The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Reception

Reception

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall had an instant phenomenal success and rapidly outsold Emily's Wuthering Heights. Within six weeks, the novel was sold out. In America, the novel achieved even greater sales than it did in England.

However, the critical reception was mixed—praise for the novel's "power" and "effect" and sharp criticism for being "coarse". Charlotte Brontë herself, Anne's sister, wrote to her publisher that it "hardly seems to me desirable to preserve ... the choice of subject in that work is a mistake." Many critics mistakenly interpreted Anne's warning of the danger of debauchery as an approval of dissipation. The North American Review criticized Gilbert as "fierce, proud, moody, jealous, revengeful, and sometimes brutal", and though it admitted that Helen was "strong-minded", but complained about her lack of "lovable or feminine virtues in her composition". It concluded, "The reader of Acton Bell gains no enlarged view of mankind, giving a healthy action to his sympathies, but is confined to a narrow space of life, and held down, as it were, by main force, to witness the wolfish side of his nature literally and logically set forth." The Spectator and others misunderstood the book's intentions, accusing it of "a morbid love for the coarse, not to say the brutal".

A reviewer in Sharpe's London Magazine wrote an article warning his readers against reading the book, especially his lady readers. His review noting its "profane expressions, inconceivably coarse language, and revolting scenes and descriptions by which its pages are disfigured".

In response, Anne wrote her now famous preface to the second edition in which she defended her object in writing the novel, saying that she did not write with the intent of amusing the reader or gratifying her own taste, but because she "wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it". She added that she was "at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man".

In September, the Rambler published another hostile review, opining that Acton and Currer Bell were probably one Yorkshire woman, and while allowing that the writer was clever and vigorous, it denounced the "truly offensive and sensual spirit" in the novel, saying that it contained "disgusting scenes of debauchery" and was "neither edifying, nor true to life, nor full of warning". Around the same time, Sharpe's Magazine warned ladies against reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, saying that it was not a "fit subject matter for the pages of a work ... to be obtruded by every circulating library-keeper upon the notice of our sisters, wives, and daughters".

However, there were a few positive reviews to balance this. The Athenaeum called it "the most interesting novel which we have read for a month past".