The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a present-day Yorkshire village. In "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" film adaptation, Juliet Ashton (Lily James), argues about the cultural significance of "The Tenant": "In "Wildfell Hall", Anne Brontë laid bare the essential imbalance of power between men and women in the suffocating hierarchical structure of Victorian marriage." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term cardboard first appeared in "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall". Phrase "tied to the apron strings" was also coined in the novel: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel by the English author
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall of genius which burdens them, very many, while enjoying the freshness and vigour, will gladly hail their appearance, as boldly and eloquently developing blind places of wayward passion in the human heart, which is far more interesting to trace than all bustling traces and murky alleys, through which the will-o’-the-wisp genius of Dickens has so long led the public mind". Edwin Percy Whipple from "North American Review" considered "The Tenant" "less unpleasant" than "Wuthering Heights". However, both novels, in his opinion, were constructed with an "excessive clumsiness" and "the brutal element of human nature" was equally "given prominence" in them.