5. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

By Anne Brontë 

I'm not very knowledgeable about classic literature and had only heard about the existence of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall when I read that it influenced Elizabeth Hand's 2015 novel, Wylding Hall.  

 

But after the crushing disappointment of A Haunting on the Hill (2023), I wasn't all that interested anymore, as the premise of Wylding Hall sounded too much like A Haunting on the Hill. If those theatre types annoyed me to no end, I could only imagine how members of a rock band would be much better.  Since Wylding Hall was written first, there's a chance it's better written.  

Anyway, I still wanted to read the Anne Bronte novel. I got this Arcturus trade paperback from Indigo for only $7.  They had a 3 for $12 classic fiction deal but the ones I wanted were sold out.

 

Surprisingly, my friend, who was visiting from Winnipeg at the time, and who's read a lot more classic fiction than I have, was also not aware of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  I think its obscurity (at least compared to Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre) was due to its rather scandalous and shocking content - at least, according to Victorian standards.  It was deemed "coarse" and "brutal" for its unflinching depictions of alcoholism, adultery, marital abuse, and a wife leaving her husband—which was apparently illegal at the time.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I knew to not expect any romance.  In the end, I really enjoyed TToWH.  It was very well-written, a colourful cast of characters and had some keen insights about Victorian society. And there was some romance after all, mainly from the perspective of Gilbert Markham, as the lovesick protagonist.  

 

The novel began with a letter written by Gilbert to a friend, describing the recent arrival of an attractive young widow and her son as the new tenants of Wildfell Hall and how it was drawing much gossip and curiosity amongst the small community.  When Gilbert met Helen, he found her proud and aloof, and they didn't get along very well at first. Over time he became drawn to her honesty, intelligence and depth of character which was very different from the superficial wiles of the local girls.  But Gilbert was still immature in many ways and made the wrong assumption that Helen was having an affair with her landlord Frederick Lawrence.  This forced  Helen to show Gilbert her journal which explained her entire backstory of how she ended up at Wildfell Hall.  The whole story was long and drawn out like a Jane Austen novel, but well worth the wait, for there was a happy ending. Phew!

After the dark cesspool of despair and deviance in Grotesque, it was nice to read something "lighter" in tone.  Although I was expecting a rather violent depiction of domestic discord, I was nevertheless affected by Helen Huntington's plight being married to an irresponsible and alcoholic narcissist. Even though Arthur Huntington was never physically violent, he was very controlling, as well as verbally and emotionally abusive.  He was also unfaithful -- his relationship with his friend's wife was an open secret among his circle of wealthy gentlemen. The depiction of their partying was something to behold.  

Most of the classic lit that I've read were of fairly "respectable" people with the odd character, like George Wickham, who was the black sheep.  In the world of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, we were given a firsthand perspective of what it's like to live in a toxic marriage. Bronte presented all the red flags early on in the courtship between Arthur and Helen.  He would play mind games with the young Helen, who fell for it hook line and sinker through her naivete.  In Victorian times, a woman would be trapped in such a marriage with no hope for divorce.  Even though Arthur Huntington was a fairly wealthy gentlemen, he was a boorish man and indulged in licentious, hedonistic behaviour.  He and his circle of friends often got together to carouse and were basically party animals.  As a wife, you either put up with it, or you joined them, like Lady Lowborough, who becomes Arthur's mistress.

There was a scene where Arthur's friends were staying at his estate, Grassdale Manor, for weeks and weeks.  Not only did Helen have to endure the infidelities of her husband and his mistress, but also the disrespectful behaviour of his awful guests.  Finally, when Lord Lowborough found out about his wife and Arthur, it was a bit of relief as the whole scene was getting quite awful.  Arthur and Helen also had a young son, Arthur Jr, a sweet boy who was becoming wild and out of control under his father’s influence.  With help from her brother, Helen was finally able to escape Grassdale Manor with her son and devoted maid.

I heard that Anne Brontë based a good deal of Arthur Huntington on her own brother, Branwell Brontë. Arthur resembled Branwell in three ways: physical good looks; sexual adventures (before his affair with his employer's wife, Mrs Robinson, Branwell may have fathered an illegitimate child who died at birth) and lastly, his alcoholism. Arthur Huntington was terribly flawed and unlikeable, but he felt very real.

