The Longest Letter Ever: Tenant of Wildfell Hall Part 2

The Longest Letter Ever: Tenant of Wildfell Hall Part 2

So why the complicated dual-time structure? Why have Gilbert writing from the future if he’s not really reflecting enough (for my taste) on his previous idiocy? How does all this make brilliant use of the complex epistolary form to subvert the romance novel plot (from Gilbert’s telling) and create a powerful feminist heroine and also indict the institution of marriage and marital laws?

 Some ideas:

In a way, this “future retrospective” allows Gilbert to write with the greater fluency of a middle-aged man, while still maintaining some of the ‘in the moment’ perspective of the clueless young Gilbert. He also is truly an indefatigable correspondent who seems never to get writer’s cramp or even has to stop to get a drink or buy more ink and paper.

This is in contrast to Helen’s diary, which was written contemporaneously as the events were happening. In fact, often she refers to writing the diary at that very moment, of having to write at night to hide the act from her husband, of lighting a lamp so she can better see the page, locking it away. Several times she says she must stop because she is so tired, or because her tears are blinding her.

And the physical diary itself provides an essential plot point. When Helen is plotting her escape, her husband finds her in the act of writing, grabs the diary, and starts to read the last entry. As she tries frantically to get the volume back, he learns what she has planned. He confiscates her stash of coins and burns the painting supplies she is going to use to earn a living. She does get the diary back, and this incident makes her realize she can’t just keep planning her escape—she has to just do it before he kills her.

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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall caused a huge controversy when it was first published. The harrowing moment-to-moment account of an abusive marriage shocked contemporary readers—and not necessarily out of sympathy for the diarist. The epistolary form (especially Helen’s diary) made this feel very real to readers. And many Victorians objected to Helen’s actions—“stealing” her child (or rather “her husband’s child”, as in the laws of the day, the father owns the child), “informing on” her husband, and presenting herself as something of a heroine or at least justified in her escape. And of course the description of a gentlewoman earning her own living was particularly dangerous and shocking.

Reviews described the novel as “disgusting and coarse,” implying that even if such depravity existed in reality, the author was being vulgar to expose it so vividly in print. (I note that Anne Bronte used a male penname, and also adds an author note specifically stating: “Respecting the author’s identity, I would have it to be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore let not his faults be attributed to them.” Here she is absolving her sisters (also writers with male pseudonyms) of blame for the novel. But she also proudly proclaims, “I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am 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 for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.”

(You go, girl!)

Perhaps the harshest, or at least most consequential, critic was Anne’s sister and literary executor Charlotte. Now to be fair, in the year after Tenant was published, Anne died, only months after the deaths of her brother Branwell and sister Emily. Poor Charlotte was struggling with the grief but also how to deal with her sisters’ publications. She outed the “Bell Brothers” as her sisters as she worked through the complications of issuing new editions. While Emily’s Wuthering Heights is another harrowing account of male madness, Charlotte was able to modify it enough to feel it safe for reprinting.

But not Tenant. Charlotte, whatever her motives—I’m sure they were mixed and conflicting—refused to allow republication, which had the effect of suppressing it until her own death six years later. She explains righteously–

The choice of subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the writer’s nature could not conceived. The motives which dictated this choice were pure, but, I think, slightly morbid. […] hers was a naturally dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind: it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations) as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it.

She came close to identifying her sister’s writing this book as the cause of death.

One more thought— I keep coming back to the contrast between Gilbert’s comforting retrospective letter narration of falling in love, overcoming obstacles, and getting happily married, with the brutal realism of Helen’s day-to-day account of marital abuse. Why start so far in the future (1848), then go back to the relatively neutral 1828, before descending into the horrific marriage that started in 1821?

It’s almost as if the readers are being seduced into reading what seems like a fairly standard romance, so that they can then be confronted with the obverse—another romance that starts with such promise and becomes so quickly and direly abusive. Then to mitigate the horror, the story ends back with that happy conventional romance ending.

Modern readers (at least feminist ones) see something else too. Gilbert’s a whole lot better than the evil Huntington… but he is 1) narcissistic to an extreme (notice how he finishes reading the harrowing account in the diary and thinks, “Oh, look, now it’s my entrance moment! Cool!”), 2) clueless (he doesn’t really seem to understand how very bad Helen’s situation as described in the diary is, and 3) violent himself. Acting on some stupid delusion that this “widow” owes him her exclusivity because he fancies her, he violently assaults her brother, presuming him to be her lover. Frederick, in fact, is the hero of this story, helping Helen escape, providing her shelter and support, and keeping her secrets. Gilbert doesn’t ever really repent for what he did, and doesn’t learn from it either.

So that happy ending, with Gilbert closing his letter, no doubt beaming with pride about his heroic status as the rescuer of the kind-of fallen woman, is subverted by what we know from that dual perspective and dual timeline. He’s not a bad man. But he doesn’t deserve this woman, and we know that even though he hasn’t realized it in twenty years.