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1848 novel by Anne Brontë

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel written by English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her sister Charlotte prevented its re publication in England until 1854. The novel is framed as a series of letters from Gilbert Markham to his friend about the events connected with his meeting a mysterious young widow, calling herself Helen Graham, who arrives at Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty for many years, with her young son and a servant. Contrary to the early 19th century norms, she pursues an artist's career and makes an income by selling her pictures. Her strict seclusion soon gives rise to gossip in the neighbouring village and she becomes a social outcast. Refusing to believe anything scandalous about her, Gilbert befriends her and discovers her past. In the diary she gives Gilbert, she chronicles her husband's physical and moral decline through alcohol and debauchery in his dissipated aristocratic milieu. Ultimately she flees with her son, whom she desperately wishes to save from his father's influence. The depiction of marital strife and women's professional work is mitigated by the strong moral message of Anne Brontë's belief in universal salvation. Most critics now consider The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to be one of the first feminist novels. May Sinclair, in 1913, said that "the slamming of [Helen's] bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England". In leaving her husband and taking away their child, Helen violates not only social conventions but also early 19th century English law.

Some aspects of the life and character of the author's brother Branwell Brontë correspond to those of Arthur Huntingdon in The Tenant. Another possible source for The Tenant is the story of Mrs Collins, the wife of a local curate, who in November 1840 came to Anne's father Patrick Brontë seeking advice regarding her alcoholic husband's abusive conduct. Mr Brontë's counsel was that she should leave her husband. Mrs Collins returned to Haworth in the spring of 1847, while Anne was writing The Tenant, and told how she had managed to build a new life for herself and her two children. The Brontë biographer Winifred Gérin believed that the original of Wildfell Hall was Ponden Hall, a farmhouse near Stanbury in West Yorkshire. Ponden shares certain architectural details with Wildfell, including latticed windows and a central portico with a date plaque above. Blake Hall at Mirfield, where Anne had been employed as a governess, was suggested as the model for Grassdale Manor, Arthur Huntingdon's country seat, by Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte Brontë, to Edward Morison Wimperis, an artist commissioned to illustrate the Brontë sisters' novels in 1872. However, neither Blake Hall nor Thorpe Green, another house where Anne was employed as a governess, corresponds exactly with Grassdale. Master Arthur Huntingdon, five years old at the beginning of the book, the son of Arthur Huntingdon and Helen. He has a resemblance to his uncle, Frederick, which gives rise to gossip. He is grown up by the time of Gilbert's letter to Jack Halford, and is residing at Grassdale Manor with his wife, Helen Hattersley (the daughter of Milicent Hargrave and Ralph Hattersley). Mr Maxwell, Helen's wealthy uncle, dies near the end of the novel and leaves Staningley to Helen. Margaret "Peggy" Maxwell, Helen's aunt, tries to warn her against marrying Huntingdon. She dies several years after Helen's and Gilbert's marriage. Frederick Lawrence, Helen's brother, helps her to escape from Huntingdon and lends her money. As he and Helen grew up apart and only met in Staningley or Grassdale, no one in Linden Car village guessed that the secretive Mrs Graham is actually Frederick's sister. Eventually he marries Esther Hargrave. Being in mourning for her husband, Helen is forced to miss her brother's wedding.

Arthur Huntingdon, Helen's abusive and alcoholic husband, is a Byronic figure of great fascination but also of barely concealed moral failings. His abusive behaviour impels Helen to run away from him, but nevertheless when he becomes ill (after the injury from falling from a horse when drunk), Helen returns to Grassdale to take care of him. Unwilling to stop drinking alcohol, Huntingdon deteriorates in health and eventually dies. He is widely thought to be loosely based on the author's brother, Branwell, but some critics have argued that they have very little in common. Along with Lord Lowborough, Huntingdon bears far stronger resemblance to two types of drunkards outlined in Robert Macnish's The Anatomy of Drunkenness. They frequently drink themselves into incoherence and on awakening, they drink again to feel better. Lord Lowborough understands that he has a problem and, with willpower and strenuous effort, overcomes his addiction. Arthur continues drinking even after he injures himself falling from a horse, which eventually leads to his death. Ralph, although he drinks heavily with his friends, does not seem to be as much afflicted by alcoholism as by his way of life. Mr Grimsby continues his degradation, going from bad to worse and eventually dying in a brawl. Huntingdon's son Arthur becomes addicted to alcohol through his father's efforts, but Helen begins to add to his wine a small quantity of tartar emetic, "just enough to produce inevitable nausea and depression without positive sickness". Very soon the boy begins to be made to feel ill by the very smell of alcohol.

