The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Die Herrin von Wildfell Hall, englische Ausgabe
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful and sometimes violent
novel of expectation, love, oppression, sin, religion and betrayal.
It portrays the disintegration of the marriage of Helen Huntingdon,
the mysterious 'tenant' of the title, and her dissolute,
alcoholic husband. Defying convention, Helen leaves her husband to
protect their young son from his father's influence, and earns
her own living as an artist. Whilst in hiding at Wildfell Hall, she
encounters Gilbert Markham, who falls in love with her. On its
first publication in 1848, Anne Brontë's second novel was
criticised for being 'coarse' and 'brutal'. The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall challenges the social conventions of the
early nineteenth century in a strong defence of women's rights
in the face of psychological abuse from their husbands. Anne
Brontë's style is bold, naturalistic and passionate, and this
novel, which her sister Charlotte considered 'an entire
mistake', has earned Anne a position in English literature in
her own right, not just as the youngest member of the Brontë
family. This newly reset text is taken from a copy of the 1848
second edition in the Library of the Brontë Parsonage Museum and
has been edited to correct known errors in that edition.
Anne Brontë, geboren am 17. Januar 1820 in Thornton, ist die jüngste der drei berühmten Schwestern. Ihre Jugend verbrachte sie im elterlichen Pfarrhaus in Haworth. Mit neunzehn Jahren verließ sie ihre Heimat, um als Gouvernante zu arbeiten, gab diese Tätigkeit 1845 jedoch auf und widmete sich danach ausschließlich dem Schreiben. Zusammen mit ihren Schwestern veröffentlichte sie unter den Pseudonymen (Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell ) einen Gedichtband. Ihr erster Roman Agnes Grey erschien 1847, ein Jahr später folgte The Tenant of Wildfell Hall . Anne Brontë starb am 28. Mai 1849 mit nur 29 Jahren an Tuberkulose.
