Helen gives Gilbert her diary, giving him deep insight into her art projects, thoughts, and the abusive relationship Helen had with her husband as well as the escape plan she derived to be free from the marriage. This is a lengthy book, taking the time to explore Gilbert's character and his interaction with Helen before Gilbert writes Helen's diary accounts to his friend in a letter. This is also a family-heavy story. The writing demonstrates the difference between men and women at the time: Gilbert refers to Helen's diary as his 'prize' while the diary really represents Helen's access to independence.


I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review. ( )

The only mistake I made in reading this book was to read it out of order - it is the author's second novel. And having now read the first, "Agnes Grey", I can see the huge improvement in characterisation and plotting in this second and sadly, final, novel.

Mrs Helen Graham, a woman in her mid-twenties, and her five-year-old son Arthur, together with the older woman who is her faithful maidservant Rachel, have moved into the dilapidated Wildfell Hall, where a few rooms have been made habitable by the landlord, Mr Lawrence. Her arrival occasions much gossip in the neighbourhood because the apparent widow keeps to herself as much as possible - although she does bow to pressure from the vicar and starts attending church - and even more so because she earns an income by painting, turning what was then seen as an accomplishment for middle and upper class women into a money-earning enterprise. This is very unusual for the 1840s, when the novel was published, and even more so for its setting in the 1820s.

Gilbert Markham, a neighbouring young farmer, is very taken with the elegant, serious, and pious woman, causing his current love interest Eliza to become jealous. Gilbert is trying to sever ties with Eliza anyway because his mother disapproves of her: this being an era in which the views of parents or other guardians had to be taken very seriously. Gilbert is dismayed when Eliza becomes a leading figure in the malicious gossip about Helen, which worsens over time. Mr Lawrence has been seen making visits to his tenant, and the gossips claim to see a resemblance between him and little Arthur. This eventually makes her continued stay untenable despite the love with Gilbert declares to her and which it seems she returns.

The misunderstanding which arises between them over Mr Lawrence's role obliges Helen to lend him her journal - which forms the middle and meatiest part of the book. For Mrs Graham is really Mrs Huntingdon, and is in hiding from her abusive alcoholic husband who, if he tracks her down, will continue the process of corrupting their son. Helen has broken every convention and marriage vow of obedience in taking her son and running away, helped by the loyal Rachel, to saver her son's character and - she believes - his soul.

This is a remarkable book, all the more so when the historical context is taken into account. At the time it drew a barrage of hostility from critics due to its scandalous subject matter. Anne was driven to a defence via a preface to the second edition and, after her death, her sister Charlotte did not allow the book to be reprinted. Charlotte tried to excuse it by a rather specious portrayal of Anne as a simple country girl who had been driven to portray vicious behaviour she had been forced to witness due to living in a barbarous region - the unworldy Anne had thought this was normal in wider society. Of course Anne was nothing of the kind, being intelligent and just as educated as Charlotte herself - and their home town of Haworth was far from being the back of beyond. The book is actually a spirited attack against the semi-slavery in which a married woman was plunged at that period, years before the 1870 Married Women's Property Act. It also unflinchingly portrays an abusive marriage - not physically violent, but psychologically torturing. Helen is forced to endure neglect, verbal abuse, drunken behaviour by her husband and his chums, the conducting by him of an affair with a married woman for two years - some of it under her own roof while she was forced to be polite to the other woman who was as nasty as her husband - and worst of all, her husband teaching her son to swear and drink alcohol before the age of five. It is this last which finally impels her to the unthinkable for a married woman of the age.

One of the slight weaknesses in the book are the use of the framing structure with the male viewpoint. His behaviour at times is on a sliding scale with her husband's - thinking principally of his attack on Mr Lawrence whom he believes to be Helen's lover - and perhaps is not totally convincing. But the portrayals of his family and the other characters around him come across as decent pen portraits. The other weakness is that Helen is just a bit too saintly and pious at times. She loves Huntingdon and sets out to reform him - despite her aunt's prescient warnings about his character - and can be a bit too religious by today's standards with her views of a better life in Heaven etc. But her refusal to be cowed, and her constant rebuttals to her husband, go a great way towards redeeming this. It is interesting to speculate on how much her views are based upon the author's, since from all accounts Anne did indeed have a sincere and deeply-held Christian faith.

