On Charlotte Brontë's Suppression of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë.

Of the three iconic Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, it is no secret that Charlotte is the most well-known, and her work the most celebrated. Part of this is because she lived the longest, and was even able to enjoy some literary fame in the final years of her life. Between them, the three sisters wrote seven novels. Charlotte wrote four: Jane Eyre (1847), Shirley (1849), Villette (1853), and The Professor (1857) Emily only one, Wuthering Heights (1847), and Anne two: Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) Unfortunately, none of the sisters (nor their brother Branwell) survived past their fortieth birthday. Branwell died in September of 1848 aged 31, with Emily and Anne quickly following in December of 1848 and May of 1849, aged 30 and 29, respectively. Charlotte lived for another six years, dying on the 30^th of March 1855, just three weeks before her 39^th birthday.

The Brontë sister painted by their brother Branwell, c.1834. From left to right: Anne (14), Emily (16), and Charlotte (18)

Anne, despite writing two novels, more than her sister Emily (whose work I also love), is by far the least known of the Brontë sisters. For many years, it has been a well established fact that Anne’s eldest sister Charlotte, suppressed the republication of Anne’s magnum opus, The Tenant of Wildfell, a year after her untimely death. Unfortunately, this fateful decision of Charlotte’s has thus caused enduring damage to Anne’s literary reputation as her work effectively sunk into oblivion for many years. The question is then, why? Why did Charlotte intentionally suppress her sister’s work? What prompted this seemingly strange choice? Charlotte has received a lot of flak, with people accusing her of sabotaging her dead sister’s literary career. In today’s post, I am going to discuss Charlotte’s decision to suppress the republication Wildfell Hall, and share why I believe she did. Charlotte is my favourite of the Brontë sisters, she is my all-time favourite writer. I feel that she understands me better than anyone else – living or dead. Therefore, I shall endeavour to defend her in this post, providing possible explanations for decision, but this does not negate my adoration for Anne and her two novels.

As Charlotte lived the longest, and was able to enjoy some literary fame, her works are the most celebrated, and her life the most well-known of the Brontë sisters. Her slightly longer life also meant that she was able to control (to some extent) the republications of her sister’s novels and their public reputations, which is exactly what she does in the Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell (1850). The literary careers of the Brontë sisters really took off in late 1847 when Jane Eyre appeared on the literary scene in October, followed by Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights that December. Although they previously had a collection of their poetry published, it is their novels that truly led to their fame. In order to publish their work and protect themselves from bias, the sisters adopted male pseudonyms, a decision explained by Charlotte in Biographical Notice:

We had very early dreamed of one day becoming authors […] Averse to publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. [….]we did not like to declare ourselves women – we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward a flattery, which is not true praise.

The sisters remained in anonymity from the autumn of 1847 to July of 1848, when people began to suspect that the Ellis brothers were in fact a single person. Alarmed by this hypothesis, Charlotte and Anne hastened down to London, walking ‘four miles in the pouring rain and caught the train to Leeds, and from there took the night train to London. Emily was having no part in this rash adventure, and Patrick Bronte [their father] does not seem to have been consulted or informed.’ (Claire Harman, p.254) It was there in London that they met their publisher, George Smith, who was stunned to see these two country women claiming to be the Bell brothers who had written these ‘coarse’ novels that were the talk of the town. As they had predicted, the revelation of their womanhood did in fact lead to an influx of misogynistic reviews. In a letter dated from August 1849, Charlotte discusses some of the disparaging views of Jane Eyre. One critic wrote: ‘if “Jane Eyre” be the production of a woman – she must be a woman unsexed. In that case, the book is an unredeemed error and should be unreservedly condemned.’ In the same letter, she also discusses the poor reviews of Emily and Anne’s work (bear in mind they had both already died by this point, Anne just three months prior), writing:

 to hear myself praised beyond them was cruel – to hear qualities ascribed to them so strangely the reverse of their real characteristics was scarce supportable – it is sad even now – but they are so remote from Earth – so safe from turmoil – I can bear it better.

