The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Now, Halford, I bid you adieu for the present. This is the first instalment of my debt. If the coin suits you, tell me so, and I'll send you the rest at my leisure: if you would rather remain my creditor than stuff your purse with such ungainly, heavy pieces,—tell me still, and I'll pardon your bad taste.

Dual-structure warning novel—Gilbert's frame courtship, Helen's diary of Arthur Huntingdon's degeneration, flight to Wildfell, exposure and second marriage—delivers moral argument as much as event; Helen's escape anticipates married women's property reform, so plot scores 88.

"You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don't rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again."

Helen Huntingdon/Hargrave the fugitive artist-mother, Gilbert Markham the jealous narrator-suitor, Arthur Huntingdon the dissolute husband, Frederick Lawrence the secret ally—each a position in Anne's 'warning'; Arthur's degeneration is the cast's dark center, so cast scores 86.

I went down to dinner resolving to be cheerful and well-conducted, and kept my resolution very creditably, considering how my head ached and how internally wretched I felt. I don't know what is come over me of late; my very energies, both mental and physical, must be strangely impaired.

Long frame-plus-diary architecture—the Grassdale marriage occupies the heavy middle—assumes a reader patient with moral demonstration; the diary's cataloguing of Huntingdon's vices dilates before the Wildfell escape accelerates, so pace scores 78.

"You may think it all very fine, Mr. Huntingdon, to amuse yourself with rousing my jealousy; but take care you don't rouse my hate instead. And when you have once extinguished my love, you will find it no easy matter to kindle it again."

Anne's direct, didactic register—less baroque than Emily, less polished than Charlotte—Gilbert's epistolary voice and Helen's diary plainness serve the warning; the prose of moral repulsion rather than lyrical intensity, so prose scores 84.

The family had formerly occupied Wildfell Hall, but had deserted it, some fifteen years ago, for a more modern and commodious mansion in the neighbouring parish. Now, Halford, I bid you adieu for the present.

Wildfell Hall on the Yorkshire moors, Grassdale society, Linden-Car and Staningley—the ruined Elizabethan mansion as refuge, the drawing-room as tribunal; Branwell-informed debauchery made domestic geography, so world scores 86.

Now, Halford, I bid you adieu for the present. This is the first instalment of my debt. If the coin suits you, tell me so, and I'll send you the rest at my leisure: if you would rather remain my creditor than stuff your purse with such ungainly, heavy pieces,—tell me still.

Gilbert's letter to Halford—'I bid you adieu for the present. This is the first instalment of my debt'—and the climb to Wildfell Hall to find the mysterious tenant; less iconic than Jane Eyre's Thornfield but efficient in gothic setup, so hook scores 82.

"I knew that such characters"—as Huntingdon and his companions—"do exist, and if I have warned one rash youth from following in their steps the book has not been written in vain."

The 'warning' novel of female flight—Helen's diary as courtroom evidence against marital tyranny, the artist-tenant concealing a past marriage—Anne's answer to Wuthering Heights' amoral intensity; proto-feminist divorce narrative before the law permitted it, so innov scores 88.

Till then, farewell, GILBERT MARKHAM. _Staningley_, _June_ 10_th_, 1847. THE END

Gilbert's Staningley letter—marriage to Helen, Aunt Maxwell's peaceful death, invitation to Halford—happiness earned but epistolary and summarized rather than dramatized; the warning fulfilled, the frame closed, so ending scores 84.