The Tenant of Wildfell Hall or poet, but only as the sister of Charlotte and Emily." In 1959, two biographies were published: "Anne Brontë, her life and work" by Ada Harrison and Derek Stanford and "Anne Brontë" by Winifred Gérin. Noting that "The Tenant" was published some ten years before George Eliot's novels, Harrison and Stanford named Anne the "first realist woman writer" in Great Britain. Unlike some early critics, who considered the scenes of debauchery improbable, Harrison and Stanford believed them to be "described in a fashion which Zola might have admired." Winifred Gérin believed Helen Graham to be "one of the first married
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall marriage." However, unlike Arthur, Gilbert shows much more esteem to Helen's artwork. Diederich concludes that "the domestic realm, whether established with marriage or re-established in remarriage, doesn't support women's self-definition as artists, nor does it provide structured setting for the unferreted expression of their talents" and that "The Tenant" calls for "more support for married and remarried women's legal rights and artistic opportunities in nineteen-century Britain." Seemingly pious Universalist ideas in "The Tenant" contradicted prevailing at that time Protestant doctrine in England and thus advocated a socially unacceptable view. Helen expresses several times in the story her belief in eventual