I admit, I've struggled with the Brontes in the past.
I first read Jane Eyre during entirely the wrong season: it was warm and bright outside, when really, the book is better suited to a nice winter thunderstorm. I liked it well enough, but found it hard to celebrate the ending. Similarly, I approached Wuthering Heights all wrong, expecting the romance as which it is so often characterised in popular culture, when in fact its famous couple are two of the most toxic and difficult people in literature.
After later trying Vilette and finding it far too long and sermonising for me, I was beginning to think that my relationship with the sisters was doomed. But several people had professed their love of Anne, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in particular, and it did seem a shame not to complete the 'set'.
Now, I'm very glad I took the plunge and decided to read Tenant after all, because it was genuinely brilliant. I was taken aback by how forthright and blunt Anne's writing is, particularly about the position of women. She just outright states how difficult it is for women to have any control over their lives, marriages and children, in a way that most of us wouldn't associate with writing of the nineteenth century.
We begin with Gilbert Markham's perspective on Helen Graham, who has recently moved into the area near his farm with her little boy. He rapidly moves from indifference, to fondness, to ardent love for Helen and is hurt and confused that she doesn't respond as he expects. Violently quashing the rumours that her child is illegitimate, his heart is finally broken when he sees Helen with the local squire, Mr Lawrence, and believes them to be in love.
I wasn't sure what to expect after this turn of events, except that with gossip flying that Helen's son resembled Mr Lawrence, I quickly (and correctly) diagnosed that they were siblings rather than lovers. It was thrilling when Anne played her next move, and relocated the narrative from Gilbert's recollections to Helen's diaries, kept since she was a teenager.
Here we see the inevitable tale unfold, of a young woman drawn into a 'love match' with a dangerous bully of a man, who quickly becomes emotionally and physically abusive, drinks dangerously, behaves appallingly, and flirts outrageously with other women. What's more, their neighbour takes a shine to Helen and plagues her with his inappropriate advances. Finally, after many (admittedly gruelling) chapters of this, Helen is left with no choice but to flee to her brother, Mr Frederick Lawrence.
We then return to Gilbert, who reconciles with Lawrence only to discover that Helen has returned to her foul husband, who is ill and likely to die. Through her letters we learn that he takes his time doing this, behaving in a characteristically boorish, selfish, repulsive manner until the last, finally leaving Helen free (and utterly exhausted).
The structure of the novel seems to attract criticism, and I can see that it's confusing (and definitely not well-suited to being adapted for television). However, personally I felt the diary and letters gave the narrative an intimacy and immediacy, as if I had just stumbled upon a bundle of papers and unearthed the story one entry at a time. Plus, having only seen Helen through Gilbert's eyes for the first portion of the book made it suddenly so exciting to be reading her diaries, and lifting the mask from this enigmatic lady to see the truth and sorrow underneath.
Then, the diaries finish and we are left with nothing but letters to catch glimpses of what she is enduring back at her husband's estate - and I think this format encourages the reader to feel all the anguish and anxiety of separation that Gilbert feels.
Anne is brave enough to let a woman do the unthinkable - leave her husband and live apart from him - and yet grant her a happy ending, unlike so many Victorian novels which require any transgression on the part of the heroine to result in death or deportation (spoiler, but, The Mill on the Floss). It's true that she has to 'earn' her freedom by returning to the abuser who has ruined her life, something which leaves a bad taste in the mouth these days, and her angelic devotion to religious goodness seems overblown now.
But Anne had to cover her tracks, and ensure that nobody reading her novel could have cause to say a single negative thing about her poor heroine, or deny her the right to a happy marriage and future.
And despite its serious religious morals and proto-feminist messages, so controversial at the time, the part of me which always cries during the engagement scenes in Jane Austen movies was allowed its moment too: my heart was racing as fast as Gilbert's coach as he rushes to seek out Helen and discover whether their mutual feelings are still what he hopes. So romantic!
I was also supremely relieved that neither shrinking Milicent nor her naive young sister Esther were compelled to suffer for the sake of making a point. I was pleased as punch when it arose that Frederick had married Esther, having cautiously predicted this match several chapters earlier! It would have been so easy to have the villainous Mr H or one of his scoundrelly friends seduce her, just as it would have hammered home Anne's point about the abuses of men to have poor Milicent succumb to her husband's violence or her own despair.
But no, this novel is resolutely hopeful, and the brutish Mr Hattersley turns tender and honest almost entirely of his own accord - with just a little nudge from Helen that he might want to stop making assumptions about his wife's levels of tolerance, and instead actually make an effort to understand and please her. I bet plenty of wives reading Tenant wished for a similar transformation!
To conclude, this was very much a surprising novel, and the Brontes continue to upend my expectations of them. I loved Anne's frankness, and bravery in painting a viscerally detailed picture of what life was like for abused wives, and I loved Helen's frankness in setting boundaries for Gilbert to observe in their acquaintance, and in resolutely following her own morals despite being surrounded by revolting and/or hopeless men.
I found the moralising did become tedious at times when modern consciences would have required far less in the way of bad behaviour in order to justify leaving a husband, but it's important to recognise just how severely restricted women of Anne's generation were. I thank her for having the courage to write about it, and laying the groundwork for others to fight for women's rights which we too often take for granted today.
My rating: 4 stars
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