The Tenant of Wildfell Hall may never have enjoyed much early fame, it is definitely a must-read classic.
The Classic - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Ann Brontë
While the author of our classic selection may not have the fame that her older sisters had, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall's famous protagonist, Helen Graham, is considered one of the most significant feministic mothers in literature.
To protect her son from the cruelty of her alcoholic husband, Helen flees to Wildfell Hall. The act alone of escaping one's husband, under any circumstance, was a massive scandal, breaking the social conventions and laws in her English society. Throughout the tale, Helen continues to fight societal pressures, determined to be the mother that Anne believed all should be. She kept her son close, admonishing others who would balk at his affection for his mother, and did her best to prepare him for his life's trials ahead with warmth and support.
This depiction of a mother most likely came from her close relationship with her aunt. After the passing of their mother when Charlotte was seven and Anne one, Elizabeth Branwell behaved similarly to Anne's Helen Graham, giving up her life as she knew it to help raise her sister's six children. While it may not have been the life she initially thought, she developed a close bond with Anne, who had never known her biological mother.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
by Bronte, Anne
Anne Brontë's second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall centers the arrival of the mysterious Helen Graham and her young son at the old mansion. She captures the attention of many locals, including Gilbert Markham, who becomes gradually infatuated with her.
Helen Graham is a young widow and mother of a five-year-old son. She moves into the Wildfell Hall mansion and attempts to lead a quiet life. Helen is very private and refuses to divulge any details about her personal affairs. Despite reservations, she starts a friendship with Gilbert Markham, who eventually falls in love with her. Helen's secretive nature is a point of contention with neighbors, leading to constant speculation. When targeted by a vulgar rumor, she's forced to reveal the truth about her peculiar behavior and dark past.
In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen's focus and resilience is undeterred by tradition or social conventions. Brontë gives unprecedented agency to a female protagonist living in the Victorian era. Her story is a testament to the human spirit and the art of self-preservation.
Our Modern Companions
This time, we treat readers to two modern companions, one a little more on the nose and one that reads more as a companion. The first is Emma Donoghue's powerhouse Room, which earned Brie Larson a Best Actress Academy Award. While focused on the child, the story features his fiercely heroic mom doing everything she can to protect her child from her kidnapper. The second companion read is The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert. Gilbert critiques Victorian women writers and applies a feminist lens to their 19th-century works. Taking its name from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, it's clear Gilbert has something to say about the Brontë sisters.
Room
by Donoghue, Emma
The award-winning bestseller that became one of the most talked about and memorable novels of the decade, Room is "utterly gripping...a heart-stopping novel" (San Francisco Chronicle). Held captive for years in a small shed, a woman and her precocious young son finally gain their freedom, and the boy experiences the outside world for the first time.
To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.
Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating -- a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.
Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
by Gilbert, Sandra M
"A feminist classic."--Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review
"A pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again."--Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book World
A pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women writers, and why the book still feels fresh some four decades later.
Discover more classics and their modern companion each week.