Contents
Page
Introduction
1. The Angel in the House - The role of the Victorian woman
2. A victim of her time: Milicent Hargrave
6 3. Feelings vs convention -
A heroine who follows her feelings in an age of reason
4. The fallen angel: Annabella Lowborough
5. Higher justice or kitsch ? - The final round up of the novel
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
In the 19th century, England was at its peak-time. Victorianism brought great wealth and power for the country; and many important changes took place, culturally as well as socially. Technical inventions brought new structures into working life, and a broad rich middle class sought amusement in theatre or literature.
But it was still a time of double standard. Equality of rights for men and women did not yet exist. Women still had their traditional role as housewife and mother. Mystified as “Angel in the House” in public, women often were exposed to conjugal horror at home. The “Victorian society indulge[d] men, and through that indulgence, made them tyrants over women”.
Into this time some of the most important writers of world literature were born: the Brontё Sisters. In their novels they portrait their time with all its injustices. Significant for their famous works are passionate heroines who face the “ugly hypocritical visage of society.”
In her second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (published 1848; afterwards to be abbreviated with TWH), Anne Brontё (1820-1849), the youngest sister, paints the picture of Helen Huntingdon, a young, self-confident woman, whose "decision to flee an unhappy marriage with her young son violated Victorian social convention and law.”
Love and marriage were not essentially dependent on each other in the 19th century. Money and reputation were the reasons for marriage, rather than love and affection. Nevertheless, most of the girls did not stop dreaming about love. But the gap between girlish dreams and reality was a very wide one: the society had no place left for feelings, and “a married woman had” actually “no legal existence.“
How differently the female concept of love and marriage is defined in TWH shall now be demonstrated with the examples of the figures in the novel: Helen Huntingdon, the heroine who stumbles somewhere between angel in the house and femme fatale; Millicent Hargrave, who endures her fate of commercial marriage; and proud Annabella Lowborough, who betrays her husband.
1. The Angel in the House -
The role of the Victorian woman
The patriarchal world of the 19th century was divided into a male and a female one :
a male world outside the home, and a female one inside the house.
The man's role was to work and to manage important social and economic affairs outside in order to earn the money to feed the family, whereas the Victorian “woman belonged in the home were she served as presiding angel“. Save there, she could concentrate on house-works like cooking, sewing, knitting or the education of the children, her public role was limited to representing a fine household and a good family.
Actually Victorian reality considered for most - “economically impotent“ - middle class women only a “social, decorative and childbearing role to perform.“
But the “domestic sphere“ was not only “free from the vicious influence of the competitive business world“ but also free from opportunities: except from church, parties with some friends or some shallow books to read, most women had no access to society, culture or economy. Even worse, women were absolutely dependent on their husbands. They had no own property, all their own was his own.
Exposed to physical and mental abuse her home was rather a domestic hell than a domestic heaven. The wife had no legal status, i. e. no rights under law. Leaving her husband was actually impossible, even if he cheated her. “The utmost divorce she could obtain was permission to live alone - although, if she was proven guilty of infidelity, he could divorce her.“
Nevertheless, the best thing that could happen to a woman was to get married, because “a female's real existence only [began] when she [had] a husband.“ The alternative of living single was actually not provided, and “old maidenhood” was a word with a quite negative connotation.
But the Victorian age was ruled by reason. In that misogyn society there was no place for feelings, the only reason for marriage was money. Marriages were arranged by parents whose goal was to marry their daughters to wealthy and esteemed men. The family chose a suitable groom, mostly ignoring the feelings or opinion of their beloved girls.
2. A victim of her time: Milicent Hargrave
In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Milicent Hargrave is the woman whose destiny fits into that classical Victorian pattern of forced commercial marriages.
As well educated and obedient young lady, and anyway with no possibilities to change her fate, she has to obey her family's rules. She gets introduced to Ralph Hattersley, son of a rich banker and considerably older than her, and anything else concerning marriage is arranged by her mother, who “is very anxious to see [her] well married, (...)united with rich partners.“ It was not Milicent's will, she did not even give her consent to marry that man, but “[her] fate is fixed.“
In the novel there are several details that show how few Milicent's - as an example of an “average“19th century women - own opinion was worth, for instance that her brother calls her reluctance against her chosen fate “childish nonsense“. Moreover, Milicent does not dare to contradict her mother, who “is so delighted with the idea of the match“, or her future husband , because she is afraid to disappoint them.
For Milicent there is no way to prevent the arranged marriage. She is in a very schizophrenic situation: reality of matrimony is not what she has probably dreamed of; she has to marry a man she does not love, not even know, but has to share the rest of her life with him.
Milicent's only possibility is to bear her fate. She persuades herself to “try to love [Hattersley]“ and to obtain anything positive of her relation. Which is not easy for a young woman since love and affection are nothing that can be forced.
