The Tenant of Wildfell Hall or poet, but only as the sister of Charlotte and Emily." In 1959, two biographies were published: "Anne Brontë, her life and work" by Ada Harrison and Derek Stanford and "Anne Brontë" by Winifred Gérin. Noting that "The Tenant" was published some ten years before George Eliot's novels, Harrison and Stanford named Anne the "first realist woman writer" in Great Britain. Unlike some early critics, who considered the scenes of debauchery improbable, Harrison and Stanford believed them to be "described in a fashion which Zola might have admired." Winifred Gérin believed Helen Graham to be "one of the first married
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall find it necessary, in approaching subjects that were considered to be controversial, to use the voice of a male narrator, appropriating, delegitimizing and even ridiculing his power, before telling anti-patriarchal truth. Carol A. Senf believes that the "unique narrative structure, the wife's story framed by that of her husband... encourages the reader to focus on questions of gender". According to Tess O'Toole, the architecture of Brontë's narrative stresses and calls attention to the disjunction of two different forms of domestic containment, one deriving from marriage, the other from the natal family. Priti Joshi, noting Helen and Gilbert's suspicion of spoken