The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Question 1

What areas of Victorian society does The Tenant shed light on?

Answer 1

Domestic and married

Question 2

How do people inside/outside the novel receive Helen?

Answer 2

People inside find her uncomfortable and people outside find her unsafe

Question 3

How does Helen negotiate male power?

Answer 3

Acts against the way private and married lives of people are informed by social structures and idealogical forces

Question 4

What does Helen do to the public/private dichotomy?

Answer 4

Makes the private realm visible by breaking silence on marriage

Question 5

How does the narrative begin and end?

Answer 5

Markham’s letter to Halford, uses diary as a medium by which to repair intimacy with a friend

Question 6

What does opening establish?

Answer 6

Epistolary nature of novel

Question 7

How does Gilbert play the role of editor and cesnor?

Answer 7

Provides an abbreviation of diary’s content
Edits portions of text
Creats chapter headings

Question 8

Does Helen perform acts of censorship?

Answer 8

Tears out pages of diary that relate to Helen’s perception of Markham when first gives the diary to him

Question 9

How does Bronte explore narrative levels?

Answer 9

Uses internal narrative editors
Woman’s narrative is always operating below narrator
Diarist is lowest in hierarchy

Question 10

Diary becomes a voice…

Answer 10

For narratives that would otherwise be unheard

Question 11

How does the diary lend authority to Helen’s account?

Answer 11

No entry occurs more than two days after event happened

Draws on larger context of role of written word in novel as a whole

Question 12

Helen uses the diary, painitings and letters to…

Answer 12

organise the events in her narrative

Question 13

What does Gilbert as editor achieve?

Answer 13

promote clarity and testify proper cource of evidence

Question 14

How does Helen’s narative mirror position of women in society when Bronte was writing??

Answer 14

Unable to narrate her own story and is subordinated to lowest levels in hierarchy. Women silenced by patriarchy

Question 15

Helen is the object of Gilbert’s narrative…

Answer 15

not the subject of her own

Question 16

How does gossip connect to gossip circulating in the village?

Answer 16

Diary portrays the history which has been such a threat to the community

Question 17

Gossip travels…

Answer 17

fater in smallness of community and idleness of its members

Question 18

Gossip binds…

Answer 18

communities together under a mild system of surveillance and control

Question 19

By act of gossiping, community maintains…

Answer 19

its values and solidify group sense of public and private

Question 20

But Helen refuses to conform to…

Answer 20

community authority. She doesn’t participate in the gossip

Question 21

Gossip is seen as a

Answer 21

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!”

Question 22

Act of writing and inscribing is…

Answer 22

liberating and catartic for women

Question 23

But what are the dangers of female inscription?

Answer 23

Can be appropriated by another

Misread

Question 24

This danger is made a reality when…

Answer 24

Huntingdon finds Helen’s diary and learns of her plan of escape.

Question 25

Why does Helen enjoy reading Helen’s diary so much?

Answer 25

Revels in her inability to keep a secret and ascribes this failing universally to all women

Question 26

But like the diary, paintings can reveal too much too. Give an example:

Answer 26

In The Miniature chapter, Helen is horrified when Huntingdon draws attention to the back of one of her sketches and finds his own portrait there. Evidence of her desires.

Question 27

What is Huntingdon doing here?

Answer 27

Transgressing public and private realm.

Question 28

How is the distinction between the two unsettled?

Answer 28

Public is appropriated for private ends, public exposed to scrutiny.

Question 29

Helen married Huntingdon out of romantic idealism, but what does she soon find out?

Answer 29

He will imprison her. He curtails her bridal tour and diminishes her horizons.

Question 30

Why is Helen unable to exert herself in the domestic realm?

Answer 30

Undermined by his bringing up of his sexual past. Brings in bachelor friends

Question 31

How do Helen and Huntingdon use gendered discourse to justify their occupation of town and country?

Answer 31

Business dealings legitimise absence
Domestic habits

=

division of male and female space

Question 32

Why does domestic space become volatile?

Answer 32

Threatened by collective masculinity and mistress

Question 33

How is public/private dismantled in the house?

Answer 33

Private conversations are overheard: Helen disocvers her husbands infidelity
Spatial re-enactment of power struggles: Hargrave plays chess with Helen with subtext of sexual conquest

Question 34

Is Helen’s marriage to Markham different?

Answer 34

Only in degree, not kind

Question 35

How does Bronte’s realism present Markham?

Answer 35

Not as ideal hero.

Question 36

Does the diary educate Markham?

Answer 36

Yes, didactic function that never had on Huntingdon. Markham has to submit to the diaries lessons before he can win over Helen

Question 37

What does Gilbert’s enclosure of Helen’s narrative suggest?

Answer 37

Merge until they can no longer be distinguished, suggests union of minds

Question 38

Woman is culturally silenced and doubly estranged, how?

Answer 38

Marginalised and denied possibility of self-writing