In Our Time - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

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 BBC adaptation.WithAlexandra Lewis Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle (Australia)Marianne Thormählen Professor Emerita in English Studies, Lund UniversityAndJohn Bowen Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature at the University of YorkProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programs. Hello, when the Tennant of Wildfell Hall was published in 1848, critics condemned it for trail of male violence and alcoholic abuse, recommending that no woman should read it.

Anne Bronte was the author, and she saw review after review attacking her novel as too coarse. Crushing it further, her sister Charlotte wrote, At this I cannot wonder, the choice of subject was an entire mistake. And yet in recent decades this work by the youngest Bronte has taken its place alongside those of her sisters as one of the great novels in English and perhaps the first feminist novel. With me to discuss the tenant of Wildell Hall are Alexandra Lewis,

lecturer in English and creative writing at the University University of Newcastle in Australia, Marianne Thorn Mellon, Professor Emerita in English Studies Lund University in Sweden, and John Bowen, Professor of 19th century literature at the University of York. John Bowen, what do we need to know about Anne Bronte's early life? Well, Anne Bronte was born in 1820,

so she's the sixth child, so she's got four sisters and a brother of the Reverend Patrick Bronte and his wife, Maria. Patrick Bronte was born in Ireland in poverty and had fought his way up in the Anglican church. They're just about to move to Howarth, to the iconic parsonage in Howarth overlooking the Moors when she's born.

Very sadly, her mother dies before she's two years old. And a few years later, her two eldest sisters also die. So we then have the iconic family of Patrick, the four children, and their aunt who looks after them. She's the youngest and probably patronised, dominated by her eldest siblings. And then, of all the Bronte siblings, she's the one who works outside the home

and is away from the parsonage for longest. So when she's 19, she goes out to work as a governess in a family with whom she doesn't get on. It's an extremely hard life, as we know both from her novels and also from Jane Eyre. But then the following year,

she picks herself up and gets another job. And this time she stays for five. years. But it culminates in a great crisis because her brother Branwell becomes a tutor in the same family at Thorpe Green near York and conducts an affair with the mistress of the house who's 17 years older than him. And then leaves after five years clearly realizing what is happening. And then there's a great explosion in their household when Mrs. Robinson's husband finds out what's happened and Brannwell comes home. So then all the four children are back in the family home and they begin to publish, first of all their poems and then to write the great novels by which we know about

them today. Thank you. Can we move on to those unfamiliar with the story? We'd like to a brief sketch outline of the story of the Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Yes. Well, it's a romance story really about a young man called Gilbert Markham, who's a farmer, he's about 24, when Helen Graham, Mrs. Graham, Mrs Graham, a mysterious stranger, moves in to the semi-ruined Walthall Hall with her young son. And they strike of a friendship which grows into a romance that seems to be reciprocated, but she's mysterious. And he fears that she's having an affair with another man. And so he attacks him. There's then a great confrontation with Helen, in which she then hands to him her journal.

She tells him a story of her terrible marriage. She marries a man called Arthur Huntingdon, who seems very attractive, but is alcoholic, he's abusive, he has an affair in front of her, and one of his friends tries to seduce her, so she flees. And that takes us right back to where the story begins, so she's escaped from her brutal and abusive husband. And then finally, the romance between Gilbert and her, after various difficulties, is that they come together right at the end. After he has died, her terrible husband has died, unrepentant. Thank you very much and that's a good outline it's fleshed out all over the place

but that's the skeleton and thanks for that. Alexandra Lewis I said at the beginning that some of the reviews are very bad indeed how bad? Well in Sharp's London magazine the review ran so revolting

are many of the scenes so coarse and disgusting the language put into the mouths of some of the characters that the reviewer to whom we entrusted it returned it to us saying it was unfit to be noticed in our page ages, and we are so far of the same opinion that our object here is to warn our readers, and more especially our lady readers, against being induced to peruse it.

Partly, the shock stemmed from the portrayal of women as being quite superior, and even Gilbert Markham and the tone of his jealous attack on Helen's brother is critiqued by E.P. Whipple in the North American Review, who makes the observation that Markham would serve as the ruffian of any other novelist, but seems to be a favourite with this author. A particular note is writer and clergyman Charles Kingsley's unsigned review in Fraser's magazine. On the one hand, Kingsley acknowledges Act and Bell as a satirist, performing a necessary act almost of health reform for the community.

