The Tenant of Wildfell Hall acclaiming it as "the first presentment of that Feminist novel", she stated that "it bores to tears." Her opinion of Helen was also mixed: "If Agnes Grey is a little prig, Helen Huntingdon is a prig enormous... She is Anne Bronte's idea of noble womanhood, the first of the modern, large-souled, intellectual heroines." The only thing Sinclair wholly approved of was author's treatment of marital laws of the time: "Anne Brontë attacks her problem with a freedom and audacity before which her sisters’ boldest enterprises seem cowardly and restrained... Her behaviour is the least unusual, not to say revolutionary." Despite
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall reading of the diaries. Helen bids Gilbert to leave her because she is not free to marry. He complies and soon learns that she has returned to Grassdale because her husband is gravely ill. Helen's ministrations are in vain, and Huntingdon's death is painful since he is fraught with terror at what awaits him. Helen cannot comfort him, for he rejects responsibility for his actions and wishes instead for her to come with him to plead for his salvation. A year passes. Gilbert pursues a rumour of Helen's impending wedding, only to find that Mr Lawrence, with whom he has