SOURCE: “‘A Frame Perfect and Glorious’: Narrative Structure in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall,” in Victorian Newsletter, Vol. 87, Spring, 1995, pp. 20-25.

In the following essay, Signorotti details Brontë's analysis of Victorian gender roles in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, beginning with Gilbert's narrative “appropriation” of Helen's story and concluding with the feasibility of their marriage.

Early criticism of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall focused as much, if not more, on the mysterious identity of the author Acton Bell, as on the text itself. Several contemporary critics argued that Acton Bell was simply another nom de plume for the more popular Currer Bell, while others speculated solely on the gender of The Tenant's author. In a particularly acerbic review in Sharpe's London Magazine, the anonymous reviewer decided that the “bold coarseness” and “reckless freedom of language” clearly indicated that a man...