The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was not qualified to handle at once vigorously and truthfully. The simple and natural – quiet description and simple pathos – are, I think Acton Bell's forte. I liked "Agnes Grey" better than the present work." Juliet Barker, in her biography of the Brontës, concluded that "Charlotte, it appears, was prepared to consign her sister’s novel to oblivion because she considered its subject at odds with her own perception of what Anne’s character was and ought to have been." Elizabeth Gaskell repeated Charlotte's words about Anne in "The Life of Charlotte Brontë", claiming that the subject of "The Tenant" "was
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall universal salvation. Most critics now consider "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" to be one of the first feminist novels. May Sinclair, in 1913, said that the slamming of Helen's bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England. In leaving her husband, Helen violates not only social conventions, but also the early 19th century English law. Some aspects of the life and character of the author's brother Branwell Brontë correspond to those of Arthur Huntingdon in "The Tenant". He resembles Branwell Brontë in three ways: physical good-looks; sexual adventures (before his affair with his employer's wife, Mrs Robinson, Branwell is