And in Kingsley's view, while it's true that satirists are apt to be unnecessarily coarse, they're often not half so coarse as the men whom they satirise. So Anne's novel for Kingsley successfully exposes foul and accursed undercurrents hidden in plain sight by smug, respectable, whitewashed English society, which must be exposed now and then. And she goes on the attack, and her preface to the second edition. It's sold, after six weeks, there was another edition came out. So she's moving fast in the shops.

She does, because the second sort of strand of Kingsley's review is that he would limit the audience for such reforming satire. He writes, the novel is utterly unfit to be put into the hands of girls. So picking up again on that critique, that coarseness, which stung Anne Bronte so much. It sold so well, despite these reviews, that the second edition appeared a mere six weeks after the first. And this is where, as you say,

we get this preface from Anne Bronte that gives us a very clear sense of a defence. She's still writing as Acton Bell, so this is an anonymous defence. She has to mount against criticism. Which of the reviews, which of the remarks cut her most? I think both the coarseness,

probably more so the coarseness, but also the sexual double standard. But particularly the coarseness, because she's emphasising in the preface that the pain of reading grim truth is necessary. And she asks, is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller or to cover them with branches and flowers? In a striking image, Bronte likens herself to a cleaning lady in a bachelor's apartment, likely to gain more abuse for the dust she raises than commend. for the clearance she affects.

And she's writing here, it's really a calling. She says, when I feel it's my duty to speak an unpalatable truth, with the help of God, I will speak it, and speak she does. What place did her sister's remark have in Anne's reaction? Well, her sister's remark, I mean, Charlotte says that the novel was an entire mistake, but some of Charlotte's remarks come after this, so certainly in the biographical preface of the sisters in 1850, and in remarks that Charlotte makes to her own publisher,

she thinks it's not even worth republishing the novel. I think this has a long historical effect on reception of the text. Marianne, what may Anne Bronte take on what turns out to be, such a bold and unattractive theme? Well, first of all, as we heard, Anne herself stated that she had a didactic purpose, and her sister Charlotte confirmed that. The purpose might be described as warning young people against the perils of addiction,

but also against vanity, thinking you know better than anyone else. There's the issue of the salvation of the soul where Anne Bronte explores the highly unorthodox notion of universal salvation, the contention that Christ died for all, so all will ultimately be saved after a period of purgation, in the case of sinners. The book also tells us, and I think this is part of Anne's purpose, that no human being can save another. We sink or swim alone, and God is the only constant helper. You mentioned Melvin that another important issue in the book is education and especially

for boys, and then, of course, the situation of women trapped in horrible marriages. We should remember that Anne set the book, main action in the 1820s before the first infant custody act of 1839 and the Matrimonial Courses Act of 1857. Divorce was in practice impossible for a woman, however badly treated by her husband. So when she ran away from her husband who abused her, who offered her to his friends and so on, when she ran away from him, she was here, and with taking the child, taking the five or six-year-old child with her, also called out the same as a her husband. She was in fact acting against the law. She could certainly have been compelled to return

to her husband with the child. Her husband had unrestricted rights to, not only to the child, but also to her. He was entitled to sexual services from her if he wanted them. Not that in this instance, Arthur Huntingdon seems terribly keen once he realizes that he can never possess all of her. So Helen's course of action is definitely illegal and it's also against a wife's duty to endure whatever suffering her husband inflicts on her. Why do you think it was such a success? Was it because of what you've been talking about or despite it? I think it's partly because of it.

It is a thrilling story. It's a cracking read. And you care about the characters and you care about what happens to them. and this is what a novelist always has to succeed in doing if we're going to keep reading. The texture of the book is rich too, Anne Bronte being a good novelist, took care over her secondary characters. Anne had a better ear for dialogue than either of her sisters. When you read the quarrels between the Huntington's spouses, for instance, sounds very modern and spot on to me. And then the tenant of Welfill Hall is in point.

what's very funny too. It's clear how spoiled Gilbert Markham is, for instance, and that's brought out in a very amusing way. You talk about Gilbert Markham. John Bone, could you tell us what part he plays a big part in this book? And if you can give us some idea of the dynamism of the man, although it might be entirely the wrong word for this man, but away you go. Yes, well, he's the narrator.

So he's, and the whole, in a way, everything comes through him in a way. and he's not a typical hero at all and as Alexander said you know that a lot of the early reviews were hostile to him but he is very subtly done I think all the things that Marianne was saying about the psychological complexity and the quality of the dialogue

he's this spoilt boy in a way by his mother who thinks that he should be able to do whatever he wants he's also satirised by his younger brother Fergus and he's also a bit gauche He's a sort of gentleman farmer isn't he? He's a gentleman farmer yeah that's what he did But he doesn't really want to be, but he's inherited this. And he's a bit gauche.

