The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Anne Brontë to criticize the domestic sphere as established by marriage and re-established with remarriage. At the beginning of her diary, the young and unmarried Helen already defines herself as an artist. Her early drawings reveal her private and true feelings for Arthur Huntingdon, feelings that lead her to overlook his true character and lose herself to marriage. Nevertheless, in addition to revealing Helen's true desires, the self-expression of her artwork also defines her as an artist. That she puts so much of herself into her paintings and drawings attests to this self-definition. After her marriage to Arthur, Helen, accepting
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall the same subject as her sisters, Anne presents it in completely different light. Wildfell Hall, an old superannuated mansion, she pictures not as a ‘haunted’ house like Thornfield Hall or Wuthering Heights in her sisters' works, but as a decayed relic of an outworn patrician class, whose pretensions are mocked by the recrudescence of building into moor. Stevie Davies has argued that Anne's ancient hall demystifies Gothic. Wildfell Hall is not haunted, it is simply dilapidated, damp and un-welcoming. Anne's portrayal of Arthur Huntingdon deflates Byronic cult – while witty, adventurous and handsome, he is not endowed with intellectual gifts,