer, is the principal narrator in the novel. He exhibits jealousy, moodiness and anger, but during the course of the novel he grows morally and proves to be worthy of Helen. Fergus Markham, Gilbert's seventeen-year-old brother, is high-spirited and idle, and often tries but fails to be witty.