"The Tennant of Wildfell Hall"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the issue of domestic violence and feminism in Bronte's "The Tennant of Wildfell Hall". The writer explains that Bronte's position was considered quite feminist for her time period. It looks at how the novel does not romanticize or excuse the brutality of Bronte's central male protagonist. Rather, the novel validates the central female character Helen Huntington's determination to escape Mr. Huntington's sway.

From the Paper:

"Unlike her sister's gothic or romantic sensibilities, Anne wrote with a more realistic eye about the effects of domestic abuse and alcoholism. "I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it," writes Bronte in the preface to her novel. When the 'frame' narrator Gilbert Markham writes in Chapter 2 of the titular hall as "Wildfell Hall, a superannuated mansion of the Elizabethan era, built of dark gray stone, venerable and picturesque to look at, but doubtless, cold and gloomy enough to inhabit," it is not because it is ghost-ridden but, as Helen Huntingdon eventually reveals to over the course of the novel, the hall was gloomy because of her husband's dissipation and ill will towards all around him, even to those who loved him and attempted to make the Hall a home. This view flies in the face of the common notion that a woman's love and redemption was enough to save a man and create a hospitable home-Anne Bronte insists that the goodness of both partners are necessary to do this, and that domesticity and restraint is not the female's responsibility to labor at alone."

More papers on "The Tennant of Wildfell Hall":

• Analytical Essay # 66887 : "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall"
• Book Review # 107364 : "The Marriage of Arthur and Helen Huntingdon"
• Essay # 72356 : "'The Joys of Motherhood'"

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