The Tenant of Wildfell Hall the general dismissiveness of the late 19th–early 20th century critics, Anne still had supporters in literary circles. Esther Alice Chadwick, while believing that Anne lacked "the fire and passion of her sisters" and was "inferior" to them, claimed that she is still "a character well worth studying." Chadwick also considered "The Tenant" to be "probably the first temperance novel." George Moore, an Anglo-Irish writer, was an admirer Anne Brontë's novels; he believed that Anne "had all the qualities of Jane Austen and other qualities," that "she could write with heat," and if "she had lived ten years longer she would
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for many years, with her young son and a servant. She lives there in strict seclusion under the assumed name Helen Graham and soon finds herself the victim of local slander. Refusing to believe anything scandalous about her, Gilbert befriends Helen and discovers her past. In her diary, Helen depicts her husband's physical and moral decline through alcohol and her desperate attempts to save their son from his influence in the dissipated aristocratic society from which she ultimately flees. The depiction of marital strife and women's professional identification has also a strong moral message mitigated by the authors's belief in