After my re-read of Jane Eyre and watching two tv/film adaptations of same I decided to have another perusal of the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I also found that the 1996 adaptation was available on Amazon Prime so I gave that another go and enjoyed it just as much the first time around. It would be good to have a more up to date version though I dread to think how it would be handled now to be honest.
So a bit of a Bronte month BUT I hasten to add, there will be no going back to Wuthering Heights which I freely confess I loathe. Why anybody should view Heathcliff as a hero is totally beyond me. I blame the old Olivier/Merle Oberon film of years ago with Laurence O looking all Byronic and glam when in reality Heathclifee was, in my opinion anyway, a pyschopath. The entire book is full of people with the most god awful characters without one redeeming feature amongst them. I have always found Emily to be a bit of a pain. Charlotte seemed to hold her in great admiration (or was it fear? would not be surprised).
I sometimes want to shake for her so called bravery when dying when I think she was being plain selfish and an exhibitionist. Others may weep at the thought of this strong woman staggering around the rooms clutching the furniture and refusing to see a doctor, thus ensuring the maximum amount of suffering for those who had to witness it all. Then the final collapse on the sofa and Charlotte rushing in with a piece of gorse from her beloved moors so she could smell it before she died. Yes and call me cynical if you like, I don't mind.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, is the story of an abusive marriage to a drunken husband and Anne used Branwell's behaviour and appalling end as her model for Arthur Huntingdon. Her family were not happy with the book and did not want it published but Anne stuck to her guns and Tenant was issued. Critics have said it is clumsy and uneven but I disagree. I know that the first and last sections are in the first person of Gilbert, a young farmer who persists in his
attentions to Helen Huntingdown when she moves to Wildfell Hall with her young son and refuses to be rejected until she hands him her diary to explain her situation. The majority of the novel is then Helen's narrative and it does come as a bit of a bump when we jump back to Gilbert towards the denouement. However, I think it is a wonderful book and the more I have read it the more I have appreciated it and I now have a huge admiration for Anne.
After Anne’s death Charlotte tried to stop Tenant of Wildfell Hall being republished as she disapproved of the subject matter. A bit rich from somebody who wrote about a heroine who fell in love with a man who had a mad wife in the attic.
As the years have gone by and I have re-read both Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall many times, I have re-evaluated them both and I have come to the conclusion that Tenant is the greater book. I sometimes wonder if Charlotte maintained the “quiet Anne” the “meek Anne” idea because, deep down, she realised that her younger sister was perhaps the greatest writer of them all....
