In Search of Anne Brontë

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In Search of Anne Brontë Page 22

by Nick Holland


  Finishing the diary, Markham is shocked that he has judged Helen so wrongly. He rushes to her and they finally declare a love of sorts for each other. Markham insists that Huntingdon no longer has any right to expect loyalty from his wife, but Helen is repulsed that he is resorting to the same arguments that Hargrave had tried to use. She insists that she must leave forever and that Markham cannot know her new address, although after six months have passed he may write to her courtesy of her brother. By that time, she reasons, their ardour will have cooled to an extent that will allow them to indulge in a friendly correspondence.

  Before that six months is up, Markham is shocked to hear, via the ever venomous Eliza, that Mrs Graham has left Wildfell Hall and returned to the husband that she had apparently run away from. Through letters that Mr Lawrence, now reconciled with Markham, has received, we learn that she has been notified that Huntingdon is very ill after a fall and has returned to nurse him.

  Helen has extracted, with some difficulty, a written promise that she can leave Wildfell Hall with their son at any time, if his behaviour necessitates it. At first, Huntingdon responds to Helen’s nursing and seems to get better morally and physically, but he soon begins to drink to excess again, and this brings on his death, which is accompanied by a terrible physical and spiritual torment.

  A period of sixteen months passes before Markham and the now wealthy Helen are reunited, but this separation has only strengthened their love. Anne creates a tender scene at this meeting, in stark contrast to the debauchery and misery that has preceded it. Helen opens a window, and Markham wonders whether it is to cool her feelings or to pluck a solitary Christmas rose growing outside:

  Pluck it, however, she did, and having gently dashed the glittering powder from its leaves, approached it to her lips and said –

  ‘This rose is not so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals – Will you have it?’11

  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ends on a happy note. Helen is now Mrs Markham, and her son, Arthur, is living at Grassdale Manor with his wife, the daughter of Millicent and Hattersley, who was himself reformed by a lecture from Helen. It is a powerful book, an undoubted masterpiece, and it deserves to be ranked alongside Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Like Anne Brontë herself, the book is unflinching in its honesty, but it is this honesty that would adversely affect the novel’s reputation, and hers, for over a century after it was published.

  There are two subjects within the novel that were seen by contemporary readers as both revolutionary and shocking. The first of these is the treatment of religion within the novel. Anne had mentioned the doctrine of divine redemption in Agnes Grey, through the words and actions of Edmund Weston, but it forms a central part of her second novel. She unequivocally dismisses the Calvinist doctrine that was widely held in the Church of England and which is represented in the novel by the views of her aunt.

  When Helen is first contemplating marriage to Huntingdon, her aunt asks how she can marry a wicked man when they will be separated eternally at the final judgement, where he will be cast into ‘the lake that burneth with unquenchable fire’ forever. ‘Not for ever’, Helen exclaims and uses scripture to support her belief that all people, whatever sins they may have committed, will attain eventual salvation:

  He that ‘is able to subdue all things to Himself, will have all men to be saved’, and ‘will in the fullness of time, gather together in one all things in Christ Jesus, who tasted death for every man, and in whom God will reconcile all things to Himself.’12

  The aunt is scandalised, just as Aunt Branwell had been when she heard Anne say the same words, and asks where she had learned all this. ‘In the Bible, aunt. I have searched it through, and found nearly thirty passages, all tending to support the same theory.’13

  Helen then goes on to explain that doctrines that people such as the Calvinists espouse to the contrary have come about because of an incorrect translation of the scriptures. What is translated as ‘everlasting’ or ‘eternal’ from the original Greek of the New Testament actually means for a long time, or enduring, it does not mean never ending. Here in print was Anne’s faith in a nutshell, and she had the scriptural and linguistic knowledge, and the intellectual capacity, to defend it to the full. This doctrine of eventual forgiveness is also repeated by Helen to Huntingdon on his deathbed, although he cannot bring himself to believe it.

  This in itself was enough for many critics to decry the novel as ungodly and scandalous, but worse still to them was Anne’s depiction of marriage and women’s place in society. Anne, encouraged by her father, as all her sisters had been, was a deep-thinking woman who made up her own mind about things. At the time she was writing there were clear delineations between a man and a woman, and it was accepted in law, and by society in general, that men were superior to women. Anne could not honestly accept that she was in any way inferior to a man, and she would use The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to develop this theme.

  In Anne’s time the wife became the property of her husband upon marriage, and any possessions, money, land or inheritance she had also became his to do with as he pleased. Divorces were very difficult to obtain, even if the husband had physically abused his wife or cheated on her, as in the case of Huntingdon and Helen. The terms of divorce were also vastly more favourable to men. Until the 1857 Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act, husbands were still entitled to keep the earnings of the woman he had divorced. Children over 7 were always placed into the custody of the husband, whatever the circumstances behind the divorce, until the Infants Custody Act came into place in 1886. Wives remained the legal property of their husband until 1891, and prior to this time a husband could legally keep his wife imprisoned if she refused to have sex with him.