This context is vital when considering Charlotte’s decision to suppress Wildfell Hall because it provides insight into contemporary perceptions of female writers, which can offer an explanation for Charlotte’s decision.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:

 My relationship with the Brontë sisters started back in 2019 when I was sixteen and I read Jane Eyre for the first time. I was aware that there were three Brontë sisters, but the only Brontë,  novels I had heard of were Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. When I finally read Anne’s magnum opus, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in 2020, I was blown away, and could hardly believe that Anne was not as well known as her sisters. I have now read all seven of the Brontë novels, and although Jane Eyre is my favourite, and I imagine it always will be, Wildfell Hall is by far the most overtly feminist, and this is what blew me away. Wildfell Hall was Anne’s second and final novel, published in June of 1848, just six months after her debut novel Agnes Grey which also contains feminist elements. In Wildfell Hall, Anne’s feminism emerges immediately, right from the preface, in which she writes:

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive why a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured from writing anything that would proper and becoming for a man. (June 22nd, 1848)

Wildfell Hall is a startlingly progress novel for the early Victorian era. It tells the story of a young woman, Helen Graham, who finds herself trapped in an abusive marriage to a man named Arthur Huntingdon. At the end of her tether and out of fear for their son’s future, Helen flees in the middle of the night with her little boy and resides in Wildfell Hall under the name Helen Graham – her mother’s maiden name. While there are feminist elements in Jane Eyre and Villette in particular, in Wildfell Hall, Anne overtly attacks the oppressive political structures that perpetuate women’s subordination, in a way that Charlotte and Emily do not.

Helen is a woman with an imperishable will, as seen when she says: ‘I was determined to show him that my heart was not his slave, and I could live without him if I chose.’ (chapter 24) When Helen’s husband commits adultery with Lady Annabella Lowborough, Anne also explicitly addresses the sexism of contemporary divorce legislation which allowed men to obtain divorce, but not women, meaning that they were legally enfettered to their abusive husbands. Helen reveals the affair to Lord Lowborough, and tells him: ‘you will be as calm as I am now – and far, far happier, I trust, for you are a man and free to act as you please.’ (chapter 38) Meaning that his manhood grants him an exit ticket from his marriage now tainted by adultery, but Helen, being a woman, cannot do the same. Wildfell Hall addressed contentious issues in a way no other novel had, especially from a female perspective. To say Anne was ahead of her time would be a gross understatement.

Charlotte on her sisters: drawing on The Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell and her letters.

When questioning why Charlotte suppressed Wildfell Hall, I think it is important to consider the personal relationship that she had with each of her sisters, her respective perspectives of them, and how this influenced how she viewed their work. Emily is often thought of as an enigma; a deeply introverted woman who loathed other humans, rarely venturing past the desolate Yorkshire moors. As aloof as she may have been, she seemed to have possessed a strong constitution which was observed not just by Charlotte, but others who knew her. Despite her ostensible dislike for straying away from her home on the moors, she did accompany Charlotte to Belgium in February of 1842, where they stayed at a Pensionnat run by Monsieur and Madame Heger. When Elizabeth Gaskell interviewed Monsieur Constantine Heger for her posthumous biography of Charlotte, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), he claimed that Emily had a level of logic that was

 unusual for a man, and rare indeed for a woman. She should have been a man – a great navigator. Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty; never have given way but with life. (chapter 11)

He also revealed that Emily was ‘egotistical and exacting compared to Charlotte, who was always unselfish; and in the anxiety to make her younger sister contented, allowed [Emily] to exercise an unconscious tyranny over her.’ From this character analysis of Emily, it is clear she had a fiery and determined spirit, with the ability to be intimidating and appear formidable. It is just the kind of disposition one would expect to be behind the volcanic passion of Wuthering Heights. It is a shame that Constantine Heger never met Anne because it would be interesting to know his perspective on her position in the sisterly dynamic.

In the Autumn of 1850, Charlotte revisited the novels of her sisters and wrote The Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell, where she endeavoured to further protect the reputations of her deceased sisters from the slanderous reviews of their work. It is this notice that really illuminates Charlotte’s respective relationships with her sisters. Much like Mr Heger, Charlotte saw and understood Emily’s fiery spirit, and she placed much more confidence in Emily’s abilities than her own:

One day in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS volume of verse in my sister Emily’s handwriting. Of course I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse: I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me, – a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write. I thought them condensed and terse, vigorous and genuine. To my ear, they had also a peculiar music – wild, melancholy, and elevating. […] it took days to persuade her that such poems merited publication.

Charlotte also reveals that Anne too had been writing poetry, and describes her poems as having ‘a sweet sincere pathos of their own’. Charlotte does not elaborate on her thoughts regarding Anne’s poetry, so it can be inferred that they did not spark the same interest as Emily’s. Initially, Emily was reluctant to have her poetry published, but after some sisterly persuasion, she agreed. It was Charlotte who expressed the utmost confidence in her literary abilities long before she put pen to paper for Wuthering Heights. In preparation to write Biographical Notice, Charlotte reread Wuthering Heights, and recounted the experience to her literary advisor:

I am likewise compelling myself to read it over for the first time since my sister’s death. Its power fills me with renewed admiration – but yet I am oppressed – the reader is scarcely ever permitted a taste of unalloyed pleasure – every beam of sunshine is poured down through black bars of threatening cloud – every page is surcharged with a sort of moral electricity; and the writer was unconscious of it. And this makes me reflect – perhaps I am too incapable of perceiving faults and peculiarities of my own style. – Letter dated 27/09/1850 to W.S Williams.

