Editing Anne Brontë (section)

===''The Tenant of Wildfell Hall''===
{{Main|The Tenant of Wildfell Hall}}
{{multiple image
|total_width=360
|image1=The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.jpg
|alt1=Title-page of the first edition, 1848
|caption1=Title-page of the first edition, 1848
|width1=969
|height1=1460
|image2=The Tenant of Wildfell Hall American Edition.png
|width2=969
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|alt2=Title-page of the first American edition, 1848
|caption2=Title-page of the first American edition, 1848<ref>Here Acton Bell (Anne Brontë) is mistakenly identified as the author of Wuthering Heights. [[Thomas Cautley Newby]], hoping for higher sales, purposely misled American publishers claiming that all novels from Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell were written by the same person.</ref>
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{{Quote box
 |quote  = "Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways," scribbled Anne Brontë in pencil at the back of her Prayer Book.
 |author = [[Stevie Davies]]
 |source = ''Introduction'' in ''The Tenant of Wildfell Hall'', Penguin Classics.
 |width  = 50%
 |align  = right
}} Anne's second novel, ''[[The Tenant of Wildfell Hall]]'', was published in the last week of June 1848.<ref name="Barker 557">Barker, ''The Brontës'', p. 557</ref>

The novel challenged contemporary social and legal structures. In 1913, [[May Sinclair]] said that the slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England.<ref>Brontё, Anne. ''The Tenant of Wildfell Hall''. 1848. Introduction. Winifred Gerin. New York: Penguin. 1979.</ref>

In the book Helen has left her husband to protect their son from his influence. She supports herself and her son in hiding by painting. She has violated social conventions and English law. Until the [[Married Women's Property Act 1870]] was passed, a married woman had no legal existence independent from her husband and could not own property nor sue for [[divorce]] nor control the custody of her children. Helen's husband had a right to reclaim her and charge her with kidnapping. By subsisting on her own income she was stealing her husband's property since this income was legally his.<ref name="Oxcomp"/>

Anne stated her intentions in the second edition, published in August 1848. She presented a forceful rebuttal to critics (among them Charlotte) who considered her portrayal of Huntingdon overly graphic and disturbing. Anne "wished to tell the truth". She explained: "When we have to do with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear."<ref name="Barker 532">Barker, ''The Brontës'', p. 532</ref> Anne also castigated reviewers who speculated on the sex of authors and the perceived appropriateness of their writing. She was

{{blockquote|satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.<ref name="Barker 564">Barker, ''The Brontës'', p. 564</ref>}}