The Tenant of Wildfell Hall construction, the artists hand also offers a form of independence, a possibility of earning a living, in a period when a woman had virtually no independent power base in any sphere." Nicole A. Diederich has argued that in "The Tenant" Anne Brontë constructs marriage and remarriage as a comparative and competitive practice that restricts Helen's rights and talents. Helen's artistic ability plays a central role in her relationships with both Gilbert and Arthur. Her alternating freedom to paint and inability to do so on her own terms not only complicate Helen's definition as wife, widow, and artist, but also enable
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Hall", and remember that the writers were two retiring, solitary, consumptive girls! Books, coarse even for men, coarse in language and coarse in conception, the coarseness apparently of violence and uncultivated men – turn out to be the productions of two girls living almost alone, filling their loneliness with quiet studies, and writing their books from a sense of duty, hating the pictures they drew, yet drawing them with austere conscientiousness! There is matter here for the moralist or critic to speculate on". A great success on initial publication, the novel was almost forgotten in subsequent years. When it became