The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Flashcards
What areas of Victorian society does The Tenant shed light on?
Domestic and married
How do people inside/outside the novel receive Helen?
People inside find her uncomfortable and people outside find her unsafe
How does Helen negotiate male power?
Acts against the way private and married lives of people are informed by social structures and idealogical forces
What does Helen do to the public/private dichotomy?
Makes the private realm visible by breaking silence on marriage
How does the narrative begin and end?
Markham’s letter to Halford, uses diary as a medium by which to repair intimacy with a friend
What does opening establish?
Epistolary nature of novel
How does Gilbert play the role of editor and cesnor?
Provides an abbreviation of diary’s content
Edits portions of text
Creats chapter headings
Does Helen perform acts of censorship?
Tears out pages of diary that relate to Helen’s perception of Markham when first gives the diary to him
How does Bronte explore narrative levels?
Uses internal narrative editors
Woman’s narrative is always operating below narrator
Diarist is lowest in hierarchy
Diary becomes a voice…
For narratives that would otherwise be unheard
How does the diary lend authority to Helen’s account?
No entry occurs more than two days after event happened
Draws on larger context of role of written word in novel as a whole
Helen uses the diary, painitings and letters to…
organise the events in her narrative
What does Gilbert as editor achieve?
promote clarity and testify proper cource of evidence
How does Helen’s narative mirror position of women in society when Bronte was writing??
Unable to narrate her own story and is subordinated to lowest levels in hierarchy. Women silenced by patriarchy
Helen is the object of Gilbert’s narrative…
not the subject of her own
How does gossip connect to gossip circulating in the village?
Diary portrays the history which has been such a threat to the community
Gossip travels…
fater in smallness of community and idleness of its members
Gossip binds…
communities together under a mild system of surveillance and control
By act of gossiping, community maintains…
its values and solidify group sense of public and private
But Helen refuses to conform to…
community authority. She doesn’t participate in the gossip
Gossip is seen as a
feminine way of axquiring knowledge: “I was going to tell you an important piece of news i heard there - I’ve been bursting with it ever since!”
Act of writing and inscribing is…
liberating and catartic for women
But what are the dangers of female inscription?
Can be appropriated by another
Misread
This danger is made a reality when…
Huntingdon finds Helen’s diary and learns of her plan of escape.
