Lindsay Williams

Literary Histories

The Victorian novel

Comparison of critical sources. Ann Bronte the Tenant of Wildfell Hall

APR0055-1516

Tutor: Merrick Burrows

27.11.2015

This essay seeks to discuss, compare and contrast two preferred sources that carried out a critique of Ann Bronte’s, the tenant of wildfell hall. In order to compile a factually based discussion, a key area needed to be focused on, namely, how social changes affected the gender roles in the early 18th century (1832-48). Furthermore detailing how the change challenged traditions and ideologies of the then rather prominent English common law, and the normative principle’s that surrounded motherhood.
The Critical sources that bear the utmost relevance to the challenging social content that the tenant demonstrated are Monica Hope Lee’s essay a mother outlaw vindicated: social critique in Ann Bronte’s the tenant of wildfell hall. Nineteenth century gender studies. (4.3), 1-12. And chapter 2 from, Macdonald, T (2015) the new man, masculinity and marriage in the Victorian novel. London: Routledge.
Both critics, attempt to dichotomise the tenant of wildfell hall in order to get representative discourse that outlines the social changes in question, moreover they seek to disclose how Bronte summarises her own personal perception of gender ideals in the regency culture, and how she displays openness and vision, as opposed to becoming a shrinking wall flower hidden in the shadows of sporadic sunlight, with a masked existence, and blind endemic to the upper-class hierarchies of society. Furthermore they offer an insight in to how the shift in social position and hierarchical relations altered the female identity, focusing on the two most significant events to ensue in a woman’s life, marriage and motherhood.
In the period that the tenant was inscribed, two separate spheres had