The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Penguin Classics) (73 page)

2
.
Oh! well, let’s have a look at them
: Arthur Huntingdon’s speech-patterns are one with his brattishly careless and insolent behaviour-patterns (he slings Milicent’s sketches one by one on to the table, without comment) and are symptoms legible to the reader of a contemptible character to which Helen is never wholly blinded. She allows his sexual charm to gild his impudence and levity.

3
.
quizzing
: mockery of

4
.
from some purgatorial fiend to an angel of light
: savagely ironical, since this profane ‘angel’ is destined to lead Helen to hell-on-earth.

5
.
a splendid painting of Vandyke’s
: the ownership of such a picture by the great Flemish artist, Sir Anthony Vandyke (1599–1641), court-painter to King Charles I, makes Wilmot a fabulously wealthy member of the patrician classes. Helen is moving amongst the ‘best’ circles of her time.

6
.
How do you regard me
?: In fishing for a declaration of feeling from an unattached young woman, Huntingdon is violating the social code and inviting Helen to do likewise. Manoeuvring her into dangerous positions, outside the social proprieties, he evidently enjoys the power of exposing her to struggle between feeling and duty.

7
.
maledictions against his evil angel
: the ironic ‘morality’ framework in Ch. 17, pointed up by the predominance of unmediated dialogue, is brought into blackly comic relief by the interposition of the evil angel’s evil angel
(i.e., the good angel, Helen’s aunt). Huntingdon’s ‘maledictions’, which could not have been minted in Heaven, exemplify the ‘bad speech’ he has learnt in a depraved society and which will issue in whole dictionaries of curses later in the novel.

8
.
that shocking colour
: the blush of sexual arousal, complicated by rage. Huntingdon has marked Helen out from the assembly and her aunt ironically only reinforces the effect

9
.
someone to advise him, and remind him of what is right
: Anne Brontë begins the work of debunking the myth of woman as redemptive agent, empowered by her ‘purity’ to improve the morals of her menfolk, as celebrated in many novels of the period, e.g., in Charlotte Yonge’s
Heartsease: or The Brother’s Wife
(1854), whose heroine Violet goes about ‘softening, healing, guarding, stirring up the saving part of each one’s disposition’ (Ch. 17).

10
.
if I hate the sins I love the sinner
: theological commonplace, susceptible of casuistical interpretation. See Shakespeare,
Measure for Measure
, II. ii. 35–41: ‘Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?’ (37). Charlotte Brontë had drawn this distinction in her early prose work,
Captain Henry Hastings
(1839), in relation to Elizabeth’s degenerate brother, Henry: ‘Her glance, more than her words, said: “Your faults and yourself are separate existences in my mind”’ (
Five Novelettes
, ed. Winifred Gérin (Folio Press, 1971)). But see also Irene Tayler’s astute analysis of Charlotte’s complex expression of aggressive and compassionate feeling for her fictionalized brother, in
Holy Ghosts. The Male Muses of Emily and Charlotte Brontë
(Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 142–50 – an analysis which could be extended to Anne’s treatment of Huntingdon in
Wildfell Hall
.

11
.
who can run fastest and farthest down the headlong road
: this vivid charge to perdition bears clear allusion to Matthew 7:13, ‘for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction’, with conscious or unconscious analogy in the author’s mind to Joseph’s colourful account in
Wuthering Heights
of Heathcliff’s urging Hindley ‘dahn t’Broad road, while he flees afore tuh oppen t’ pikes’ (Ch. 10).

12
.
the place prepared for the devil and his angels
: Matthew 25: 41.

13
.
recall him to the path of virtue
: cf. Richardson’s
Clarissa
, Introduction, p. xiii above.

1
.
to spare the partridges
: partridge-shooting was prohibited from 1 February to 1 September under the Game Reform Act of 1831. Gentlemen
were permitted to ‘devastate the moors’, in Emily Brontë’s scathing phrase
(Wuthering Heights
, Ch. 18), within limits that conserved the stock. Pheasants were conserved from I February to 1 October and grouse from 10 December to 12 August (named ‘the glorious twelfth’ amongst the slaughtering fraternity). Branwell Brontë was proud of his hunting prowess which is exhibited in a now lost picture entitled ‘The Gun Group’. Emily Brontë too was a crack shot but regarded this ‘manly’ sport with contempt as a sign of human damage (see her Brussels essay, ‘Le Chat’, translated S. Davies,
Emily Bronte: Heretic
(Women’s Press, 1994), pp. 248–9). In
Agnes Grey
Anne Brontë equates hunting men with the morally lowest of the low in the figure of the brutal Uncle Robson who encourages Tom in his sadism to the baby birds, leaning on his gun and commending the boy’s depravity as ‘spunk’ (Ch. 5).

