Gilbert's Love For Helen example essay topic

The Victorian era was marked by rapid social and intellectual change. Industrialization upset Britain's stable system of class distinctions as well as its system of gender roles, and with the approach of scientific knowledge, faith in dogmatic religious explanations were being tested. Among this turmoil of social and political concerns came Anne Bronte and her depiction of early 19th Century marriage, faith and vice. Through her characters, she challenged the social conventions, creating a realistic expose of alcoholism and marital abuse in 'The Tenant of Wildfell', as well as stressing the importance of faith in God against the vices of society that threatened the salvation of the soul. In the 'New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne Bronte', two critics concentrate on their take of the novel and Bronte's messages to her readers. Marianne Thormahlen stresses the 'Aspects of Love' among the characters, especially concerning the main protagonist, Helen Huntingdon and the trials of loving.

Her struggle to overcome other's vices and her own failure's bring to light a religious struggle of faith that can only be fulfilled through the love of god and the passion to be 'educated for Heaven'. Andres G. Lopez also uses Helen's strong faith to demonstrate Anne Bronte's wish for gender and cultural reformation, pulling apart strongly held beliefs of Victorian gender convention and presenting a strong case of equality through the actions and behaviours of each character. Like the road to purgatory, Helen's quest for the salvation of the souls of people she loves, strengthens her Christian character, as Anne Bronte would have it, against the often brutal realism of human weaknesses. From youthful fantasies about everlasting love and happy-ever-afters, Marianne indicates Helen's first mistake in love was to marry a character utterly unequal in intellect and goodliness and thus presuming that her strength of faith could overcome decades of entrenched behaviours and vices. It is her initial 'physical' love for her husband that persuades Helen to follow her heart rather than her senses, and endeavour to redeem him in God's eyes. This 'infatuated' mistake serves to support Marianne's theory of love as an 'actuator of and driving force in human development and spiritual pilgrimage'.

Even as that love turns to hate (a serious crime against God's doctrine of forgiveness in Andres Lopez's theory of character building) Helen redeems her 'saintly' character by tending to the deathbed of her wretchedly 'lost' husband, remaining constantly aware of the salvation of her soul and her duty to God. Marianne denotes Helen's God as the 'very fount of love' and that 'divine and human love are inseparable'. This in turn accentuates the coarse human nature of her husband's adultery and violence and her struggle for selfhood within and against the constraints of Victorian social structures. Marianne goes on to explain the complementary characters of Helen and Gilbert. Like Andres Lopez, she shows how each trial in their life denotes a certain development in their relationship towards one another, their behaviour towards their peers and the spiritual development of their souls. However, unlike Marianne who remains fixated on the trials of Helen to explain the development of other characters, Lopez uses Anne's unique narrative to concentrate on the development of Gilbert as an equal to Helen, spiritually and literally.

He also introduces the social group, not as a means of accentuating either characters spiritual, and otherwise, superiority over them, but as a sounding board to their reactions and ultimately their cultural and spiritual development from their respective peers. Here, Helen and Gilbert eventually, represent Bronte's self-help rule, the role of the individual to achieve self-reformation. Continuing on from this vein, Lopez presents the commonality of jealousy, hatred and violence, all the vices that Helen / Bronte was adamant against, as well as the goodness of character, love and devotion in both sexes. According to Lopez, when Helen engages in a heated discussion on the virtues that are supposedly 'inherent' in women, Bronte 'explodes several Victorian myths and misconceptions about education, marriage and the family' and the 'assumptions about the natures and roles of men and women'. Anne was very much aware of the debilitating effects of the real world that Helen would rather her son die 'to-morrow! -rather a thousand times!', than have him exposed to the corrupting force of the world of men. As a rule, her son's soul remained uncorrupted until the threat of being exposed to tainted characters like Arthur Huntingdon, forced Helen to abandon her duty as a wife to flee a system that almost inevitably gave custody rights to the father, no matter whether the marital situation was full of suffering and agony.

Her preoccupation on the education of her son indicates the growing concern in Anne's mind, on the spiritual and social development of future generations and the unfair power structures that defined sexual relationships during the Victorian period. As Lopez points out, both men and women of all social circles are capable of good and evil, it is up to the individual, whether they reform for the better or worse. The love of God and the moral development of character remained an important issue in both critics' articles. Especially, when the difficult task of not succumbing to the debilitating effects of rage and vice lay primarily in the individual as well as, according to Lopez, the negative effects of one's respective social group, in this case, Helen's 'human brutes' in the shape of Huntingdon and his cronies and Gilbert's 'scandalmongers' in Eliza Millward, Jane Wilson and Reverend Millward. Like Lopez, Marianne indicates how divine love remains constant even as human love alters when alteration finds.

When Helen's marriage dissolves into a farce, she becomes yet again, exposed to the corrupt nature of men like Hargrave who seize the opportunity to 'brutalise' her senses with his advances. It is not until men like her brother and Gilbert, that Helen restores her love for earthly beings. However, according to Lopez, the passionate actions of Gilbert in the beginning, threatened not only his future with Helen, but parallel his character to that of Hargrave. However, unlike Hargrave, Gilbert learns from his mistakes and follows Helen's wishes to the letter, showing that even though Gilbert was a victim / product of his upbringing; small community, small talks, small minds; he has enough presence of mind and faith in god to reform for the better. However, one telling factor that was not explored in much detail from either critics was the amazingly quick recovery of Gilbert from 'loving' and wooing Eliza Millward, to 'loving' and proposing to Helen. His conduct towards Eliza was one of an egotist.

He enjoys her simpering attention, describing her as 'charming beyond description' and in spite of the morality of his social conduct towards her, "guiltily" snatches 'a kiss behind her father's back'. He realises that he is a catch within the small community and despite his protestations against the kind, begins his adult life as a spoiled fop that is until he meets the cleansing and thoroughly moral Helen Huntingdon. Marianne discussed Gilberts reaction towards Helen's diary as his love for Helen was growing, but still did not explore the 'aspect' of his 'love', if it even was love, towards Eliza. To do so may well have given some indication of Gilbert's character developing away from his social circle and old self, as well as show Anne Bronte's realisation that the current Victorian society that she was living in was changing and that social climbing through marriage or achievement was therefore blurring the previously stable system of class distinctions. Therefore the next step to blurring class distinctions was the need to change the inequitable distributions of social power to men and women in the 19th Century. Along the way however, Gilbert does change for the better, becoming more aware of his duty towards his family, friends and society by bequeathing a farm to his brother Fergus and like Helen, fostering the education of 'latent virtues'.

Anne demonstrated the dangers of dissolution of moral standards by associating different standards with each character. Marianne Thormahlen used Helen as the main protagonist from which all other characters were judged upon and Andres Lopez attributed these standards to the company one kept and the development towards a spiritual partnership with God. Marianne believed that love in all its forms dissolved under the 'perfect love' of God and that the inability for Helen's husband and his cronies to achieve salvation was due to their inability to love and respect God. Helen could not reform her husband unless he really wanted to be reformed and indicates that Gilbert's love for Helen was 'a matter of the soul'. Andres focused on the process of moral development and that by controlling one's passions conveyed one closer to God thus leading both Helen and Gilbert 'more humble, tolerant and self-sacrificing'. Both critiques of Anne Bronte's 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' indicated the eventual triumphs of the main characters over adversary and the stringent critique of the values of the day.

Though Anne could not physically reform society, through 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall's he endeavoured to make her reviewers and readers look closer to their own behaviour, and to an awareness of the salvation of their souls in the hereafter.