ABSTRACT
Critics of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall have expended little energy considering the ramifications of the heroine’s career as a professional painter.1 The oversight is surprising, considering the intense scholarly interest-particularly from feminist and historicist Victorianists-in working women of all kinds. This lack of interest stems, in part, from the more general critical neglect, dismissal, or downright disparagement of Anne Brontë’s work. We have inherited this critical disparagement in large part from Charlotte Brontë herself, who as the sole surviving sister had great influence upon the publication and reception of her sisters’ works after their deaths.2 Twentieth-century critics were slow to address Anne’s work, but feminist critics began at last to embrace the novel starting in the 1980s3 and subsequent work has gone further towards redressing the balance of Brontë scholarship.4 Particular attention has been paid to Tenant’s incendiary historical and social context, focusing variously on religion, child custody laws, marital abuse, and alcoholism.
