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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
this is the best bronte book. argue with the wall
Quite an interesting story. Liked it far better than Jane Eyre, but not nearly as much as Wuthering Heights. Still, this was a brave undertaking for Anne as she lets it rip on the men of Victorian society who expect their wives to stay & tend the home while they go out drinking, fighting & engaging in extramarital affairs. This is about a woman who is openly dissatisfied with such a marriage, flees it, and is able to have a happy, successful life afterwards. It's too bad no one of the era could take a leaf out of Anne's book. She's clearly years ahead of her time.
Once again, I have to start a review with saying that I expected something else from a book. I'm not entirely sure what the something else I expected was in this case, because what I expected was:
✔ protofemist work
✔ alcoholism & marital abuse
✔ intricate narrative structure
And the book does have all of those! And yet, I expected... a different tone, maybe. Maybe a different characters. I expected to adore this book and it didn't happen but it is still pretty great book don't take me wrong!
The characters in this one were pretty interesting, because... I didn't particularly liked them as people. In the first part, Gilbert is pretty unsympathetic and I couldn't keep wondering what Helen sees in him (because we see her through Gilbert's eyes and she... she just shines for him). And then we get to Helen's part and it turns out that she has a terrible taste in men, so that tracks!
I also didn't expect religion to play such important role as it did and I have to say that it got to a point where it was annoying for me. There are bits that are clearly meant to be empowering moments for Helen, but even when I agreed with her, I just wished that her reasoning was different.
So yeah, this was a pretty weird book that turned out to be addictively readable for me and I quite enjoyed it (even though there were bits of annoyance in there too). This book has been on my radar for a while and I'm glad that I finally read it.
✔ protofemist work
✔ alcoholism & marital abuse
✔ intricate narrative structure
And the book does have all of those! And yet, I expected... a different tone, maybe. Maybe a different characters. I expected to adore this book and it didn't happen but it is still pretty great book don't take me wrong!
The characters in this one were pretty interesting, because... I didn't particularly liked them as people. In the first part, Gilbert is pretty unsympathetic and I couldn't keep wondering what Helen sees in him (because we see her through Gilbert's eyes and she... she just shines for him). And then we get to Helen's part and it turns out that she has a terrible taste in men, so that tracks!
I also didn't expect religion to play such important role as it did and I have to say that it got to a point where it was annoying for me. There are bits that are clearly meant to be empowering moments for Helen, but even when I agreed with her, I just wished that her reasoning was different.
So yeah, this was a pretty weird book that turned out to be addictively readable for me and I quite enjoyed it (even though there were bits of annoyance in there too). This book has been on my radar for a while and I'm glad that I finally read it.
4.4/5 stars, full review to come! Folks, it’s official, I have a new favorite Brontë sister.
Plot: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
Pacing: 3/5
Writing: 4/5
Enjoyment: 5/5
Plot: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
Pacing: 3/5
Writing: 4/5
Enjoyment: 5/5
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Violence
Moderate: Death
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was so good!! I mostly read this just to tick of a book of my remaining Bronte sister, but to my surprise, I loved it!
This book has an unconventional structure: it is an epistolary novel, where the first quarter is letters the MMC (Gilbert,) writes to a third party, the middle half is a diary of the FMC (Helen), given to the MMC to read, and then the final quarter returns to Gilbert's letters. But it kinda works??
Oh god though, I don't think I've ever hated male characters more than in this book! Think no one can be worse than Tamlin? THINK AGAIN. Some of the men in this book are absolutely abhorrent. It's hardly his greatest sin, but of one character, Helen says thus: "he never reads anything but newspapers and sporting magazines; and when he sees me occupied with a book, he won’t let me rest till I close it." Horrid!!!
The romance was okay, but honestly I was just here for Helen, and rooting for her. This is thought of as one of the first feminist novels, and I loved it for that.
This book has an unconventional structure: it is an epistolary novel, where the first quarter is letters the MMC (Gilbert,) writes to a third party, the middle half is a diary of the FMC (Helen), given to the MMC to read, and then the final quarter returns to Gilbert's letters. But it kinda works??
