ABSTRACT
Exemplifying Swift’s definition of the function of satire, Bronte’s The Tenant o f Wildfell Hall deserves to be read alongside other satires, including Vanity Fair and Bleak House. In Wildfell Hall\ Bronte explodes several Victorian myths and misconceptions about education, marriage and the family. And, primarily, she satirizes fundamental Victorian assumptions about the natures and roles of men and women. Throughout the novel, Bronte unequivocally demonstrates the ‘equality’ and not the ‘difference’ between men and women. She constructs dual narratives of growth to highlight the equality of her narrators, Gilbert Markham and Helen Huntingdon, and simultaneously uses them as vehicles to expose the corruption in their society.1 As Elizabeth Langland has stressed, Wildfell Hall ‘rewrites the story of the Fallen Woman as a story of female excellence [and i]n so doing, it takes on a radical feminist dimension’ (119). Such a dimension, I will argue, is also necessarily satiric, since it undercuts the conservative views that dominated Victorian thinking.2 Bronte’s novel thus provides a different perspective which contrasts sharply with those of other acknowledged male satirists of her age, especially with Thackeray’s.
