74 pages • 2-hour read
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
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Themes
The Dangers of Bad Marriages Versus Companionate Love
Marriage forms one of the novel’s key themes, with the novel demonstrating both the dangers of an unhappy match and celebrating the happiness of a truly companionate marriage. The main characters and their experiences illustrate these different forms of marital life and romantic love.
Helen’s experiences in marrying Huntingdon reveal the dangers inherent in making a bad match based on naivety or pure attraction. While Helen is warned of Huntingdon’s flaws by her aunt and others, she refuses to heed their advice, choosing instead to excuse Huntingdon’s faults and believing her influence will change him. Helen’s experiences of abuse at Huntingdon’s hands serve as a warning about the consequences of a bad match, especially for women: Due to her legal and social dependence upon Huntingdon and her own beliefs in a wife’s duties, Helen struggles to reconcile the ideal she had of marriage with the distressing reality. Likewise, Millicent’s initially abusive match with Hargrave demonstrates the dangers of giving in to a bad match due to parental or societal pressure. Women who wish to marry only to elevate their rank, like Annabella Wilmot and Jane Wilson, come to unhappy ends, suggesting that such calculations leave little room for true affection to flourish. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall therefore exposes how destructive making a bad match can be, as well as how difficult it is to escape from bad choices in an era in which women had few legal recourses.
In contrast to these bad matches, several couples demonstrate that successful marriages are based on compatibility of character, true knowledge of each other, and shared moral values. Millicent Hargrave best expresses this ideal when she hopes that her sister Esther will “never, on any account, or for anybody’s persuasion, […] marry for the sake of money, or rank, or establishment, or any earthly thing, but true affection and well-grounded esteem” (293, emphasis added). Men who choose women of good character and moral virtues enjoy happy marriages, as in the example of Lord Lowborough’s second marriage, Hattersley’s to Millicent (after he reforms), and Frederick Lawrence’s to Esther Hargrave. Marital harmony ensues when both partners recognize the other’s worth, as shown in the example of Richard Wilson and Mary Millward. They are unattractive to others, he being considered a “pale, retiring bookworm” and she “plain-looking” and “plain-dealing” (441), but they wait quietly for years until they are able to marry, proving that true affection can endure time and separation. These matches establish the ground by which the reader can judge Gilbert and Helen’s affections as built on solid foundations.
Helen’s courtship with Gilbert corrects the mistakes of her courtship with Huntingdon, demonstrating both her growth as a character and providing the novel’s most important illustration of a marriage based on companionship and genuine affection. Unlike Huntingdon, Gilbert proves that he is capable of maturity and growth, as he gradually learns how to consider Helen’s well-being and feelings instead of just his own. For her part, Helen insists that differences in rank or fortune should not divide “truly loving, sympathizing hearts and souls” (487), but she also prudently asks for a further year of courtship after their reconciliation to ensure that Gilbert’s affections will last beyond infatuation. As the protagonists come to know one another, attraction and initial passion deepen into real affection, and this kind of care for one another in a lasting companionate marriage, so the novel suggests, offers the true happily-ever-after of romance.
The Importance of Women’s Independence and Gender Equality
The novel’s focus on romance and marriage obscures an outside reality that the novel only hints at. By sheer fact of numbers, there were not enough men in Victorian England to provide a spouse for every woman. While they were by no means uncommon, unmarried women were mocked as “old maids,” figures of pity and contempt, as Eliza Millward hints to Gilbert. Separated women, like Annabella Lowborough or Helen, are considered scandalous. Esther Hargrave even uses threats of independence to frighten her mother, saying she will run away “and disgrace the family by earning [her] own livelihood” (440, emphasis added) if her mother forces her to marry. However, as the novel demonstrates, having a degree of financial independence is crucial in order to give women leverage both within their marriages and in society at large.
Helen’s early conversation with Gilbert shows how keenly she understands the flaws in a system that makes women entirely dependent on men. She also realizes the injustice of society demanding that women be compliant while men are allowed to behave as they wish. In a world where masculine aggression and dominance are deemed “manly,” a man who demonstrates a gentle nature is a “milksop”—a valuation Helen deplores, with the prizing of masculine aggression proving especially damaging to women like herself. She likewise makes the argument that girls ought not to be kept ignorant of worldly matters to preserve their innocence, but rather, like boys, should be taught self-respect and self-reliance. Helen’s mistake in making a bad match—and then suffering for it—teaches her that keeping young women ignorant and sheltered leaves them vulnerable to falling prey to manipulative men and the naivety of their own misguided passions. It is only through genuine knowledge and self-awareness, she suggests, that women can truly protect themselves and choose their partners wisely.
Helen’s experiences during and after her marriage reveal how important the principle of independence is. So long as Helen remains dependent upon Huntingdon for her and her son’s upkeep, she is trapped in an abusive cycle and left with no means of defending herself. It is only when Helen forms an escape plan based on financial self-sufficiency through selling her art that she is able to regain a measure of leverage against Huntingdon. Huntingdon’s angry reaction in destroying her paintings shows that he, too, realizes what Helen’s bid for independence means—an escape from his totalizing control over her. Unlike Millicent, who remains at the mercy of her husband’s ability to reform himself, Helen chooses to make her own way in the world and even embraces being a single parent. It is this financial and social independence that enables Helen to free herself and her son from her husband’s abuse, giving her a new chance at life and love in Wildfell Hall. Helen’s insistence on the ability of a woman to think for herself, financially support herself, and protect herself within marriage—or leave a marriage that is abusive—are the elements that feminist scholars have celebrated as unique for a Victorian novel.
The Solace of Christian Faith and Salvation
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall—and, indeed, much of Victorian literature—reveals a strong adherence to Christian doctrine. In the novel, Christian belief is both a moral imperative and a source of consolation when dealing with life’s struggles.
Helen’s faith forms a crucial part of her characterization and is the novel’s most explicit illustration of this theme. Helen demonstrates on several occasions that her belief in God and her eventual place in heaven is a comfort and a moral compass. She goes so far as to express the wish that, if her son should grow into the kind of man who pursues vice, she would rather he die young (57). As she matures within her marriage and realizes the limits of her ability to guide and influence her husband, Helen turns to prayer and expresses the hope that “God might awaken that heart supine and stupefied with self-indulgence, and remove that film of sensual darkness from his eyes” (271). Huntingdon, however, mocks her beliefs in eternal reward, saying that by her acts of Christian charity she “hope[s] to gain a higher seat in heaven” (430) instead of recognizing and appreciating her genuine care for him. He already proved irreverent early in the marriage by chastising her that she was too religious, suggesting that she should love the Lord a little less and him as her “earthly lord” more. While Helen’s Christian faith guides her in living a moral life, Huntingdon’s constant rejection of religious ethics and values leads to his destruction.
Again and again, when she is driven to emotional turmoil, Helen finds solace in her Christian faith. Helen’s joy in the birth of her son is strengthened not only by conventional maternal feelings but also by the thought that “God has sent [her] a soul to educate for heaven” (252). In one of her most painful moments, when she has learned her husband is having an affair with Lady Lowborough, Helen deals with her distress by taking comfort in the thought that God is still with her and, despite all earthly trials, she still has hope of eternal salvation (313). When she is nursing Huntingdon in his final hours and finds no reward in the effort, she reminds herself that her Christian duty “is the only comfort” she has (433). Finally, it is also her moral faith and sense of duty that helps her navigate her attraction to Gilbert in a way that, eventually, secures their mutual happiness at the novel’s end—by staying true to her religious values and beliefs, Helen has both a source of solace in difficult times and a moral guide that leads her to happiness.
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