The Tenant of Wildfell Hall the authors, having in mind all the novels from Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell published by 1848, "against their fancy for dwelling upon what is disagreeable". "Examiner", while praising all Brontës as "a hardy race", who "do not lounge in drawing-rooms or boudoirs", and "not common-place writers", considered "The Tenant's" frame structure "a fatal error: for, after so long and minute a history [of Helen's marriage to Arthur], we cannot go back and recover the enthusiasm which we have been obliged to dismiss a volume and half before". The gossiping of the inhabitants of Linden-Car village reminded it of Jane
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for many years, with her young son and a servant. She lives there in strict seclusion under the assumed name Helen Graham and soon finds herself the victim of local slander. Refusing to believe anything scandalous about her, Gilbert befriends Helen and discovers her past. In her diary, Helen depicts her husband's physical and moral decline through alcohol and her desperate attempts to save their son from his influence in the dissipated aristocratic society from which she ultimately flees. The depiction of marital strife and women's professional identification has also a strong moral message mitigated by the authors's belief in