Using this letter excerpt, it is undeniable that Charlotte both admired and approved of Wuthering Heights that triggered a feeling of ‘renewed admiration’ for Emily. The question is then, why didn’t Charlotte extend these praises to Anne and Wildfell Hall?

When researching the Brontë sisters, it is abundantly clear that Charlotte had very contrasting opinions of her two sisters. As explored, she had supreme respect for Emily, not just because of her literary proficiency, but for her strength of mind and character. However, with Anne, her opinion is almost entirely different. Referring back to Biographical Notice, Charlotte wrote of Wildfell Hall:

The choice of subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the writer’s nature could not conceived. The motives which dictated this choice were pure, but, I think, slightly morbid. […] hers was a naturally dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind: it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations) as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it.

In this excerpt, there is none of the ‘renewed admiration’ that Charlotte had for Emily. Instead, Anne is infantilised and depicted as a tormented woman. Although cutting, this was written in order to save Anne from the criticism of Wildfell Hall. There is hypocrisy in this statement though, because Charlotte also had a ‘dejected nature’, and was deeply affected by things she observed from her surroundings. In fact, out of the three sisters, Charlotte’s works are the most autobiographical.

Furthermore, in a heartbreaking letter written by Charlotte on the 4^th of June 1849, she discusses the deaths of her sisters, and once again, her contrasting statements are very illuminating:

You have been informed of my dear Sister Anne’s death – let me now add that she died without severe struggle – resigned – trusting in God – deeply assured that a better existence lay before her. Her quiet – Christian death did not rend my heart as Emily’s stern, simple, undemonstrative end did – I let Anne go to God and felt He had a right to her. I could hardly let Emily go – I wanted to hold her back then – and I want her back hourly now – Emily’s spirit seemed strong enough to bear her to fullness of years – They are now both gone […] Papa has now me only – the weakest, puniest – least promising of his six children.

From this letter, it is clear that Charlotte believed Emily to be strongest of the three of them by far, and this is what made her death particularly unbearable and shocking. This is not to suggest however, that Charlotte was unmoved by Anne’s death, for her grief and heartbreak are palpable, but she clearly felt it much easier to accept Anne’s death over Emily’s because she felt Emily was the strongest, which is not an unreasonable way to feel.

Juliet Barker, in her seminal biography The Brontës, writes ‘curiously too, Charlotte seems to have formed the odd impression that Anne was glad to die’, and goes on further to say ‘Perhaps subconsciously Charlotte felt that Anne’s early death was not as tragic as Emily’s, or even Branwell’s, because there was not the same sense of unfulfiled promise. Since she could not admit this feeling, even to herself, she found acceptance of Anne’s death in believing that her sister was glad to die.’ (p.704) I think it incredibly unfair to assert that Charlotte was less saddened by Anne’s death in comparison to those of Emily and Branwell, but is even more unfair to suggest that this is because Charlotte saw less literary fulfilment in Anne’s future, as it implies that Charlotte reduced her siblings down to their literary merits and legacies. While it is clear that Charlotte felt that Emily was destined for greatness from her girlhood, and had much more confidence in her abilities than her own and Anne’s, hence describing herself as ‘the least promising’, it is beyond unfair to suggest that Charlotte’s opinion of Wildfell Hall prevented her from grieving Anne’s death in the way she did Emily’s. While Charlotte clearly did think Emily stronger, Anne was the last of her siblings to die, so I do think it possible that she convinced herself that Anne was happy to go in order to lessen the unimaginable pain of losing her final remaining sibling and writing companion. Also, Anne and Emily treated death very differently. Emily fought death, and refused all medical treatments and advice. Anne however accepted her terrible fate and did all she could to extend her life and quell her earthly suffering. Both Emily and Anne suffered in their final moments, as did Charlotte when her time came in 1855. I hope the three of them have found the eternal peace that eluded them on earth.

