The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

I love Victorian Lit.  I love stories with female protagonists.  I love female writers.  I love Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.  And yet, an ill-timed - and ultimately deeply unsuccessful - attempt to broach Villette whilst on a road trip through Andalucia a few years ago prevented me, until recently, from attempting any of the other of the lesser known of the Bronte oeuvre.   A schoolgirl error, I now concede.

Firstly, I must address the fact that though the book is set - of course - largely in a secluded little mansion in the northern wilderness, Anne does not have that same talent as her sisters for making the landscape a character in its own right.  She tries.  And sometimes, she comes close.  But there is none of the primitive cruelty of Emily's heathland, nor the savage romance of Charlotte's.  No, the horrors of Anne's world spring entirely from the hearts of men.

A widow, Helen Graham - a pseudonym, we correctly suspect - arrives unannounced in a society familiar to anyone who has read Austen: one where the sexes "must fall each into [their] proper place", as Mrs Markham, the mother of our 'hero' Gilbert, reminds us continually.  She tells her son, in a discussion of marriage, that "you'll do your business and she, if she's worthy of you, will do hers; but it's your business to please yourself, and hers to please you."  And yet, this mysterious newcomer to the area, with whom Gilbert quickly becomes enamoured, seems not to abide by these proper laws.  Indeed, she shuns society at any available opportunity, and rumours soon begin to chase her.

Anne uses, rather clumsily, it has been said (and I'm tempted to agree), the Chinese Box method of narration here, as we move into Mrs Graham's diary, whereupon we learn her true history: she had married, unwisely and against advice, a man who can no better be described than as a veritable rogue, a dissolute gambler and, to use the modern vernacular, party animal.  As her marriage drags through years, our heroine, we discover, now a new mother, accepts all that is thrust upon her - humiliation, violence, neglect, imprisonment, for the very reasons Mrs Markham has outlined above.  Because it is her business to do so. Because that is a woman's lot.  Because one belongs to one's husband and a man may treat his property however he sees fit.  But when this awful man starts to ruin her son, Helen will take no more.  In order primarily to protect her child, she escapes, changes her name, and moves to an empty Hall in the middle of nowhere, where she earns a meagre living as an artist.

This is a remarkably modern story.  Exactly such things may happen now.  And that is where the story's power lies.  This is a feminist tale - so much so, that even Anne's own sister Charlotte tried to prevent publication as she saw it is a step too far - and as such, still has much to teach us.  The fear with which an abused wife lives has not changed in 150 years, and it is evoked here in all its horror. The sadistic husband, who delights in the torture he inflicts on his powerless wife, is enough to drive the reader to distraction.  One roots for Helen all the way through, and although I found her piety a little wearing, her lioness-like protection of her son cannot help but draw one to her.

Gilbert, on the other hand, is rather unlikeable, hence my use of inverted commas around the word 'hero'.  He is dangerously impetuous, has a tendency to violence himself, and is arrogant to the point of extreme vanity.  But then, what man in that society would not be all of those things?  Perhaps he is merely a realistic portrayal.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a strange mix of modern manners and outmoded mores.  In places it touches a Mills and Boon-esque sensibility - but perhaps that now clichéd romance was exactly what these Bronte girls imagined and dreamed of.  Whilst this novel's hair does not blow wild, like that of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, it is more compact, more restrained, more rooted.  I loved it, and consider that it sits proudly and rightfully alongside its better known siblings as a more political, if less fanciful, equal.

The Help

I had started reading Villette while I was travelling, but I'm afraid that after 120 pages, I had to give up. Maybe the story of a lonely Victorian governess in dark, rain-sodden France just wasn't working for me as I reclined on a sun-lounger in 42 degree heat in Andalucia, or maybe it was that the style was so over-wrought and almost sycophantic; whatever the reason, I just couldn't get into it, and have left it sitting woefully in a villa in Spain.

When I returned, then, I was bookless. Currently not-reading. The first thing I did was go through my ever-increasing bought-but-not-yet-read (the 'yet' is crucial) pile, but nothing grabbed me. My head was all over the place and anywhere but here, and I would read 3 pages of something and put it down in frustration, unable to connect with the written word. Grrrr.... Then I picked up The Help. And it turns out it was exactly what I needed.

Now, this is not a great work of literature, a life-changing novel; it is not the new To Kill a Mockingbird. Had it been written and published in 1964, it most certainly would have been both of those things. But context is an important aspect in the making of a classic, and while I loved this book (and I am far from alone there), I think it is important to wade through the praises heaped on it, and to consider it as simply an exciting story filled with wonderful characters, well-written and easy to digest. It is a reminder of the way things were - although I am aware that similar communities do still exist around the globe - and looks at the Civil Rights Movement from a new perspective; from, in fact, an entirely female perspective. This gives the story a unique spin because, as Minny and Aibileen discuss at one point in the novel, women can exact a far more ruthless revenge than men can; their ability to work slowly, chipping away at the foundations of a life they intend to destroy is a far more effective and frightening method than a one-off violent act. The women in The Help are both each other's support and each other's worst possible enemies - the way the League ladies treat Marilyn Monroe-alike Miss Celia is as appalling and as prejudiced as the way they treat their maids. But she is from the wrong side of the tracks, and in Jackson, Mississippi, only Miss Hilly Holbrook's side matters.

Hilly is an almost cartoonish villainess. She is a southern belle Cruella deVille - the description of her final visit to Miss Skeeter, hair akimbo and clothes hanging out, reminds me of nothing less than Cruella's defeat at the end of 101 Dalmations. And yet Hilly's defeat is a long way from total - we know, as readers, that she will pick herself up and continue to treat the black members of her community in the same way she always has. We know this because we know people like her still exist. And we know, more worryingly, that though there may be only a few as awful as Hilly Holbrook, there are many, many Elizabeth Leefolts: the friend who is too weak to do anything, too scared to speak up, too preoccupied to form an opinion of her own. These people - the ones who sit by - are the majority, and are just as damaging.

Kathryn Stockett uses key events in the struggle for Civil Rights as pegs on which to hang her story, and this is a useful and effective technique. We can place the fictional characters in the real, historical world. We can dress them accurately, we can feel the wide outside swirling around them, even as Jackson seems caught in a web of time, unable to free itself and move forward. Miss Skeeter's desire to be free of this claustrophobic society is brought to a simple, easy head when she hears Dylan for the first time on the radio and realises that elsewhere in the United States, the times are indeed a-changing.

The three narrators have endearing voices, and we warm to each of them immediately they open their mouths. Stockett's use of dialectical phrase is just right - Aibileen's words ring true and honest, not foreign enough that we struggle to understand her, but with an accent that places her exactly.

This novel is an ideal easy-read, without being vacuous and forgettable. It does nothing new or daring within itself - indeed, it is almost a novel-by-numbers; questions are set up one after the other that ensure we stay with the book till the end: what happened to Constantine? Did Minny really do to that pie what we fear she did? What is the matter with Miss Celia? What did Stuart's ex-fiancee do? We care, we really do want to know the answers to these questions - and that is Stockett's skill. Her talent lies in her creaton of wholly believable characters, in whom, within mere pages, we are entirely invested.

There is a short epilogue-of-sorts, in which Stockett delivers a mini-autobiography. The fact that she has written from some personal experience, in this case, adds to the book. It authenticates the stories of Aibileen, Minny and Miss Skeeter. I know that there must be snippets of real events in here - some incidents must be founded in reality. I can't help but wonder if the pie story is one of them. And I can't help but hope it is, hope that some white lady, somewhere, really did get her just desserts...