Oh god though, I don't think I've ever hated male characters more than in this book! Think no one can be worse than Tamlin? THINK AGAIN. Some of the men in this book are absolutely abhorrent. It's hardly his greatest sin, but of one character, Helen says thus: "he never reads anything but newspapers and sporting magazines; and when he sees me occupied with a book, he won’t let me rest till I close it." Horrid!!!
The romance was okay, but honestly I was just here for Helen, and rooting for her. This is thought of as one of the first feminist novels, and I loved it for that.
The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall is far, far better than Anne's other novel, Agnes Grey. When I first read it, I thought it was decent enough, and possibly my most enjoyed book of the Brontës after Jane Eyre, and having just finished my second perusal, I would say that it is okay, and possibly it's true that it comes in second place, since I despised Wuthering Heights and was bored by Agnes Grey, Shirley and The Professor (Villette I read too many years ago to fairly judge, but I did not like it at the time), but it is a very distant second place and overall not likely that I would bother reading it a third time.
While Anne obviously felt that literature was a means to sharing moral enlightenment, The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall is a lot more human and interesting than Agnes Grey, which barely even had a plot and was just a series of scenes in which a perfect(ly dull) narrator told us about the mean people she had met. While again Anne has used upsetting experiences from her real life to make a story, here she has woven it more subtly into its own plot. The mystery surrounding the title character, Helen, is intriguing and her strong feminist ideals are very appealing. She doesn't just think that women deserve to be treated the same as men (like Jane and Shirley in Charlotte's books) but she also believes that men should be treated the same as women (that they should not be bullied or shamed for 'feminine' behaviour) which is incredibly forward-thinking of her.
However, I find the structure is something of a mess. Really the book feels like two framing devices, one inside the other. First of all we have the concept that this story is being told by our narrator, Gilbert Markham, to his brother-in-law, Halford. The first time I read the book, I found this idea irritating, because it felt like Anne was trying to justify why a first-person narrator would exist, why they would be telling their memoirs, and as a huge fan of first-person narration, this need to explain grated on me. This time it did not seem so unnecessary, and Markham's asides to Halford feel natural enough and preferable to the clunky direct-to-audience addresses that Anne used in her previous novel (and Charlotte seemed obsessed with in hers). However, since Markham states how close he is to Halford (closer even than he is to his siblings or any friend) it feels pretty much impossible that ALL of this story should be unknown to Halford and it is unconvincing the way Markham introduces and talks of characters - new to us the audience, but who definitely would be known to Halford the supposed recipient of this story. I guess back in those days people just didn't see each other often enough to actually talk about anything.
Then we get the massive info-dump flashback (or really bulk of the novel) when Helen hands Markham her diary, and he in turn now posts it to his brother-in-law (as if!) and we learn her story. This of course is the 'real' story, but since we go in knowing basically what will become of Helen by the end, it is obviously going to be a tragic tale and it becomes quite tedious having to wade through the young and naive Helen's stupid blindness to what is going on around her. I realise that it is true to life that people get trapped in unhealthy relationships with abusive or negligent partners, and that often they won't listen to reason from friends trying to help them and will blind themselves with love and loyalty, but all the same, it is infuriating having to read about it. The Helen of the diary did not strike me as reminiscent of the Helen of the first part of the novel. I suppose the years to despair made her a more intelligent, deeper person, but it just didn't convince me that I was reading about the same character at all. Her level of blindness really pushed past what could be believed, and ended up making her less sympathetic because I couldn't help rolling my eyes. I cannot conceive how she is so unable to see Arthur's faults even when he tells her about them himself and yet she is so distinctly perceptive about Mr Hargrave. Hargrave is a more decent person than Arthur, and loves her for far longer than Arthur ever did, and yet she is instantly on her guard about him for pretty much no reason. How can she be this stupid and this smart at the same time? Then we have the passing of time - sometimes we get details of every hour and then we will suddenly jump a year. We get plenty of her thoughts but somehow the actual events of the story feel glossed over. Whichever way, not that much changes. We see straight away that Arthur is a complete shit, and then we have to watch him slowly try to destroy Helen, while we are endlessly regaled with her hopes and fears, over and over, without really much new being added to the story. Also her religious zeal is actually quite annoying, much as I hate to side with the despicable Arthur. It is one of those 'of-its-time' ideas. Just like Jane Eyre, Helen's religious fervour makes adultery absolutely out of the question even in the face of a marriage that is totally worthless, with the modern reader left kind of just going... why? It was better handled in Jane's case; here it's just another roll of the eyes.
