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Isolation: Helen & Agnes, Pt. Helen

Anne Brontë's two main characters - Helen Graham (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) and Agnes Grey - share quite a few things in common with both each other and their author. Of all of those things, there's one theme that is truly striking when you realise that both these characters are based on Anne Brontë's own experiences - the isolation.

Helen Graham

In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Helen Graham faces isolation in two different forms, during two different chapters of her life - before and after leaving Arthur Huntingdon.

Before moving to Wildfell Hall, Helen was trapped in an emotionally abusive marriage with that bastard Arthur. Thanks to his cruelty and general control over Helen's life, she was not only isolated in her marriage but her social life as well. As Arthur deteriorated into immorality and alcoholism, Helen slowly became more and more isolated from the world outside.

Her emotional isolation got worse when she realised that Arthur is, in fact, irredeemable.

However, it was not only Arthur himself that restrained her, but society in general.

“I had no friend to whom I could unburden my heart, no one to whom I could appeal for advice or assistance.”

This loneliness is increased by her inability to share her suffering with anyone, as the societal expectations of women in her time would have made such a disclosure scandalous. Helen lived in a time where women often had to endure pain in silence.

What made her isolation worse was that she presumed no one around her cared.

“I was often alone—alone in the midst of company; for, though I saw the faces of the people around me, and heard their voices, I was as much forgotten as though I were not there.”

In that moment, Helen reflects on how she feels like a ghost within her own home. Even in the presence of others, though they are all Arthur's preferred company, she experiences a profound emotional disconnection. She becomes increasingly aware of how little her thoughts and feelings matter to those around her, especially to Arthur, who is indifferent to her suffering. This passage underscores the alienation she feels within a supposedly intimate setting, her own home, which deepens her loneliness.

And of course, for the longest time, Anne attempts to deny her own suffering, both because she believes she can still save Arthur's soul, and to protect her reputation as a good wife.

However, even when she gets the courage to leave for Wildfell Hall, she is still lonely and in isolation, though it takes a different form. While she escapes the immediate emotional abuse, she faces the harsh reality of being a woman living alone with a child in a society that judges her for leaving her husband. Her loneliness now becomes one of exile, secrecy, and emotional restraint.

“I was very much alone in the world, and I felt as if I had no one to whom I could turn for help or sympathy.”

After leaving Arthur and taking refuge in Wildfell Hall, Helen is physically isolated in the countryside. Though she is free from her abusive marriage, she still feels the weight of her isolation, compounded by the secrecy she must maintain about her past. Her situation is one of self-imposed exile, as she has little contact with the outside world, and her past remains hidden. The loneliness is not just about being alone but also about the emotional burden of carrying the secret of her failed marriage.

Helen knows she is an “outcast” from the social world she once inhabited. Her reputation is shattered, and she is judged for defying the societal expectation that women should remain in marriage at any cost. The loneliness she feels is not only emotional but also social, as she faces rejection and scorn from society. This reflects the harsh consequences for women who break from the conventional roles of wife and mother, reinforcing her sense of alienation.

“I was an outcast—an object of derision and scorn, and to the world at large, I was a woman without a character, without a protector, and without a home.”

In many ways, Helen's loneliness mirrors Anne Brontë's own life experiences. Though not married or in a similarly abusive relationship, Anne Brontë, like many women of her time, experienced a deep sense of isolation. Anne lived much of her life in relative obscurity, growing up in the moors of Yorkshire, and often in the shadow of her more famous sisters, Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Her personal life was marked by solitude, as she was known to be shy, introverted, and intensely private.

She grew up with very few people for company and often described her loneliness to her publisher. Even as she grew older, she never moved out of seclusion, though that may have been a personal choice, especially after the death of her brother, Branwell, who she deeply cared about.

In terms of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne does not hide her views on love and society. Helen’s decision to leave her abusive husband and live independently was radical for the time, as was Anne’s critique of Victorian society’s treatment of women. Anne, like Helen, understood the cost of standing apart from societal norms.

And like Helen's actual decision to leave her husband, Anne also got serious criticism for writing about it.

Helen’s eventual happy ending - finding some peace with Gilbert Markham - suggests that loneliness is not permanent and that healing and connection are possible. This reflects Anne’s own sense of hope, that she, too, might have her own happy ending. Though she never had a conventional romantic relationship, she created her own emotional satisfaction through writing, intellectual pursuits, and deep familial bonds.

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Why Arthur Huntingdon is a bastard

Let's get real - if you've read the book, you shouldn't need to be told why he's a bastard. If you do, you are also a bastard.

First point: HE'S MENTALLY, VERBALLY, EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE.

Yes, ladies and gents. Financial and emotional abuse is still abuse.

