The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Anne was the sixth and youngest child of Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman, and Maria Branwell, a merchant’s daughter. Her mother died when Anne was one, and when she was five, her two older sisters died of tuberculosis (then called consumption). Anne grew up with her brother Branwell and sisters Charlotte and Emily at the parsonage of Haworth in West Yorkshire, where her father was perpetual curate. Inspired by their father’s library, the four children entertained themselves by writing stories and poems set in vivid imagined worlds. While Charlotte and Branwell collaborated on the world of Angria and Glass Town, Emily and Anne invented Gondal, a fictional island in the North Pacific. While Anne’s Gondal stories have been lost, her poetry survives, and many of the poems share the theme of separated lovers who long to be reunited.

At age 15, Anne enrolled at Roe Head School in Mirfield, where Charlotte was a teacher. While there she reportedly experienced a spiritual crisis that impacted her health. Biographer Winifred Gérin has noted Anne’s belief in the doctrine of universal salvation, which was a controversial belief within the Anglican Church in which she was raised. In spring of 1839, Anne took a post as governess to the Ingham family of Blake Hall, Mirfield. She was dismissed after a few months but while there began writing “Reflections in the Life of an Individual,” early drafts of her first novel. The turbulent Bloomfield household in Agnes Grey likely captures some of what Anne observed and experienced during her time at Blake Hall.

Anne then spent five years as governess for the Robinsons of Thorp Green in Little Ouseburn. She wrote in her diary that she did not enjoy her position and wished to exchange it, but she continued with the household in large part because her brother Branwell was hired to tutor the Robinson boy. Anne left her position in 1845, and Branwell was fired shortly thereafter under accusations that he had been having an affair with Mrs. Robinson. Branwell’s inability to find future work and his search for solace in alcohol made a deep impression on Anne: The struggles of Arthur Huntingdon and Lord Lowborough with alcohol addiction in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are likely drawn to some extent from her observation of Branwell’s experience.

In 1846, at Charlotte’s suggestion, the three sisters published a volume of their poetry under the names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The collection sold poorly, but Emily and Anne had their first novels accepted for publication by Thomas Newby. When Charlotte’s novel Jane Eyre was published by George Smith in 1847 to wild acclaim, Newby hastened to publish Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey in a three-volume set, also released in 1847. All three of the novels provoked much speculation and discussion, but Anne’s novel—the quietest and most realistic of the three—was generally considered the least moving.

A greater public reaction was stirred by publication, also by Newby, of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 1848, but the family was at that time absorbed by internal crises. After a long decline and illness attributed to alcohol and opium use, Branwell died in September of that year. In December, Anne’s beloved sister Emily died of tuberculosis. Anne contracted the same disease and wrote in her diary that, while she wished to be of more use to the world, she would attempt to meet her fate with noble resignation. She died during a trip to the seaside in May 1849.

Anne’s relative obscurity after her death was due in large part to the reputation established by her sister Charlotte in a biographical note that accompanied a second edition of Agnes Grey in 1850. Charlotte described Anne’s writing as having a “sweet sincere pathos” while Emily’s writing she described as “a peculiar music—wild, melancholy, and elevating” (Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey, Wordsworth Editions 1988, p. 156). Suffering in comparison to Emily, whom Charlotte described as “fiery,” Anne was long thereafter considered the least interesting Brontë sister. However, with the advent of feminist scholarship in the later 20th century, her reputation underwent a considerable reconsideration, and both Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are now considered classics in their own right.