  This was the world that Anne and her sisters grew up in, yet there were still some enlightened men, and their father provided a shining example. In 1841 he was visited at the Haworth Parsonage by a Mrs Collins. She was married to John Collins, the assistant curate to Reverend Busfield of Keighley. In tears, Mrs Collins explained her problem. Her husband, despite being a man of the cloth like Patrick, was a gambler and a drinker, who beat both his wife and his children. He had run up debts that could never be paid, and Mrs Collins saw no way out of the problem she was in.

  It says a lot that she had chosen to come to Haworth to speak to Patrick rather than speaking to Reverend Busfield himself. Patrick’s opinion on these matters must have been known to her, and others, although it certainly did not comply with the perceived wisdom of the time. Patrick told Mrs Collins that she should leave her husband, and take her children with her. Acting on his advice, this is just what she did, and just at the time that Anne was thinking of writing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the Brontës found out the results of that action.

  In a letter to Ellen Nussey dated 4 April 1847, Charlotte reminds her friend of the story of Mrs Collins, who had been abandoned ‘to disease and destitution in Manchester, with two children and without a farthing in a strange lodging house’.14 A day earlier Martha Brown had told Charlotte that a ladylike woman wished to speak to her in the kitchen. To her amazement, it was Mrs Collins, who stood there ‘cleanly and neatly dressed as was her little girl who was with her’. In a conversation, Charlotte learned that Mrs Collins had made a new and respectable life for herself and now ran a boarding house in Manchester. In Charlotte’s words, she had ‘triumphed over the hideous disease’15 of staying with a man who did not love her and who mistreated her.

  In the tale of Mrs Collins we see more than a reminder of Mrs Huntingdon, and it was a story that chimed particularly with Anne because it was so attuned with her own opinions on this subject. The great crime against God wasn’t in leaving a husband bu
t in forcing or encouraging a woman to marry against her will. We see this in the way that the Robinson girls wrote to her for advice on the matter after she had left Thorp Green Hall, and we even hear Anne giving Ellen a warning on this subject in her letter of October 1847.

  Towards the close of the novel, Helen tries to counsel the young Esther Hargrave against marrying against her wishes to please the persistent demands of her mother. In this we see a reflection of Anne’s relationship with the young Robinsons, as well as recognising a portrayal of Mrs Lydia Robinson in Mrs Hargrave herself:

  I have seen Esther Hargrave twice. She is a charming creature, but her blithe spirit is almost broken, and her sweet temper almost spoiled, by the still unremitting persecutions of her mother, in behalf of her rejected suitor – not violent, but wearisome and unremitting like a continual dropping. The unnatural parent seems determine to make her daughter’s life a burden if she will not yield to her desires.16

  There was one character even closer to home that would have a huge influence on Anne’s novel. We see elements of Branwell in both Huntingdon and in Lord Lowborough. By this time, Anne’s brother was a hopeless addict to both drink and laudanum. Debt collectors would knock on the parish door,17 Branwell would be dragged home from the inns, threats would be made against himself and his family.

  At a time when she should have been celebrating the fulfilment of her writing dream, all hope and happiness for Anne was gone. She found the completion of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to be even more difficult than Agnes Grey, and yet she could not turn away from her promise to reveal the truth, come what may. She would often sit crying at the table, as she realised that in writing about the death of Huntingdon she was really writing about the death of Branwell that was surely to come.

  Anne’s sisters would try to comfort her and even to dissuade her from continuing the book, but she would shrug away the arm around the shoulder, and with a stern look she would silence any words on this matter. The decline in her health was plain for all to see, it was as if the act of writing the book was draining away her very life.

  Charlotte reveals her own thoughts on this in her ‘biographical notice’ of Anne:

  Hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind; it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations) as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it. When reasoned with on the subject, she regarded such reasonings as a temptation to self-indulgence. She must be honest; she must not varnish, soften or conceal.18

  Charlotte knew well how sensitive and reserved Anne could be, and yet she again failed to credit her sister’s courage and inner strength. Anne was not dejected, because she would always have the hope that her faith brought to her, and although reserved she refused to be silent when she had something to say. At last, the novel was completed, yet still she would not rest. Charlotte encouraged Anne to contact her own publisher, Smith, Elder & Co., rather than using Thomas Cautley Newby, but Anne would not hear of it. It was as if she could sense the failing of her own powers and hear time’s winged chariot approaching. No, there could be no delays. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was despatched to Newby in May 1848, and by June 1848 it was already published. What happened next was a shock to Anne, and her sisters.