(And they told her she had no right to leave because he wasn't beating her 🙄).

That's the main point. Other than that:

HE'S AN ANNOYING LITTLE BITCH THAT CAN'T SHUT UP.

(He just can't keep his mouth shut. Lord Lowborough would've been a better man by now if not for him. Hell, everone would've been better. Who the hell does he think he is!?)

What else...

Oh yeah.

WTF. I get it's the 1800s, but basically imprisoning her in the house!? Taking her keys and her paintings!? That's her stuff, you bastard!

(Okay, can't say much about that. Our favourite hero locked his lady in the attic. Then again, the ladies were a teensy bit different).

And of course, Arthur Jr. deserves a hell lot more than his scumbag dad corrupting him!

(When Arthur Jr. starts mocking poor Helen 😢)

Feels like I'm missing something...

Right, just remembered.

He's so UGLY. And not good ugly like some other byronic heroes. HE'S JUST UGLY.

(Was I the only one who thought the description of his face was horrid?)

(HE'S JUST SO UGLY. HOW DID HE EVER GRT THE GIRLS??? Genuinely curious).

Okay, I'm too mad to think of more right now but when I do...

I'M COMING FOR YOU, HUNTINGDON!!!

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Charlotte Brontë's letter to Ellen Nussey, dated November 7th 1854

Transcription:

"Dear Ellen

The news of an acquaintance death always seems to come suddenly. I thought ill of the previous accounts you had given of poor Elizabeth Cockhill – but still I did not expect she would die so soon. And theirs is a family into which it is difficult to realize the entrance of Death. They seemed so cheerful, active, sanguine. How does Sarah bear her loss? Will she not feel companionless – almost sisterless? I should almost fear so – for a married Sister can hardly be to her like the other. I should like to know too how Mrs Cockhill is. Did she ever lose a child before?

Arthur thanks you for the promise. He was out when I commenced this letter, but he is just come in – on my asking him whether he would give the pledge required in return – he says “yes we may now write any dangerous stuff we please to each other – it is not “old friends” he mistrusts, but the chances of war – the accidental passing of letters into hands and under eyes for which they were never written.”

All this seems mighty amusing to me: it is a man’s mode of viewing correspondence – Men’s letters are proverbially uninteresting and uncommunicative – I never quite knew before why they made them so. They may be right in a sense. Strange chances do fall out certainly. As to my own notes I never thought of attaching importance to them, or considering their fate – till Arthur seemed to reflect on both so seriously.

Mr Sowden and his brother were here yesterday – stayed all night and are but just gone. George Sowden is six or seven years the junior of Sutcliffe Sowden (the one you have seen) he looks very delicate and quiet – a good sincere man – I should think – Mr. S – asked after “Miss Nussey.”

I will write again next week if all be well, to name a day for coming to see you – I am sure you want – or at least, ought to have a little rest before you are bothered with more company: but whenever I come – I suppose, dear Nell, under present circumstances – it will be a quiet visit and that I shall not need to bring more than a plain dress or two. Tell me this when you write

Believe me faithfully yours

C Brontë Nicholls

I intend to write to Miss Wooler shortly"

Source: https://www.themorgan.org/collection/charlotte-bronte/letters/31

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Homecoming (Jane Eyre, Chapter Twenty-Two)

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"Mr Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think it too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling — he shed it over me now.

'Pass Janet' said he, making room for me to cross the stile: 'go up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold.'

All I had now to do was to obey him in silence: no need for me to colloquise further. I got over the stile without a word, and meant to leave him calmly. An impulse held me fast — a force turned me round. I said — or something in me said for me, and in spite of me —

'Thank you, Mr Rochester, for your great kindness. I am strangely glad to get back again to you; and wherever you are is my home — my only home.'

I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he tried. Little Adèle was half wild with delight when she saw me. Mrs Fairfax received me with her usual plain friendliness. Leah smiled, and even Sophie bid me 'bon soir' with glee. This was very pleasant; there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

I, that evening, shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming grief. When tea was over, and Mrs Fairfax had taken her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Adèle, kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus sat, Mr Rochester entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable — when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added that he saw Adèle was 'prête à croquer sa petite maman Anglaise'* — I half ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence."

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*French translation: 'prête à croquer sa petite maman Anglaise': 'ready to crush her little English mother'

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Brontë Archives

Welcome to Yorkshire, where the moors are haunted by gytrashes and vengeful exes. Our main stars being Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, with guest appearances from the family artist and resident rake Branwell.

This blog will include excerpts and fragments from our favourite books, as well as think pieces, essays, character studies, historical records, shit posts, and all things Brontë.

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-Admins, Smith & Artie