The Tenant of Wildfell Hall universal salvation for all souls. She does not reassure the elder Arthur about this on his deathbed because she wants him to repent of his wrongdoing on his own accord. Despite his inability to do so, Helen still believes in his redemption. Unlike her elder sisters, Anne Brontë did not follow the Romantic style in her two novels, opting instead for Realism. Many critics, including Anne's sister Charlotte, considered her depiction of alcoholism and adultery overly graphic and disturbing. In defence, Anne openly stated her writer’s intentions in the preface to the second edition of the novel. Often, when depicting
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall avoided." In "Sharpe's" opinion, the novel's "evils which render the work unfit for perusal" arose from "a perverted taste and an absence of mental refinement in the writer, together with a total ignorance of the usages of good society". It argues that the scenes of debauchery "are described with a disgustingly truthful minuteness, which shows the writer to be only too well acquainted with the revolting details of such evil revelry" and considers it a final "proof of the unreadableness of these volumes". Helen's belief in Universal salvation was also castigated: "The dangerous tendency of such a belief most be