This volume completes the acclaimed Clarendon Edition of the Novels of the Brontes. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte's second (and last) novel, was published in June 1848, less than a year before her death. It is the sombre account of the breakdown of a marriage in the face of alcoholism and infidelity. Writing with a power not usually associated with the youngest of the Bronte sisters, Anne portrays the decline of an aristocratic
husband whose drunken excesses and domestic violence force his loving wife into a reluctant rebellion.
The novel enjoyed a modest success that led its publisher, the unscrupulous T. C. Newby, to issue a `Second Edition' less than two months later. The present volume offers a text based on the collation of the first edition with the second (really a re-issue of the first, with a few corrections). The introduction details the work's composition and early printing history, including its first publication in America; and the text is fully annotated. Appendices record the substantive variants in the
first English and American editions, and discuss the author's belief in the doctrine of universal salvation.
I applaud Anne Brontë for writing this honest, brave book. She does not shy away from subjects that were rarely brought into the open in the nineteenth century. Even now, I think her descriptions of a woman being married to a brute of a man will resonate with readers. Though women now have more options to escape a bad marriage, emotional abuse and the pressure to "make things work" have remained relatively unchanged.
Though I appreciate The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for its merits, it was not a book I particularly enjoyed. The main reason for this is the character of Helen. Truly, she is a bright angel of morality in a pit of terrible people - and that is why I could not connect with her. She is too good, too rational, too uprightly moral, too pious. I understand that Brontë needed Helen to be this way to survive her situation, but she lost some of her humanity in the process. People have faults, and Helen has too few of them. Her coldness and determination often alienated me, even though I have sympathy for her plight.
