‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’

Originally published in 1848, ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ is considered one of the first feminist novels because it challenged the social norms of the Victorian era. It is the second of only two novels written by Anne Bronte.

This romantic novel tells the story of the titular character, a beautiful young woman, thought to be recently widowed, who suddenly moves into the half-ruined Wildfell Hall with her five-year-old son. Young squire Gilbert Markham and the local residents are intrigued. Gilbert meets the aloof newcomer Helen Graham by chance, falls in love with her, and she with him. Their passion is held in check by her mysterious relationship with the handsome but cruel Arthur Huntingdon. Her dramatic flight from him is revealed in her journal—a story within a story.

The novel is told through the letters and diaries of several main characters, each embedded in the one that came before. It is both written in the first person and features several different narrators. Probably the most shocking of Bronte’s novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death, her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication in England until 1854.