The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Author: Anne Brontë

Narrator: Alex Jennings, Jenny Agutter

Unabridged: 16 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/01/2011

Categories: Fiction, Classic

Synopsis

Helen Huntingdon flees a disastrous marriage and retreats to the desolate, half-ruined moorland mansion, Wildfell Hall. With her small son, Arthur, she adopts an assumed name and makes her living as a painter. The inconvenience of the house is outweighed by the fact that she and Arthur are removed from her drunken, degenerate husband.Although the house is isolated, she seeks to avoid the attentions of the neighbors. However, it is difficult to do so. All too soon she becomes an object of speculation, then cruel gossip. Narrated by her neighbor Gilbert Markham, and from the pages of her own diary, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall portrays Helen's struggle for independence in a time when law and society defined a married woman as her husband's property.

About Anne Brontë

Anne Bronte (1820-1849), a British novelist and poet, was the youngest member of the famous Bronte literary family. She wrote a volume of poetry with her sisters, Charlotte and Emily, entitled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, and she is the author of the novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Anne's two novels, written in a sharp and ironic style, are completely different from the romanticism followed by her more famous sisters. She wrote in a realistic, rather than a romantic style.

About Alex Jennings

Alex Jennings is an award-winning narrator and actor of stage and screen. He has worked extensively with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. He is also known for his role as Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor, in the Netflix series The Crown, along with his roles in The Queen, Lady in the Van, and The Wings of the Dove. He is a three-time Olivier Award winner and has been nominated for a BAFTA.

About Jenny Agutter

Jenny Agutter is an English film and television actress. She began her career as a child actor in the mid 1960s, starring in the BBC television series The Railway Children and the film adaptation of the same book. She moved on to adult roles with Walkabout, An American Werewolf in London, Logan’s Run, and Equus. Agutter is the winner of two AudioFile Earphones Awards.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Emily May on April 17, 2018

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is not quite Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, but I did really enjoy it. It's surprising, given how dated the characters' moralizing is, but I was so swept up in the past and the setting that I felt totally 19th-Century level shocked by the cheating and lying and *gasp* dr......more

Goodreads review by Amy on June 21, 2008

Carol said I must list my all time favorite books. What a challenge this is! I have read everything those Bronte girls wrote, even their childhood poetry and I love all of it. But Anne will take the showing on my list for her bravery. Of course Charlotte was the most prolific and Emily the true brai......more

Goodreads review by emma on April 27, 2022

welcome to...TENANT OF WILD(APRIL) HALL. doesn't roll off the tongue like middlemarch march, but elle and i bravely march on in our project of reading long classics in small installments over the course of a month. also - not enough houses have names these days, in my opinion. might start walking ar......more

Goodreads review by Ruby on January 24, 2021

I've read this once before (I was thirteen and we went to the beach for the day; I read it in a single sitting and didn't end up swimming at all because I loved it so much!). The plot is fast-paced and was just as enjoyable this time around. The book is written part-epistolary and part-diary. Like F......more

Goodreads review by Emily on April 21, 2022

I really enjoyed this one... more than Jane Eyre! I knew I needed to decide which Bronte sister I liked the most and this is it. Anne was definitely a feminist and it shows in this book. I definitely understand why it was controversial when it was first published. (view spoiler)[I thought Gilbert was insufferable. I (hide spoiler)]......more

Quotes

“Alex Jennings, who reads Markham’s letters, gives us a strong sense of the youth’s energy and frustration, while Jenny Agutter, who reads Helen’s journal, never loses sight of the powerful heroine’s threatened dignity and immense personal control. Both of these accomplished actors combine to create a moving and eloquent narration.” AudioFile

“The novel is vast but primarily tells the story of Helen, whose husband is abusive and dissipated…The book’s most shocking moments are the ones which depict Arthur’s abusive attempts to get the young child drunk, seemingly to spite and hurt his wife, and it’s clear from the narrative that Brontë had a lot of first-hand experience in dealing with and subduing drunk men…The book was neglected for a really long time. Today it is widely considered to be a landmark in early feminist literature, but its frank depictions of addiction within marriage are just as deserving of acclaim.” New York Times

“Of the three Brontë sisters, Emily and Charlotte are better known, yet it is Anne’s work which carries some of the strongest…themes…While the plot continues and mysteries are unraveled, what Helen and Gilber say…reinforces Anne Brontë’s indictment of the sexual double standards of nineteenth-century Britain.” Erica Bauermeister, 500 Great Books by Women

“The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was conceived in the same atmosphere as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Wildfell Hall has power and imagination, and is so close to one of the tragedies in the sisters’ own lives, that no perceptive reader can be indifferent to it.” Margaret Lane, Brontë scholar

Awards

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