The Tenant of Wildfell Hall The Tenant of Wildfell Hall The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel by the English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication. The novel is framed as a series of letters from Gilbert Markham to his friend and brother-in-law about the events connected with the meeting of his wife. A mysterious young widow arrives at Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Unlike Chitham and Liddell, Maria H. Frawley named the criticism of 19th century domestic ideology that encouraged women to "construct themselves as ethereal angels of morality and virtue" the central element in "The Tenant". Betty Jay, analyzing Helen's marital experience, concluded that "The Tenant" "not only demonstrates that the individual is subject to powerful ideological forces which delineate his or her place within culture and society, but that there are ways in which these forces can subverted and resisted by those who suffer as a result. In a narrative which dramatizes the complex interplay between subject and society by focusing