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Mar 01, 2010

Elizabeth rated it:

I wrote a long, introspective review of this book last night. I am now grateful for the internet outage that lost it. First reactions are wonderful to capture. I love the energy of them, but I miss some of the ideas that only come from reflection. So I'm glad I never posted it. The book deserves long, careful thoughts (and I'm also sure that the story about traveling to York and breaking my toe was not really relevant either to the book or my reading of it).

I did ask a lot of questi More...

23 comments like (46 people liked it)

May 31, 2010

Chandra rated it:

This novel is told in a dual narrative structure – starting first with letters from Gilbert Markham. In these letters addressed to a close friend he describes the arrival of a mysterious young widow and his eventual infatuation with her. At first everyone in the small village is curious about Helen ‘Graham’. She makes her meager living painting and is intensely private and protective of her only son. Predictably the town’s curiosity is soon replaced with their contempt and derision because of More...

13 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jun 21, 2008

Amy rated it:

Carol said I must list my all time favorite books. What a challenge this is! I have read everything those Bronte girls wrote, even their childhood poetry and I love all of it. But Anne will take the showing on my list for her bravery. Of course Charlotte was the most prolific and Emily the true brainiac, but Anne has my complete respect for being a true literary pioneer: she was the first woman to write of a wife leaving her abusive husband - and then goes on to lead a happy, successful life! More...

0 comments like (17 people liked it)

Sep 26, 2011

Knowledge Lost rated it:

I thought I would read Anne Brontë before reading Charlotte Brontë; Why? Because I didn’t want to go with the most popular of the three; before exploring Anne and Emily. I loved Wuthering Heights for its unexpected story, with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I was secretly hoping from more of that. But instead I was presented with a book that while it with very much a Victorian novel; it did push topics, like Divorce, Abuse, Alcoholism, Feminism, Adultery and many more issues to do with morels.
More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 22, 2011

Sarah rated it:

Poor Helen. Poor Anne. Poor book...

Anne is just as much a Brontë as her sisters! Her voice, in many ways, completes the harmony and picks up where the two of them leave off. True, there are no fires, ghosts, or windswept moors. But, as one critic noted, "The slamming of Helen's bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England."

I struggle with Victorian literature, because I don't have a clear sense of context. It's difficult for me to s More...

13 comments like (5 people liked it)

Feb 17, 2010

Margaret rated it:

Anne Bronte's second novel is often overshadowed by her sisters' more famous novels, Charlotte's Jane Eyre (and three others) and Emily's Wuthering Heights, but it is equally worth reading. It tells the story of Helen Huntingdon, a mysterious woman who comes to live at Wildfell Hall with her child and one servant, and Gilbert Markham, the young man who is powerfully drawn to her and eventually learns her secret: that she left her dissolute, drunken husband in order to shield their son from his i More...

9 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2010

Boof rated it:

After reading Jane Eyre (for the first time) just recently and falling totally head over heals with that book, I had an urge to try some more Bronte (albeit the lesser known one) and picked up The Tennant of Wildfell Hall . I wanted to love it, I really did, and to be fair I adored the first half.

The Bronte's have a way of pulling you in, making the characters jump off the page. For the first 200 pages of The Tennant I was in love with this book. I loved Gilbert, the narrator, More...

8 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 29, 2008

Camie rated it:

Anne Bronte is severely, severely underrated. This book is fascinating. It's a work of quiet rebellion; the rebellion of Helen and of Anne herself, who is working to subvert some of the Romantic conventions. My edition had a great introduction that posited Helen as a Byronic hero. Admittedly I'm stuck on books that create the female artist (I actually think this has a lot in common with Emily's Quest-- the heroine coded with some male virtues of independence and mystery, the threat of the Heathc More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jun 22, 2007

Mary rated it:

Loving a rake can have it's downside. Just as for men there's a madonna/whore complex, for women there's a priest/devil complex when it comes to men. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall presents this rake at his worst and gives us a female protagonist, Helen Huntingdon, who's strong enough to overcome his charm and escape from his power. Helen is, in fact, a thoroughly Byronic character in her own right, who turns up in a small town with a hidden history and a mysterious allure that fascinates more t More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2012

Renae rated it:

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the first Brontë novel I’ve read cover to cover. (I attempted to read Jane Eyre when I was ten and made it through three-fourths before I decided Jane was silly and boring.) Reading this book now, several years later, has shown me why this family is so popular (though I understand than Anne's writing is vastly different than Charlotte and Emily's).

