A review by lyricallit
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

challenging dark emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

First exposure to Anne Brontë! I could see a re-read of this one, especially since I think my audiobook version might have suffered from the removal of passages that have long plagued poor Anne's work. I listened to this one via Audrey, which includes a helpful guide.

Here I will include my final post from the readalong, hidden for spoilers:
I enjoyed the read and I'm so glad I had this readalong to encourage some analysis of the text. I am perhaps not as severe upon Gilbert as others have been. Maybe I should be, and I do think it is a text I could re-read, and I look forward to how my opinions of him may shift. What I saw in the post-diary section of the novel was some growth for our young gentleman farmer. He does go and apologize to Frederick -- it may not be a GREAT apology but there was acknowledgement of wrong and remorse and a branch of friendship. He seems 10x more respectful of boundaries - not begging or demanding word from Helen but instead respectfully accepting what Frederick is willing to offer. When he rushes to her aunt's estate and then gets cold feet, I thought of that scene from the beginning when he ignored the signs and encroached on her being alone to paint. In this later scene, he gives in to the impulse to go to her -- but then checks himself! His pause is from being humbled by the fact that she has wealth & position (i.e., power) without him! I see this (perhaps overly dramatic self-pitying) moment of him waiting outside the gate as an acknowledgement by a man - at last - of a woman's boundaries. 

Do I wish that this story had been entirely told to us by Helen, like Jane Eyre? 💯 But I can understand why Bronte frames it the way she did -- after all, she needed a male penname to tell her own stories, too! In a patriarchal society, Gilbert is the authorizing ally to lift up Helen's voice, just as "Acton Bell" was Anne's.
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