Marianne Thormählen calls Milicent's remark to her drunk and abusive husband Ralph, reminding him that they are not at home, "one of the most harrowing sentences in the entire novel". Thormählen argues that in The Tenant the traditional submissive behavior of wives is shown as a factor that encourages male oppression. Later, when Ralph decides to reform his life, he blames his wife's meekness and says that resistance from her would have prevented his violence and debauchery.

[[File:HannahMore. jpg|thumb|left|200px|Hannah More's belief in the "moral superiority" of women had strongly influenced Victorian domestic ideology. Of all Arthur's friends, only Walter Hargrave has never been a heavy drinker. He uses this as manipulation in an attempt to win Helen's favour. When it doesn't work, he starts speculating that she cannot manage her life after leaving Arthur without a man's protection and supervision. Gilbert's mother, Mrs Markham, holds the doctrine prevailing at the time that it is "the husband's business to please himself, and hers [i. e. the wife's] to please him". The portrayal of Helen, courageous and independent, emphasizes her capacity for seeking autonomy rather than submitting to male authority, and the corrective role of women in relation to men. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is thus considered a feminist novel by many critics.

Josephine McDonagh believes that the theme of displacement is underlined by the title of the novel: Helen is the tenant, not an owner occupier, of Wildfell Hall, the place of her birth, which was bequeathed to a male descendant, her brother. The Tenant features numerous allusions to a wide range of other texts, from the Bible to contemporary novels. Apart from being used as a quotation, allusions are often applied by peculiar characters to reflect their personalities. Sometimes the individual voices of characters are shown as a patchwork of quotations. Such "borrowed voices" may denote the displacement of the main heroes As expressed in Hugo Black's dissent in United States v. Yazell, "This rule [coverture] has worked out in reality to mean that though the husband and wife are one, the one is the husband." Helen is misled by ideas of romantic love and duty into the delusion that she can repair her husband's conduct. thumb|300px|The story of Helen Graham, according to Samantha Ellis, may have inspired Emily Mary Osborn's painting Nameless and Friendless (1857), which depicts a widow attempting to make a living as an artist. Nicole A. Diederich has argued that in The Tenant Anne Brontë constructs marriage and remarriage as a comparative and competitive practice that restricts Helen's rights and talents. Helen's artistic ability plays a central role in her relationships with both Gilbert and Arthur. Her alternating freedom to paint and inability to do so on her own terms not only complicate Helen's definition as wife, widow, and artist, but also enable Anne Brontë to criticize the domestic sphere as established by marriage and re established with remarriage. At the beginning of her diary, the young and unmarried Helen already defines herself as an artist. Her early drawings reveal her private and true feelings for Arthur Huntingdon, feelings that lead her to overlook his true character and lose herself to marriage. Nevertheless, in addition to revealing Helen's true desires, the self expression of her artwork also defines her as an artist. That she puts so much of herself into her paintings and drawings attests to this self definition. After her marriage to Arthur, Helen, accepting the roles of wife and housekeeper, rarely refers to herself as an artist. The marital laws of the day made Helen's artworks legally belong to her husband and allowed Arthur to destroy them when he discovered her plans to earn money by selling paintings. Diederich calls it "an ironic echo" of Helen's destruction of Arthur's portrait just before their engagement when he tried to take it from her. Diederich also points that in attempt to become a fee earning artist "Helen reclaims her artistic talent as her own, distinct from her husband's possession of her art, and of her." Posing as a widow, Helen makes her role as an artist who sells her works, especially to support a child, more socially acceptable. Resembling the time of Arthur's courtship, when Helen's portraits of him betrayed her affection, artwork once again serves the autobiographical role during her meetings with Gilbert – the painting of Wildfell Hall deceptively labelled "Fernley Manor" discloses her precarious position as a runaway wife. Showing Gilbert handling Helen's paintings without her permission, Brontë, according to Diederich, "hints that remarriage to Gilbert may not hold any greater promise to Helen's self definition and freedom as an artist than did her first marriage". However, unlike Arthur, Gilbert shows much more esteem for Helen's artwork. Diederich concludes that "the domestic realm, whether established with marriage or re established in remarriage, doesn't support women's self definition as artists, nor does it provide a structured setting for the unfettered expression of their talents" and that The Tenant calls for "more support for married and remarried women's legal rights and artistic opportunities in nineteenth century Britain".

In the Downton Abbey Christmas special (2011), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the book title acted out by Lady Mary Crawley in the Christmas charade. The story of Helen Graham is mentioned in Elizabeth George's 1988 novel A Great Deliverance. Her name is also used as a secret code. Tina Connolly's 2013 novel Copperhead was inspired by The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The name of the heroine is Helen Huntingdon and she also has a disastrous marriage. Sam Baker's 2016 novel The Woman Who Ran takes inspiration from radical themes of Anne's novel. The heroine is a woman also called Helen, who she hides from her past (in an abusive marriage) in a present day Yorkshire village.