The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to her son, while Anne was governess to her daughters. Du Maurier concluded that in childhood years Branwell "shared in his sister's writings; somehow he must continue to live out their characters in the world of his imagination." In her early essays on Anne Brontë's novels and poetry Muriel Spark praised her proficiency. She believed that Charlotte was a "harsh sister to Anne" and "had she taken an impartial view of "Wildfell Hall", she must have discovered its merits." Despite notion that Charlotte and Emily were "more gifted," Spark stated that "[Anne's] writings none the less take no mean place
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on the marital experience of a woman, Bronte highlights the extent to which the internal and supposedly private realms of desire and domesticity are also intensely political." In the last decades "The Tenant" has established its reputation as a landmark feminist text. In her introduction to the novel, Stevie Davies called it "a feminist manifesto of revolutionary power and intelligence." The novel's framing structure, long dismissed as faulty, started to get acclaim as a fitting narrative device, essential to Anne's critical and artistic purposes. Although the publishers respected Charlotte's wishes, shortly before her death in 1854 the London firm of