The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's second novel, published in 1848, which is now celebrated alongside those of her sisters but which Charlotte Bronte tried to suppress as a 'mistake'. It examines the life of Helen, who has escaped her abusive husband Arthur Huntingdon with their son to live at Wildfell Hall as a widow under the alias 'Mrs Graham', and it exposes the men in her husband's circle who gave her no choice but to flee. Early critics attacked the novel as coarse, as misrepresenting male behaviour, and as something no woman or girl should ever read; soon after Anne's death, Charlotte suggested the publisher should lose it for good. In recent decades, though, its reputation has climbed and it now sits with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as one of the great novels by the Bronte sisters.

The image above shows Tara Fitzgerald as Helen Graham in a 1996 BBC adaptation.

With

Alexandra Lewis Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle (Australia)

Marianne Thormählen Professor Emerita in English Studies, Lund University

And

John Bowen Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at the University of York

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:44.0	our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time I hope you enjoy the
0:48.8	programs hello when the tenant of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848, critics condemned its portrayal
0:55.5	of male violence and alcoholic abuse recommending that no woman should read it.
1:00.8	Anne Bronte was the author and she saw review after review attacking her novel as
1:05.1	too coarse crushing it further her sister Charlotte wrote at this I cannot wonder the
1:11.0	choice of subject was an entire mistake. And yet in recent decades
1:15.6	this work by the youngest Bronte has taken its place alongside those of her sisters as
1:21.0	one of the great novels in English and perhaps the first feminist
1:24.6	novel.
1:25.6	With me to discuss the tenant of Wildfell Hall, are Alexander and Lewis, lecturer in English
1:30.3	and Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle in Australia,
	...

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