The Tenant of Wildfell Hall may be influenced by the works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Priti Joshi, believing that Anne had read her works, argues that she not only refuses the Wollstonecraftian indictment of the feminine, but also rejects its elevation, articulated by Hannah More. Anne Brontë’s feminism, in Joshi’s words, "forges a path between the extremes of Wollstonecraft-More spectrum". In "The Tenant", a reformed masculinity emerges not, as More would have it, under the tutelage of a woman, but by emulating feminine ways. Anne presents the "idle talk" of Linden-Car villagers primary as a way of creating fellowship and community, not only as vicious gossip.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Tenant" "infinitely inferior" to "Jane Eyre", "Literature World" admits that two novels share "the same mysterious word-painting" with which the author "conveys the scene he (or she) describes to the mind's eye, so as not only to impress it with the mere view, but to speak, as it were, to the imagination, to the inner sense, as it ever the case with the Poetry as the Painting of real genius". Again having in mind both "Jane Eyre" and "The Tenant", it concludes: "However objectionable this works may be to crude minds which cannot winnow the chaff vulgarity from rich grain