The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

by Anne Bronte

Now I have read a work by each of the Bronte sisters. Charlotte’s Jane Eyre has been one of my top favorites ever since I read it years ago. I recently read Wuthering Heights by Emily and found it quite compelling but too dark and disturbing to truly enjoy it. The Tenant is a real gem. I think the thing I like most about it is the depth and believability of the characters. They are intense, passionate, but not idealistic or overly sentimental. You feel that if you lived in their time and place, you’d know them just the way they are presented in the book.

I have been thinking off and on recently about female characters written by male authors and vice versa. I find myself analyzing how well an author presents a character, and then I start to doubt my conclusions because of the sex of the author. I may think a male character is believable and empathetic, but is that just because he was written by a woman? Or, I feel I can’t say a female character is really written “truly” because I can’t help remembering her male author. But, who am I to judge? Just because I am a woman doesn’t mean I understand all womanhood. I think some of my intellect may be somewhat masculine in nature.

Maybe some authors simply excell at writing characters in a way that transcends gender. George Eliot (who was a woman named Mary Ann Evans) and Leo Tolstoy are my favorite examples of this. Their people move me. (In Eliot’s case, the male characters might resonate with me even more than the female ones.) Tolstoy astonished me with his broad range of characterization that was utterly convincing throughout the epic War and Peace. I wonder if I was able to read books with the author unknown to me if I could figure out whether they were written by a man or a woman?

I was leading up a point with all this: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is written partly from the first-person narrative perspective of a young gentleman farmer in the Hall’s vicinity, as if he is writing a story in a letter to a friend much later in his life. A large portion, however, is “excerpted” from the diary and letters of the mysterious woman living at the Hall. So, we get to know Gilbert as he presents himself and then as he learns of Helen we are right there with him, or rather with her, as she lives out her early years. I could really relate to Gilbert’s suspense and excitement as he was reading the diary – I could barely put it down!

The book is compelling for another reason – I think it shares this somewhat with the other Brontes’ books, but is the most direct in its quality of “this could be your life.” There are such brutally honest examinations of human nature, thought processes, and how people impact each other. It can be chilling at times – too close for comfort! But, Wildfell Hall is a redemptive story, and gives us hope that people can rise above suffering and vice. (I can’t say the same for Wuthering Heights with Catherine and Heathcliff.)

I’d say, read it. Soon.