Anne was often infantilised by Charlotte, there is no denying this, but I do not think this came from a place of malice, though this infantilisation did contribute to the suppression of Wildfell Hall. Anne was the youngest of the Brontë family, so I think an element of infantilisation is inevitable with her because no matter how old she would have been, she always would have been the baby of the family. Barker notes how Patrick also infantilised Anne, and this is what had made him reluctant to send her to school: ‘All her life [Anne] had been the cherished and protected “little one”, the baby of the family who was always spoken of in more than ordinary affection.’ (p.275) Going by this then, I do not think it unreasonable nor implausible to suggest that Charlotte, particularly after becoming the eldest sibling after the untimely deaths of Maria and Elizabeth, observed Patrick’s infantilisation of Anne and copied him.

A sketch of the 13 year old Anne Brontë done by Charlotte Brontë.

Over the years, there have been many theories about what exactly prompted Charlotte to suppress Wildfell Hall. Many argue it was a decision motivated by Charlotte’s jealousy towards Anne, but I do not feel that this is entirely plausible. If Charlotte’s decision did stem from jealousy, then why did she only target Anne, and why only one of her novels? If Charlotte wanted to attain the most fame, then why did she not suppress Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey as well? It is, I believe, vital to remember that Biographical Notice was written in 1850, and by this time, Charlotte was virtually alone in the world. At just 34 years old, her life had been one characterised by grief and loss. Firstly, she lost her mother, Maria Brontë, at the tender age of five, then a few years later she lost her two elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth to consumption which they contracted at Cowan Bridge school, consequently making Charlotte the eldest at age eleven. Then, in her adulthood, she lost her Aunt Branwell who was a substitute mother to her. This was a tremendous loss for Charlotte which was only compounded six years later as her three remaining siblings succumbed, in rapid succession, to consumption between September of 1848 and May of 1849. Although she still had her father, Patrick Brontë, and close friend Ellen Nussey, she lost people she had the closest bonds with. So, by 1850, the severity of Charlotte’s grief is nearly incomprehensible. From their girlhood and the days of Angria and Gondal, the Brontë sisters cherished the dreams of becoming published authors, and though their literary dreams did come into fruition, Emily and Anne did not live to enjoy their literary success with Charlotte. To have spent years sharing a dream with her sisters to have to someday experience that very dream alone would have been enormously painful for Charlotte.

As a teenager, Emily wrote of the futures of herself and her siblings in a heartbreaking diary entry:

Anne and I say I wonder what we shall be like and what we shall be and where we shall be if all goes on well in the 1874 – in which year I shall be in my 57 year, Anne will going in her 55^th year, Branwell will be going in his 58^th year And Charlotte in her 59^th year. Hoping we shall be well at that time.

Unbeknownst to the young Emily, neither she nor her siblings would be lucky enough to live to the year 1874. Similarly, Anne wrote of her future in a diary entry dated from 1844:

I wonder how we shall be and where and how situated on the thiryeth of July 1848 [Emily’s birthday] when if we are all alive Emily will be just 30, I shall be in my 29^th year, Charlotte in her 33^rd, and Branwell in his 32^nd, and what changes shall we have seen and known and shall we much changed ourselves? I hope not – for the worse at least – I for my part cannot well be flatter or older in my mind than I am now – Hoping the best, I conclude Anne Brontë (Harman, p.197)

July of 1848 would have been the last happy time for all four siblings, as Branwell would die just two months later, and Emily and Anne shortly after.

Charlotte clearly felt protective of Anne, feeling her to be vulnerable. Therefore, rereading Wildfell Hall and its disparaging reviews portraying Anne as coarse and disturbed, must have been all too painful for her – much more so than any reviews of Wuthering Heights. Therefore, I believe that her decision to suppress the novel stemmed from her immeasurable grief and desire to protect the reputation and honour of baby sister that were being called into question by literary critics and the wider public. I cannot imagine how distressing it must have been for Charlotte to hear such harsh words used to describe her sister who was no longer around to defend herself. I do, however, think that had Emily written Wildfell Hall, Charlotte would have felt differently about it. It seems almost certain that Charlotte felt that Emily, because of her strong and stoic character, would have handled condemnation of her work better than the ‘gentle’ Anne. Charlotte’s reviews of Wildfell Hall are a classic example of an ad hominem response because she refers to Anne’s apparent delicate character, rather than the literary qualities of the novel, and it is this which has led me to think that had Emily written Wildfell Hall, it may not have been suppressed or would not have been so shocking to Charlotte.

