English novel It features his most memorable character, the engagingly roguish Becky Sharp. The Brontë sisters were other significant novelists in the 1840s and 1850s. Their novels caused a sensation when they were first published but were subsequently accepted as classics. They had written compulsively from early childhood and were first published, at their own expense in 1846 as poets under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. The sisters returned to prose, producing a novel each the following year: Charlotte's "Jane Eyre", Emily's "Wuthering Heights" and Anne's "Agnes Grey". Later, Anne's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (1848) and Charlotte's "Villette" (1853)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for her own sake but for young Arthur's. She wants to "obviate his becoming such a gentleman as his father." According to Stevie Davies, Anne's depiction of the woman as fee-earning artist "trebly trespasses on the domain of the masculine: female artists dabbed in water-colours or sketched decoratively in pen and ink; ladies did not engage in trade; and, besides, tools of her trade [legally belonging to her husband] in this case count as stolen." Melinda Maunsell believes that Helen is "both revealed and concealed by her artistic hand; providing her with an acceptable means of expression within her social