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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's second novel, published in 1848, which is now celebrated alongside those of her sisters but which Charlotte Bronte tried to suppress as a 'mistake'. It examines the life of Helen, who has escaped her abusive husband Arthur Huntingdon with their son to live at Wildfell Hall as a widow under the alias 'Mrs Graham', and it exposes the men in her husband's circle who gave her no choice but to flee. Early critics attacked the novel as coarse, as misrepresenting male behaviour, and as something no woman or girl should ever read; soon after Anne's death, Charlotte suggested the publisher should lose it for good. In recent decades, though, its reputation has climbed and it now sits with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights as one of the great novels by the Bronte sisters.

The image above shows Tara Fitzgerald as Helen Graham in a 1996 成人快手 adaptation.

With

Alexandra Lewis
Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle (Australia)

Marianne Thorm盲hlen
Professor Emerita in English Studies, Lund University

And

John Bowen
Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at the University of York

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

50 minutes

Last on

Thu 30 Sep 2021 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

CONTRIBUTORS








READING LIST

Christine Alexander and Margaret Smith, The Oxford Companion to the Bront毛s (Oxford University Press, 2006)

Juliet Barker, The Bront毛s (first published 1994; Abacus, 2010)

Samantha Ellis, Take Courage: Anne Bront毛 and the Art of Life (Chatto & Windus, 2017)

Adelle Hay, Anne Bront毛 Reimagined: A View from the Twenty-First Century (Saraband, 2020)

Maria Frawley, Anne Bront毛 (Twayne Publishers, 1996)

Betty Jay, Anne Bront毛 (Northcote House, 2000)

John Kucich and Jenny Bourne Taylor (eds.), The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 3: the Nineteenth-Century Novel 1820-1880 (Oxford University Press, 2011), especially 鈥楾he Brontes and the Transformations of Romanticism鈥 by John Bowen

Elizabeth Langland, Anne Bront毛: The Other One (Palgrave Macmillan, 1989)

Elizabeth Leaver, 鈥榃hy Anne Bront毛 wrote as she did鈥 (Bront毛 Studies 32.3, November 2007)

Alexandra Lewis, 鈥楽atisfied With Such a Life鈥 (Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature 138, 2020)

Alexandra Lewis (ed.), The Bront毛s and the Idea of the Human: Science, Ethics and the Victorian Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

Juliet McMaster, 鈥樷淚mbecile Laughter鈥 and 鈥淒esperate Earnest鈥 in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall鈥 (Modern Language Quarterly 43, Dec. 1982)

Lucasta Miller, The Bronte Myth (Vintage, 2002)

Marianne Thorm盲hlen (ed.), The Bront毛s in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Marianne Thorm盲hlen, 鈥樷淗orror and disgust鈥: Reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall鈥 (Bront毛 Studies 44.1, January 2019)


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  • Thu 30 Sep 2021 09:00
  • Thu 30 Sep 2021 21:30

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