Even right towards the end, you know, she practically has to propose to him by giving him this Christmas rose, Helen does. He's kind of hanging around outside the gates of her enormous estate. And you almost feel he'd walk off if she hadn't, by chance, turned up in her coach. So he's got a lot to learn in the book, and that you see complex towing and throwing with him of emotions. Sometimes very childish. But he's a very important character in the book.

And although he is meek and mild and although he's spoiled by his mother and everybody in his house and he gets what he wants and so on and so forth, there is one scene which is so violent where he beats, as he thinks to death, the man whom he thinks is his rival. Yes, I mean, that's a very surprising and very shocking moment. I mean, it's part of the violence that's quite deep in the book.

We've already seen him kind of pinching people and doing it on a small scale. But this is shocking. And then he kind of goes back and just kind of checks on him but doesn't really care if he lives or dies. And even when he apologises, even after he's found out from Helen

that, in fact it's her brother, even then it's a pretty grudging apology. He thinks that this is his rival and he sees him putting his arm around Helen's waist and acting confidentially towards her and he thinks this is his great rival and he blows up in this almost against his own character way and attempts to beat this man to death

and he's strangely pleased to see the pallor come to his face as he lies on the ground. Yes, I mean, he thinks he's in an erotic triangle. He thinks he's in a traditional novel plot, but in fact it turns out he's in a much more interesting one, and that's what Helen tells him in her journal. Alexandra, the violence there is at it's extreme, but there's more violence as it goes along.

Could you point to some other points of it? areas of violence, not only person to person to person to object. Person to object, person to dog. There's lots of violence in this novel, various manifestations, as you've indicated, physical and emotional abuse. So it's explored in terms of class and gender and age and certainly arching across all of this, there's the extreme violence of the law. A good starting point is to note the presence of several unhappy, to put it mildly, couples

in the novel. And perhaps the most chilling reminder of what's novelist Wilkie Collins would call in 1852 the secret theatre of home, a famous phrase for us now, is the scene where Hatterasley, one of Huntington's cronies, is crushing and shaking his wife in front of a party of guests at the Huntington residence. And as he threatens to mistreat her further, Millicent quietly asks her husband to, remember, we are not at home, where what goes unseen might go unspoken. So the threat of violence looms large in this text, as well as the depiction of actual physical violence. And the abuse we see of Helen is mainly, though not only verbal and emotional,

including coercive control, manipulative behaviour, which is now rightly recognised, of course, as an insidious form of domestic violence. There's an interesting split level here because, on the one hand, the novel doesn't shy away from recording Helen's experiences and her views, and partly that's because we're getting her diary, so her most intimate thoughts, as Marianne has said, the ear for dialogue the reported quarrels and conversations in full. However, we note that there are also gaps between entries, sometimes a whole year passes. So we have the question of what sorts of violence might be occurring, as it were, off stage. Something that we do see throughout is how Huntington treats his servants and his animals. And he curses them. He calls the butler Benson an insensate

brute. He hits his favorite dog, dash and throws a book at the creature. And when the book clips Helen Huntington then threatens her with the ominous, I see you've got a taste for it. I think there might be a point of asking here, Marian, why did she marry him in the first place? She's in love for the first time, head over heels, and in fact, Anne Bronte handles this so well and with superb irony, because before Helen met Arthur Huntingdon, she spoke just like the authors of conduct books for young women, saying she'd never. love a man whose character she didn't admire and all those things. And here she is falling for a man she knows is less than upright and virtuous and making all sorts of excuses for him too. She buys into

that great female illusion, he'll change in its most egregious form, I'll change him. Physical attraction is obviously a key factor. There are all these flushes and blushes and pantings, and the ironic message is, a girl may have exalted principles dined into her by her educators, but the moment a personable male turns up, her principles fly out of the window. Plus, of course, Arthur flatters her by pretending to be in awe of her virtue and wisdom, and since she's rather vain about her goodness, she's susceptible to that sort of flattery. Can we bring in the situation in which she finds herself, which comes from the title of the tenant of Wildfell Hall?

She arrives in this just a mile outside this village. This is a great hall which is going to pieces, but a part of it has been restored. And she lives there with her son and with her servant. Can you talk about her life there and how she is protected there? And then let's bring in her brother. I think the house that she lives in is one that has got this slightly odd relationship with the world around it.

