The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

“If you would have your son to walk honourably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his path, but teach him to talk firmly over them—not insist upon leading him by the hand, but let him learn to go alone.”

Speaking to the theme of education, Gilbert’s family protest that Mrs. Graham’s protectiveness of her young son, Arthur, will not fit the boy for success in the world. Gilbert’s admonishment to her emphasizes self-reliance and personal responsibility as a moral virtue. How a man or woman deals with temptations and obstacles is a concern throughout the novel.

“I would not send a poor girl into the world unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power, or the will, to watch and guard herself.”

When the Markhams claim that shielding her son from the world’s vices will turn Arthur into a milksop, that is to say not masculine, Mrs. Graham argues that ignorance is no way to raise a girl, either. Helen challenges Mrs. Markham’s conventional ideas about gender education and instead argues that both boys and girls should be equipped to deal with the moral snares and corruptions of the world, which reflects the novel’s preoccupation with gender equality. She shows that she shares Gilbert’s understanding that ignorance is not real protection; one must prepare a child to resist temptation.

“Where her opinions and sentiments tallied with mine, it was her extreme good sense, her exquisite taste and feeling that delighted me; where they differed, it was still her uncompromising boldness in the avowal or defence of that difference—her earnestness and keenness that piqued my fancy: and even when she angered me by her unkind words or looks, and her uncharitable conclusions respecting me, it only made me the more dissatisfied with myself for having so unfavorably impressed her, and the most desirous to vindicate my character and disposition in her eyes, and if possible, to win her esteem.”

The somewhat vain Gilbert, who has always been spoiled and admired, encounters a challenge in Mrs. Graham, who does not simply agree with everything he says, as might Eliza Millward. Gilbert’s realization that he must demonstrate character to win her esteem coheres with the book’s larger themes about the dangers of trusting appearances and the importance of knowing the beloved before marriage. The ideal of companionate marriage requires that spouses bring out the best in each other and strive to be worthy of one another.

“Did I not know Mrs. Graham? Had I not seen her, conversed with her time after time? Was I not certain that she, in intellect, in purity and elevation of soul, was immeasurably superior to any of her detractors; that she was, in fact, the noblest, the most adorable, of her sex I had ever beheld, or even imagined to exist?”

Gilbert’s passionate defense of Mrs. Graham when the slander begins to circulate shows the intensity of his love, but in naming her attractions as intellect, purity, and moral integrity, he also shows that he has taken the time to get to know her. Knowing the beloved’s mind and character are, throughout the novel, the foundations for enduring love.

“Is it that they think it is a duty to be continually talking […] and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions, when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves?—or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?”

Mrs. Graham, in this comment to Gilbert at a party, shows that she is of a more reflective character than others who freely engage in small talk; she is more intellectual and interested in genuine connections. The recurrence of gossip and slander, as they play out in the rumors circulating about Mrs. Graham, shows how important a woman’s reputation was to her social standing, but also shows how easily that reputation could be imperiled through such “discourse.”

“Dear Arthur! what did I not owe to you for this and every other happy meeting? Through him, I was at once delivered from all formality, and terror, and constraint. In love affairs, there is no mediator like a merry, simple-hearted child.”

In this passage in one of his letters, Gilbert steps out of direct narration of a scene and reflects upon the role the young Arthur played in his courtship of Helen. The perspective gives him the opportunity to comment on the action from the perspective of the older, wiser Gilbert, rather than the young Gilbert courting Mrs. Graham. The reflection also provides a hint of foreshadowing for the moment at the end when Gilbert is reluctant to call at Staningley, but Arthur recognizes and hails him, thus affecting his reunion with Helen.

“There is such a thing as looking through a person’s eyes into the heart, and learning more of the height, and breadth, and depth of another’s soul in one hour, than it might take you a lifetime to discover, if he or she were not disposed to reveal it—or if you had not the sense to understand it.”

Gilbert’s avowal to his sister, Rose, that he knows Mrs. Graham quite well, will turn out to be ironic when he obtains her journal and learns her true history. The passionate language shows his infatuation with Helen, but also expresses the novel’s theme that true romantic love is a matter of understanding someone else’s soul.

“However little you may value the opinions of those about you—however little you may esteem them as individuals, it is not pleasant to be looked upon as a liar and a hypocrite, to be thought to practice what you abhor, and to encourage the vices you would discountenance, to find your good intentions frustrated.”

