Drunkeness, cheating, and sexual assault in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Okay, Helen's diary, um, from, uh, Wildfell Hall, A Tenant of Wildfell Hall. What do you think of Helen's diary?

Uh, it made me kind of sad at some points, um, and especially the part that we read. Um, I felt really bad for her and for Arthur too, the little one. Um, but I'm glad she finally got out of there. Even though she's lying to everyone. It's okay. Now I know. That's why she was so, like, distant from Gilbert. She's actually still married. And we don't know if Arthur has died yet, right?

The father?

Yes.

Yeah, we don't— I think he's still alive. You know, we don't— I don't think we know anything yet about that. Um, but— and maybe he— maybe it's not true that he died. I don't know, you know. What do you make of her ex-husband, and what's the woman, Annalise? Or what was the woman who he was having an affair with?

I think it's Annabelle.

Annabelle, thank you. Yeah, what do you think of those two?

Kind of disgusted me at first, and I was pretty satisfied when Mr. Loboro found out that Annabelle was cheating on him and she kind of like fell down the social ladder because her husband separated from her. Like, she thought she had all the power because she was making Helen feel bad or whatever. That was really not the case. So I thought, I thought something like that was going to happen, and I really hoped it did, honestly.

So I was struck by, um, just how nasty Annabelle was to Helen. I remember there's one chapter where Annabelle is deliberately nasty to her. Have you read things like that where, yeah, the person doing the wrong thing is deliberately mean? And I'm inclined to say it's in this case a very female thing. Does that seem—

Oh, yeah.

Have you run across accounts like that where the woman doing the wrong thing is just really mean and nasty to the other woman?

not in real-life cases like this, and not so vigorously. It was really interesting to read, honestly. So bad.

Yeah, it was something. And so I think— and what about, what do you make of the husband, Arthur, her husband? Is he just a horrible person, or did you— at what point did you think that he might be redeemable early on, or At what point was it obvious that he was kind of a hopeless, horrible person?

For me, it was pretty early on, honestly, just because I thought something like that would happen. But for me specifically, it was when he went to London for the very first time and then stayed all that time. I knew that after that nothing would be better, honestly. Um, and I knew especially after, um, they invited everyone to their house, and that's when everything the affair first started. And I got to see everyone's bad habits in real life, instead of just hearing it from Mr. Lowe— no, instead of hearing it from Arthur. So that was pretty traumatic in terms of reading the book.

What do you make of the subplot of the guy who falls in love, the other husband who falls in love with Helen? Is he a good guy, bad guy, back and forth? What do you what do you make of all that?

Honestly, I was pretty confused. I thought he was trying to be a good guy and like have good intentions and help Helen get her out of there. I thought he was too persistent, even in the beginning, because she said no, and he still kept prodding her. And then when he made her his attempt in. I forget where they were, but when he made his physical attempt, when she definitely said no, I knew that he was predatory. Maybe is not the right word, but too insistent.

Um, did she pull a knife on him? Am I correct about that?

Yeah, yeah, she did. So it was really bad.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. That's pretty bad. Uh, I would say, why would you hesitate to say predatory at that point?

Um, I only hesitated because, um, of what I thought of him before, how he was trying to be a good guy, and it hasn't really slipped from my mind yet. But yeah.

Um, yeah, I mean, he seemed like a gentleman. Too persistent, yes. But I was— I guess because I did, I also had a mental model of him as a gentleman, perhaps in love, too persistent. I was shocked when she pulled a knife, which made me think that this must be more serious. And, uh, yeah, I— for Helen to do that, I mean, my sense is that Helen is on the whole a wise woman and not rash. Does that seem fair?

Except for in the beginning of the book, in the beginning of the diary. But yes, I agree, I agree.

She made us incredibly stupid Case, you know, falling in love with Arthur, incredibly stupid.

That's what made her wise.

Yeah, yeah, pain made her wise. So yeah, we're not done with the last chapter of the book, but I want to kind of pull out, and you know, now we have Jane Eyre, we have Wuthering Heights, and we have most of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. What do you see now about how Anne Brontë How do you compare these 3 very different plotlines? Um, they all just like to have mostly bad characters, or what are you seeing about these sisters given these 3 very different plotlines?

Um, well, honestly, I think they're all pretty different. Um, Jane Eyre is probably the most lighthearted one, even though it has an insane twist, just because there's more characters who do good. I feel like, than in the other 2 books. There's only a handful of characters, at least in Helen's Diaries era, that I can name are like actually, actually good. I'm not wanting to harm Helen or Arthur or anybody. And then Wuthering Heights, I don't even need to talk about that. So, um, I would say there's 2 on the darker end of the spectrum and then one a little towards the lighter. But, um, they're all really interesting though. I really like them.