It's a world of gossip. People are very gossipy. They're very fascinated by her. They don't. They want to know all her secrets. And gradually you see the more the insidious nature of that gossip, the way that gradually becomes scandalous. And so her own background, her own backstory is very mysterious. We don't know about her father, except that he drank himself to death.

She's brought up by an aunt and uncle. Is it that she's illegitimate? What is her relationship with her brother, which seems very uncertain throughout the book? It's important that we don't know about her relationship with her brother until deep into the book, do we really? There's this elegant man of a reasonable age, keeps turning up there, and our hero can't work out who he is except to decide, not all that stupidly, that he must be a rival and someone preferred to him. Yeah, so he's, Frederick Lawrence is a very interesting and slightly mysterious figure.

We learn about him through Gilbert, who has these very hostile feelings about him, because he thinks, well, is it that Helen is a woman who's not married and yet has got a child by him? Is he, is he keeping his mistress here? Or is it that they're possible rivals to marry her? He just doesn't know any of that. And throughout the book, they have a very cagey relationship. but towards the end when he's desperate to find out what Helen is doing after her husband has died, he gets a very kind of tender, almost erotic relationship with him, in which the two men almost hold hands.

And he says, it so reminds me of her hands. So it's a very strange relationship of tension and violence and rivalry, but also affection. Marian, we'd like to tell us more about Helen, particularly her painting, paintings. What did that give her? And what does that give the book? Helen paints well enough to be a professional painter and earning money in that role, which I think is quite striking. She is accomplished enough after only having painted for her pleasure in earlier life as a girl and then as a married woman. She paints well enough to be able to sell her work and to keep herself, her son and her servant on.

those earnings. Alexandra, at the beginning of the program, we spoke at Anne Bronte being a governess. What insight, if any, did that give ideas about how you rear children? I mean, she is very keen to let us know that it's not being very well done and girls are being overprotected

and boys are being underprotected. Could you develop that? Absolutely, Anne Bronte has such a lot to say about child rearing in this text. Some of it quite controversial. course central to her interest is this sense that it isn't quite right that men should be sent out into the world to learn everything from experience, while women should be not only learning about experience secondhand, but not even that, sheltered even from reported experience.

Anne's experience as governess herself, I think, comes into place, certainly more so in her first novel, Agnes Gray. She explores the limited potential of the governess to guide or to punish unruly children. In Tenant, she's looking at a mother's role and the force of maternal love, because it's really Helen's love for little Arthur that causes her to say, that's it, that's enough, that's the point at which I must leave this situation of abuse. And it's really, I mean, Arthur is very quickly jealous of the attention his baby receives, and so he enacts a campaign of miseducation against which Helen will react. Arthur Huntington teaches his son to tipple wine like his father. You know, the child is only five, six years old to swear like Mr Hattesley and have his own

way like a man. It's an early version of what we might today call toxic masculinity. It was fairly common though, wasn't it, that toxic, what you call toxic masculinity. It doesn't excuse or anything. Just sort of gives it a context. Well, certainly the swearing, even the tippling, the tippling children having alcohol at such a young age might be surprising to us today, but there's this beautiful moment of comedy where the vicar Reverend Millwood states that Helen's denial of it tipple for her young child is criminal. He says it's contrary to scripture and to reason, to teach a child to look with contempt upon the blessings of providence, which of course, taken in the wrong light might excuse all manner of ills and indulgences. Well, I'm glad he stops her because she

puts a nematic in the drink of the poor lad. Doesn't have a great time with his wine, does he? That's what's most controversial, I think, about Helen's method of child rearing, and it plays into the wider debate about temperance and whether the goal should be abstinence or moderation, whether this should cover all alcohol or hard spirits. Anne's Father Patrick and ironically Brandwell served on the Hat with Temperance Society. So there's a broader context for this. And we see lots of offers to people of glasses of wine in the novel for medicinal purposes, which is, I think, with an ironic nod from Anne Brontea,

you know, the worst possible moment that these glasses of wine are offered. But Helen, exactly, as you say, gives an emetic alongside any alcohol, whenever Arthur is sick, so she's wanting to make him literally physically sick by what disgusts her and in that way to school him. The gossip-filled community at Lyndon Carr are very worried that this firm guidance, and it's true she barely lets Little Arthur away from her side. She is perhaps overly firm, but they're worried this will turn him into the various milk sop that ever was sopped.

