The Status of Women in the Victorian Society in Anne Bronte’s The Tennant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

Abstract

The Victorian period lasted more than half a century. During this time England changed radically in almost all respects. One of these was the rising consciousness of women about their rights and potentials. Soon, the social awareness was transmitted to literature. In retrospect we find that many women writers emerged at this critical juncture in history when women were pleading to be given voice, to achieve their rights and to be given an opportunity to come out of the shells of quiet submission enforced upon them and achieve something of their own. Three sisters living deep in the Yorkshire moors surprised the world by taking part in this ongoing struggle. This article attempts to evaluate their contributions towards achieving women’s rights in English history. The aim purpose of this study is to show Anne Bronte’s status of women in her novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In the 1840s the ideal of domesticity was at its height, but questions were also being raised on how safe the domestic home was for women, while at the same time having to be a place of refuge for husbands who were in a position of power and ownership over their wives. Through historical gender ideals and ideals of domesticity as well as through the analysis of literary devices and genres.