The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Written by: Anne Brontë

Adapted by: Alison Farina Directed by: Shane Morgan

Starring: Madelaine Ryan and Tom Turner

Anne Brontë, the least well-known (and vastly under-appreciated) of the sisters wrote the most shocking of all the Bronte novels put together, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Telling the story of Helen Graham, a reclusive artist who has mysteriously taken up residence at the dilapidated Wildfell Hall, Anne’s multi-layered masterpiece aims to show both the brutality and consequences of life choices along with hope and happiness through redemption, forgiveness and truth. When The Tenant was first published it sold out within 6 weeks (vastly outselling Wuthering Heights and selling even better in the US than the UK, something that cannot be said of the other two sisters) and is widely considered to be the first ‘sustained’ feminist novel. However, Charlotte Brontë, for reasons best known to herself, succeeded in widely denouncing the book and suppressing a reprint after Anne’s death. Was she doing it to "protect" her “sister’s reputation”, or her own?