The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in nineteenth-century literature." However, some forty years later, in introduction to "The Essence of the Brontës", Spark radically changed her views on Anne: "I do not now agree with my former opinion on Anne Brontë's value as a writer. I think her works are not good enough to be considered in any serious context of the nineteenth century novel or that there exists any literary basis for comparison with the brilliant creative works of Charlotte and Emily... She was a writer who could 'pen' a story well enough; she was a literary equivalent of a decent water-colourist." Only in the
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall avoided." In "Sharpe's" opinion, the novel's "evils which render the work unfit for perusal" arose from "a perverted taste and an absence of mental refinement in the writer, together with a total ignorance of the usages of good society". It argues that the scenes of debauchery "are described with a disgustingly truthful minuteness, which shows the writer to be only too well acquainted with the revolting details of such evil revelry" and considers it a final "proof of the unreadableness of these volumes". Helen's belief in Universal salvation was also castigated: "The dangerous tendency of such a belief most be