Of course, the irony is that this competing model of masculinity, that of men behaving badly, figures it's debauched drunkards rather like giant babies. They're like unsupervised children playing their games at all hours, hunting, gambling, urging each other in the words of the novel to seize the bottle and suck away. So the first controversial thing really is the use of the emetic. The second is that Helen feels so passionately about her son's education into positive rather than destructive masculinity that she makes some rather startling statements

about preferring death over life, which of course speak to the true. trauma, the extent of the trauma she and her son have suffered, but she says, it would be better that he should die with me than that he should live with his father. And even more so, she says, if I thought he would grow up to be what you call a man of the world, one that has seen life and glories in these experiences, I would rather that he died tomorrow rather a thousand times. She's this great moral person. You keep saying how moral she is and how she looks up to him. And then she says that, I think that's terrible. It is. Well, it. I agree with you that it's absolutely terrible, but it goes to the heart of all that she has

experienced. It also plays into the religious aspect of Helen's motivation because for Helen, who propounds the doctrine of universal salvation, education in this world is directed not towards material success in this life, but to the smooth passage of the soul into the hereafter. So that sort of context is playing in. The flip side, I agree, that's absolutely terrible to say he'd be better off dead than a hunting, gambling, cavorting, philandering, blood spattered from the alcohol imbibing boy. You know, I'd probably rather have the alcohol imbibing boy and try and help him on his way. However, she uses certain brands of Methodist thinking about child rearing, and in some senses, they're not so deeply based in revulsion or fear as other dominant modes of

child rearing. She doesn't adhere to the popular and more punitive Wesleyan kind of Wesleyan kind of Wesley and child-rearing techniques of breaking the will through the application of the rod or the whip. She sees her views here as very much based in love. The fact that this was doesn't mean that she isn't bad, does it? Anyway, can we move on to Bramwell, please, Marianne? She has a brother who died of alcoholism when he was 31. She was very close to him, this young brother, a lot of alcohol, a lot of general degeneration, as the word was used in those days.

Can we bring him into the picture? Branwell is certainly part of the whole issue of addiction. And Charlotte emphasized that in her short memoir of her sisters, which was published alongside the reprints of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Gray. And Charlotte says explicitly that Anne had witnessed at close range the destruction of a gifted personality owing to the abuse of alcohol. And in Brannwell's case, it was opium too. We should remember, though, that Brannwell was not yet dead

when Anne wrote the tenant of Wildafel Hall, nor was his demise foreseen by the family at that point. It was such a horrible disappointment to all the sisters that Brannwell took this course, because so much had been invested in him. Branwell, the sole brother, who had had all sorts of extra teaching given to him whatever Patrick Bronte could afford to set him up in a career which would have enabled him to keep his sisters if they were to remain unmarried. But as one disappointment after another followed in respect of Bramwell,

the girls realised that they would have to keep themselves. And the only way they could do that was by teaching, which not one of them liked. The tragedy of Branwell was a catastrophe for the family in more ways than one. And it comes out in part in the Tenet of Welfill Hall. But I think we should remember that not one character in the novel is actually in any way patterned on Branwell. John Byrne, what do you think about the set around Helen's... first marriage, Helen's marriage, they set of drunken, loud,

misbehaving in the shrubbery, literally. And I hate it, I said literally then, but misbehaving in the shrubbery, and everybody else they could get their hands on, and everyone else they can get their hands on. Do you think they're grotesques? I mean, do you think they keep the balance of the novel as a realistic novel,

or they're satirical? What's going on? Well, I mean, one of them is called Mr. Grimsby, and they are a pretty grim lot on the whole. They're misogynistic, They can be violent, as Alexander was saying, you know, you come very close to violence. But I think what's so interesting about Ambronte is she's not just kind of morally condemning them simply. She's very interesting in understanding them.

So it's an analytic understanding of what masculinity is like, this kind of toxic masculinity. So she's interesting the way that they egg each other on. And she also traces different kinds of fates for them. So there's Lord Lovera who's a complete. root and drunk and a gambler. But gradually he becomes disgusted when his wife, Annabella, has an affair with Helen's husband. And then he makes a second marriage and becomes much better. Ralph Hattersley, who behaves appallingly and violently to his wife, he gradually learns from his experience. So the book is very interesting the way that people learn from their experience.

And so, yeah, they are often appalling. But I don't think they're going to be. I think she wants this to be grounded in a kind of realism. And I think the other bit where Branwell's story fits in is that, of course, he was a tutor at the same time where she was a governor's. And clearly it was a very sexually promiscuous kind of household in which, when her daughters runs off with somebody, the mistress has an affair with the tutor with Branwell himself. And so she was aware of what that kind of aristocratic world of debauchery and alcoholism and casual sexual sexual affairs was like. and I think she grounds it in a psychological realism. Charlotte was very dismissive indeed of the book,

not only saying it was a mistake, but advocating it should not be reprinted and so on and so forth. What did she not see in it? I think she had a view of Anne that was like that you might have, if you're an older sister, towards the youngest of the family, in which she was sweet-natured and morally good and so on and so forth. And I think the bravery and the courage of the book, I think she, although her own books in some ways were seen as shocking,

I think they were just too bold in terms of their portrayal of masculinity, that there's an idealisation of masculinity, I think, and of romance in, say, Jane Eyre, that I don't think there is in this book. It's more tough-minded in a way. I think that's what she felt was missing. Marianne or Aisana, which one we want to answer this, I both do. How important is the idea that this was, if not the first, near the first feminist novel? It's not wrong.

Whether it was the first is debatable. But you can certainly call it a feminist novel in that it embodies feminist concerns, position of women and not only unhappy married women, but also young girls who are coerced into marriage by terrible mothers. Feminism in the academy in the 1960, 70s and 80s was instrumental to the rediscovery of the tenant of Wildfell Hall. And I think that is one way in which we see how important feminist concerns are in the book. And yet, and yet, you know, this feminist novel appellation, when you fit an ideological screen across a literary work, you diminish the reader's pleasure and alertness to other things. And I think it's a pity to impose a reductive dimension on this rich novel.

So I have a slight resistance to that term feminist novel. But it's not wrong. If I can chime in there too. Yes, it's definitely its own kind of vindication of the rights of woman. You know, calling back to Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792. It's calling for women having same educational rights and opportunities. But I absolutely agree with what Marianne has alluded to in terms of the didacticism getting in the way, the perceived extent of didacticism has certainly affected the reception of the text,

and it is fiction with a purpose. It is designed to instruct, and it is, in my view, deeply feminist, but such are Anne Bronte's literary talents that she avoids the trap of writing from ideas. To me, she's writing deeply from character and time, intention and desire, which is all the stuff of successful fiction. She's also, to pick up on one of John's ideas, she's very interested in, has a lot of compassion for the messiness of life. So there's a desire to understand motivations for all that she wrote in frustration in her prayer book that she was sick of mankind

in their disgusting ways. There's an urgency to her writing about discovery and about understanding that isn't closed off or patronising. So yes, as an early feminist work, it's a brilliant text. Why do you think, as I said at the beginning of the program, that it was gathering support, gathering strength, gathering significance almost, if you want to use that as well in the last few years.

How has that come about? Is it because of what you've been saying on this programme? Well, I think there have been shifts in the way that Anne Bronte's work has been dealt with. To take Elizabeth Langland's book in 1989, the subtitle of her book about Anne was the other one. So that's rather framed the critical reception. But I think where we are today,

we ought not to keep saying that Anne Bronte is overlooked. I think we run the risk of perpetuating a myth. So to be able to ask these sorts of questions and think about what the novel is doing and the complexity of the work is very important. So not to keep asking, but you just take it for granted, that she's a very good writer. My impression is that Anne is now regarded as her sisters equal by people who deal with the Bronte body of fiction and also with Bronte. is biographically. So I agree entirely with Alexandra. I think there is a sense now that we can stop saying that Anne has been overlooked and has been in the shadow of her sisters all these years.

And she is coming into her own. I think it would be fair to say that she has already done so. The other thing I just add to that is I think, I mean, earlier, you know, Marianne said it's a cracking read and is a cracking read. And one reason is, you know, the way it's narrated, the way the story's told is really complex and interesting with this journal inserted within this extraordinary long letter. So you can see her also responding to Wuthering Heights, which has got lots of embedded narrators, you can see her responding to Jane Eyre too. And yet out of that, and still she's a very young novelist. She's only in her late 20s creating this really complicated story with very complicated and enjoyable humor motivations within it, while also dealing with

this very difficult subject matter of, you know, domestic violence, toxic masculinity, addiction. Alexandra? We can see even in the beginning of the 20th century, you know, the reverberations. It was British suffragist May Sinclair in 1913, spoke of the slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door against her husband reverberating throughout Victorian England.

Can you develop that a bit, please? I think that phrase is a great phrase, but many people who won't. Can you just give it a bit of context? Well, the sense in which, you know, it's part of this campaign of coercive control that he enacts against her, which sees her views on Victorian wifely duty change from saying, I will know, I have no right to complain, I do and will love him still, to actually beginning to recognise that there's something wrong

in a situation where he goes off for jaunts in London, but prevents her even from leaving the house to attend her own father's funeral. So it's this taking very bravely of a stand within the marriage before she leaves it. That is one of the feminist aspects of this text. He continues, as we know, to degrade and disrespect her, offering her sexually to any of the men. If you fancy her, you may have her and welcome. But again, she fed the horrible lurking Hargrave doesn't need a second invitation at this point, but she bravely fends him off with her palate knife.

