The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall

The second and final book written by English author Anne Bronte is The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Under the alias Acton Bell, it was first printed in 1848. It had an instant and amazing success and was arguably the most upsetting of the Bronte sisters' books, but following Anne's passing, her sister Charlotte stopped its re-publication in England until 1854. The story is told through a series of letters that Gilbert Markham writes to a friend about the encounter with a mysterious young widow who goes by the name of Helen Graham and shows up at Wildfell Hall, an abandoned Elizabethan manor, with her small son and a servant. In contrast to early 19th-century customs, she pursues a profession as an artist and earns money by selling her paintings. She quickly becomes a social outcast as a result of her severe seclusion, which quickly sparks rumors in the nearby town. Gilbert befriends her and learns about her past after refusing to believe anything controversial about her. She documents her husband's physical and spiritual decline caused by alcohol and vice in the disintegrating aristocratic society in the diary she gives Gilbert. She ultimately takes her son with her, whom she is desperate to protect from his father's influence.