The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Helen's diary; and in turn, Helen's diary includes Arthur's autobiographical reminiscences. Anne Brontë starts her novel in a social comedy manner, reminiscent of Jane Austen. Like "Pride and Prejudice", "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" starts with the arrival of a new person in a neighbourhood — a source of curiosity for a small rural community. Unlike Austen, Brontë makes a woman the center of interest. Reticent Mrs. Graham with her views on alcohol consumption and girls’ education, controversial for the 19th century, soon becomes an outcast. Tess O'Toole calls "The Tenant" "the most unusual example of 19th century domestic fiction",
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall father’s farm, and Helen, being a runaway wife, can call neither her home nor her name her own. The emphasis on allusions in the novel, on using the "language of others," according to McDonagh, may be a reflection on the position of being a tenant, which in its subjugation is similar to that of being a wife. Until the passing of the Married Women's Property Act in 1870 a wife had no independent existence under English law, and therefore no right to own property or to enter into contracts separately from her husband, or to sue for divorce, or for