The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a woman as narrator. Langland concluded that "if Charlotte Brontë was radical in claiming sexual identity for women, then Anne Brontë was radical in claiming professional identity for women." Robert Liddell, noting Anne's apparent distaste for Romantic tradition, claimed that "The Tenant" criticized both Branwell's life and "Wuthering Heights". Edward Chitham in "A Life of Anne Brontë" (1991) also juxtaposed the novels of Anne and her sisters'. He stated that in Anne's view "Wuthering Heights" exhibited elements which she called in the preface to the second edition of "The Tenant" a "soft nonsense," thus making "almost an accusation against Emily."
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall thought to have fathered an illegitimate child who died at birth); and especially in his alcoholism. Another character in the novel, Lord Lowborough, has an association with opium that may also reflect Branwell's behaviour. Another possible source for "The Tenant" is the story of Mrs Collins, the wife of a local curate, who in November 1840 came to Anne's father Patrick Brontë seeking advice regarding her alcoholic husband's abusive conduct. Mr Brontë's counsel was that she should leave her husband. Mrs Collins returned to Haworth in the spring of 1847, while Anne was writing "The Tenant", and told how she