Expressions // ‘An Unpalatable Truth’: Moral Nurture and Individual Responsibility in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
The eponymous tenant of Anne Brontë’s second and final novel is the mysterious widow Helen Graham. She arrives at the hitherto uninhabited Wildfell Hall with just her young son, a servant and a view to earning a living through her art. Naturally reticent and wary of forming any real attachments to the inhabitants of the neighbouring village of Linden-Car, the mysterious Helen soon becomes the subject of unfavourable local gossip. Gilbert Markham, who lives in the village with his mother and siblings, is initially rather taken with her, but in the face of village speculation and Helen’s own evasiveness, grows increasingly suspicious of her personal history. Only when narrative control is handed over to Helen in the form of her diary entries does Gilbert (and by extension, the reader) learn that she is not a widow at all; she has run away from her abusive husband, Arthur Huntingdon.
Critics have long pointed out the parallels between Huntingdon and the Brontës’ ill-fated brother Branwell. While he very probably served as inspiration, it’s been suggested more recently that Anne’s novel was born out of disapproval of her sister’s work, rather than (or at least, in addition to) the spectacle of her brother’s rapid decline. Smith, for example, describes Tenant as ‘a sharp commentary… on Wuthering Heights’,[1] and Liddell agrees: the novel, ‘in which conscience triumphs, is in some sort an answer to the triumph of passion in Wuthering Heights.’[2] Nevertheless, Anne’s novel was poorly received by contemporary critics. Among those critics was her sister, Charlotte, who wrote in a letter to W.S. Williams that ‘it hardly appears to me desirable to preserve.’[3] Although the book’s instructive emphasis is certainly evident to the modern reader, the moral of Anne’s story was apparently lost on many 19th century reviewers who wrote primarily of the book’s ‘revolting scenes’ and took issue with its ‘inconceivably coarse language.’[4] Otherwise, that moral was counteracted altogether by the author’s ‘morbid love of the coarse’.[5] Consequently, Anne’s novel was considered highly unsuitable for its intended demographic of young women.