Eventually the diary ends and we revert to Markham's narration, helped along by him managing to read some of Helen's letters to allow us back into her perspective. This really makes me wonder whose story this is, Helen's or Markham's, and if Anne would have been happier just to make Helen the main character after all. It would be a shame to lose that opening mystery, but because of this imbalance the novel feels like a bit of a mess.
There's also a conceit that all the characters in the book appear to have photographic memories and are quite capable of regurgitating entire scenes that involved multiple characters almost as if they are novelists telling a story. Basically I'm beginning to think that this book should have been written in 3rd person and saved Anne the trouble of how to constantly show scenes in which the narrator(s) was not present.
Also the final section, possibly not helped by my slight boredom left over from Helen's endless, whiny (obviously she has just cause to be upset and I get that she is trapped because of the way society at that time treated women*, but a story needs more than just that point to make it consistently readable i.e. it needs to be entertaining too) and repetitive diary, is fairly irritating as Markham wastes his time moping about and not doing what he was supposed to for seemingly no reason whatever. He does often come across as a stroppy teenager, and it is a wonder that Helen ever liked him considering what trouble she has had with men.
So, in all.... It's perfectly readable (although I often found my eyes skimming the page during Helen's narration) but the structure and narration could have been vastly improved, and the story, while sort of intriguing, is not nearly as exciting as it should be, and Helen's unwavering goodness and Godliness makes her somewhat dull at times, and in the end I'm not sure how much I really care about the happiness of Markham or Helen. As usual, all the bad characters get their comeuppance and all the good characters are rewarded. I mean, I do prefer that to Wuthering Heights, in which evil reigns, but it is still rather clumsy. The characters in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall feel more human than the automatons in Agnes Grey, but they are still not very nuanced. In order to rejoice at the triumph of good, the good must be likeable and relatable, and while Helen certainly suffers more than most, she bears it all too well and is never tempted herself (the only time she may be, we don't get her perspective), so I can never really sympathise with her. Still, I'm sure this was a delightfully shocking novel when it came out.
*In fact, Helen never really tests this, she never asks anyone for help and no one tells her this is her burden, she just accepts that this is probably how it is. If her aunt and then she and then Milicent actually talked openly to each other then some of them may have been saved from misery, but for some reason they're all too polite and well-bred to express the truth, which might be due to societal pressure but just makes them come across as repressed and inconsiderate.
While Anne obviously felt that literature was a means to sharing moral enlightenment, The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall is a lot more human and interesting than Agnes Grey, which barely even had a plot and was just a series of scenes in which a perfect(ly dull) narrator told us about the mean people she had met. While again Anne has used upsetting experiences from her real life to make a story, here she has woven it more subtly into its own plot. The mystery surrounding the title character, Helen, is intriguing and her strong feminist ideals are very appealing. She doesn't just think that women deserve to be treated the same as men (like Jane and Shirley in Charlotte's books) but she also believes that men should be treated the same as women (that they should not be bullied or shamed for 'feminine' behaviour) which is incredibly forward-thinking of her.
