The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall: An Analysis

From 1801 to 1851, the population of London grew from under 1 million inhabitants to 2.25 million. This was due in large part to immigration, both from other countries and from the countryside of England. Hundreds of thousands of people were moving to the newly industrialized cities and towns to find work, having been squeezed off the land because of the enclosure of farms. There was also displacement of the working-class within the city of London because of a number of construction projects. There were street improvement schemes in which tenements were razed in order to widen the passages. The transformation of part of the city into a non-residential district devoted to finance

Women who had no claim to wealth or beauty received the harshest of realities in America’s Victorian era. Author Charlotte Bronte – from America’s Victorian era – examines and follows the life of a girl born into these conditions in her gothic novel Jane Eyre (of which the main character’s name

Creating a haven from the cruel outside world, families ideally provide protection and support for each of their members. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, however, bitterness grows between the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Within these two families, siblings rival for power and parents fail to fulfill their roles as caregivers. The intertwining relationships of the Earnshaws and the Lintons are marked by physical abuse, degradation, and emotional negligence. These reduce each of the family members’ life to a lonely and meaningless journey though the cold and misty moors.

“No matter the term used to identify the abuse of women in nineteenth-century Britain—domestic violence, spousal abuse, marital violence, or wife-beating—it was written about by leading authors of the time” (Wingert, 1). Women lacked many rights that they are presented with today. Women were not even allowed to file for divorce unless they had proof of adultery or abuse; and although most women had substantial evidence of abuse, they realized the fate they would be given if they chose to leave their husbands. Divorce would usually end in poverty and ostracization from society for a woman. In Wuthering Heights, the physical and verbal abuse imposed upon Isabella from Heathcliff is horrid and a perfect example of the daily abuse many women during the time period

Violence is the most recurrent gothic convention used in Jane Eyre, which is prominent in Charlotte Brontë's effective development of the novel and the character of Jane Eyre, who, throughout this novel, is searching for a home in which she would have a sense of belonging and love which would ultimately resolve this exact unfulfilled need she had as a child. The neglect she experienced in her childhood is manifested in the way she is treated by her aunt, Mrs. Reed, as in the first page of the novel Jane Eyre admits: ‘Me, she had dispensed from joining the group, saying, 'She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance’’. This opening shows how there is a clear line of separation drawn between Jane and her relatives due to her complicated family background which consequently results in their reluctance to accept her into their environment. These complications lead to her maltreatment, which also adds on to the violence she experiences acting as a catalyst for the development of the character and her subconscious quest.

Charlotte Bronte, in her most famous novel, Jane Eyre, carefully utilizes different characters to influence and shape Jane’s personality throughout the story. Bronte uses varied actions and emotions to do this, but one of the main actions is abuse. Though not in every setting in the novel, abusive tormenting people are spread throughout the story that change Jane and her future. These ill-mannered actions can completely change Jane’s mindset, personality, and life-story. In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, cruel male protagonists alter Jane’s character through physical, psychological, and emotional abuse.

       As the tale begins we immediately can sympathize with the repressive plight of the protagonist.  Her romantic imagination is obvious as she describes the "hereditary estate" (Gilman, Wallpaper 170) or the "haunted house" (170) as she would like it to be.  She tells us of her husband, John, who "scoffs" (170) at her romantic sentiments and is "practical to the extreme" (170).  However, in a time

Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre embraces many feminist views in opposition to the Victorian feminine ideal. Charlotte Bronte herself was among the first feminist writers of her time, and wrote this book in order to send the message of feminism to a Victorian-Age Society in which women were looked upon as inferior and repressed by the society in which they lived. This novel embodies the ideology of equality between a man and woman in marriage, as well as in society at large. As a feminist writer, Charlotte Bronte created this novel to support and spread the idea of an independent woman who works for herself, thinks for herself, and acts of her own accord.

Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, is a coming of age story, about a young, orphaned, and submissive girl growing up, through many hardships, into a young, passionate, and free willed woman. Charlotte Bronte begins the story with a ten-year-old Jane Eyre living with an impartial and sometimes cruel aunt, Aunt Reed. Aunt Reed, after neglecting Jane for the whole of her life, finally decides to send her away to boarding school, to Lowood School. Upon her departure, Jane expresses a measure of autonomy and agency, the first of many episodes in which she “gathered her energies and launched them in this blunt sentence – ‘I am not deceitful; if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love

He is further portrayed as such in Ezra 1.1-4 and Chronicles 36.22-3. Similarly Roman rule was also understood to have been sent by God. In this case, however, it was to punish the Israelites for refusing past prophets including Jesus. In the Parable of the Wicked Tenants in the Gospel of Mark, it's understood that the destruction caused to the vineyard, (Israel), and those that the Lord sent to take it, (the Romans), came as a result of the Israelites own actions. “What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others” (The Harper Collins Study Bible, Mark 12.9).

In Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Arthur Huntington, Helen’s husband and Arthur’s father, is presented as an alcoholic, disgraceful, narcissistic “gentleman” (Brontë 311). Despite Helen’s efforts to shelter their son, Arthur, from the corrupted masculinity embodied by Huntington and his friends, Huntington encourages Arthur’s “manly accomplishments” that mirror his own character, such as excessive drinking, swearing, and selfishness (297). For fear of Arthur becoming “a curse to others and himself”, like his father, Helen has acquitted herself to prepare for an escape; however, Huntington seizes her journal which reveal her plans (203). In this passage Mr. Huntington is not only devaluing aspect of his corrupted masculinity,

“I am no bird and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will” (Bronte, Jane Eyre 293). In the Victorian time period Charlotte Bronte lived the unequal life as a woman, like many others. The only difference is Bronte did not believe in living in inequality, and she wrote about her hardships in her literature. In her book, Jane Eyre, the reader can see many similarities in her main character’s life and her own. Jane Eyre has many ways of showing how Victorian women were expected to be and act, included in the life of Jane. Bronte also continues her portrayal of the inequality of women and the decision of love versus autonomy through two of her poems, “Life” and “The Wife’s Will.” Charlotte Bronte displays the inequality in life of women in the Victorian era by taking her life and revitalizing it into themes of her works, by providing a journey of discovery of love or autonomy.

Helen Graham, the heroine in The tenant of Wildfell Hall, is a strong and unique woman. She is in many ways a typical Victorian upper-class lady, but in many ways also a very modern and independent kind of woman. She lives with her aunt and uncle, who want to see her married to a wealthy man, but she refuses any offers of marriage since she does not want to marry a man she does not love. When she is about 18 years old and still quite naivë, she falls in love with Mr Huntingdon, who woos and courts her - and seems very much in love with her too. "I will willingly risk my happiness for the chance of securing his" (p 125), she says when trying to persuade her aunt into

Jane Eyre is a novel written by Charlotte Brontë. It is distinctly a female Bildungsroman, as it follows the progress and growth of Jane’s character on her quest for selfhood and independence in a society that tries its best to impress upon her the roles and expectations of women in the Victorian era (which is neatly packaged in the figure of the ‘Angel-in-the-house’.) This is something with which this essay seeks to engage by looking at female figures which feature prominently in Jane’s life, how those who embrace the figure of ‘Angel-in-the-house’ are treated and viewed, versus those who do not. Furthermore, important male figures will also be looked at in order to understand Jane’s own feelings to the ‘Angel-in-the-house’ figure and how she approaches it, as well as how the Byronic hero might relate – if it even does.

As the story’s introduction progresses, Jane Eyre, a ten-year-old child, begins to face gender injustice by his cousin, John Reed. In “In the Window-Seat: Vision and Power in Jane Eyre,” Peter J. Bellis states, “John Reed claims the house and its contents as his. . .”(page number/period) He exerts authority on her simply because he is a male by controlling her, abusing her, and bossing her. The situation starts holding Jane back as a female, leaving her defenseless, as Bellis claimed “the powerless victim of its oppressive force.” Jane speaks of how John harshly demanded her, saying, “‘I want you to come here;’ and, seating himself in an armchair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him,” referring to him as ‘Master’ (4). The simple act of her needing to call him ‘master’ shows the difference of power among them. John deprived Jane from freedom such as simply reading a book by controlling her life at a young age, and it marked a new beginning to encounters with dominating men.