The Other Brontë Sister’s Buried Book

Most avid readers can name a book they believe to have been unjustly neglected. That book, for me, is Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

The youngest of the three sisters, Anne’s literary reputation was in the shadow of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre and Emily’s Wuthering Heights, both of which were published in 1847 and remain far more acclaimed. Though it was initially successful on publication in 1848, after Anne’s death in 1849 Charlotte excluded The Tenant of Wildfell Hall from the republication of the Brontës’ collected works, causing it to go out of print for several years. Charlotte’s decision had to do with the novel’s portrayal of alcoholism and domestic abuse; she wrote bluntly in a letter to her publisher that it isn’t “desirable to preserve” Wildfell Hall because “the choice of subject in that work is a mistake.”

Ironically, it’s that very “mistake” that has revived The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’s reputation in recent years. Helen, the novel’s long-suffering heroine, has become something of a favorite among feminist literary critics, who praise her for having the courage to leave her abusive husband Arthur Huntingdon, and for supporting herself and her son (named for his father) by selling her paintings. And yet, in the latter part of the novel Helen does something that often leaves readers uncomfortable: she freely chooses to return to her husband. In the 1996 TV adaptation of the novel, he kidnaps their son away from her and this prompts Helen’s return. But in the book, Huntingdon never discovers where they are hiding. Rather, Helen returns to her husband when he falls seriously ill because she sees it as her duty of charity to care for him in the final weeks before his death. No matter the audience, Anne Brontë always ends up ruffling feathers: too scandalous for the Victorians, not progressive enough for contemporary readers.

While I agree that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall raises very important questions about alcoholism, domestic abuse, and female education, I read the novel from a different perspective altogether. I see Anne Brontë’s literary work as grounded in her Christian faith.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a testament to God’s unfailing gift of redemption. Anne’s own brother, Branwell Brontë, was an alcoholic, and likely the inspiration for Huntingdon. Just as Helen continues to pray for her estranged husband’s soul to the point of his death, so Anne never lost hope that her brother could be redeemed. After the publication of her novel, she corresponded with the Reverend David Thom, who, like her, came to believe in the controversial doctrine of universal salvation, describing it to him as a “consoling creed.”

Landscape near Haworth, West Riding, Yorkshire, where many of the Brontë sisters’ novels are set. Photograph by Luise Berg-Ehlers / Alamy Stock Photo.

One doesn’t have to share Brontë’s belief in universalism to agree that hope for salvation, down to the very last moments of a person’s life, is key to the Christian faith. In fact, Helen’s decision to return to nurse her abusive husband only makes sense in the light of Anne Brontë’s rich exploration of salvation, as well as of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.

Faith is the theological virtue that comes easily for Helen. She never wavers in her belief that God exists and that he is good, even in the darkest moments of her marriage. Helen would have been considered particularly devout among the cultural Christians of Victorian England. Her genuine faith is in stark contrast to her husband’s understanding of religion, which for him consists of nothing more than irregular church attendance.

Once Helen has returned to live with Huntingdon, toward the end of his fatal illness, he begins to contemplate death with fear, wondering “What is God? – I cannot see Him or hear Him. – God is only an idea.” Helen knows that for someone like her husband, who has never given much thought to religion, defining and understanding God is “overwhelming,” so she urges him to fix his mind “on Him who condescended to take our nature upon Him, who was raised to heaven even in His glorified human body, in whom the fulness of the Godhead shines.” Looking to Christ to grow in her faith is likely what Helen has been doing all her life.

The remaining two theological virtues present more challenges for Helen. She ardently wishes to practice charity, but she’s misguided by an underdeveloped understanding of hope.

In her youth, before her marriage, Helen has the naive confidence that a person’s vicious character can be reformed through sheer willpower on her part. During her courtship, Helen’s aunt insightfully asks her if she thinks she can change Arthur Huntingdon, who has already started to show tendencies to be thoughtless, manipulative, and selfish. “The worse he is, I suppose, the more you long to deliver him from himself,” Helen’s aunt guesses. “Yes, provided he is not incorrigible – that is, the more I long to deliver him from his faults.” The trouble is that Huntington has shown no signs of wanting to reform his character. Helen marries him knowing that he is irreligious and prone to drinking too much. She’s relying on the hope that she, not God, can change him.

Her charity is misplaced not because it’s inherently wrong to try and help someone who doesn’t want to be helped (though marriage is an especially poor vehicle for such a mission), but rather because, if we do so, we must remember that only God can ultimately deliver that person from his faults. No single human being can do that. We can pray, and we can offer help, but the power of reformation is not ultimately in our hands.

This brings us to hope, the virtue that Helen misunderstands the most, which in turn leads her to struggle to practice charity. In Self, World, and Time (2013), theologian Oliver O’Donovan speaks of two perceptions of the future: “anticipation,” which is “founded on the present,” and “hope,” which is founded on promise. Anticipation is based on the conceivable likelihood of something occurring. But hope, O’Donovan continues, “is not a heightened form of anticipation. It responds to [God’s] promise, presumes on a future that is absolute.” While hope doesn’t “imply total darkness,” it is, for O’Donovan, “the severest purgation of our knowledge.” In other words, hope has an eschatological dimension. We hope in God’s promise of perfect love and happiness in heaven, but this is not based on a clear view of how that future is to be brought about. When we practice the virtue of hope, we trust in God’s providence regardless of – and sometimes in spite of – the knowledge at hand.