Especially when the husband is actually a stranger, who is more occupied with the wrong friends, games and alcohol than with family or business.
A man, whose idea of his wife is “some good, quiet soul that will let [him] do what [he likes] and go where [he likes] (...), without a word of reproach or complaint“, and hopefully without “a will of [her] own“.
Although “the further [Hattersley] is from [her] the better [Milicent] like[s] him“, she makes some efforts in her attempts to love him, or at least to get along with her lot.
One could call it inconsequent, but the relation between Milicent and Hattersley does not stick to the classic clichè of Victorian marriage throughout the whole novel. Be it a romantic attitude within Anne Brontë, but the author herself changes Milicent's fate towards the end of the story. In the novel it needs Helen, the encouraged heroine, to open Hattersley's eyes. In a talk she tells him, who is loved “a great better deal than [he] deserve[s]“, about his wife's feelings and sorrows.
Helen's warnings that “if [he] behave[s] worse, she will love [him] less till all is lost in fear, aversion and bitterness of soul, if not secret hatred and contempt“ can effect a change in Hattersley. Also very shocked by the last illness of his former “friend“ Huntingdon, he finally “'comes out from among them' [his vicious friends]” . He alters his lifestyle and his attitude towards his wife and becomes a “hearty, active country gentleman“, keeps company with “better friends than those of his youth“, and now enjoys the society of Milicent, “his happy little wife (now cheerfully and confiding as heart could wish), and his fine family of stalwart sons and blooming daughters“.
Milicent at last gains the loving husband she had formerly dreamed of.
3. Feelings vs convention -
A heroine who follows her feelings in an age of reason
Anne Brontë has created her heroine as a very emancipated young lady, a self-confident, but also stubborn and naïve one.
Already from her first notes in her diary the reader learns that Helen is not willing to yield to the contemporary rules and roles. She quarrels with her aunt, who is her guardian, about men, love and marriage. The “cold, cautious“ aunt represents the Victorian principle of reason, and with “frigid gravity“ she tries to convey her warnings and advise to her niece, who “treat[s] the matter [of matrimony] in [the] light way.“ “First study; than approve; than love“, is the aunt's main principle. In her opinion - which mirrors the spirit of her time - the suitor should be rather chosen by attributes like “principle, (...), good sense, respectability, and moderate wealth“ than by outward appearance or other superficialities. Which is not bad at all - if the subject is to be looked at rationally, shallowly - and theoretically.
“Victorian patriarchal ideology enforced views of good women as essentially passionless“. But Helen is a passionate young woman. Her rebellious temper is put in an appearance when, as 18-years old girl, she presumes the right to reject the arrangement made by her uncle. As common in the 19th century, her guardian has chosen the candidate for Helen - an old friend of the uncle, twice as old as her, but “upright, honourable, sensible, sober, respectable.“ Not like most of her female contemporaries, but rather fearing to become like them “so provokingly mindless, and heartless, and artificial,“ Helen “take[s] the liberty of judging for [her]self.“
Although she shares her aunt's principles at first, Helen shall drop them not later than the first time she meets a really interesting young man. Fascinated by his fine external features and his charming manner she falls in love with
Mr Huntingdon. All her aunt's warnings about that man, who is a womanizer and suspectible for vices are in vain. In her juvenile naïveté (“[she] cannot believe there is any harm in [his] laughing blue eyes“) Helen believes that “[she] might have influence sufficient to save him from some errors.“
In defiance of all warnings and actually with her guardiances' opposition, she finally marries Huntingdon, who himself courts quite much and persuasive for her. Overwhelmed by her feelings for him, she is even willing to “risk [her] happiness for the chance of securing his.“
Helen's naïve idea to be able to change another human of course cannot come true. At least because Huntingdon's reasons for marriage differ from Helen's. For Helen it was love, but surely not for Huntingdon.
In the novel he actually turns out to be somebody who is only able to love himself. His affection for Helen had actually a quite egocentric background: his interest for her starts to spread when he sees some pictures drawn by Helen, showing Huntingdon's face. “He likes to be pleased“, and such an interest in his person flatters him and is actually what he loves her for: he does not love her but only the fact that she loves him.
Although the first time of matrimony is a quite happy one for Helen, her idea of marriage soon gets disappointed. Even before they marry Helen notices that “his very heart (...) is (...) less warm and generous than [she] thought it.“ Already in their first year of matrimony she soon has to recognise that their relation becomes more and more distant and cooler, and “[now that she is] a wife [, her] bliss is sobered (...); [her] hopes diminished, (...); [her] fears increased.“ Even the birth of a son does not change anything.