Helen’s frustrations about the rumors developing in consequence to her secrecy about herself and her history provide narrative tension and suspense since the reader, at this point, is only learning of her through Gilbert. Her statement foreshadows the truths Gilbert will learn when he reads her journal, especially when he learns how pained she was by her husband’s infidelity. Helen’s speech hints at her strong morals and the wide gulf that can exist between appearances and the truth.

“If life promised no enjoyment within my vocation, at least it offered no allurements out of it; and henceforth, I would put my shoulder to the wheel and toil away like any poor drudge of a cart-horse that was fairly broken in to its labour, and plod through life, not wholly useless if not agreeable, and uncomplaining if not contented with my lot.”

When he thinks Helen is in love with Frederick Lawrence, Gilbert attempts to employ his father’s advice and do his duty within the station he was born to. The metaphor of the cart horse hints that Gilbert finds farm work drudgery, but his resolution to be useful and uncomplaining echoes Helen’s self-effacing attempts to reconcile herself to her marriage to Huntingdon.

“I need not dilate upon the feelings with which I approached the shrine of my former divinity—that spot teeming with a thousand delightful recollections and glorious dreams—all darkened now, by one disastrous truth.”

His language as he calls at Wildfell expresses Gilbert’s passionate feelings, but his regarding of Helen as a “divinity” hints at an excessive and incomplete perception of her—one that will be corrected when he reads her journal. Learning more about Helen’s past will help his love mature in later chapters, but the imagery here reflects the sharp contrast between his hopes as a lover and his disappointment when he sees her with Frederick Lawrence.

“But when [a girl’s affections] are sought—when the citadel of the heart is fairly besieged it is apt to surrender sooner than the owner is aware of, and often against her better judgment, and in opposition to all her preconceived ideas of what she could have loved, unless she be extremely careful and discreet.”

Aunt Maxwell advises Helen to be cautious when they visit London and Helen makes her debut, for she will be an attractive marriage partner due to her youth, beauty, family standing, and inheritance. Her aunt tries to warn Helen that passion can overset her better judgment—foreshadowing exactly what happens when Helen meets Arthur Huntingdon.

“He made some very clever remarks, and some excessively droll ones, I do not think the whole would appear anything very particular, if written here, without the adventitious aids of look, and tone, and gesture, and that ineffable but indefinite charm, which cast a halo over all he did and said.”

As she describes Huntingdon in her journal, Helen reveals herself as a naive young woman in love, but there is a powerful dramatic irony in how Helen paints a rosy picture of her beloved. There is already a hint that Huntingdon’s charm is superficial and Helen’s judgment has been clouded by attraction. Charm and wit, as the novel will go on to show, are not the strongest grounds for choosing a marital partner.

“She does not love him: she thinks only of herself. She cannot appreciate the good that is in him: she will neither see it, nor value it, nor cherish it. She will neither deplore his faults nor attempt their amendment, but rather aggravate them by her own.”

Helen is jealous when Huntingdon flirts with Annabella Wilmot instead of her—a strategy he uses to fan Helen’s interest in him. Helen suggests that a good wife will think first of her husband, value his good qualities, and also guide and influence him to overcome his faults. The belief that she, Helen, can bring out the best in Huntingdon is one of the primary motivations for her marriage to him, reflecting Helen’s misguided faith in the domestic ideology of the Victorian wife.

“I was willfully blind, and now, instead of regretting that I did not discern his full character before I was indissolubly bound to him, I am glad; for it has saved me a great deal of battling with my conscience, and a great deal of consequent trouble and pain; and, whatever I ought to have done, my duty, now, is plainly to love him and to cleave to him; and this just tallies with my inclination.”

As Helen writes in her journal how she has discovered the real character of the man she married, she wrestles with achieving a state of mind that will save her from the pain of regret and give her an optimistic outlook on their future. These lines demonstrate Helen’s commitment to duty, even at the cost of her own happiness or preference, and the belief in wifely obedience that will be sorely tested and then broken in the course of her marriage.

“He dislikes me to have any pleasure but in himself, any shadow of homage or kindness but such as he chooses to vouchsafe: he knows he is my sun, but when he chooses to withhold his light, he would have my sky to be all darkness.”

After she quarrels with her husband and watches him flirting with Annabella at their house party, Helen begins to understand Huntingdon’s self-absorption. She realizes that his demand to be her all-in-all is not a romantic ideal but is rather impractical, manipulative, and, as it will turn out, cruel. The attempt to make one’s spouse completely dependent on oneself is now recognized as a symptom of an abusive relationship.

“How little real sympathy there exists between us; how many of my thoughts and feelings are gloomily cloistered within my own mind; how much of my higher and better self is indeed unmarried—doomed either to harden and sour in the sunless shade of solitude, or to quite degenerate and fall away from lack of nutriment in this unwholesome soil!”