2
.
at work
: on genteel sewing or embroidery.

3
.
chariot
: small enclosed carriage with a coach box: the passengers sit facing the horses.

4
.
barouche
: four-wheeled carriage with folding top for four passengers and a driver.

5
.
phaeton
: light four-wheeled open carriage driven by owner. The different carriages suit their owners’ temperaments and values rather as modern cars display pretensions: Huntingdon’s fast phaeton may be thought of as the early nineteenth-century equivalent of a sports car.

6
.
like the postscripts of their letters
: proverbial. Compare
Agnes Grey
, Ch. 22: ‘I had enquiries to make, and, like the substances of a lady’s postscript, the most important must come last.’

7
.
put his arm round my neck and kiss me
: Huntingdon’s manipulations of Helen’s person show disrespect for her dignity which, by the standards of the day, constituted not just exploitation but a calculated attempt to compromise her. He derives his chief pleasure from the struggles of the victim of this orchestrated harassment. At this stage it is not clear whether the cocksure ‘sportsman’ is doing much more than seeking to make a ‘kill’.

8
.
too deeply absorbed in each other to notice her: Jane Eyre
also uses Jane’s paintings to disclose her deepest fears and desires, in the visionary water-colours of Ch. 13. Helen’s allegorical picture seems to resemble Anne Brontë’s own style of painting symbolic scenes of conventionally pretty girls with significant trees, e.g., ‘What you please’ of 1840 (Chitham,
Life
, plate 10).

9
.
a very Hebe
: daughter of Zeus and Hera, goddess of youth and cupbearer to the gods on Mount Olympus. Personification of nubile freshness.

10
.
Let me have its bowels then
: the coarse suggestiveness of this
penetration and evisceration of Helen’s innermost privacy (represented by the personal pictures) gestures forward to Huntingdon’s rape-like assault on her diary and the vandalizing of her painting equipment in Ch. 40.

11
.
ivory paper
: artist’s heavy paper with fine glossed surface.

12
.
stained with the blood of his prey
: this repellent image implies his exploitation of the human as well as the animal prey he hunts.

13
.
Oh, why can’t I hate him
?: recalls Richardson’s
Pamela
: ‘What is the matter, that, with all his ill usage of me, I cannot hate him?’ (ed. P. Sabor (Penguin, 1980), p. 218). Anne Brontë is exploring a masochistic aspect of female psychology which cleaves to its abuser, thus reinforcing the abusive behaviour.

1
.
Farewell to thee!
: this ‘song’, with its emphasis on ‘sunny’ brightness, is a personal lyric composed by Anne Brontë, possibly related to the poetry she wrote to William Weightman who died in 1842 (see
Poems
, pp. 16–17, 171–2). Chitham believes, however, that ‘there is no question of the beloved’s death: ‘“Contempt” and “coldness” are given as the cause of the estrangement’. However, the source of the contempt and coldness is indeterminate, and, despite the hope expressed by the last stanza, the lyric has a distinctly elegiac tone. It seems to me possible that the lyric may have been adapted from a personal poem to fit the circumstances of the novel, and not impossible that it may have been written especially for the novel.

2
.
mortal language
: like Shorter, Chitham prints ‘language’, which is certainly preferable to ‘languish’ used as a noun, glossed by the
OED
as ‘a tender look or glance’, and accepted by both Rosengarten and Hargreaves. However, the rational Anne Brontë did not go in for ‘languishes’: and ‘language’ fits indisputably with ‘mortal’, in designating the heavenly character of the lost brightness. The sense depends on the fact that there exists an (unavailable)
immortal
language – an immortal ‘languish’ is inconceivable.