So there are all these moments of bravery within the marriage before she even takes her leave and flees that play into answering this feminist question. And of course, the way the novel paints for us the very stark reality of a woman having no possessions but her self-possession. When he destroys all of her valuable art supplies, the reader has to realize that being a married woman in the 1820s, her things are not her own. And it's this kind of demonic scene of casting everything,

the pallets, the paint, pencils, brushes, varnish, all of it, highly flammable, into the fire and ordering the servant Benson to destroy her paintings. So the novel, I think, plays with that and plays with almost the melodrama of some of those feminist clarion calls to the reader. One thing, one scene that I love in the book is the bit where there's a chess game

between her and Walter Hargrave. And it's almost like a scene in a kind of Renaissance play, as it were. So he's over a long period of time trying to seduce her. And he's very plausible. And at one point she seems to waver and she thinks, well, you know, that would be a great revenge on my terrible husband's behavior. And she becomes desperate to win this chess go. Now, in fact, she loses it.

But it just so intensely concentrates all the emotion. And that's part of the power of the way that the book works, I think, is that in very small things, great emotion is kind of concentrated. You get it again at the end, there's where she gives. She gives Gilbert a rose, a winter rose, a Christmas rose at the moment where they come together. And I think it's not, you know, it's very lightly done symbolism, but beautifully attuned, realistic and yet at the same time carrying this great freight of meaning about their feelings and their relationships. So I think she's a very subtle novelist at times like that. I agree with that. It seems to be absolutely remarkable book, and God knows what she would have gone on to do had she lived any longer.

Yes. What do you think she would have gone on to do? Well, you think, you know, if you put in next to, say, Trollope or Dickens or Georgelia, all of whom live into their 40s and 50s and 60s, you know, to have written two novels, including what seems to be a great experimental masterpiece, that's how I think of terms of Walfel Hall, experimental in its subject matter, anticipating lots of stuff that doesn't really get into fiction until much later into the 1860s and with sensation fiction and so forth,

to have done that and to still be experimenting. You know, she would have bestowed the century, I think. I mean, if any of them had lived, if Emily or Charlotte or Anna had lived, you know, a span of 40 or 50 into their 40s and 50s, then the whole direction of the novel, I think, would have changed. They're so inventive. Do you want to have the last word on that, Marianne?

And then you, Alexandra? I agree entirely. And it's so moving that, Anne a short time before her death wrote a letter to the family friend Ellen Nussie saying that she had ideas about things she wanted to do and she hoped that she would be able to go on living in order to do them. And it's so horribly sad that she wasn't able to do that. I'm quite sure that Anne would have continued writing fiction.

I'm less sure about Emily in that regard, but we're talking about Emily in that regard, but we're talking about Anne here. And so I think John put that beautifully and there is such power, there is such vigour, there is such drive in the writing of the Brontes. Finally, Alexandra? Well, I'm not sure what she might have gone on to write, but on a lighthearted note,

we might say of this text urging as it does the kind and considerate treatment of others within the shared domestic space, including effective, if rather over-the-top homeschooling, and taking healthy moderation in all things, food, drink, leisure, it could well be the perfect lockdown read. Well, thank you very much. Marianne Thelmellon, Alexander Lewis and John Bowen,

and to our studio engineer, Charles Aspen. Next week is the Manhattan Project, the race to create the atomic bomb. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melville. and his guests. What do you regret not having said?

One thing I wish we had talked more about is the religious element in the novel because it's so important. I agree entirely with Alexandra that I'd far rather have a scapegrace of a son than a dead son, but we must remember that to Helen Huntingdon, the salvation of her soul and in due of course, her sons, is more important than anything else. And this is what a present day audience would find, will surely find hard to understand, let alone identify with. But it is so clear in the book.

Is it so clear in the book? Or is it sort of an outburst from a different part of her character that she believes this? Because as I remember, when she says that, There's no connection that she makes with the resurrection or eternal life or anything like that. She just wants to strike out in this way. I think she is mindful of the ultimate fate of her boy and concerned that vicious life would destroy his hope of eternal happiness in heaven. I think we have to face that.