Helen’s desire for a companionate marriage is thwarted by the character of her husband, with whom she has little in common. Not only can she not express her full self to him, but she also uses the metaphor of a plant to suggest that her true self will wither without nourishment. Envisioning that part of herself as “unmarried” expresses the depth of Helen’s loneliness.

“Since he and I are one, I so identify myself with him, that I feel his degradation, his failings, and transgressions as my own; I blush for him, I fear for him; I repent for him, weep, pray, and feel for him as for myself; but I cannot act for him; and hence, I must be and I am debased, contaminated by the union, both in my own eyes, and in the actual truth.”

Helen is tormented by the vows she has made to be of “one flesh” with her husband; as with her legal identity, she cannot define herself independently of her husband. However, she has now also realized that her influence as a wife is limited, and she cannot demand or encourage her husband to reform the behavior she finds shameful and harmful. Helen will need to stop seeing herself as responsible for correcting Huntingdon’s failings before she is able to take the step of leaving her marriage.

“I was infatuated once, with a foolish, besotted affection, that clung to him in spite of his unworthiness, but it is fairly gone now—wholly crushed and withered away; and he has none but himself and his vices to thank for it.”

A more mature Helen realizes that her initial devotion to Huntingdon was not, in fact, a genuine or lasting love, and she also realizes that she can no longer pretend to support his choices. She realizes that, had Huntingdon made an effort to keep or renew her affections, she might have continued to excuse or reconcile herself to his poor behavior. She continues to think of herself with imagery of a plant that is withering and dying—a state of mind that the ruined, barren Wildfell Hall will reflect when she moves there.

“I must have a bad disposition, for my misfortunes have soured and embittered me exceedingly: I was beginning insensibly to cherish very unamiable feelings against my fellow mortals—the male part of them especially […] what would Frederick have been, if he had lived in the world, and mingled from his childhood with such men as these of my acquaintance? and what will Arthur be, with all his natural sweetness of disposition, if I do not save him from that world and those companions?”

This passage in Helen’s diary questions the influence of environment on one’s nature. She suggests she must have a “bad” disposition because misery has embittered her, but then wonders if her brother’s “good” disposition would have changed under the influence of poor companions. Her concern about how her young son will be shaped by the influence of his father and the poor example of his father’s friends reflects her struggle to educate Arthur in her own beliefs and prevent him from making destructive choices.

“Mamma affirmed you would be quite shocked at my undutiful conduct—you can’t imagine how she lectures me—I am disobedient and ungrateful; I am thwarting her wishes, wronging my brother, and making myself a burden on her hands—I sometimes fear she’ll overcome me after all.”

Esther Hargrave faces the all-important duty of selecting a marital partner, and the insistence of her mother represents the pressures of the outside world to choose a mate based on economic considerations. If she did not marry, Esther would need to be financially supported by her brother, as well as facing contempt and ridicule for being an “old maid.”

“I told her I was sensible of my error: I did not complain of its punishment, and I was sorry to trouble my friends with its consequence; but in duty to my son, I must submit no longer; it was absolutely necessary that [Arthur] should be delivered from his father’s corrupting influence.”

In a letter to her aunt explaining her decision to leave her husband—a shocking move that would not be approved by Victorian society—Helen clarifies that her chief motive is the maternal instinct to protect her son. Unlike what Gilbert suggested earlier, about teaching a young man to handle temptation, Helen believes he will be safer if she can remove temptation.

“It would be wrong to forget one so deeply and fondly devoted to her, who can so thoroughly appreciate her excellences and sympathize with all her thoughts as I can do, and it would be wrong in me to forget so excellent and divine a piece of God’s creation as she, when I have once so truly loved and known her.”

After Gilbert reads Helen’s journal, the language he uses to express his love takes on a new dimension. As he reads about her moral struggle, he gains a deeper insight into her character. While Gilbert senses that Lawrence does not encourage Gilbert’s attachment, he also hints that his affections will not change—proof of his worthiness to be her spouse.

“The world was nothing to him: life and all its interests, its petty cares and transient pleasures, were a cruel mockery. To talk of the past, was to torture him with vain remorse; to refer to the future, was to increase his anguish; and yet to be silent, was to leave him a prey to his own regrets.”

Helen describes Huntingdon’s last torments as his illness worsens. Where Helen’s adherence to Christian morals and her belief in salvation are a comfort to her, Huntingdon has no such compass to help him feel calm in the face of death. The difference reinforces Helen’s own values and reaffirms the great difference in their personalities.