The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Narrative Silences and Questions of Gender

College English Apr 1990

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Narrative Silences and Questions of Gender

Carol A. Senf

Abstract

In past decade and a half, feminist critics-including Ellen Moers, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, and Elaine Showalter-have focused on Charlotte and Emily Bronte and their literary treatment of contemporary issues, especially their concern with women's education, women's employment, and women's identity during a period in which both law and custom gave women significantly fewer rights and privileges than men. Their younger sister, Anne, has not fared as well with either readers or critics, and consensus seems to be that she is not worth reading. Tom Winnifrith, for example, describes her as most obvious and crude of three sisters and as a moralist, not an artist: For in her views on marriage as in other spheres Anne Bronte is a much more blatant preacher of unorthodox attitudes than her sisters; she is also a much less good novelist and therefore gave reviewers less opportunity of softening their attacks on doctrines which she appeared to be thrusting down their throats. (116) Though feminist critics who have done so much to explore works of other Brontes have rarely given Anne more than passing notice, an earlier critic, Inga-Stina Eubank, devotes more attention to Anne and argues that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a feminist novel though not in the obvious sense. Contrasting Tenant to other nineteenth-century feminist novels, Eubank suggests that Anne may not always be in control of her feminist sentiments, for she does not focus her novel on question of married women's rights to control their own property, to enter universities, or to seek employment except in a few limited professions: And yet, through very nature of its central concern, this novel is feminist in deepest sense of word. Without any thought of what ought to be proper sphere of a woman writer, it analyses passion (and Helen even 'tells her love,' first to Huntingdon and then to Markham), exhibits profligacy and demonstrates vice, as demanded by its theme. (84) Almost a century and a half after pubication of Tenant, it is difficult to use external evidence to prove degree of Bronte's feminism, for-unlike Charlotte-Anne left few letters that clarify views expressed in her novels. How

Journal: College English
Published: 1990-04-01
DOI: 10.2307/377662
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multilingual writers