The Tenant of Wildfell Hall the authors, having in mind all the novels from Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell published by 1848, "against their fancy for dwelling upon what is disagreeable". "Examiner", while praising all Brontës as "a hardy race", who "do not lounge in drawing-rooms or boudoirs", and "not common-place writers", considered "The Tenant's" frame structure "a fatal error: for, after so long and minute a history [of Helen's marriage to Arthur], we cannot go back and recover the enthusiasm which we have been obliged to dismiss a volume and half before". The gossiping of the inhabitants of Linden-Car village reminded it of Jane
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall find it necessary, in approaching subjects that were considered to be controversial, to use the voice of a male narrator, appropriating, delegitimizing and even ridiculing his power, before telling anti-patriarchal truth. Carol A. Senf believes that the "unique narrative structure, the wife's story framed by that of her husband... encourages the reader to focus on questions of gender". According to Tess O'Toole, the architecture of Brontë's narrative stresses and calls attention to the disjunction of two different forms of domestic containment, one deriving from marriage, the other from the natal family. Priti Joshi, noting Helen and Gilbert's suspicion of spoken