Tenant of Wildfell Hall
{{The Tenant of Wildfell Hall}}
Basic Info
- Author: Anne Bronte
- Year: 1848
- Type: #primary1
Summary (brief)
-Helen Graham flees her alcoholic, abusive husband, Arthur Huntingdon, to move into the bleak, crumbling mansion called Wildfell Hall with her son & her one servant, Rachel. Her neighbors are scandalized by her singleness and how her son resembles her landlord, Frederick Lawrence, (who is actually secretly her brother). She falls in love with a nice guy named Gilbert Markham who defends Helen against the goss. Annabell Wilmot (Lady Lowborough) has an affair with Arthur in Helen's house. Her husband is the reformed gambler and addict. Walter Hargrave is a fake friend to Arthur and tries to manipulate Helen into having an affair with him but she's way too moral for that. The first part is told through Gilbert's perspective and the second part is told through Helen's diary (read by Gilbert).
Major Themes
- #trans-corporeality
- #woman-as-house
- #domesticabuse
- #marriage/relationships
- #surveillance
- #craft/body
Key Passages / Quotes
Quote 1
quote:: “Those were four miserable months, alternating between intense anxiety, despair, and indignation, pity for him and pity for myself”
page:: 274
themes:: woman-as-house, marriage
Quote 2
quote:: “what if Frederick should not have received my letter? or if he should not have had time to prepare the rooms for our reception, and we should find them all dark, damp, and comfortless, destitute of food, fire and furniture, after all our toil?”
page:: 425
themes:: woman-as-house, marriage
Quote 3
quote:: “but now, each separate object seemed to echo back my own exhilarating sense of hope and freedom”
page:: 425
themes:: woman-as-house, interiority, freedom
Genre Notes
-Using the diary to convey Helen's interiority honestly (as honest as a woman could be even in her diary in the Victorian era).
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
Theory Connections
Related Texts
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