A minor complaint of mine was how Helen Huntington was just a little too perfect.  Her character was imbued with dignity, pureness of heart and an unwavering faith in God.  Her one mistake was marrying Arthur Huntington when she was young and naive. However, I did admire her courage in leaving her awful husband and her ability to use her painting skills to support herself and her son.  The only help she had was from her loyal maid and her brother. I also liked how Gilbert had a good character arc.  He began as a rather immature, cocky young farmer but over the years his love for Helen remained true, and he became someone who was worthy of Helen's love.

I saw the 2022 film Emily, which was loosely based on Emily Bronte. It didn't depict sister Charlotte in a great light, and portrayed Anne as rather meek and passive.  I was never able to finish Wuthering Heights, but I loved Jane Eyre when I read it during my first year at university.  It still remains my favourite of all the books by the Bronte sisters, with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall a close second!

20. Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror & Speculative Fiction

By Lisa Kröger and Melanie Anderson

During the 2020 pandemic, Olman ordered a bunch of books from Argo because he wanted to support a local indie bookshop.
 
I think he had spotted Monster, She Wrote and thought it'd be right up my wheelhouse.  It took me a while to realize this, but it turned out he was right!   At first, I only read the chapters of authors I was already familiar with, ie. Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Sarah Waters, etc.  It was only later when I started reading the book from start to finish that I discovered a treasure trove of new authors.  This also explains why I finally finished it in 2024, as I would read a chapter in between my "regular" reading routine.
 
Even though Monster, She Wrote gives a general overview of sorts, it also pays tribute to the trailblazing women writers of horror and science fiction of the past four centuries starting with the Gothic fiction of Mary Cavendish and Mary Shelley to contemporary award-winners Helen Oyeyemi and Emily St. John Mandel.  Yet what makes this book special is that Kröger and Anderson also shine a light on more obscure and/or overlooked writers, like Ruby Jean Jensen, Elizabeth Engstrom and Kathe Koja.
 
The authors may be academics, but Monster, She Wrote is written in an easy, informal yet informational style with lots of pop-cultural references.  Each featured author is organized by subgenre, gets a brief life history, their better known works (with brief descriptions), recommended reads and a quote. I sat updating my 'to read' list as I went through each author, picking up almost several new books to check out!   
 
Monster, She Wrote is a keeper for sure.  I have my first wave of authors I want to read asap but there will definitely be a second wave as I delve into works by other featured writers.
 
p.s. I've already started checking off my list by:

•     borrowing the graphic novelThrough The Woods from the library
•     purchasing a reprint of Elizabeth Engstrom's When Darkness Loves Us
•     purchasing a reprint of Kathe Koja's The Cipher

18. Women Talking

By Miriam Toews

Women Talking was one of a few random finds from my annual summer visit to Vancouver.

 

My brother moved to Abbotsford a few years ago, a minimum one-hour drive from Kits, so I was trying to find a way to visit him.  In the past, we’ve met up for lunch in Surrey, a good halfway point.  I recall my friend had recommended the Otter Co-op Outdoor Experience, a water park out in Aldergrove, a half hour drive from Abbotsford.

 

I thought my family could spend an afternoon at the water park, then meet my brother for dinner.  Admission was ridiculously inexpensive, like $10 for an adult and $5 for kids but the catch was you had to buy tickets online at least a day in advance, and we were limited to a 3 hour time slot.  Otter was a decent water park with slides that you ride down on inflatable tubes, a wave pool, hot tubs and swimming pools.  It was quite crowded too – no surprise, considering the low admission price.

 

When our time ended, we had about an hour to kill before meeting my brother.  There was a Salvation Army thrift store nearby where we browsed around.  It was there that I spotted a hardcover of Miriam Toews' Women Talking - a pristine library copy that still had labels stuck to it and the plastic cover, but had never been checked out.  It was only 25 cents!