 Thinking more about argument that Charlotte acted out of jealousy, I feel this would be more plausible had she suppressed all of her sister’s novels after their passings, or if her own novels had been unsuccessful – but this was not the case. Jane Eyre was successful, so much so that Charlotte was able to enjoy some literary fame during her final years. In November of 1849 Charlotte made her first solo trip to London, and it was on this trip that she became acquainted with her literary hero, William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair (1847). In 1850, she had portrait done by George Richmond, and even had an offer from notable Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais who greatly admired her. While I do reject the assertion that Charlotte acted out of malice or jealousy, I do think that she tended to underestimate Anne, perhaps because she was the youngest of the family. Anne may truly have been ‘gentle’ and sensitive, and her life may have been tinged with ‘religious melancholy’, but it still certainly takes a daring and fiery spirit to produce a novel like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and its aforementioned preface at a time where women were still almost entirely disenfranchised. Perhaps Charlotte did not see Anne’s fiery spirit in the way she did Emily’s, or perhaps Anne’s was more subtle. Either way, I do imagine that Charlotte was shocked to read Wildfell Hall, irrespective of the views of literary critics, because it challenged how she viewed her baby sister who she saw as ‘milder and more subdued’ with ‘quiet virtues’. She approved of Agnes Grey, writing in a letter that she much preferred it to Wildfell Hall. She also enjoyed Anne’s poetry, even if she believed Emily to be the strongest poetess of the three of them. Adelle Hay, in her biography of Anne titled Anne Brontë: Reimagined (2020), recounts a humorous incident that occurred during Anne’s time as a governess at Blake Hall: ‘after a particularly long day of unpleasant behaviour on behalf of the children, Anne tied them to a table leg so that she could get on with some writing.’ (chapter 1) Although a small detail, I do think it is interesting to think of when considering Anne’s temperament. Tying insolent children to a table leg seems like something Emily would have done! Even if Anne was ‘gentle’, this incident shows that even she had her limits and was capable of asserting some authority and that she too had her limits.

Although Charlotte’s decision to suppress Wildfell Hall was not one that stemmed from malice, it caused long term damage to Anne, but not in the way that Charlotte expected. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so it is very easy for people in the twenty first century do condemn Charlotte for what she did, but her cultural context must be considered. Charlotte was living in an epoch where female novelists were met with hostility, and their work was judged based on their femaleness and not its literary merits. Never could the Brontë sisters have imagined a world in which women are free to openly write novels about whatever topics they see fit, and publish them under their own names. Anne Brontë courageously wrote a novel that confronts what were incredibly taboo topics such as marital abuse, alcoholism, divorce, and single motherhood during a time period long before women even gained the right to vote. If Charlotte Brontë could not have envisioned a time period where women could vote, then she certainly could not have envisioned one where a novel like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall would be openly embraced, nor a world where women can obtain divorce and leave their abusive husbands. The Biographical Notice ends with Charlotte stating:

This notice has been written, because I felt it a sacred duty to wipe the dust off their gravestones, and leave their dear names free from soil.

This tells us that it was never Charlotte’s intention to do wrong by either of her sisters, even though she inadvertently did so with Anne. We will never know everything that was on Charlotte’s mind when she chose for Wildfell Hall to not be republished, but I think it does both Charlotte and Anne a disservice to suggest that she was motivated by jealousy. I do not wish to place Charlotte on a pedestal, for she was a flawed being like the rest of us, but I truly believe she did not act out of malice. Had the Victorian era been kinder to female novelists, or just women in general, then Charlotte’s attitude would have been very different.

Fortunately, Anne’s reputation does seem to be catching up with those of her sisters, as The Tenant of Wildfell Hell is now acclaimed as a proto-feminist novel, with many arguing that she actually the most radical of her sisters (a statement I do not disagree with). Although Charlotte is my favourite of the Brontë sisters because of how much her work resonates with me, there is no denying that the three them were each immensely talented and paved the way for their literary successors. I think that the three of them would be incredibly proud of their legacies and the progress that women have made, it is only unfortunate that they are not around to witness and relish in it.

Thank you reading.

‘For my part, I am free to walk on the moors – but when I go out there alone – everything reminds me of the times when others were with me, and then the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary – saddening – My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne’s delight, and when I look around, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it – now I dare not read – and am driven to often wish I could taste one draught of oblivion and forget that. While my mind remains, I shall never forget.’

– Charlotte Brontë, A letter dated 22/05/1850.

Bibliography:

Barker, Juliet The Brontës (Great Britain, Abacus, 2010)

Brontë, Anne, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (London: Penguin Books, 1985)

Brontë, Charlotte, The Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell (1850)

Brontë, Charlotte Selected Letters ed. Margaret Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

Claire Harman, Charlotte Brontë: A Life (London: Penguin Books, 2016)

Gaskell, Elizabeth, The Life of Charlotte Brontë  (Hero Press)

Hay, Adelle, Anne Brontë: Reimagined (Salford: Saraband, 2020)