The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was not qualified to handle at once vigorously and truthfully. The simple and natural – quiet description and simple pathos – are, I think Acton Bell's forte. I liked "Agnes Grey" better than the present work." Juliet Barker, in her biography of the Brontës, concluded that "Charlotte, it appears, was prepared to consign her sister’s novel to oblivion because she considered its subject at odds with her own perception of what Anne’s character was and ought to have been." Elizabeth Gaskell repeated Charlotte's words about Anne in "The Life of Charlotte Brontë", claiming that the subject of "The Tenant" "was
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall which to take a comprehensive view of humanity and the novelist who confines his observation to them is not likely to produce any lasting impression except of horror and disgust". "Sharpe's London Magazine", believing "despite reports to the contrary" that "[no] woman could have written such a work", warned its readers, especially ladies, against reading "The Tenant". While acknowledging "the powerful interest of the story", "the talent with which it is written" and an "excellent moral", it argued that "like the fatal melody of the Syren's song, its very perfections render it more dangerous, and therefore more carefully to be