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''The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'' is the second and final novel by the English author Anne Brontë. It was first published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell. Probably the most shocking of the Brontës' novels, it had an instant and phenomenal success, but after Anne's death her sister Charlotte prevented its re-publication. The novel is framed as a series of letters from Gilbert Markham to his friend and brother-in-law about the events leading to his meeting his wife. A mysterious young widow arrives at Wildfell Hall, an Elizabethan mansion which has been empty for many years, with her young son and servant. She lives there in strict seclusion under the assumed name Helen Graham and very soon finds herself the victim of local slander. Refusing to believe anything scandalous about her, Gilbert Markham, a young farmer, discovers her dark secrets. In her diary, Helen writes about her husband's physical and moral decline through alcohol, and the world of debauchery and cruelty from which she has fled. This novel of marital betrayal is set within a moral framework tempered by Anne's optimistic belief in universal salvation. ''The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'' is mainly considered to be one of the first sustained feminist novels. May Sinclair, in 1913, said that the slamming of Helen's bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England. In escaping her husband, Helen violates not only social conventions, but also English law.〔 (【引用サイトリンク】title=Anne Brontë at A Celebration of Women Writers )〕 ==Background and locations== Some aspects of the life and character of the author's brother Branwell Brontë correspond to those of Arthur Huntingdon in ''The Tenant''.〔 He resembles Branwell Brontë in three ways: physical good-looks, sexual adventures (before his affair with Mrs Robinson, Branwell is thought to have fathered an illegitimate child who died at birth), and especially in his alcoholism.〔 Another character in the novel, Lord Lowborough, has an association with opium that may also reflect Branwell's behaviour. Another possible source for ''The Tenant'' is the story of Mrs Collins, the wife of a local curate, who in November 1840 came to Anne's father Patrick Brontë seeking advice regarding her alcoholic husband's abusive conduct. Mr Brontë's counsel was that she should leave her husband. Mrs Collins returned to Haworth in the spring of 1847, while Anne was writing ''The Tenant'', and told how she had managed to build a new life for herself and her two children.〔 The Brontё biographer Winifred Gérin believed that the original of Wildfell Hall was Ponden Hall, a farmhouse near Stanbury in West Yorkshire. Ponden shares certain architectural details with Wildfell, including latticed windows and a central portico with a date plaque above. Blake Hall at Mirfield, where Anne had been employed as a governess, was suggested as the model for Grassdale Manor, Arthur Huntingdon's country seat, by Ellen Nussey, a friend of Charlotte Brontë, to Edward Morison Wimperis, an artist commissioned to illustrate the Brontë sisters' novels in 1872. However, neither Blake Hall nor Thorpe Green, another house where Anne was employed as a governess, corresponds exactly with Grassdale.〔 Linden-Car, the village that Wildfell Hall stands close to, is in Yorkshire. ''Car'' in northern dialect means pool, pond or low-lying and boggy ground. Lindenhope ''hope'' in Northeastern English means a small enclosed valley. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Tenant of Wildfell Hall」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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