The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

And there was and is a considerable narrative ability, a sheer moral energy in 'Wildfell Hall, ' which would not be enough, indeed, to keep it alive if it were not the work of a Brontë, but still betray its kinship and source. The scenes of Huntingdon's wickedness are less interesting but less improbable than the country-house scenes of 'Jane Eyre'; the story of his death has many true and touching passages; the last love-scene is well, even in parts admirably, written. But the book's truth, so far as it is true, is scarcely the truth of imagination; it is rather the truth of a tract or a report. There can be little doubt that many of the pages are close transcripts from Branwell's conduct and language, -so far as Anne's slighter personality enabled her to render her brother's temperament, which was more akin to Emily's than to her own. The same material might have been used by Emily or Charlotte; Emily, as we know, did make use of it in 'Wuthering Heights'; but only after it had passed through that ineffable transformation, that mysterious, incommunicable heightening which makes and gives rank in literature.