#the tenant of wildfell hall

[ladyhawke]

Toby Stephens as Gilbert Markham in THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL Part I.

[hayaomiyazaki]

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall — 1996 dir. Mike Barker, adapted from the novel by Anne Brontë

[afirewiel]

When you get down to it, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall basically have the same premise. They both feature a protagonist (Jane Eyre/Gilbert Markham) who falls in love with someone (Edward Rochester/Helen Huntingdon) who turns out to be already married. The books are even written by sisters. (Charlotte and Anne Bronte, respectively).

While Rochester and Helen are both unhappy in their marriages (Rochester's wife is insane and Helen's husband is unfaithful and abusive), the way they handle their situations could not be more different though. Rochester keeps his wife locked in the attic and keeps her existence a secret from all but a select few, letting the rest of the world think he is a bachelor. He deceives Jane as well and even tries to marry her, almost committing bigamy in the process. It's only the timely arrival of Rochester's brother-in-law Richard Mason at the wedding that the truth comes out.

Helen, on the other hand, runs away from her husband, taking her young son with her. She pretends to be a widow. But when she realizes Gilbert has fallen in love with her and wants to marry her, she comes clean to him about her marriage and says she cannot marry him because she is married.

Helen acts more nobly than Rochester and yet, of the two novels, it's the latter that was considered controversial at the time it was released with even Charlotte criticizing it for featuring a woman leaving her husband. Helen never tried to commit bigamy but somehow a woman leaving her abusive husband was considered worse at the time. It really is mind blowing.

[fictionadventurer]

I need to get way too excited about this extremely basic edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

It's just an old Barnes and Noble edition. But it's also the best possible cover this book could have in this format. That purple is the perfect color for this book! That picture! Covers of this book usually feature the hall, but this one features Helen! She's an artist! She's looking straight at you! She's demanding to be the focus of the story! It's like it was made for this book!

And then the inside!

That beautiful clear font! The kerning! The white space! It's so beautiful I could cry! That is how you format classic literature so people can actually read it!

I just love how all these little details come together to make this nothing-fancy edition into the ideal copy of this book for me.

[rayatii]

A few years ago, I had the idea of making one of those movies about a girl who falls in love with some asshole “bad boy” with the idea that she can “fix him” with her good influence, but it’s portrayed in a realistic way, and instead of improving, he becomes more and more abusive, until she has to escape.

A couple of days ago, I started reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and finished it yesterday… and I realized that Anne Brontë already beat me to it 177 years ago.

[problematic-faves-appreciation]

The screenshot below is what I mean by people taking something a male love interest did, and blowing it out of proportion to make him look like the worst:

[Source — Link TW: Rape mention]

To add to my annoyance, the author of these takes thinks Charlotte and Emily Bronte were "into weird men" (they even provided a link to that obnoxious comic) merely for, what, not writing Rochester and Heathcliff as complete jerks with no redeeming features a la Arthur Huntingdon?

Ugh. Shut up about that word. Charlotte and Emily didn't "romanticize" their Byronic heroes' douchey behavior.

Rochester got punished by God.

Story-wise, Heathcliff's abusive behavior is treated as bad thing (poor Linton Heathcliff). And he died — his unwanted, "outsider" presence gone from Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.

Romanticized, my foot!

[littlestfallenangel]

"You have to forgive the sexism in this book because it was a product of its time" Anne Bronte did not write The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848 just for me to put up with sexist bullshit written a hundred years later.

[softly-and-suddenly]

People are so boring about classic literature sometimes. Like I know it’s cool to be critical of men in books from the 19th century or whatever but it just leads to ripping out all of the nuance in favor of “Uh all of the Brontë men were evil and abusive and that’s all there is to those characters.” Say something interesting. I’m begging you

[burningvelvet]

In a letter to W. S. Williams (14 August 1848), Charlotte Brontë compares Jane Eyre’s Rochester to the Byronic heroes of her sisters’ novels, Heathcliff from Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Huntingdon from Anne’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

“You say Mr. Huntingdon reminds you of Mr. Rochester. Does he? Yet there is no likeness between the two; the foundation of each character is entirely different. Huntingdon is a specimen of the naturally selfish, sensual, superficial man, whose one merit of a joyous temperament only avails him while he is young and healthy, whose best days are his earliest, who never profits by experience, who is sure to grow worse the older he grows.

Mr. Rochester has a thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor self-indulgent; he is ill-educated, misguided; errs, when he does err, through rashness and inexperience: he lives for a time as too many other men live, but being radically better than most men, he does not like that degraded life, and is never happy in it. He is taught the severe lessons of experience and has sense to learn wisdom from them. Years improve him; the effervescence of youth foamed away, what is really good in him still remains. His nature is like wine of a good vintage, time cannot sour, but only mellows him. Such at least was the character I meant to portray.

Heathcliffe, again, of Wuthering Heights is quite another creation. He exemplifies the effects which a life of continued injustice and hard usage may produce on a naturally perverse, vindictive, and inexorable disposition. Carefully trained and kindly treated, the black gipsy-cub might possibly have been reared into a human being, but tyranny and ignorance made of him a mere demon. The worst of it is, some of his spirit seems breathed through the whole narrative in which he figures: it haunts every moor and glen, and beckons in every fir-tree of the Heights.”

Source: The Brontës Life and Letters (Clement King Shorter, 2013)

[bethanydelleman]

My very specific narrative catnip is stepparents who love their stepchildren with their whole hearts and stepchildren who consider their stepparent to be superior to their deadbeat biological parent and who tell them that out loud. And this doesn't have anything to do with my childhood AT ALL.

[quotation--marks]

He is very fond of me - almost TOO fond. I could do with less caressing and more rationality: I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend, if I might choose - but I won’t complain of that: I am only afraid his affection loses in depth where it gains in ardour. I sometimes liken it to a fire of dry twigs and branches compared with one of solid coal, - very bright and hot, but if it should burn itself out and leave nothing but ashes behind, what shall I do?

Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

[literarylumin]

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: it vexes me to choose another guide.

- Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

[adobongsiopao]

Caricature of Brontē siblings from an old issue of "Punch" magazine.

Source: The Official Bronte Group on Facebook

[oneclumsybat]

Got a *very* pretty copy of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall yesterday

[fictionadventurer]

I've seen classics with "spoil every plot point in detail" introductions.

I've seen classics with "twist the book so I can analyze it through a specific lens rather than letting you come to your own conclusions based on the actual text" introductions.

But I think the introduction to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, written by some woman (Mary Augusta Ward) who died in 1920, that says "no one would remember this book if Anne Bronte didn't happen to have Emily and Charlotte (actual geniuses) as sisters" might be the worst introduction I've ever seen.

[longtimewish]

When will they stop trying to adapt Wuthering Heights and realize that what we actually need is a new The Tenant of Wildfell Hall adaptation