The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a much-reviewed and well-known classic novel. So can a novel that is a hundred and fiftyyears old still have anything to say about life that is relevant, let alone original? The answer to this obviously rhetorical question is obviously ‘yes’, hence this review.

Though it bears the same initials as her sister’s Wuthering Heights, Wildfell Hall is certainly a very different territory, albeit in a similar landscape. If you are the kind of reader that gets tired of nineteenth century matchmaking parading as literature then you share my impatience. How many times must we live through the apparent mental torment of a heroine wondering incessantly whether this gentleman or that might or might not be the right moral or social class, might or might not possess sufficient property, might or might not be acceptable to one’s family? The process, surely, is memorable. Whether it is worth recording repeatedly is open to question.

Some of the suitors, it has to be acknowledged, might turn out to be rather caddish, but too often this might imply he whips his horse rather too ferociously, or treats the lower classes too harshly. All too often, the family concerned lives in middle-class comfort as a result of their investments in the colonies. That means slavery, or the profits thereof. And it is usually the case that no one ever admits they are on the side of the abolitionists. Usually, the moral dilemma is not even recognised, let alone considered. As readers, and even film-goers, we have all been there and probably wished that an occasional non-matrimonial issue might have arisen.

None of this analysis applies to the Wildfell Hall of Anne Brontë‘s novel, however. In her book, this particular Brontë sister offers a tale in which no holds are barred. Her style often seems rather detached, perhaps taking even an alienated view of the society with which she is familiar. She mentions some things that mid-nineteenth century England regarded as unmentionable, especially amongst the middle classes. She also, for much of the book, convincingly presents a narrative from a male perspective that confronts and reacts to, for its time, the unlikely and novel image of female independence. In doing so, she confronts male attitudes that still today may block these concerns from a man’s understanding.

Gilbert Markham becomes infatuated with Helen Graham, the young widow who has moved in with her son into Wildfell Hall. She seems to be a propertied, but also determined to make her own way in life by selling her artworks to achieve financial independence.

In the second section, we learned of Helen Graham’s background. She had been married to an alcoholic and abusive husband and had stood up to him. Her demands that her rights be respected were not commonly expressed in the society, let alone observed. They are still to be fully realize the century and a half later. Drug abuse, alcoholism and extramarital sex, not to mention conspiratorial behaviour among a masculine clique are all addressed. The hypocrisy of middle-class male attitudes is drawn with considerable skill, rather than overstatement.

In the final section, Gilbert appears to absorb these issues and accommodate them. The scarring is permanent, however, and thus this is no simple happy-ever-after tale.

So what might The Tenant of Wildfell Hall have to say to contemporary audiences? Well, these issues of women’s rights, drug abuse, alcoholism and sexual exploitation are still being discussed a century and a half later. These issues were being discussed a century and a half ago. They are still in some places contentious. Need one say more? Read the book.

Europe Since Napoleon by David Thomson

 

Some time ago and in relation to a different book, I wrote a review that in essence began, “Occasionally, just occasionally, one comes across a book so impressive, so scholarly and so communicative that it leaves a reader both in awe of its achievement and completely rewarded by the experience of reading it.” I did not expect to encounter another book in the near future to which that description might also apply. I have done just that, and my life is immeasurably richer as a result.

The title, Europe Since Napoleon, communicates what the book addresses. This is not a history of the United States, Asia, China, South America or Africa. Europe is the focus, but the vision is in no sense myopic. During the period in question, history of course documents that some European powers were imperial powers, claiming ownership and rule of colonies across the globe, indeed on every continent. There was also the detail of two World Wars, which have been granted that title because the conflict was near global in scale. Hence Europe Since Napoleon addresses many aspects of history, politics and economics that relate to the global interests of the European nations and, as such, this book, at least in the opinion of this reader, becomes more of a Eurocentric view of world history, rather than a narrower discussion of a specific continent. And it must also be added that any Eurocentrism arises nearly out of the focus, and not from any form of bias or sense of superiority.

There is a problem with the book’s title, however. Europe Since Napoleon implies that it might begin at the end of the French Imperial era, but Europe Since Napoleon begins by analyzing the circumstances and events that allowed Napoleon to assume power. We start, therefore, with the discussion of pre-revolutionary France and the revolution, itself, because it was out of these events that the arose the opportunity for Napoleon to assume power.

The Napoleonic Wars, the peace, reform, revolution, socialism, labor, economy, Russian expansion, nationalism, the creation of Italy and Germany, the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune all pass by and we have yet to complete half of the book’s two centuries of coverage. Of course, there follows the Berlin Conference, the partition of Africa, the lording it over the rest of the world to shape it into European advantage zones, the Great War, another revolution, boom, depression, strike, greater war, atomic bombs, the Iron Curtain, the suggestion of international cooperation, the rise of science, the nuclear age and the molecular age.

Of course, Europe Since Napoleon, like any summary work cannot even address the claim of being comprehensive. But in his book, David Thomson regularly illustrates how the big issues of the day re-drew the map, forged new alliances, created opportunity and transformed people’s lives. The author wrote over 400,000 words spanning almost 1000 pages and at the end provides a thorough bibliography of works he has no doubt read to provide greater depth across most of the issues covered in the book.

