Picture copyright: Sew Many Books
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848)
What is it about?
The Markham family and the rest of the neighbourhood, are intrigued by the appearance of a new tenant who has come to live in gloomy and partly derelict Wildfell Hall. The young widow, Mrs Helen Graham, keeps herself to herself, watching obsessively over her young son and earning her own living by painting. Soon unpleasant rumours begin to circulate about her story – could she be an immoral woman with a scandalous relationship with her landlord? Gilbert Makham, who begins to fall in love with her, comes to know the truth of her story – and in so doing, uncovers a truly shocking story, exposing the vulnerability of women and children in an unjust society.
What did I think about it?
I really enjoyed the book and found it pacy and engaging. The format is a little odd; the first part about Helen’s life at Wildfell Hall is told in a series of letters from Gilbert to a friend; Helen then passes him her diary which explains how she arrived at her current situation and finally Gilbert picks up the story again in further letters. These ‘documents’ seem a bit unnatural and forced at times, but it is possible to suspend disbelief. What the book reveals about the social world in which the novel is set (the 1820s) is where the real fascination lies. Children were essentially their father’s property and it was difficult for mothers to protect them from even the worst excesses of their male parents.
There is also much interesting information about drink – surely inspired by Brontȇ’s experiences with her brother. As someone who researches the history of children and food, I was particularly interested in this topic in relation to Arthur, Helen’s son. Before the age of five, he partakes of wine, brandy and water, and gin and water, and is frequently inebriated. Helen successfully weans him off alcohol by surreptitiously mixing ‘tartar-emitic’ into his drinks but the respectable neighbours find her behaviour quite odd: 'The poor child will be the veriest milksop that ever was sopped'. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is definitely worth reading alongside the works of Anne’s more famous sisters. One word of warning – the book has a somewhat complicated publication history and there are some mangled versions of the text out there. It is worth getting hold of a decent scholarly edition (such as Oxford World Classics/Penguin Classics)
Is there any needlework in it?
There is a little bit of cosy knitting by the fire. Eliza Millward, Gilbert’s initial love interest, busies herself adding a lace border to a cambric handkerchief whilst her sister hems a ‘large, course, sheet’. There is a very interesting observation on fashions in embroidery – when Gilbert first visits Eliza she is working on ‘some piece of soft embroidery (the mania for Berlin wools had not yet commenced)’. Belin woolwork, stitching with wool over patterns printed on canvas, became fashionable in the 1830s. Unfortunately, Anne Brontë seems rather negative about women spending their time in such ways – one character, who we are encouraged to look down on, spends her days ‘in fancy work and scandal’.
Inspiration for textile art
The book is rich in descriptions of Yorkshire landscapes. The obvious choice is WIldfell Hall itself, a ‘superannuated mansion of the Elizabethan era, built of dark grey stone, - venerable and picturesque to look at, but doubtless cold and gloomy enough to inhabit, with its thick stone mullions and little latticed panes’. The garden has been left wild, ‘untilled and untrimmed, abandoned to the weeds, and the grass, to the frost and the wind, the rain and the drought’ and has topiary which had grown misshapen and has ‘a goblinish appearance’. As Gilbert walks up to the property, ‘the hedges, as well as the trees, become scanty and stunted, the former, at length, giving place to rough stone fences, partly greened over with ivy and moss, the latter to larches and Scotch fir-tress or isolated black thorns’. In the fields, ‘bits of grey rock here and there peeped out from the grassy hillocks’.
You might choose to depict an interior – such as the ‘great, dark, gloomy room, with its narrow latticed windows and its dismal furniture’. Or there is ‘a tolerably spacious and lofty room, but obscurely lighted by the old-fashioned windows, the ceiling, panels and chimney-pieces of grim black oak – the latter elaborately, but not very tastefully carved – with tables and chairs to match’ with an over-stacked bookcase and ‘an elderly cabinet-piano’ As Helen is an artist, we also have a description of her studio ‘covered with rolls of canvas, bottles of oil and varnish, palette, brushes, paints etc’ with her sketches and paintings lying around. Her paintings are described in detail.
Finally, Helen is strongly identified with a ‘beautiful half-blown Christmas rose that grew upon the little shrub without, just peeping from the snow’. This symbolises her (internal) beauty and her resilience in the face of her personal struggles.
My own design draws inspiration from the gates of WIldfell Hall and its desolate garden. The pinks and blues create an eery, spooky atmosphere.
Add comment
Comments