Domestic Relations and Domestic Abuse -- the clear-eyed vision of alcoholic dissipation of Anne Bronte's the Tennant of Wildfell Hall

According to the posthumous introduction to her final novel, The Tennant of Wildfell Hall the Victorian author Anne Bronte was often considered the 'nicest' and most conventionally of all of the three female Bronte sisters who lived on past childhood, to become published authors. However, Anne Bronte's novel The Tennant of Wildfell Hall may perhaps be the most ostentatiously feminist of all of the texts published by the various female Brontes, from Emily's Wuthering Heights, to Charlotte's Jane Eyre, Shirley, and even Villette.

Unlike Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Anne Bronte's final novel does not romanticize or excuse the brutality of her central male protagonist. Rather, Anne validates the central female character Helen Huntington's determination to escape Mr. Huntington's sway. Nor does Anne's novel ideologically excuse even romantic forms cruelty to...
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