Best Of Anne Brontë's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall"
Here are some memorable quotes from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë.
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| Painting above: The Woman Painter c. 1903 by Károly Ferenczy |
If you are into Brontë sisters lore, I would def recommend Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life by Samantha Ellis.
You would have us encourage our sons to prove all things by their own experience,
while our daughters must not even profit by the experience of others,
and the precepts of higher authority, that they should know beforehand
to refuse evil and choose the good,
and require no experimental proofs to teach them the evil of transgression.
I would not send a poor girl into the world, unarmed against her foes,
and ignorant of the snares that beset her path:
nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance,
she lost the power, or the will, to watch and guard herself.
p.34
The Brontë word on lady brewmasters*:
‘There’s nothing like this, Mrs Markham!’ said he,
'I always maintain that there’s nothing to compare with your home-brewed ale.’
‘I’m glad you like it, sir. I always look after the brewing myself,
as well as the cheese and butter—
I like to have things well done, while we’re about it.’
p.41
The torment of suspense was not to be endured:
I would not suspect my husband falsely, on this man’s accusation,
and I would not trust him unworthily—I must know the truth at once.
I flew to the shrubbery.
Scarcely had I reached it,
when a sound of voices arrested my breathless speed.
p. 302
‘It gives me little consolation to think I shall next behold you as a disembodied spirit,
or an altered being, with a frame perfect and glorious, but not like this!—and a heart,
perhaps, entirely estranged from me.’
p.404
Good grief I love that Brontë violence:
‘What would Lord Lowborough, your friend think, if he knew all?
or what would you yourself think,
if he or any other had acted the same part to me,
throughout, as you have to Annabella?”
“I would blow his brains out.”
p.235
*Did you know that brewing and making beer started as women's work? Read on to learn more:
