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A review by gracer
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë
dark
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
There is much to like here, but I also found quite a bit to disappoint me. Ever since I read Agnes Grey a few years ago, and really liked it, I looked forward to reading this, the book that Charlotte "wished had never been written" (viii). I was of course intrigued by the way people refer to this book as perhaps the most obviously feminist of Brontë novels, and the fact that Agnes Grey had seemed so different, to me, from the works of Anne's sisters (in a way I liked, no less) might have given me certain expectations.
But although I really enjoyed the experience of reading this book - I really just love being wrapped up in a long, possibly dark, 19th-century English novel - there was a lot here that I found strange.
At first I thought the book did a great job at giving us an unreliable narrator in Gilbert Markham. He is a wily little gossip and seems to love a good time, love to judge, have a temper that gets in his way, and more. His commentary on his family members and neighbors early in the book makes him not at all likable, but the interesting thing was that he never improved. We are supposed to see him changed by the things he learns about the realities of life for so many, and instead he seems just as obsessive and obnoxious as any other male character in the book, perhaps even more so.
Helen is not much better. While admirable, and to an extent understandable, she never really came alive for me. She was a stiff little silhouette, supposed to be shaped, I think, by so many others' opinions of her, but I did not find it quite successful. I did like that she was not a complete angel, and that she was paranoid quick to judge; in those ways she felt accurate.
At this point, my review will get deeper into spoiler territory, but as this is a classic I am not going to mark it.
As the book moved along I was surprised by the long diary excerpt in the middle. This felt a bit longer than necessary, but more importantly, so jarring in the pace of the book that it was like reading a different book. I am really curious about the reasons Brontë had for framing the novel in this way, first with the letters to an unimportant character, and then with the diary. But the journal entries were also confusing because I could not believe the bond between Helen and Markham. I was waiting for something exciting to unfold about her background, about her being tied to another man, or something interesting, that it was such a letdown to have the mystery just be her brother and a slightly random misconception of the characters.
By the end I was so disappointed that Helen ended up with Markham, who was so single-minded and prone to violence I did not think it much of an improvement for her.
BUT, on the other hand, I did enjoy and appreciate the bigger picture here - the portrait of what life could really be like for women if they happened to end up with a bad husband. And it was a book that kept me coming back, because I wanted to see what happened, and how the story would resolve.
On a related note, I have to add that while I really like the Penguin Clothbound Classics, that they are nicely printed and it's a sort of old-fashioned treat to crack into one when I do most of my reading in ebook form, I am always perplexed at best, and frustrated at worst, by the footnotes. What is their goal? Half of them offer some interesting, relevant information on the author's experience or what could have inspires this stretch of text, or words for old things that we might not know (different types of carriages, anyone?), or various drafts and comparisons of various versions of the text, and the rest are inane, insipid comments - or, in the case of this book, telling you any time 3+ words in a row were directly copied from the Bible. It is the most anticlimactic thing to see a footnote, turn to read it, and see, for "a few words of course," that the footnote has decided we need to be informed that that means "a few commonplace words." Who do they think is reading these books?
But although I really enjoyed the experience of reading this book - I really just love being wrapped up in a long, possibly dark, 19th-century English novel - there was a lot here that I found strange.
At first I thought the book did a great job at giving us an unreliable narrator in Gilbert Markham. He is a wily little gossip and seems to love a good time, love to judge, have a temper that gets in his way, and more. His commentary on his family members and neighbors early in the book makes him not at all likable, but the interesting thing was that he never improved. We are supposed to see him changed by the things he learns about the realities of life for so many, and instead he seems just as obsessive and obnoxious as any other male character in the book, perhaps even more so.
Helen is not much better. While admirable, and to an extent understandable, she never really came alive for me. She was a stiff little silhouette, supposed to be shaped, I think, by so many others' opinions of her, but I did not find it quite successful. I did like that she was not a complete angel, and that she was paranoid quick to judge; in those ways she felt accurate.
At this point, my review will get deeper into spoiler territory, but as this is a classic I am not going to mark it.
As the book moved along I was surprised by the long diary excerpt in the middle. This felt a bit longer than necessary, but more importantly, so jarring in the pace of the book that it was like reading a different book. I am really curious about the reasons Brontë had for framing the novel in this way, first with the letters to an unimportant character, and then with the diary. But the journal entries were also confusing because I could not believe the bond between Helen and Markham. I was waiting for something exciting to unfold about her background, about her being tied to another man, or something interesting, that it was such a letdown to have the mystery just be her brother and a slightly random misconception of the characters.
By the end I was so disappointed that Helen ended up with Markham, who was so single-minded and prone to violence I did not think it much of an improvement for her.
BUT, on the other hand, I did enjoy and appreciate the bigger picture here - the portrait of what life could really be like for women if they happened to end up with a bad husband. And it was a book that kept me coming back, because I wanted to see what happened, and how the story would resolve.
On a related note, I have to add that while I really like the Penguin Clothbound Classics, that they are nicely printed and it's a sort of old-fashioned treat to crack into one when I do most of my reading in ebook form, I am always perplexed at best, and frustrated at worst, by the footnotes. What is their goal? Half of them offer some interesting, relevant information on the author's experience or what could have inspires this stretch of text, or words for old things that we might not know (different types of carriages, anyone?), or various drafts and comparisons of various versions of the text, and the rest are inane, insipid comments - or, in the case of this book, telling you any time 3+ words in a row were directly copied from the Bible. It is the most anticlimactic thing to see a footnote, turn to read it, and see, for "a few words of course," that the footnote has decided we need to be informed that that means "a few commonplace words." Who do they think is reading these books?