This is a story of romance as to its topic, with strong themes running through it such as alcoholism, gender relations, marriage, motherhood, domestic violence, and piety. I believe, as a powerful work of fiction, the central theme focuses on one woman, her strength and her courage. For the understanding of 1820s, this novel may as well be considered a trend setter and a harbinger of feminism.

The story is mostly told by Gilbert Markham about the events leading to his meeting, trials of love, and marrying his wife. As a gentleman farmer, Gilbert becomes interested in the strange female tenant, Mrs. Helen Graham, in an apartment in Wildfell Hall, a condemned mansion. Helen is a landscape painter, living as a recluse, and concealing her former life. She has a young child, Arthur, with her and Rachel, her housekeeper.

Gilbert manages to become friends with Helen; yet, he is extremely jealous of his friend Lawrence, and blames his attentions for Helen’s refusal to marry him. Confronted by Gilbert’s poking into her life, Helen hands him her diary as an explanation.

In that diary is the main story, in which we find that while Helen is married to a violent, conniving drunk, she has faced many trials and has finally was able to escape from him. The rest of the story unfolds as the obstacles to this repeatedly twisting love story is cleared.

As much as the novel had created strong social reverberations in its first publishing, it is still set within a moral frame, since divorce laws for women were next to impossible and women’s rights probably weren't heard of. What impressed me the most was Brontë’s introduction in the second printing of the book. In it she wrote: “Reader; neither was it to gratify my own taste, nor yet to ingratiate myself with the Press and the Public: I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it."

Although I had read Emily and Charlotte Brontë’s books much earlier, somehow, I wasn’t familiar with Anne Brontë’s work, which was a loss up to now. I found the writing in this novel to be just as strong, if not more powerful, than Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

Such a pity that this writer had to pass away from tuberculosis at the age of 29. Had she lived another few decades, she would have given us so much more of herself and her impeccable storytelling.

admiring classics.

Everything.

read Anne Brontë’s only other book, Agnes Grey, which I have now downloaded to my Kindle.

awed and amazed.

is Anne Brontë. The youngest sister of Charlotte and Emily Brontë.

Yes, definitely, especially if a reader likes the classics.

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Created Jan 14, 2015 at 5:00pm • Submit your own review...