And I want to point out that when you say Jane Eyre is on the lighter end of the spectrum, by the way, it includes, uh, a crazy ex-wife who tries to burn her husband to death, who ends up jumping from a building, a burning building, to her death. He is crippled in that building. This is the lighthearted one.

For me, yeah, because, because the burning part, I mean, even though it is realistic, it doesn't seem as realistic to me because I've never experienced that. And I haven't experienced like alcoholism or whatever that extreme, but I've seen people like under the influence, so I can kind of visualize it a little more. I think that's why I put it like that.

Yeah. Also in Jane Eyre, the, the burning house burning down is sort of off you know, it's described as in the past. We don't see it live. Whereas I think one of the things that's striking about certainly this one, um, you know, I'm gonna go back to Jane Austen. With Jane Austen, there are a lot of kind of in the, in the, um, you know, drawing room people talking and the dynamics of the dialogue and so forth. I think here, and each of these, in each of the Brontë books, there's a lot of dialogue, but it Seems like in this one, the dynamics of the dialogue are especially gruesome. So, you know, the burning takes off place, but Annabelle— I'm tempted to use bad words— Annabelle being, you know, a really— You can use them. Yeah, you get the bad words I'm thinking of. To Helen, real-time nastiness, real-time vivid nastiness. Is that a fair description?

Yes, for sure.

Um, do you think, do you think that you could put up with the situation as well as Helen did, or would you be very different in a situation like that from Helen?

I would not have reacted the same way. Um, well, I don't really know how I'd react, honestly. I wouldn't, I wouldn't marry Arthur in the first place because I would respect my aunt too much. But that's okay if I were in that situation. I don't really know the— or I don't really know how common separating is. I mean, I know Will Barrow and Annabelle separated, but I don't know if the woman can initiate that because it was hard for her to leave Arthur on her own. Really hard.

No, and I think that's definitely a big part of the plot is that, you know, now it's much easier for women or men to leave each other. It was pretty easy for men to leave their wives then, but much, much, much more difficult for women, and especially women of a certain station who didn't have their own money and so forth. And so that was a major thing, is clearly, you know, she— my understanding is she doesn't hope to have a regular life. She is going to try to make it on very little money raising Arthur alone, you know, and had she not had her brother's house, the house she was raised in that her brother could put her in, she really would be stuck. And you, you can see, say, from Charles Dickens, you know, when people again fall to the bottom of society, it's a horrific life. Um, so yeah, it was tough. Uh, well, any other thoughts on Helen's diary and this far along?

Uh, well, I'm excited to see how Gilbert reacts, um, after knowing all this new information. Are you— oh, also one more thing.

Yeah.

Uh, I hated how— it seemed like it to me— I hated how Big Arthur gave Little Arthur alcohol. That was just kind of baffling to me, and it took me like a couple seconds to realize that he wasn't like giving him water or something.

Yeah.

Pretty weird.

Well, and I think that is part of the horror of Helen's situation, is that, um, she sees that Big Arthur is deliberately actively corrupting little Arthur. And presumably, not just the alcohol, but also the language and so forth. And as Helen can see that if she doesn't leave, little Arthur is going to become just as horrible a person as her father, as his father. So yeah.

Yeah.

That is sadly shocking. Are you hoping that Gilbert and Helen get together at the end? Or you don't think they should? Or you have no opinion yet?

Um, I'm kind of hoping they do because my— I mean, it seems like Gilbert's a pretty good guy and he would be a good dad to Arthur. Just for the sake of Arthur. I don't know about Helen's feelings, but, um, I think it would be a nice ending if they got together.

Even though he beat up, um, Helen's brother?

Oh, I forgot about that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I forgot about that. No, no, no, no, no. Um, I don't know.

I don't know, honestly. I think many of us always love for books to end, especially kind of romantic books, to end in marriage happily ever after, you know.

Yeah, I don't know.

But again, I think in some ways, because I think I certainly feel the hope that now that Gilbert understands Helen's situation from Helen's diary, Gilbert would more than forgive Helen. But then the question is, should Helen and her brother forgive him for attacking? Okay.

I don't think so.

Okay. Well, I mean, I don't know, in which case I look forward to reading the rest of this with you and, uh, seeing how Anne Brontë resolves all of this. Okay. All right. See you next time. Thanks. Bye-bye.