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Title: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Oxford World's Classics) by Anne Bronte, Herbert Rosengarten, Smith Margaret ISBN: 0-19-283462-2 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.82 (34 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Gripping!
Comment: I read "The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall" by Anne Bronte for my review of personal reading in English last year and I thought it was really gripping. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend it.
It tells the story of a young woman's struggle for independence, against law and a society which defined a married woman as her husband's property. The novel, which uses extracts from her diary and narration from her neighbour, is very interesting and quite realistic.
It seems to me that the most interesting thing about the novel, is the build up of tension Bronte uses to sustain the reader's attention. It is stimulating and creates a little excitement in the book.
Helen Graham moves into Wildfell Hall with her son. She is a single mother and earns her living as a painter. Her neighbour, Gilbert Markham, takes a sudden interest in her and wants to find out everything about her. Although she is quite content being friends with him, she wants nothing more. As soon as he becomes too personal, she reminds him that friendship is the principal of their relationship. As they spend more time together, though, she learns to trust him and reveals the truth about her past. She is living at Wildfell Hall under a false surname, hiding from her husband who is an adulterer. The only other person who knows of this is her landlord, who Gilbert learns late in the novel, is in fact, her brother.
One thing which I found gripping about this story, was the build up of tension Bronte used. She took her time, revealing one thing, building up the tension again, then revealing another. She continued to do this throughout the story, and this is what kept me interested. It is a story, in which two people who love one another, are prevented from being together by society and their own natural reticence. We know romance often has this, but Bronte creates a strong desire in the reader for them to be together. She puts real obstacles in the way of their love for each other, such as the fact that Helen is already married and has a child to her husband. This therefore, causes the reader to understand the story more.
Rating: 5
Summary: 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' - a review
Comment: 'Sick of mankind and its disgusting ways' Anne Bronte once scribbled on the back of her prayer book. Her evident harsh view of life, coupled with her moral strength as a woman, are beautifully interwoven to produce this novel; her masterpiece. Although never enjoying the popularity and success of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' - her sisters' books - 'Wildfell Hall' is quite fit to join any bookshelf of classic English literature. The themes include utter despair and the tragic consequences of a young woman's naivety; Helen felt that, although she could see Arthur's faults, she would be able to somehow change him once they were married. In reality, her marital experience was a disaster.
Anne Bronte creates a world in which the drunken, immoral behaviour of men becomes the norm and this may have been startling to contemporary readers - perhaps a reason for the book's panning at the critics. The narrative is built up delicately; first Gilbert; and then the racier, more gripping diary of Helen as she guides us through her married life; before returning again to Gilbert, whose tale by this time has become far more exciting as we know of Helen's past. Helen's realisation of the awful truth and her desperate attempts to escape her husband, are forever imprinted in the mind of the reader as passages of perfect prose.
One of the earliest feminist novels, the underrated Anne Bronte writes in this a classic, and - defying the views of her early (male) critics - a claim to the position of one of England's finest ever female writers.
Rating: 4
Summary: As Good as the Rest of Them
Comment: This is a much more interesting book than I expected it to be. I came to it as almost every reader will come to it: after having read almost everything of her more famous sisters'. I don't know what I was expecting - perhaps something paler or more insipid.
Pale and insipid it is not. Anne Bronte's prose is fully as energetic as the others', and she has a world-view that equally as rich, nuanced and fully realized (how /could/ they have thought so much, and about so much?).
The plot here, as any casual observer knows, revolves around the woman yoked to a loutish husband. Some have perceived this as more original or daring than her sisters' plots, and certainly in her own time, it received a special kind of disapprobation (even Charlotte appears to have thought it cut a bit close to the bone - apparently perceiving that the lout was patterned on their own dear brother). Maybe so, but in another sense, you could say that it is just the mirror image of the Jane Eyre plot. Mr. Rochester has a guilty or scandalous secret about his wife; Mrs. Huntington has the same about her husband - not the same secret, but equally eligible for secrecy. Each has an innocent lover; in each case the point is to disentangle from the guilty and join with the innocent.
The device of the loutish husband is not necessarily all that promising. In the hands of an amateur it is no more than a setup for a tedious account of outraged virtue. Indeed if this were all, we would do well to leave it for the Jerry Springer show. The reason this book works is that it is not just a tale of outraged virtue: Mrs. Huntington makes it clear just how much she was attracted by Mr. Huntington: how she walked into this bog on her own, and against all the entreaties of her nearest and dearest. As if to cap it all, we are treated to the spectacle of an older, more chastened Mrs. Huntington trying to warn a younger companion off from making the same kind of mistake. We readers can make up our own mind as to what the young companion is likely to do.
Unfortunately, after a bit of this, the modality of outraged virtue takes over. Huntington wallows in vice; Mrs. Huntington remains a saint. Even here, the author does not lose us: she is a remarkable dialectician, and I am not sure the case of the woman wronged has ever been put better. What is missing is an important human truth: vice (to use the Victorian term) is catching, and suffering does not purify. Indeed, that is one of the things so dreadful about suffering. You cannot put up with someone like Huntington indefinitely before some of it wears off on you. It beggars all expectation to suppose that Mrs. Huntington could have come through all this without meanness, without spite, without the slightest hint of schadenfreude. Indeed on this point (dare one say it), Jerry Springer just might be a better guide. But life is too short for that. Instead, thank heavens for the Brontes, and what a pleasure to learn that Anne is just as absorbing as the rest.
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Title: Agnes Grey (Oxford World's Classics) by Anne Bronte, Hilda Marsden, Robert Inglesfield ISBN: 0192834789 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Shirley (Oxford World's Classics) by Charlotte Bronte, Herbert Rosengarten, Margaret Smith ISBN: 0192833782 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Villette by A.S. Byatt, Ignes Sodre, Charlotte Bronte ISBN: 037575850X Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Professor (Penguin Classics) by Charlotte Bronte, Heather Glen ISBN: 0140433112 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1989 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Wuthering Heights by EMILY BRONTE ISBN: 0553212583 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 October, 1983 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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