It is also interesting to speculate just how much the portrayal of Huntingdon himself draws on Anne's observation of her alcoholic brother Branwell. But she had also worked as a governess for some years at the houses of two families in higher ranks of society, one very grand indeed, and some at least of her material must come from things she had seen there. Scenes such as the drunken brawl in the house one evening during one of the extended house parties Huntingdon inflicts upon Helen are so realistic that they can't have been totally imaginary. The very creepy Mr Hargrave, too, who seems at first to be a friend to Helen during the years she puts up with her husband's worsening conduct, but who eventually tries to convince her to have an affair with him is so well characterised that he, too, was possibly drawn from life. This was written many years before terms such as sexual harrassment were coined, but his behaviour is a classic case.

All in all, I enjoyed the book a great deal. It almost earned a full rating, but given the two reservations above I have to rate it a well-deserved 4 stars. ( )

A much underrated and underread book, and one I prefer to Wuthering Heights.[return][return]A mysterious woman (with a child but no husband) moves into Wildfell Hall, and one of the local landowners Gilbert Markham becomes intrigued with her remoteness. Gilbert falls in love with Helen Graham, but feels that he is getting nowhere, and becomes suspicious of her relationship with her landlord.[return][return]Gilbert confronts her, and she reveals that she is in love with him, and hands over her diary for him to read. It provides reasons for her living apparently unmarried but with a child; her marriage to a violent drunken husband; her relationship with her landlord; her need and desire to protect her son; trying to earn a living in a society that does not allow women to independently have a serious job or career without the "protection" of a husband (living with a violent drunk always being preferred to walking away).[return][return]Rightly or wrongly I've always seen Gilbert as the "younger man". I think in terms of years, he is probably older than Helen, it's just in terms of emotional maturity and life lessons, she is much older than him. He has had a reasonably easy and unchallenging life whilst she has had so much to confront.

I've always appreciated and usually enjoy reading "The Classics" but that wasn't the case with this one. The story had two narrators. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall herself;Helen Graham. And the man trying to woo her; Gilbert Markham. Helen is stuck in a loveless marriage and half the book consists of her bitching, moaning, whining, and complaining in her high and mighty, holier than thou manner about her borish husband. While the other half consists of a love sick Gilbert chasing after Helen like a love sick puppy despite being repeatedly rebuffed by her. These were two of the most annoying and depressing characters I've ever come across in a piece of fiction and what made this book even worse was the sappy happy ending that came out of absolutely nowhere. 600 plus pages of being rejected and then at the end they live happily ever after ? Come on give me a break ! ( )

Victober 2022 read.

I read this so long ago that I thought it was time to revisit it, now that I'm better acquainted with the lives of the Bronte sisters. It's hard to know how to rate it. It's not pleasant reading; indeed, it's rather oppressive. But of course, Anne didn't write this book to be amusing. She wrote it to highlight truths and double standards and injustices that were being completely swept under the rug at the time, and that reflected traumas going on within her own family. So, as an exercise in authorly courage, it's significant.
And yet I have lukewarm feelings toward it. I think I would have warmed to it more if Gilbert Markham, the narrator, had been more admirable. But, other than his jealous and occasionally violent temperament, he felt like a vacuum. There wasn't much there, certainly not enough to make one feel that Helen would choose him after going through her nightmarish first marriage. Maybe Anne did that deliberately. Maybe she's saying that the best one could hope for in marriage is to find the least evil. I'm not sure. But regardless, it's a sad, long, heavy story that didn't resonate much with me personally.

Incidentally, I'm still not sure how to find the true unabridged original version of the text. What I read had re-inserted the opening letter, but otherwise it was identical to the mutilated version of the text that is generally accepted now. ( )