Please note: I compare Anne Brontë to Jane Austen in this review. I like both authors for separate reasons, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 02, 2012

Sarah rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

8 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 31, 2011

skein added it

As I slept last night I listened to the cat wail and dreamt it was Anne Bronte, sobbing and crying and screaming at her brother, and I --

Crap. I can't write this now.

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2011

April the Cheshire Meow rated it:

Very interesting righteously judgmental novel on being rich and alcoholic and proud of it vs. "it is well for me that I am doing my duty," said I, with a bitterness I could not repress, "for it is the only comfort I have; and the satisfaction of my own conscience, it seems, is the only reward I need look for!". Page 428. Actually, I agreed with the book on all counts. Alcoholism, money, patriarchal powered legal system, powerless women and children, and false morality can lea More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 05, 2011

Amy rated it:

I adored 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'. To me, it combined the best bits of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Wuthering Heights' and smashed them together in a wonderful story of intrigue, at the heart of which Helen Lawrence.

Helen is a fascinating character, who attracts the attention of Gabriel Markham who serves a similar role of Lockwood in 'Wuthering Heights', in that Helen's backstory is told with the help of him; when he obtains her diaries. The main difference is probably that Markham plays a m More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 13, 2012

Tatiana rated it:

Funny how things change. I used to love this book. I pretty much can't stand it now. 3 stars (it was 5 before today) is just an obligatory i-appreciate-but-not-really-care-for-it rating.

Anne Brontë and I would have never been friends, because it's hard to be a friend with someone so damn righteous and unbendable. Sure, Helen Graham and Agnes Grey are fictional characters, but is there a doubt they are reflections of the author? Not in my mind.

Granted, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall More...

8 comments like (14 people liked it)

Jun 05, 2008

Rian rated it:

Enjoyable for what it is, but not my favorite romance. Anne, thankfully, departs from the colloquial writing and phonetic spellings of her sisters (except by a few servants and other drudging, minor characters), which makes the novel easier to digest; but her constant sermonising and preaching creates a pretty heavy-handed narrative. To be fair, religion is the centre and grounding for Helen Huntingdon, but her constant referral to Bible passages and the grace of God, and devotion almost to a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 30, 2008

Nicole rated it:

A classic with some surprisingly good gems that I wasn't expecting. Don't get me wrong, I like a good classic, but I'm generally not impressed with the characters, especially female ones, if I analyze them too strongly using modern criteria. This is one book where I can and am still quite satisfied.

I'll start first by saying that I found the frame story far less interesting, and would have liked the book even better had it not been for that. Second, there was way too much god in t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 25, 2011

Sanna rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2009

Paul rated it:

This was a disappointment after the wonderful Agnes Grey. Where that book had a relentless realism, Tenant has all the worst aspects of Victorian literature. The heroine has a total bastard of a husband who cheats on her while being a depraved loser. You wonder in these types of books why women do this to themselves, and this one will too. Esepcially when she goes back to him when he gets sick and dies nobelly. I wanted to shoot him half way thru the book! I even searched for this book in More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Sarah rated it:

Wowzer. If you thought the characters in Wuthering Heights were overly violent, unpleasant, and responsible for their own miseries, then I recommend that you stay away from this book.

The epistolary structure didn't do this book any favors, in my opinion, and since there was very little character development, I wasn't terribly invested in the characters' fates. I read online that Arthur Huntingdon was based on Branwell, though, which made me appreciate it a bit more. More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 04, 2011

Sorcha added it

A much underrated and underread book, and one I prefer to Wuthering Heights.[return][return]A mysterious woman (with a child but no husband) moves into Wildfell Hall, and one of the local landowners Gilbert Markham becomes intrigued with her remoteness. Gilbert falls in love with Helen Graham, but feels that he is getting nowhere, and becomes suspicious of her relationship with her landlord.[return][return]Gilbert confronts her, and she reveals that she is in love with him, and hands over her More...

