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Title: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Author: Anne Bronte
Narrator: David Rintoul, Carole Boyd
Format: Abridged
Length: 2 hrs and 22 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-07-07
Publisher: CSA Word
Genres: Classics, British Literature
Publisher's Summary:
Helen Graham, aloof and thought to be recently widowed, moves into the half-ruined Wildfell Hall with her five-year-old son. She meets and falls in love with the young Squire Gilbert Markham. However, their passion is held in check by Helen's mysterious relationship with the handsome but cruel Arthur Huntingdon, a character modelled on Anne Bronte's alcoholic brother, Branwell.
Critic Reviews:
"Of the three Bronte sisters, Emily and Charlotte are better known, yet it is Anne's work which carries some of the strongest feminist themes....While the plot continues and mysteries are unraveled, what Helen and Gilbert say - as well as what they don't say - provides another story to follow, which reinforces Anne Bronte's indictment of the sexual double standards of nineteenth-century Britain." (Erica Bauermeister, 500 Great Books by Women)
Members Reviews:
Anne Bronte's masterpiece
First of all, I'm a big fan of 19th century Victorian British literature. I love Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, and so on. Unfortunately, this novel by Anne Bronte has not been given its due. It has definitely taken a back seat to her sisters more famous novels, the eldest Bronte, Charlotte's "Jane Eyre," and the middle sisters, Emily's "Wuthering Heights." Anne died very young of illness in her early 20s, and Emily died too, around the same time. Apparently her surviving older sister, Charlotte had the idea that Anne had written an offensive, inappropriate, and possibly embarrassing book, so she suppressed it.
Charlotte seems to have believed that Anne had no authority to write on the subject matter, which delves into some dark places, including just about every kind of human abuse - spousal, emotional, physical, child, drug, alcohol, financial, and even animal cruelty. Apparently for these reasons, Charlotte blocked further publications of Anne's major novel, posthumously, for some time. Also, once it finally resurfaced, sadly, apparently it was largely rewritten by male writers, unauthorized, and what we have today is probably not exactly as Anne Bronte intended, but we can only hope that enough of her story and her personal touch remains.
A woman leaving an abusive husband is not so shocking or unusual in terms of today's standards, but in Victorian times, it was not just frowned on and shocking, it was illegal for a woman to leave her husband for ANY reason, or to live off her own income or labor. At that time, unfortunately for all women, the law in Britain still followed the Napoleonic Code, which said that women were basically sub-human, in the same category as children, and mental incompetents. Women had no legal rights to speak of, but that soon began to change for the better, as laws reformed. Nevertheless, our heroine reaches her limits, and at last rebels against her cruel, belittling, abusive husband, for the sake of her child, and they flee.
There is a lot of excitement in the story, and twists in the plot. It seems to me, true to life, as far as spousal abuse, and other dysfunctional forms of human relationships. Apparently Anne may have gotten some of her ideas of dysfunctional relationships from observing her brother, who seemed to have substance abuse problems, and her experiences observing the lives of the very wealthy through her time working in aristocratic homes, as a governess.