3
.
I would sacrifice my body and soul
: the Faustian theme of glib bargains with the immortal soul, which is nothing more than a name to Huntingdon, tolls out in dark farce.

4
.
tired nature’s sweet restorer
: a circumlocution derived from the first line of Edward Young’s ‘The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality’ (1742): ‘Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!’

1
.
a man of ‘decided piety’
: the phrase which temporarily sticks in Huntingdon’s throat derives from Virgil’s
Aeneid
, 1. 151: ‘
vir pietate gravis’
(a man confirmed in piety).

2
.
a brand plucked from the burning
: Zechariah 3:2, Amos 4:11. The phrase has a long history in relation to Dissent and Methodism as a symbol of salvation, frequently used by Wesley concerning his ‘providential’ escape from the fire at Epworth Rectory in his youth. Huntingdon’s comic fantasies playfully reconstruct Helen’s aunt as a religious zealot of the sort the Brontë children themselves enjoyed caricaturing (see Valentine Cunningham,
Everywhere Spoken Against: Dissent in the Victorian Novel
(Clarendon Press, 1975)). It seems to have been a standing joke with Branwell Brontë (see Introduction, p. xxvi).

3
. a
’sweet preacher… a ‘dear, delightful, heavenly-minded man
: not identified.

4
.
I don’t think he cares enough about me
: a telling comment, which deepens our understanding of Helen’s psychology. Because of her aunt’s sterling influence, her background has left Helen principled, thoughtful and independent-spirited but, because of her uncle’s laxness and her father’s abdication of care, her self-esteem is complicated by a neediness which attaches her fatally to Huntingdon.

5
.
a little lower than the angels
: Psalms 8:5, Hebrews 2:7, 9.

6
.
his wife shall undo what his mother did!
: the cry of hubris for whose blind arrogance Helen will have to pay in the tragic knowledge not only of failure but also a sensation of being herself contaminated. See Ch. 30, n. 2, Ch. 34, n 1; and Richardson’s
Clarissa
, quoted in the Introduction, p. xiii.

7
.
What fellowship hath light with darkness; or he that believeth with an infidel
?: Anne Brontë conflates 2 Corinthians 6:14 and y. Paul goes on to say that ‘ye are the temple of the living God’ (16): the reference is a reminder of the sexual bond of marriage which turns man and wife into ‘one flesh’ – a pollution, in Helen’s strict aunt’s view, of the ‘temple’ of the godly by the ungodly.

8
.
If be hear not them, neither will he hear though one rose from the dead
: adapted from the end of the parable of Dives and Lazarus in Luke 16:31, a key biblical text for
Wildfell Hall
. See n. 10 below and Ch. 49, n. 2.

9
.
The wicked shall be turned into hell… forget God
: from Psalms 9:17.

10
.
When you see yourselves parted for ever
: taking up the parable of Dives and Lazarus, in which the pauper is taken into bliss in Abraham’s bosom and the rich man who had rejected his claim to charity is excluded. Dives cries from hell, ‘send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue’ (Luke 16:24) but his plea is denied.

11
.
cast into the lake that burneth with unquenchable fire
: Aunt Maxwell now turns apocalyptic in quoting Revelation 20:10, conflated with Luke 3:17.

12
.
Not for ever
: this phrase is the important pivot upon which turns Anne Brontë’s version of the Brontë antagonism to the Christian vision of eternal hell as the punishment of sinners. Whereas Emily Brontë denied the goodness of God in the light of his punitive morality, Anne Brontë denied the eternity of hell as inconsistent with a loving Father ‘even the wicked shall at last / Be fitted for the skies’ (‘A Word to the Calvinists’, 37–8). In an early religious crisis, she had consulted a Moravian minister, Revd James la Trobe, who had consoled her with his church’s emphasis on divine Grace; latterly she corresponded with Dr David Thom, the leader of the sect of Beroen Universalists, who believed in universal salvation. See Tom Winnifrith,
The Brontës and their Background: Romance and Reality
(Macmillan, 1977 edn.), p. 35, 56–62.

13
.
only till he has paid to the uttermost farthing
: Matthew 5:26

14
.
If any man’s work… so as by fire
: 1 Corinthians 3:15.

15
.
is able to subdue
…
all men to be saved
: conflates Philippians 3:21 with 1 Timothy 2:4.