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Aug 02, 2011

Alun added it

I avoided reading any books by the Brontë sisters for many years, after failing to finish Villette, and then being put off further by Charlotte Brontë's well-known remarks about Jane Austen. After coming across an old copy of Jane Eyre I decided it was time to give the sisters another chance. I quite enjoyed Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights, which I read next, I liked less. Then I turned to Anne, not expecting much more than a paler version of her sisters' works.

Instead I find myself reading one of More...

0 comments like

Feb 11, 2012

Rebecca rated it:

Content - An interesting story. Lots of preaching. Anne Bronte is completely unapologetic about this since she intentionally wrote the story with a moral in mind. I didn't find it tedious enough to stop me from reading the book. As a matter of a fact I had a great deal of difficulty putting it down. Interestingly enough the issues she takes on are pertinent to today.

Mechanics - Anne Bronte does not write as well as her sisters. Having said that she's still a good deal better than ma More...

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Jan 03, 2012

Maddie rated it:

I found this book on my parents' library shelves and decided that it was time to give the last Bronte sister a read. I wasn't disappointed; the story kept me interested the whole time and I ate it up. I found Anne's insights into human nature to be very deep and wise for someone her age. I feel that at my similar age I can understand human nature well, but to write so many varied characters, each with their own believable depth and complexity, is no small feat. Anne also had a very clear underst More...

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Dec 31, 2011

Laura rated it:

I suppose it's slightly ironic that I picked up this book to read now since it is lauded as one of the first feminist novels, and I've had my fill of feminism at work during the past year. But I just can't resist 19th century British literature, so I read it anyway.

I liked it; it kept my attention (even though much of it was written in the epistolary form) and it was an entertaining read. However, I got a little annoyed by Helen towards the end of the book. Maybe it's excusable beca More...

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Dec 10, 2011

Shinn rated it:

I rather like Agnes Brontë's naturalistic style, compared to her sisters' more romantic writing but I do wish she were less cynical about the human character (and this coming from me!).

I liked the opening chapters of the book, the bucolic English setting as much as the intrigues of the characters. When the narrative shifts to Helen's journal, however, the tragedy is unrelenting. For starters, I really cannot comprehend why Helen chooses Huntingdon in the first place if she already gu More...

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Nov 26, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

After rounding out my reading of the sisters B with Anne's Wildfell Hall, I can't help but wonder if Papa Bronte taught a homeschool class on awkward narrative frames. Skipping over the glaring structural flaws, I give full props to Anne for having more spine than both her sisters combined (the bit in the preface where she states that she's "at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured More...

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Nov 18, 2011

Lindsey rated it:

This is Anne Bronte's second novel, and is often overshadowed by her sisters' more famous novels, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in particular, but it is equally worth reading in my opinion. It tells the story of Helen Huntingdon, a mysterious woman who comes to live at the long deserted Wildfell Hall with her child and servant, and Gilbert Markham, the young man who falls in love with her and eventually learns her secret, which I won't give away here as I don't want to spoil the book for those More...

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Oct 02, 2011

Naima rated it:

This review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is an excerpt from my blog on http://naimahaviland.blogspot.com:

The novel's focus is Helen Graham, a woman with a young son who takes up residence in a tumbledown manor house. No one in the village knows where she came from or how she came to be a single parent supporting herself by painting landscapes. And the lady's not satisfying their curiosity. Gossips sharpen their tongues with unkind speculation but as a respectful friendship slowly gro More...

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Sep 16, 2011

Carol rated it:

Anne Bronte is the third Bronte sister, not the one who wrote Jane Eyre, or the one who wrote Wuthering Heights. I don't think any of Anne's novels are particularly well known. At least in the case of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I think that's a shame, because I really enjoyed it. Quite ahead of its time, it is the story of a woman, Helen, who falls in love with and marries a man who turns out to be a complete jerk. Once the early period of wedded bliss fades, he is revealed to be a corrupt sco More...

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