Another Lovely Literary Gilbert

I have closed the black cover of Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall with its very serious, thin-lipped painted lady - two tomes from the nineteenth century dispensed with in a month!

This one is a version of the "who to choose" novel - the handsome exciting man or the sensible good man, but whereas Jane Austen's heroines always seem to have the good sense to see through the hollow charms of these caddish types, poor Helen -Anne's heroine - marries one. I have to say I liked her the more for it. Who hasn't been charmed by a handsome man at some time or other? I also admired Anne for moving beyond the conventions of the conventional romance to write honestly of her observations of relationships at this time. In her introduction she says "I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it. But as the priceless treasure too frequently hides at the bottom of a well, it needs some courage to dive for it". (She has a soft spot for a slightly purple metaphor) Indeed she even hints at venereal disease in Arthur's decline when she says "It is deplorable to see how completely his past life has degenerated his once noble constitution". Or perhaps I am reading too much in to it!

But of course Tenant is foremost Helen and Gilbert's love story and they are both so lovely, temperate and undemanding of each other that when at last the husband dies, they almost miss the opportunity to live a long, lovely temperate and undemanding life together.

The novel has a strange structure. It begins with Gilbert writing an intimate letter to a male friend and about a fifth of the way through the book Helen gives Gilbert her diary so that he may know her sad story. I was fascinated by this as a plot device. At one level I found it very unbelievable - but at another I admired its grandness as a gesture of intimacy.