Helen begins her marriage by conflating anticipation with hope. She expects to be able to exert enough influence on her husband to make him more virtuous, but when he becomes increasingly more debauched, leaving her and their child for long periods to spend his time in London gambling and drinking, she looks back at her initial confidence as “delusive hope.” In O’Donovan’s terms, however, it would be more accurate to refer to this as “deluded anticipation.” Hoping for her husband’s redemption through God’s grace makes sense. But anticipating that a dissolute man will, in the absence of a true conversion of heart, grow more virtuous simply through her efforts is indeed delusional.

Over time, however, Helen learns the true meaning of hope. After leaving her husband, she seeks refuge in the village where her brother, Frederick Lawrence, lives, pretending to be a widow to keep her secret. There, she meets and falls in love with Gilbert Markham, eventually revealing the truth of her tragic marriage to him. Having now been unhappily married for several years, she no longer anticipates being able to reform her husband or finding earthly happiness. She advises Gilbert that they should no longer meet each other, because there is no prospect of ever being able to marry. The separation is unbearable for Gilbert, but Helen, though distressed, is hopeful of meeting again in heaven.

Gilbert would have benefited from reading O’Donovan: he confesses to Helen, contemplating heaven, that “earthly nature cannot rejoice in the anticipation of such beatitude.” He’s right. We can’t rejoice in the anticipation of beatitude because, in O’Donovan’s terms, heaven is not something we can understand through anticipation, but rather it can only be accessed through hope, which in turn requires the virtue of faith. Helen understands this. She admits that she can’t imagine preferring “the joys of heaven” to “earthly pleasures,” but this doesn’t surprise her, because, she tells Gilbert,

We are children now; we feel as children, and we understand as children; and when we are told that men and women do not play with toys … we cannot help being saddened at the thoughts of such an alteration, because we cannot conceive that … though our companions will no longer join us in those childish pastimes, they will … mingle their souls with ours in higher aims and nobler occupations beyond our present comprehension, but not less deeply relished or less truly good for that, while yet both we and they remain essentially the same individuals as before.

What causes such deepening of hope in Helen? In the first years of her marriage, Helen’s prayer life is primarily petitional. She prays and prays that her husband will finally cherish her love and end his destructive behavior. Then, she discovers that he has been serially unfaithful to her. The proof of Huntingdon’s utter disregard for their marriage vows is now incontrovertible, but it’s in this moment of despair that she also discovers the necessity of integrating prayers of petition with prayers of adoration, as she recounts in her diary:

My burning, bursting heart strove to pour forth its agony to God, but could not frame its anguish into prayer. … Then, while I lifted up my soul in speechless, earnest supplication, some heavenly influence seemed to strengthen me within: I breathed more freely; my vision cleared; I saw distinctly the pure moon shining on, and the light clouds skimming the clear, dark sky; and then I saw the eternal stars twinkling down upon me; I knew their God was mine, and He was strong to save and swift to hear. “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,” seemed whispered from above their myriad orbs. No, no; I felt He would not leave me comfortless: in spite of earth and hell I should have strength for all my trials, and win a glorious rest at last!

Helen first resorts to what is most familiar to her, petition, as she lifts her eyes to the night sky in “earnest supplication.” But then she notices the grandeur of God in the “pure moon,” the “light clouds,” and the “eternal stars.” Helen is taken out of her herself and of her own tribulations, and she begins to contemplate the splendor of the natural world, God’s creation. Nothing has changed in her material circumstances, but this moment of adoration has given her the strength to endure her trials.

As Helen’s understanding of the virtue of hope deepens, and as she expands her conception of prayer beyond petitional prayer to include prayer of adoration, she also learns to practice charity in its truest sense. Helen has now left Gilbert and Wildfell Hall to return to her ailing husband. On his deathbed, he asks Helen to pray for him for the first time in their marriage. “I do pray for you,” she cries gravely, “every hour and every minute, Arthur; but you must pray for yourself.” It’s left unclear whether he does pray and ask for forgiveness, as his final words become unintelligible. And yet, Helen writes to her brother, “thank God, I have hope.” Helen is hopeful because she knows that, even at the last moment of her husband’s life, redemption remains possible. Although she prays for him, she also compels him to pray for himself, because she now knows that charity involves reminding our fellow humans that we must love God above all others, and that without his aid, no one else can save us.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ends with Helen marrying Gilbert and building a new life for herself and her son. It’s a deeply satisfying ending, but that’s almost beside the point. Anne Brontë’s novel is not really about virtue being rewarded with earthly happiness. Rather, it’s a novel about accepting God’s love and being open to his plan for our salvation. By growing in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, its heroine Helen grows in turn in her love of her creator, becoming confident that God loves her, even in the darkest moments of her life.