Customer Reviews

Uneven book - Warning for SPOILERS ! - By: Sibylle, 25 Oct 2008
1848 was quite a yearin History : everywherein Europe, but perhaps most specificallyin France, revolutions were carried by those who felt were left out of the system. Flaubert wrote about itin L'Education Sentimentale. Andin a way, the revolutionary elements of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall allow me to say that Anne Brontë, on another level, wrote very much about 1848 too.

The book is presented as a series of narratives reminiscent of the complex struture of Wuthering Heights : Mr Markham, a kind farmer, writes letters to his brother-in-law confidingin him his feelings towards a woman, Mrs Graham, who has just lent the house nearby & who seems to be a widow living alone with her son. Her moral principles & I would say austerity surprise the whole community not used to meeting a woman who takes such great care of her offspring so as to protect him from great or harmless dangers & everythingin between. As the story enfolds, Markham gets closer & closer to Mrs Helen Graham even though this advancement can & should be contrasted with the polite coldness with which she accepts his attentions. One day, & this is the second level of narrative, she decides she wants him to understand what happened to her & gives him her diaryin which we learn that she & little Arthur, her son, were abused by a self-indulgent, drunk & sadistic (in that he knows exactly what he's doing & takes pleasurein doing it) husband & father, Mr Huntington. To protect her & little Arthur's life, Helen had to flee & live as a reclusein a small village.

As the introduction to my edition reminded me, during the whole book, Helen is an outlaw. Not only was it shocking & not proper for a woman to leave her husband & taking the fruit of the marriage with her, it was just plain illegal &in surrendering her diary to Markham, Helen understands she might as well go to the nearest police station. It did strike me that the most revolutionary part of the story was delivered to us second-hand (by a character who reads the journal containing the story), we are deprived of an expected first-hand account of the events but with a publicationin 1848, the heyday of the victorian era, it could be seen as a means for Brontë to somewhat stiffle its power. It is subversivein that it is an appealing portrait of an outlaw but also becausein the middle of the 19th century it contains an allusion to suicide (and not related to the one you'd think).
Of course, there's no arguing this is also a feminist book & very much so - Anne Brontë's makes her point very clearly :in victorian society, women have no status & their only goalin life is to live for somebody else, be it husband (wives) or father (and daughters). Helen has to support herself & Arthur through art. It also depicts the struggle of one person trying to fit boundaries, especially religious & moral ones, when she has broken every other boundary society had imposed on her. It is difficult to warm to Helen for just that reason : even though 21st century readers of course sympathize & understand very well what she's done, because of her austerity (she constantly refers to religion & the Bible, even quoting specific characters of the book to answer questions she's being asked, as my edition very cleverly shows itin its explanatory notes), we are prevented from ever relating to her. If her action is understandable, the part when she falls for Huntington before agreeing to marrying him is way less justifiable : all the clues are already here, he is jealous, spoilt & enjoys teasing her & making her ill-at-ease, yet she is attracted to that dangerous, reckless part of him. Because of this rather cold main protagonist, the reader has to rely on subplots & other characters to keep him or her satisfied, especiallyin the first part of the book which has many elements of the detective novel : Mr Lawrence is believed by Markham to be wooing Helen although several clues are given to some other connection between them, & Helen herself is a mystery during a great part of the book, an adulterous affair between two married people has to be deciphered. The sirupy end was just another a testament of Brontë's uneven style.
Even though Anne Brontë's realistic book kept me interested throughout, I think the way she portrays her characters could have been improved. It is of course way more radical than her sisters' works on the one hand (feminism) but on the other it indulgesin some austerity her sisters don't depict this much & I couldn't justify this part. This left me with a feeling of coldness & distance, a shame for a book that contains so much fire.