The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Anne Bronte's second novel seemed to many contemporary readers shockingly unlike her first, Agnes Grey, published in the previous year. There, Charlotte Bronte had admired her sister's 'quiet description and simple pathos', but she was disturbed by The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which reminded reviewers of Wuthering Heights: it was, in spite of its 'excellent moral', 'coarse, not to say brutal'. For Anne's heroine, Helen Huntingdon, having endured too many of the 'revolting scenes' deplored by reviewers, leaves her dissolute husband in order to earn her own living and rescue her son from his influence. A passionate and courageous challenge to the conventions supposedly upheld by Victorian society and reflected in circulating-library fiction, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is compelling in its imaginative power, in the bold naturalism of its central scenes, the realism and range of its dialogue, and in its psychological insight into the characters involved in the marital battle. The present text is based on the first edition of July 1848, incorporating authorial corrections from the second edition.