Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books 
 After many years of reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, I finally got around to reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. While Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Bronte) and Wuthering Heights (by Emily Bronte) have remained popular through the years, Anne's Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are rarely read now, even though they were the most popular of the Bronte books while the sisters were alive. 
 This book can be read as a straight-up gothic romance novel - will the mysterious beautiful woman in the rundown mansion marry the gentleman farmer who adores her? But it's more of a discourse on the perilous position of married women in Victorian England than it is a romance. 
 This book is very much a deconstruction of the idea that a flawed hero can be saved by the love of a good woman. As soon as she meets Arthur (the shitty husband), Helen is warned over and over again that he is not a good man to marry, but she is convinced that she will be able to steady him, impart good sense and good morals, and change his carousing ways. Surprise - this does not work. Many critics have assumed that this is Anne's rebuttal of Emily Bronte and Charlotte Bronte presenting their readers with flawed heroes who are romanticized. 
 As romance goes, Helen's ultimate romance with Gilbert is lukewarm. Several scenes contrast Gilbert to Arthur while others point out similarities, but to me the biggest problem with Gilbert is that he's immature. His family spoils him. He's prone to jealousy. He flirts with a woman in the village and we are supposed to dislike her but I thought Gilbert's treatment of her was deplorable. He beats the shit out of the guy he thinks is seeing Helen on the sly in a truly disturbing and bizarre scene that doesn't seem to fit into the rest of the book. He's kind to Helen's son when he wants to win Helen over, but ignores him when he's mad at Helen. He whines. 
 I found this book to be fascinating, but more from a historical perspective than a storytelling one. On the face of it, the book is less ambitious in style than the books of Charlotte and Emily, but that's part of the point of the book. By using a very plain, straightforward style (in the journal part of the book) the author ensures that Helen's plight is laid out before us inexorably. We can't say, "Wow, this is all so unusual! These people are crazy!" as we can with the more florid (and I use the word as a complement) fiction of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Arthur and Helen are quite ordinary people for their class, and they live quite ordinary lives with the exception of drunken Arthur having his drunken friends over for weeks on end. In this way, Tenant reminds the reader that what happened to Helen can happen to any young woman who made a naive and unfortunate marriage during a time when married women had so few rights. 
 However, as much as I admired this book for its feminist stance, the romantic angle between Gilbert and Helen was disappointing. I'm just not feeling the epic love with Gilbert. Anne of Green Gables aside, "Gilbert" is not a sexy name, and this is not a sexy character. I felt the romance was contrived so that Helen would end up in a socially acceptable relationship instead of prospering as a singe woman. Gilbert does not seem necessary to Helen's future happiness - she'd be fine on her own. 
 - Carrie S.