  Notes

  1. The Examiner, 19 February 1848

  2. Quoted in an advert placed by Thomas Cautley Newby in The Athenaeum, 25 December 1847

  3. Atlas, 22 January 1848

  4. Gérin, Winifred, Anne Brontë, p.233

  5. Atlas, 22 January 1848

  6. Brontë, Anne, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, p.4

  7. Letter to Ellen Nussey, 4 October 1847, manuscript now held in the Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth

  8. Ibid.

  9. Brontë, Anne, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, p.12

  10. Brontë, Anne, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, p.118

  11. Brontë, Anne, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, p.378

  12. Brontë, Anne, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, p.138

  13. Ibid.

  14. Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.521

  15. Ibid.

  16. Brontë, Anne, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, p.340

  17. See, for example, Charlotte’s letter to Ellen Nussey, 13 December 1846: ‘It was merely the arrival of a Sherrif’s Officer on a visit to Branwell – inviting him either to pay his debts or take a trip to York – of course his debts had to be paid. It is not agreeable to lose money time after time in this way but it is ten times worse to witness the shabbiness of his behaviour on such occasions.’ Smith, Margaret (ed.), The Letters of Charlotte Brontë, Volume 1, p.507

  18. Brontë, Charlotte, Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell, p.5

  15

  THE BRONTË SISTERS MAKE

  THEIR ENTRANCE

  Respecting the author’s identity, I would have it be distinctly understood that Acton Bell is neither Currer nor Ellis Bell, and therefore, let not his faults be attributed to them. As to whether the name be real or fictitious, it cannot greatly signify to those who know him only by his works. As little, I should think, can it matter whether the writer so designated is a man, or a woman as one or two of my critics profess to have discovered… I make no effort to refute it, because, in my own mind, I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

  Preface to the second edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

  Thomas Cautley Newby had hardly proved to be an ideal publisher for Anne Brontë. They had delayed the publication of Agnes Grey until they thought they could make capital out of the appearance of Jane Eyre, and the published copy itself had contained errors that Anne had earlier corrected. They also failed to provide any remuneration for Anne and Emily. It was little wonder that Charlotte tried to persuade Anne to turn aside from publishers she saw as charlatans, but Anne would not hear of it. She was fatigued mentally and physically from writing the novel, and was giving it up to the world to do with as they pleased.

  Thomas Newby had been expecting a second novel from Acton Bell, and encouraged both Anne and Emily, still known to him as Ellis Bell, to return to their writing endeavours. Their first books had been moderately successful and had created some interest in the authors themselves, primarily through their association with Currer Bell. A second novel from either author would be likely to build on this initial success and generate profits for the publisher, if not for the authors themselves.

  As Newby unwrapped The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, he could not have been prepared for what he read. This was a different book to Agnes Grey altogether, a book that would make an impact on the circulating libraries and in the reading rooms of country houses. Newby may not have been a lover of literature, but he was a keen lover of money, and as he turned the pages it was as if he were turning the bank notes in his hand. There would be no delay in publishing this novel, nor any requirement for a payment towards the cost of publication. Anne was paid £25 up front, with another £25 to come once it sold 250 copies. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published with as much publicity as Newby could muster, and it soon captured the imagination of the critics and the public.

  If the reviews of Agnes Grey had been half-hearted in their praise, or even faintly damning, there were to be no half measures in the reviews of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It was a coarse and brutal book, designed to shock, a book that had no place in the hands of a person of proper character. One reviewer lamented Acton Bell’s ‘scandalous insistence on presenting scenes which public decency usually forbids’.1 The Spectator railed against the author’s
‘morbid love of the coarse, not to say of the brutal’,2 and the critic in The Rambler was even more damning, saying, ‘the scenes which the heroine relates in her diary are of the most disgusting and revolting species’3 and pronounced disgust at the way it portrayed people as animals, less than human.

  The Morning Post was confused by the difference between the sections narrated by Markham and Helen: ‘There are two portions in the book so distinct in their style that we have not any doubt they were originally separate works, if not by different hands.’4 They found the end of the novel to be ‘peculiarly pleasant, from a species of arch and piquant simplicity which is not often found in such stories’,5 but this contrasted with the section containing Helen’s diary, which was ‘not so interesting or pleasing as the rest’.6

  The reviewer for The Examiner cast a critical eye over the Bell brothers themselves:

  The Bells are of a hardy race. They do not lounge in drawing rooms or boudoirs. The air they breathe is not that of the hot-house, or perfumed apartments; but it whistles through the rugged thorns that shoot out their prickly arms on barren moors, or it ruffles the moss on the mountain tops. Rough characters, untamed by contact with towns or cities; wilful men, with the true stamp of passions upon them; plain vigorous Saxon words, not spoiled nor weakened by bad French or school-boy Latin; rude habits; ancient residences – with Nature in her great loneliness all around: these are the elements of their stories.7

 

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