As time goes by, their mutual affection diminishes and their problems grow. Helen still loves Huntingdon, but her feelings are now “different from the love [she] could have given, and once had hoped to receive.“
Huntingdon often leaves his wife alone. Very frequently he goes to London. Staying there for months, he spends his time drinking and gambling, in society of his vicious pals. Quite soon Helen has to recognise that her husband is not just often drunk but an alcoholic, and now bit by bit “[discovers] all the evils of his nature“.
Helen is still full of good will, but all her attempts to change or at least help Huntingdon fail. Not only that he rejects her help and closes himself towards her, he becomes intolerable and now turns out to be the vicious man she had been warned of. The situation is not easy for Helen. Huntingdon hardly shows any sign of affection for his wife. On the contrary, he commits adultery with Annabella, an aquaintance of the family. As it would be for any other wife, that is all too much for Helen. She now can “no longer love [her] husband“, who “cruelly (...) has trampled on [her] love, betrayed [her] trust, scorned [her] prayers and tears, (...) crushed [her] hopes, destroyed [her] youth's best feelings and doomed [her] to life of hopeless misery.“ Hate begins to grow inside Helen.
It is also because of Huntingdon's strange relation towards their son. At first he refuses the new born boy, and later he tries to drive a wedge between him and his loving mother: Huntingdon slanders about Helen, shows only bad manners, teaches the 3 year old boy how to course and even gives him alcohol to drink.
Helen can't stand Huntingdon's presence any more. “There is no love, friendship, or sympathy between them“ left. Depressed by his behaviour, his affair with Annabella and in order to save her son from the influence of his wicked father, Helen swears in the 5th anniversary of their wedding day that “[that shall be] the last [she] shall spend under [that] roof“, but it takes almost two more years and many sorrows before Helen can finally escape her husband and that “wicked house.“
In her role as woman of the 19th century she is powerless to go away anyway. Not only had the Victorian “[husband] entire control over his wife's property“, but also over his wife herself. There is no chance for Helen to leave her husband legally, because - as already mentioned above - women actually had no rights.
Huntingdon has very much power over her anyway, physically as well as mentally. In the novel that is highlighted in the scene, when he forces Helen to give him the key to her desk. He takes away all her money and jewels, and
also her diary. There he reads about her plans of escape and is now able to thwart them.
But what is even worse is the actual, humiliating act of reading. Helen's
privacy, symbolised by the diary, is penetrated, and all her secrets and
feelings are violently exposed to Huntingdon, the unworthy reader.
Anne Brontë expresses Helen's decreasing affection for Huntingdon with different levels of names for her husband: the man, who is at the first time of their relation her love, “[her] Arthur“, is after a while just called “Arthur.“ When he has become “[her] greatest enemy“ after she discovers his affair, Helen prefers to call her husband “Mr Huntingdon (...), for [Arthur] is the child's name“, before he finally becomes “one who shall be nameless“ in her eyes.
After her successful escape from her husband Helen leaves everything behind. Taking on her maiden name and pretending to be widowed, she finds shelter as tenant of Wildfell Hall, on a manor owned by her brother. Even her best friends do not know about her new identity or her present abode.
But Helen's destiny does not let her be happy yet. When she hears about Huntingdon's serious illness - caused by his excessive alcohol consume - she returns to him. She considers it to be her duty - which was in her first time of matrimony “plainly to love him and to cleave to him“ - as his wife. So Helen “[comes] back to nurse [him]“, because “there is no one else to care for [him]; and [she] shall not upbraid to [him] now.“ Although Huntingdon “abuse[s] and curse[s her] bitterly“, she nurses him unswervingly until his death, which is a relief for both.
Helen has become much more mature with the years. To provide security for her son's future welfare, she very self-confidently and proudly requires from Huntingdon still on his death-bed to sign a note that allows her “to leave [little Arthur] entirely under [her] care and protection, and to let [her] take him whenever and wherever [she] please[s].“
After Huntingdon's death Helen is free at last. Free for her new admirer, Gilbert Markham, a gentlemen farmer in —shire, where Wildfell Hall is. Now for him “it [is] no longer a crime to think of her.”
The basis of Helen's new relation totally differs from her former one. She met
Markham, “an intimate aquaintance”, under different circumstances, and in spite of initially lies, misunderstanding and distrust, the feeling that started as friendship can now turn out to be real love.
Markham is rather an opposite of Huntingdon, and his idea of his wife surely does not accord to the contemporary Victorian view. Although his mother tells him that in matrimony it is “[his] business to please [him]self and [his wife's] to please [him]“ he is a man who “expect[s] to find more pleasure in making [his] wife happy and comfortable, than in being made so by her“, he would “rather give than receive.“
The couple can overcome even the “greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth and fortunes” together because it shares “truly loving, sympathising hearts and souls.” When they finally marry, at least Helen's romantic wishes can come true for she has finally found a honest, loyal and loving husband. In her second relation Helen follows - rather unconsciously - her aunt's main advise: “first study; than approve; than love.“
4. The fallen angel: Annabella Lowborough
In the novel there is the figure of Annabella to show another extreme of Victorian women's fate.