 

What made this copy particularly interesting was that it once belonged to the “Middle and High Library of the Langley Christian School”.  I thought, how interesting that a Christian school would acquire Women Talking, as it deals with the very adult subject of sexual assault within a remote religious community!  I wonder if someone had caught on and removed the book so it wouldn't outrage young Christian minds... how else would this apparently unread copy end up at a thrift store?

 

I’d already watched the film adaptation (on Aug 30th to be precise, thanks to my Letterboxd history).  I was spurred on because some filmmaking friends of filmmaking friends were saying how good it was.  I was invited to join a 5a7 at Pelican’s astro-turfed terrasse.  The FFs of FFs shared an amusing story about attending the premiere (I assume in Montreal) where a couple was being very vocal about how much they disliked the film.  I think they were parents of Dave G?  I can’t remember.  At some point we clinked glasses.  Someone made a toast, to ‘Women Talking’.  Then as our glasses clinked, I exclaimed, “To parents talking!”  I got a few laughs! 

 

As mentioned earlier, Women Talking was based on true occurrences of systemic rape within a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia.  Between 2005 and 2009, over a hundred girls and women in the colony woke up to discover that they had been drugged and sexually assaulted in their sleep.

 

The novel begins after the suspects had been finally caught and apprehended by city police -- eight men from within the Molotschna colony (the fictional name for the actual Manitoba colony).  While the rest of the village men were away to post bail for the suspects, the women secretly formed an ad hoc meeting in the barn loft to discuss whether they should stay or leave the colony.  They only had a couple of days to decide before the men returned with the suspects to await trial. 

 

Most of the novel was structured as the minutes of their meeting, which were taken by August Epp, the colony's male schoolteacher who recently returned following a period of excommunication. August took the minutes at the request of Ona, the object of his unrequited love and his childhood friend, as the women cannot read or write (they speak Plautdietsch).  Some may take issue with the fact that the story was told from the viewpoint of a man, but August was also an outsider and considered by the men to be low status like the women, as he cannot farm. 

 

Here's an excerpt from August’s POV which pretty much set up the story:

When I arrived in the spring of 2008, there were only whispers, fragments of whispers, concerning the mysterious night-time disturbances. Cornelius, one of my students, wrote a poem called “The Washline” in which he described the sheets and garments on his mother’s washline as having voices, of speaking with one another, of sending messages to other garments on other washlines. He read the poem to the class and all the boys laughed. The houses are so far apart and there is no electrical light anywhere, inside or out. The houses are small tombs at night…

 

      In the year after I arrived, the women described dreams they’d been having, and then eventually, as the pieces fell into place, they came to understand that they were collectively dreaming one dream, and that it wasn’t a dream at all.

 

      The women in the Friesen and the Loewen families who have gathered for today’s meeting represent three generations each, and all have been repeat victims in the attacks. I’ve done some simple calculations. Between 2005 and 2009, more than three hundred girls and women of Molotschna were made unconscious and attacked in their own beds. On average, an attack occurred every three or four days.

 

      Finally, Leisl Neustadter forced herself to stay awake night after night until she caught a young man prying open her bedroom window, holding a jug of belladonna spray in one hand. Leisl and her adult daughter wrestled the man to the ground and tied him up with baler twine. Later that morning, Peters was brought to the house to confront this young man, Gerhard Schellenberg, and Gerhard named the other seven men involved in the attacks.

      Nearly every female member of the Molotschna Colony has been violated by this group of eight, but most (except for the girls too young to understand these proceedings, and the women, led by Scarface Janz, who have already chosen to exercise the Do Nothing option) have marked an X next to their name to indicate that they are content (and many ecstatic) not to attend the meetings about how to respond. Instead, they will contribute to the well-being of the colony by tending to the chores, which are manifold now while the men are away, and which if abandoned for as little as one day will result in mayhem, especially when it comes to the milking and feeding of the animals.

Having read the book after watching the film, I thought Sara Polley and cast did a great job bringing the book to life.  I thought how articulately the women spoke in the film, for Mennonite women weren’t very literate, let alone educated.  But I also noted how much the screenplay was heavily based on the dialogue written by author Toews.  There was so much talking in the novel that I suspect Toews didn't bother with the use of quotation marks!

