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Title: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, John Weeks ISBN: 0-912800-70-4 Publisher: Woodbridge Press Publishing Co. Pub. Date: September, 1979 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.82 (34 reviews)
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.
Rating: 5
Summary: The forgotton work from the forgotton sister
Comment: After reading a flat and unintresting Jane Eyre I found myself shunning the work of the Bronte family, until I read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. This is no Jane Eyre and should never be compared, even though frequently I have heard the outlandish comparision. In the novel Anne Bronte introduces the reader to real women, no Jane Eyre type who's only accomplishment was living one her own. No Anne Bronte's main character leaves her husband ( something which was unheard of at that time) and lives alone with her son. Bronte also changes the form of the classic novel by speaking as from both a man and woman's perspective. The strengh of the novel is the fact that Bronte's starting narrator is a man then a woman and once again a man. She takes a risk which last over 100 pages when the tenant (woman) becomes the narrator as the man narrator reads her journal. This novel tell a tale of a woman who breaks free from society to save herself. Anne Bronte has become the forgotton sister, though her works were never as sucessful as her to sisters, I feel that her risk taking ability, along with her ability to tell a great story makes her the best out of the three. I would also tell everyone to read her other novel Agnes Grey for it to is a great story. I only wish that Anne Bronte had left more works for her loyal fans as myself to read.
Rating: 5
Summary: Must read for any Bronte fan
Comment: As some people would say, once you read "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" then you'll definite end up with Anne Bronte "Tenant of Wildfell Hall." The heroine is Helen. She could've turn out to be another Jane Eyre if she didn't have a son or an alcoholic husband. Like Jane, she stands by her moral convictions, and takes drastic action if necessary to achieve or maintain them. All in all, the book is terrific which all the characters got what they just deserve where every books should be.
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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: The Life of Charlotte Bronte (Penguin Classics) by Elisabeth Jay, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte ISBN: 0140434933 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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