The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

The most radical of the Brontë sisters' novels, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall shocked Victorian England with its portrait of a woman who walks out on her husband. Helen Graham arrives at the decaying Wildfell Hall with her young son and a servant, concealing her past and earning the local gossips' suspicion. Gilbert Markham, the local farmer, is drawn to her quiet dignity and striking paintings, but it is only when Helen trusts him with her diary that the full truth emerges: a marriage destroyed by alcoholism, cruelty, and moral corruption. What Helen chooses to do about it made this novel revolutionary. Anne Brontë dared to depict a woman who refuses to endure domestic tyranny, who takes her child from an abusive father, and who earns her own living as an artist. The novel crackles with defiance even as it grounds its argument in moral philosophy and religious hope. For readers who believed the Brontës wrote only about passion and romance, this book stands as a fierce rebuttal.