And when little Arthur is just baby, she says that she's torn between two feelings. One is, I might lose him. And the other is he might live to curse his own existence. And she says that even if she were to lose him, she would then know that he would go to heaven in his sinless state. This is hard for a modern audience to understand. And I think it's quite natural for present-day readers to gloss over that, rather. But I think we should remember that to Helen, as she speaks, and in her own voice, this is her greatest concern in life. She hangs on to this hope of eternal bliss.

I think that's part of the way that the book is a novel of ideas as well as about feelings and characters, and that there's some real intellectual thinking, I think, going on in questions about salvation, questions about addiction, about the self, about education. And you can see that just how serious her commitment is to thinking these issues through in an independent way. I think that's also part of its power. And one of the things that Helen shows so clearly and realizes so clearly is that she is actually very far

from the good and happy and cheerful girl she was. There is an ethical backsliding in the book, and she puts that on record. She says that constantly dwelling on her husband's behaviour and making excuses for him has contaminated her. She's losing the kind of moral integrity that she had. I absolutely agree with Marianne's point. It's bound up in Helen's recognition that I am no angel. which on one level captures her distress at being ground down,

even as Marianne says, contaminated by Huntington's depravity. On another, it's reminiscent of Jane Eyre's famous cry, I am no bird and no net ensnars me. I am a free human being with an independent will. Because what I think Anne Bronte is playing with in terms of morality, I think the novel is asking us to rethink morality. Should morality be gendered in the way that it was? Helen has spoken of herself remaining a slave, a prisoner,

through the self-sacrificing feminine duty of Angel in the house, but this is overridden by her protective duty to her son. So although to our sensibilities, those statements about preferring death over life are very startling, we see that Helen, John said earlier, all of the various characters learn from their experience, or perhaps except Huntingdon, who doesn't. Helen certainly learns a lot and her ethical behaviour ultimately, I think, has more to do with

her individual spirituality than it does with the more limited morals of state or even religion-sanctioned propriety. So she's figuring this out and it's a complicated terrain for her. It's extraordinary the level of thought and feeling it goes into someone who is virtually self-educated like her sisters. And as John was saying, still so young. She's hardly more than a girl. Late 20s, my goodness. Yes, absolutely. And they did have this amazing writer's workshop, really.

You know, there's three of them all, you know, purely by chance, all of them at home together and all writing away. So it must have been an extraordinary circulation of ideas between the three of them. The only thing I was just going to add was about, I think Marion said that it's often quite a funny novel. And I think that's true. And I think at the beginning, Helen, you know, she laughs quite a lot.

And she laughs quite a lot at Gilbert. So you can see that there, when she's escaped from Huntingdon, that you can see her getting back her kind of wit and poise. And that, I think, is a good place that the book begins. Fine, do you think this is in any way a response to Wuthering Heights? Yes, I do. I think it is a response to Wuthering Heights because, you know, of course, the first novel, Agnes Gray, had been published alongside Weathering Heights.

Heights next to it. So two-thirds of the three volumes would be Wuthering Heights and then Agnes Gray. So it's a very odd supplement that. And yeah, there's a big house outside, you know, a smaller community and then there's a mysterious person going on there. So it's borrowing, I think, lots of things from Wuthering Heights in terms of its setting, but then taking the story in a very different direction. And it's particularly its relationship to masculinity. also in the way that the story is narrated, of course, where you get a male narrator, and then inside that is folded, I folded other, particularly a female narrator's story. So that borrows from Wuthering Heights, but also counters it as well. And the account you get of desire, sexual desire and violence, which are common to both,

you end up in a very different place with Walthell Hall from Wuthering Heights, those two Woh-H places. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to all of you, and thanks very much for taking part. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. Hello there, I'm Richard Osmond. Before you go, yes, I know you've switched off already, but in case you haven't, I want to tell you about my new Radio 4 podcast, The Birthday Cake Game, a brand new comedy quiz that poses one simple question.

Do you know how old people are? By which I mean, how old say, is Bruce Willis? Hmm. Now, I know all you're doing now is thinking about how old Bruce Willis is and not listening to me, but I can tell you each episode I'm joined by three celebrity guests who battle against each other to see how old celebrities are that week. Richard Gere. I'm still enjoying the assertion that Richard Gere has always been old. What a beautiful baby, Mrs. Gere. Unusual grey hair.

So old your baby. The winner takes home a birthday cake. A very special birthday cake from a supermarket I can't mention in the shape of an insect I can't mention. You know the one I'm talking about. So tune in to find out who comes on top and see if you can beat the players and score higher at home. That's the birthday cake game. Listen and subscribe right now on BBC Sounds.

How old is Bruce Willis?