But the real strength of Europe Since Napoleon is not its coverage, nor its description of the events it lists, but its narrative. Throughout David Thompson resists the temptation merely to list facts, opting instead for a fluid, narrative style that does, it has to be said, assume a modicum of prior knowledge. But what if the reader gains from this apparently stylistic ploy is quite brilliant contextualization, synthesis and thereby understanding. This is a thousand-page history book that is simply a joy to read, from page one to page 946, to be precise, not counting the appendices.

And, if the foregoing were not enough praise, the author’s final observations, written in the 1960s are ostensibly predictions of where the human race may go over the following decades and it is nothing less than revelatory. Not only does David Thompson have a bigger view of history, but he also demonstrates a true intellectual vision that is both breathtaking in its scope and exciting in its optimism. Reading this vision sixty years on, one can only ask the question, how on Earth did this happen, how on earth did we end up here? And, after reading this book, the one thing that history has taught us repeatedly, is that we may catalogue, describe and understand, but also that we should not predict, and we should not take anything for granted. History is a guide, but never repeats itself, never returns us to the familiar. That is how it happened. What a superb book!

Shelley by Jon Addington Symonds

Consider these elements. A young, rich and gifted man is obsessed with revolutionary idealism. He attends prestigious schools and the most prestigious university but is expelled from the latter because of his outrageous outspoken views, opinions he chose to publish in pamphlets. He is disowned by his family, runs away with his girlfriend, gets into drugs and devote his time to writing poetry that no one else professes to understand. He gets bored with his wife, has a fling with a teenager and sets off with her to travel, apparently none too troubled by leaving his wife and children to their own devices. Soon afterwards, his estranged wife kills herself. He takes more drugs, regularly, wanders around on his travels with his new wife, gets in with a heavy crowd of fellow travellers, falls foul of authority and does stupid things.

He continues to write, but generally has to publish his work at his own expense, because others still find it baffling. He seems to be obsessed with a particular pastime, a practice that, for him, is positively dangerous and is eventually killed on an escapade where he pursues this risky activity, has an accident and dies, aged very young. His friends recover his body and they ritually burn it, but the heart seems to survive its roasting and is retrieved.

This is no 1960s hippie, no millennial millionaire millionaire’s misguided, spoilt son. This is Percy Bysshe Shelly, the English poet, in the first two decades of the 19th century. And reading J.A. Symond’s 1878 biography, with its copious quotes from the Romantic poet’s work, we view a portrait of the artist as a young man. He stayed forever the young man because he died well before he ever became old. But he was also young because he never seemed to shake off the infant’s need for attention, for the kind of special treatment that demanded other’s accommodate his whims whilst he, himself, did not seem to notice that others might need some of the same.  He was the artist because his entire life seems to have been a pursuit to express a platonic essence of life and experience, a life he seemed to reject, or at least take for granted, an experience he clouded with narcotics.

A 21st-century visit to Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s biography might persuade the reader to reject the whole as merely the pranks of a headstrong, spoiled sick boy, who was also rich boy. But this 19th century biography offers a more contemporary view of this great life than one clouded by more recent assumptions or interpretations about the individual and his era. It enables us to view Shelley’s undoubted genius more in the context of how it was received in its own time and, though it cannot be the last word on the great poet, it can offer interesting and arresting perspectives.

What is doubly interesting about this work is that it’s author, John Addington Symonds, was himself a rebel in his own time, apart from society because of his homosexuality. And strangely, the author was buried in Rome, not far from the grave where Shelley’s ashes were interred. Poetry, it seems, is alive and well.

Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge

At first glance Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge suggests it might be quite a light book, an easy read, a period piece set in the mid-nineteenth century. This would be wrong. Master Georgie is no safe tale of country house manners, of marriages imagined by confined, embroidering young women. Beryl Bainbridge’s Master Georgie is anything but a tale of such saccharine gentility.

Master Georgie is a surgeon and photographer, and the book is cast in six plates – photographic plates, not chapters. Death figures throughout. From start to finish morbidity crashes into the lives of the book’s characters. We begin with Mr Moody, dead in a brothel bed, his host of minutes before in shock. Later we move to the Crimean War, where the carnage is graphic, extensive and apparently random. And even then individuals find their own personal ways of adding insult and injury to the suffering.

The book uses multiple points of view. We see things Master Georgie’s way. Myrtle, an orphan he takes in, adds her perspective. The fussy geologist, Dr Potter, imprints his own version of reality. And still there are less than explained undercurrents, undeclared motives which affect them all. Thus, overall, Master Georgie is a complex and ambitious novel. Though it is set in a major war, the backdrop is never allowed to dominate. The characters experience the consequences of conflict and register their reactions, but we are never led by the nose trough the history or the geography of the setting.

But we also never really get to know these people. Myrtle, perhaps, has the strongest presence. She has a slightly jaundiced, certainly pragmatic approach to life. But even she finds the privations of wartime tough. Why the characters of Master Georgie are all so keen to offer themselves as support for the war effort is an aspect of the book that never fully revealed itself. And ultimately this was my criticism of Beryl Bainbridge’s book. While the overall experience was both rewarding and not a little shocking, I found there was insufficient delineation between the characters and their differing motives. The beauty of the prose, however, more than made up for any shortcoming. The language created the mixed world of mid-nineteenth century politeness and juxtaposed this with the visceral vulgarities of soldiering and the general struggle of life. This rendered Master Georgie a complex, moving and quite beautiful book.

View the book on amazon
Master Georgie