However, I find the structure is something of a mess. Really the book feels like two framing devices, one inside the other. First of all we have the concept that this story is being told by our narrator, Gilbert Markham, to his brother-in-law, Halford. The first time I read the book, I found this idea irritating, because it felt like Anne was trying to justify why a first-person narrator would exist, why they would be telling their memoirs, and as a huge fan of first-person narration, this need to explain grated on me. This time it did not seem so unnecessary, and Markham's asides to Halford feel natural enough and preferable to the clunky direct-to-audience addresses that Anne used in her previous novel (and Charlotte seemed obsessed with in hers). However, since Markham states how close he is to Halford (closer even than he is to his siblings or any friend) it feels pretty much impossible that ALL of this story should be unknown to Halford and it is unconvincing the way Markham introduces and talks of characters - new to us the audience, but who definitely would be known to Halford the supposed recipient of this story. I guess back in those days people just didn't see each other often enough to actually talk about anything.
Then we get the massive info-dump flashback (or really bulk of the novel) when Helen hands Markham her diary, and he in turn now posts it to his brother-in-law (as if!) and we learn her story. This of course is the 'real' story, but since we go in knowing basically what will become of Helen by the end, it is obviously going to be a tragic tale and it becomes quite tedious having to wade through the young and naive Helen's stupid blindness to what is going on around her. I realise that it is true to life that people get trapped in unhealthy relationships with abusive or negligent partners, and that often they won't listen to reason from friends trying to help them and will blind themselves with love and loyalty, but all the same, it is infuriating having to read about it. The Helen of the diary did not strike me as reminiscent of the Helen of the first part of the novel. I suppose the years to despair made her a more intelligent, deeper person, but it just didn't convince me that I was reading about the same character at all. Her level of blindness really pushed past what could be believed, and ended up making her less sympathetic because I couldn't help rolling my eyes. I cannot conceive how she is so unable to see Arthur's faults even when he tells her about them himself and yet she is so distinctly perceptive about Mr Hargrave. Hargrave is a more decent person than Arthur, and loves her for far longer than Arthur ever did, and yet she is instantly on her guard about him for pretty much no reason. How can she be this stupid and this smart at the same time? Then we have the passing of time - sometimes we get details of every hour and then we will suddenly jump a year. We get plenty of her thoughts but somehow the actual events of the story feel glossed over. Whichever way, not that much changes. We see straight away that Arthur is a complete shit, and then we have to watch him slowly try to destroy Helen, while we are endlessly regaled with her hopes and fears, over and over, without really much new being added to the story. Also her religious zeal is actually quite annoying, much as I hate to side with the despicable Arthur. It is one of those 'of-its-time' ideas. Just like Jane Eyre, Helen's religious fervour makes adultery absolutely out of the question even in the face of a marriage that is totally worthless, with the modern reader left kind of just going... why? It was better handled in Jane's case; here it's just another roll of the eyes.
Eventually the diary ends and we revert to Markham's narration, helped along by him managing to read some of Helen's letters to allow us back into her perspective. This really makes me wonder whose story this is, Helen's or Markham's, and if Anne would have been happier just to make Helen the main character after all. It would be a shame to lose that opening mystery, but because of this imbalance the novel feels like a bit of a mess.
There's also a conceit that all the characters in the book appear to have photographic memories and are quite capable of regurgitating entire scenes that involved multiple characters almost as if they are novelists telling a story. Basically I'm beginning to think that this book should have been written in 3rd person and saved Anne the trouble of how to constantly show scenes in which the narrator(s) was not present.
Also the final section, possibly not helped by my slight boredom left over from Helen's endless, whiny (obviously she has just cause to be upset and I get that she is trapped because of the way society at that time treated women*, but a story needs more than just that point to make it consistently readable i.e. it needs to be entertaining too) and repetitive diary, is fairly irritating as Markham wastes his time moping about and not doing what he was supposed to for seemingly no reason whatever. He does often come across as a stroppy teenager, and it is a wonder that Helen ever liked him considering what trouble she has had with men.