She also marries a much older man, and like Milicent's, her marriage has commercial reasons. Mr Lowborough is quite poor and actually needs the money she owns, but is caught in the illusion “that she`s devotedly attached to him; that she will not refuse him for his poverty, and does not court him for his rank.“
Annabella never even tries to love her husband. She “loves nothing about him, but his title and pedigree, and `that delightful old family seat'.“ Annabella finds other ways to find satisfaction than in matrimony. That insidious person begins an affair with Huntingdon. After her husband comes to know about that “criminal connection with Mr Huntingdon“, he “immediately [seeks] and [obtains] a divorce.”
Annabella expects the same fate like many unloyal wives in the 19th century: if they did not find forgiveness they were expelled from home, and left alone without reputation, rights or money.
After the divorce Annabella “leads a gay, dashing life in town and country.“ As a lesson Brontë lets Annabella perish in her lifestyle, since “Lady Lowborough elope[s] with another gallant to the continent, where, having lived awhile there in reckless gaiety and dissipation, they quarrelled and parted. She [goes] dashing on for a season, but years [come] and money [goes]: she [sinks] at, length, in difficulty and debt, disgrace and misery; and [dies] at last, (...), in penury, neglect, and utter wretchedness.“
5. Higher justice or kitsch ?
- The final round up of the novel
The whole novel seems to be deeply influenced by the contemporary opinion that a person, especially a woman, can only be happy and is only worth something when married. Although Anne Brontё is said to have a “lively distrust of romantic posturings and a predilection for a clear-sighted realism”, she creates a happy ending of the novel. In a kind of final round up, all the “bad” characters are punished, while life provides happiness and loving and respectable partners for the “good”. Actually there is no need for
such a clearing for the progress of the novel, but it satisfies the reader's heart to learn about the fate of the remaining figures.
It smoothes to read that while Annabella has to atone for her mistakes, her former husband gets married again. Lord Lowborough finds a good soul to share his life with. It is significant that his new wife is “remarkable neither for the beauty nor wealth.” But here again the story proofs how influential outward appearance and financial background were on a woman's chance to get married.
Also the fate of Mary Millward shows how much importance was attached to superficialities. The husband of the “steady, sensible girl” is a “pale, retiring bookworm.” Though both were declared “born of single blessedness,” the patient, faithful lovers” find their luck with each other. Here again it is her, the “plain-looking, plain-dealing, unattractive, unconciliating Miss Millward”, who
Seems to be actually a bad match.
Additionally it gives the reader satisfaction that the beautiful but discontented and ungrateful girls get what they deserve. Eliza Millward marries a “wealthy tradesman”, but “leads him a rather uncomfortable life.”
Her friend Jane Wilson had “been wholly unable to (...) obtain any partner rich and elegant enough to suit her ideas of what the husband of Jane Wilson ought to be.” Her fate is to spend the rest of her life “loving no one and beloved by none - a cold-hearted, supercilious, keenly, insidiously censorious old maid.”
Most of Mr Huntingdon's false friends have ruined themselves with their lifestyle. Huntingdon befalls the fate of a painful death, while Helen is allowed to love again. Not only for her and her friend Milicent the tables have turned, but also Mili's sister Esther finds a loving husband, namely Helen's brother Frederick. In the very end also Markham's sister Rose is not to be left out in the cold, although she has just been mentioned at the beginning of novel and hardly while its continuation.
Conclusion
Like her sisters' works, Anne Brontё's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall caused a sensation when it was published in 1848. Although Anne herself rejects in the
preface to the second edition that the figures in her novel and their behaviour are “specimen of the common practices of society”, the picture of the young Victorian women in the novel surely is not only mere fiction, but rather a mirror image of the actual conditions in the 19th century.
In spite of political movements which have brought equal rights for women nowadays, there is still lots of hidden male despotism and abuse at home. There are still enough problems between men and women, and for many cases Anne's words did not lose any validity, when she stated in 1848 that
“if [she] have warned one rash youth from following in their [the scapegraces in her novel] steps, or prevented one thoughtless girl from falling into the very natural error of [her] heroine, the book has not been written in vain.”
Bibliography
Primary source:
Brontё, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. 2nd Edition.
Wordsworth Editions Limited. Hertfordshire, 1996.
Secondary sources:
Langland, Elizabeth. Anne Brontë: The Other One. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and London, 1989.
Reed, John R. Victorian Conventions. Ohio, 1976.
Stubbs, Patricia. Women and Fiction. Feminism and the Novel 1880-1920. London, 1981.
Winnifrith, Tom. The Brontёs and their Background. New York, 1973.
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