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The Tennant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Gilbert Markham is deeply intrigued by Helen Graham, a beautiful and secretive young woman who has moved into nearby Wildfell Hall with her young son. He is quick to offer Helen his friendship, but when her reclusive behaviour becomes the subject of local gossip and speculation, Gilbert begins to wonder whether his trust in her has been misplaced. It is only when she allows Gilbert to read her diary that the truth is revealed and the shocking details of the disastrous marriage she has left behind emerge. Told with great immediacy, combined with wit and irony, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful depiction of a woman’s fight for domestic independence and creative freedom.

Published: 1848
Published Edition: Jan 2016
Publishers: Penguin Classics
Genre: Classic
Pages: 576

Format of Reading: Hardback and Audiobook

Goodreads Star Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Review

It took me a while to get into this book. I started to read this book at the beginning of the year and I had struggled to pick it up.

I found this book to be a lot more interesting than Anne’s older Sister, Charlotte of Jane Eyre. Jane is a woman who doesn’t know about love and what love means for herself after going through a childhood of nobody caring about you. While Helen is a woman who knows what she wants and defies the social standard of a married woman.

At the start of this book, you follow Gilbert, who is fascinated with Helen and her son and wants to marry her but she pushes away because of reasons she is afraid to talk about. While he tries to persuade her and fails, she visits him and hands him her personal diary. The diary accounts of her at the age of 18, before she marries a man named Mr Huntington, while her aunt has been very vocal about her opinion of him, Helen believed that they would be happy together but marriage is not turning out as she hoped it would be.

I really enjoyed this book, I was amazed that the story plot of this book was not the interpretation that I thought it was. When I first read the blurb, I believed that Helen was being mistreated by her husband which is slightly true but not the way how I thought it was going to be. It also deals with divorce, love affairs and falling out of love (not in love, out). It is a book that I will always remember and I am even more interested in reading some more of Anne’s other works.

Happy Reading xx