Spoiler
The finale itself is a little lacklustre. Anne seemed to feel a need to write romance without making a convincing case for the pairing. It's not as bad as in Anges Grey, when I laughed aloud at the idea that the romantic leads loved each other, because the love part here, or at least the repressed passion part, is certainly referenced, but their entire relationship has only ever really been referenced rather than properly shown, we don't see what exactly they like about each other or if they particularly get along and we never get to see them spending time together as a couple, so I have no idea how they are suited to each other.So, in all.... It's perfectly readable (although I often found my eyes skimming the page during Helen's narration) but the structure and narration could have been vastly improved, and the story, while sort of intriguing, is not nearly as exciting as it should be, and Helen's unwavering goodness and Godliness makes her somewhat dull at times, and in the end I'm not sure how much I really care about the happiness of Markham or Helen. As usual, all the bad characters get their comeuppance and all the good characters are rewarded. I mean, I do prefer that to Wuthering Heights, in which evil reigns, but it is still rather clumsy. The characters in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall feel more human than the automatons in Agnes Grey, but they are still not very nuanced. In order to rejoice at the triumph of good, the good must be likeable and relatable, and while Helen certainly suffers more than most, she bears it all too well and is never tempted herself (the only time she may be, we don't get her perspective), so I can never really sympathise with her. Still, I'm sure this was a delightfully shocking novel when it came out.
*In fact, Helen never really tests this, she never asks anyone for help and no one tells her this is her burden, she just accepts that this is probably how it is. If her aunt and then she and then Milicent actually talked openly to each other then some of them may have been saved from misery, but for some reason they're all too polite and well-bred to express the truth, which might be due to societal pressure but just makes them come across as repressed and inconsiderate.
I actually enjoyed this far more than I thought I would. I usually avoid Bronte/Austen books because the type of writing doesn't really appeal to me. However, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall presented a far more likable story than I expected. I managed to read the majority of it in 2 days, and it's rare I get through such an old book so fast!
I think what really stood out was the voice of Helen Huntingdon. She provide direction and interest to the story, mainly in her narrative in the middle of the book, cataloguing her marriage and time before arriving at Wildfell Hall. She is frequently blunt and coarse about the social expectations and views on women & men of the period, criticising society's establishment of matrimony and love. Frequently guiding other female characters, her wisdom, although caused by heartbreak and hardship, really shines through in the narrative. I doubt the novel would have been so readable if it wasn't for her opinions.
I did find the parts with Gilbert rather lackluster compared to Helen's accounts, but it does provide a nice framing for the story. The epistolary style combines story and judgement, better forming both Helen and Gilbert Markham than if it was written in a simple third person narrative.
Nevertheless, this book definitely surprised me. I believe I am due to read Mansfield Park later in the semester, and I look forward to hopefully comparing it to this!
Note: I may update this review after my lecture/seminar on Monday. Next up in my Victorian Lit module is The Mill on the Floss!
I think what really stood out was the voice of Helen Huntingdon. She provide direction and interest to the story, mainly in her narrative in the middle of the book, cataloguing her marriage and time before arriving at Wildfell Hall. She is frequently blunt and coarse about the social expectations and views on women & men of the period, criticising society's establishment of matrimony and love. Frequently guiding other female characters, her wisdom, although caused by heartbreak and hardship, really shines through in the narrative. I doubt the novel would have been so readable if it wasn't for her opinions.
I did find the parts with Gilbert rather lackluster compared to Helen's accounts, but it does provide a nice framing for the story. The epistolary style combines story and judgement, better forming both Helen and Gilbert Markham than if it was written in a simple third person narrative.
Nevertheless, this book definitely surprised me. I believe I am due to read Mansfield Park later in the semester, and I look forward to hopefully comparing it to this!
Note: I may update this review after my lecture/seminar on Monday. Next up in my Victorian Lit module is The Mill on the Floss!
Having just read Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall consecutively, I can definitely say that JE and TToWH are my two favorite. I liked WH and I appreciate it's contribution to literature and the Women's Right's movement but I feel like the other two are a step above it in terms of quality and enjoyment. My only real knock on TToWH is the extreme religiosity of Helen, but given the era this book was written, it is only to be expected. At some point down the road I may read Anne and Charlotte's other novels. We'll see.
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated