A review by sarah_ls
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

1.0

I'm having a hard time rating this. On one hand, I absolutely hated it. It hinted at a mystery in Helen's background that was kind of almost given a gothic air. Then it went on unrelentingly about the two main characters lives. It started with a male perspective, that I felt was not particularly well done, and then he was given Helen's journals (more on that later), and then it switches back to the male perspective. The male, Gilbert Markham, was high-strung, over-emotional, and almost prissy at times. I liked Helen at first but the longer the story went on, the more she seemed sanctimonious and she tended to nag. She may have been right, but she was always right. It was too much for me.

The thing that actually gave this book some worth to me was that the journals, written from Helen's perspective, actually raised some important issues and would have caused an uproar in 1830. Alcoholism, gambling addiction, adultery, and what was going on behind closed doors in the families.

So historically it has value, but I absolutely tortured myself through the last third of the book. It wasn't what I expected at all and it was about 40% too long. I'm going with one star in case I ever even think about this in the future, but it really did have value.