Here's a sample of one of their many discussions/arguments:

Salome, more calm now, adds: So once again, we return to our three reasons for leaving, and they are valid. We want our children to be safe. We want to keep our faith. And we want to think.

  Agata splays her fingers on the plywood table as if to build a new foundation. Shall we move on? she asks.

  But, says Mariche, if there is any chance that the men in prison are innocent shouldn’t we, as members of Molotschna, be joining forces to secure their freedom?

  Salome explodes. We’re not members of Molotschna!

  The other women recoil and even the sun takes shelter behind a cloud.

  Greta, she says, are your beloved Ruth and Cheryl members of Molotschna?

  No, not members, says Greta, although—

  Salome interrupts. We’re not members! she repeats. We are the women of Molotschna. The entire colony of Molotschna is built on the foundation of patriarchy (translator’s note: Salome didn’t use the word “patriarchy”—I inserted it in the place of Salome’s curse, of mysterious origin, loosely translated as “talking through the flowers”), where the women live out their days as mute, submissive and obedient servants. Animals. Fourteen-year-old boys are expected to give us orders, to determine our fates, to vote on our excommunications, to speak at the burials of our own babies while we remain silent, to interpret the Bible for us, to lead us in worship, to punish us! We are not members, Mariche, we are commodities. (Again, a translator’s note about the word “commodities”: similar situation to above.)

  Salome continues: When our men have used us up so that we look sixty when we’re thirty and our wombs have literally dropped out of our bodies onto our spotless kitchen floors, finished, they turn to our daughters. And if they could sell us all at auction afterwards they would.

Narratively speaking, having articulate characters is convenient because if the women were not very articulate, it would be harder for the author to convey good quality prose.  I found the writing to be overly expository at times and it often felt like Toews was using the women as mouthpieces to get her points across re: patriarchal oppression.  Thus, the writing came across very heavy-handed at times.

 

However, much of the thoughtful, articulate dialogue was attributed to Ona, especially when confronted by an angry Salome (who attacked the perpetrators with a scythe to avenge her children) or a defiant Mariche (who’s in denial that she’s in an abusive marriage).

 

Ona was a bit of an outsider due to some unconventional personality traits (intelligence, melancholy).  Even though she was illiterate and uneducated like the other women, she was able to use big words like “pernicious ideology” in her discussions to try to explain why men are the way they are.

Ona’s Narfa (a term for depression), the colonists say, had been latent, simmering but not unmanageable, until her father died. Afterwards, she committed her life to dreamy eccentricity, and also to facts, curiously, and to her seemingly preferred status as a pariah, as the devil’s daughter, and God-given burden to the colony. I contend a lighter, less intrusive presence has never been known.)

Despite the need to suspend a great deal of disbelief, Toews did execute a great premise:  have a sensitive male outsider take minutes of a secret meeting of women who are divided between leaving an oppressive Mennonite colony to start anew, or staying and thus, being stuck in a situation that won't change for the better.  The women, despite being uneducated and illiterate, are smart, articulate and funny.  After much discussion, which takes up the bulk of the novel, they finally agree upon a decision.

End spoiler coming...   

 

When August is alone with Ona:

   I asked her what good the minutes would do her and the other women if they were unable to read them? (But she may well have asked me instead, What good is it to be alive if you are not in the world?)

  And that’s when she told me the story of the squirrel and the rabbit and of their secret playing, and said that perhaps she hadn’t been meant to see them playing—yet she had seen them. Maybe there was no reason for the women to have minutes they couldn’t read. The purpose, all along, was for me to take them.

  The purpose was for me to take them, the minutes. Life.

  I smile. I see the world turning in on itself, like waves, but without a sea or shore to contain them. There was no point to the minutes. I have to laugh.

Well, there was a point.  The author needed to find a way to tell the story!  

 

So yes, the style and format was rather self-conscious, yet Women Talking was very well-written overall. The minutes device was really an excellent way of telling this important story by giving a POV from someone within the community yet outside of it, while still being empathetic to the victims.  Still, the writing was often too affected for me to truly enjoy it as a whole, as it reminded me too much of a staged play. Come to think of it, Women Talking would be perfect for the theatre stage!

5- Fearless Females

 By Marta Breen