The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)

Aug 21, 2009 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-and-movie, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, e-books, read-2012, victorians, mtbr-challenge-2012

This book is being discussed at Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die .

An amazing book and even progressive book written by one of the Bronte sisters telling the story of Helen Graham, the new tenant of Wildfell Hall and Gilbert Markham, her neighbor who is intrigued by her past.

Even if the story is told through letters, Bronte managed to keep the reader's full attention, in my opinion. ...more

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Feb 22, 2018 superawesomekt rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, british-literature, feminism

If you are looking for a pleasure read, dear reader, you have come to the wrong Brontë. Don't mistake me, it's not that there aren't some enjoyable aspects... Who is this mysterious tenant? What is in her past? There are some commonalities among the Bröntes and you will see them here, but frankly it just isn't as riveting or deeply gothic or romantic as Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. Also it's in epistolary format (meh) and the tone can be a bit moralizing.

BUT if the unhealthy relationship beha ...more

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Nov 14, 2017 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audio, fiction, romance, classic, era-regency, era-victorian, angst, 1001-books, era-early-mid-1800s

Increase of love brings increase of happiness, when it is mutual, and pure as that will be.

This is such a huge, beautiful, sweeping novel, I don't really know what to say about it.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this. It's inspired me to want to read everything by the Brontes that I have not read yet, and to re-read those books that I have already read. Their dark, passionate tales are just the ticket for me!

This felt so fresh and modern! Quite unlike the other Victorian

Increase of love brings increase of happiness, when it is mutual, and pure as that will be.

This is such a huge, beautiful, sweeping novel, I don't really know what to say about it.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this. It's inspired me to want to read everything by the Brontes that I have not read yet, and to re-read those books that I have already read. Their dark, passionate tales are just the ticket for me!

This felt so fresh and modern! Quite unlike the other Victorian lit I've read in the last few years (Middlemarch, North and South, The Woman in White ...). Ms Bronte is quite upfront and modern about women's place in society, and the difficulties they could face.

The writing is beautiful (and, amazingly, this is all one sentence!!):

But now—at evening, when I see the round red sun sink quietly down behind those woody hills, leaving them sleeping in a warm, red, golden haze, I only think another lovely day is lost to him and me; and at morning, when roused by the flutter and chirp of the sparrows, and the gleeful twitter of the swallows—all intent upon feeding their young, and full of life and joy in their own little frames—I open the window to inhale the balmy, soul-reviving air, and look out upon the lovely landscape, laughing in dew and sunshine—I too often shame that glorious scene with tears of thankless misery, because he cannot feel its freshening influence; and when I wander in the ancient woods, and meet the little wild flowers smiling in my path, or sit in the shadow of our noble ash-trees by the water-side, with their branches gently swaying in the light summer breeze that murmurs through their feathery foliage—my ears full of that low music mingled with the dreamy hum of insects, my eyes abstractedly gazing on the glassy surface of the little lake before me, with the trees that crowd about its bank, some gracefully bending to kiss its waters, some rearing their stately heads high above, but stretching their wide arms over its margin, all faithfully mirrored far, far down in its glassy depth—though sometimes the images are partially broken by the sport of aquatic insects, and sometimes, for a moment, the whole is shivered into trembling fragments by a transient breeze that sweeps the surface too roughly—still I have no pleasure; for the greater the happiness that nature sets before me, the more I lament that he is not here to taste it: the greater the bliss we might enjoy together, the more I feel our present wretchedness apart (yes, ours; he must be wretched, though he may not know it); and the more my senses are pleased, the more my heart is oppressed; for he keeps it with him confined amid the dust and smoke of London—perhaps shut up within the walls of his own abominable club.

I listened to this mostly as an audiobook, but, due to a glitch, some files would not load, and so I downloaded the Gutenberg e-book and switched between listening and reading, as needed. I suppose it should be no surprise that I preferred reading to listening, but listening is good enough in those situations when I can't read (driving, for example!)

One interesting note about the audio: it was the style at the time to write a "----" in place of a name, and I had always assumed people understood what name was meant and would tramslate that in their heads as the actual name. So I was curious to hear how the audiobook handled it. To my surprise, the reader did his best to phonetically reproduce the blank space, so that "---shire" became "blankshire" and "M---" became "murgkhur" (basically, a garbled nonse secsound.)

words I had to look up:
monitory - giving or serving as warning. ...more

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