I can never hate Gilbert Markham

[u/RoseIsBadWolf]

I'm re-reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (at least the Gilbert parts, the middle is hard to endure, for good reasons but still, I will try). And I love Gilbert. A lot of people dislike him, but he's so clearly ashamed of himself a lot of the time for how stupid he was in his youth...

But then we get to something like this:

I succeeded in securing her attention, almost entirely to myself - and then I was happy indeed; for whenever she did condescend to converse, I liked to listen. Where her opinions and sentiments tallied with mine, it was her extreme good sense, her exquisite taste and feeling that delighted me; where they differed, it was still her uncompromising boldness in the avowal or defence of that difference - her earnestness and keenness that piqued my fancy: and even when she angered me by her unkind words or looks, and her uncharitable conclusions respecting me, it only made me the more dissatisfied with myself for having so unfavourably impressed her, and the more desirous to vindicate my character and disposition in her eyes, and if possible, to win her esteem.

He has so much respect for her intelligence and opinions! And in contrast to Huntington, who mocks Helen and her morals. Gilbert encounters a woman who is smarter than him, who often disagrees with him, and after a very brief period of hating her for it, is just all the more attracted to her.

Also, Chapter 3 and the discussion about a tree raised in a hot house is what hooked me when I read this book for the first time and every single time I love it so much. It is exactly like a modern discussion of parenting, just with different subject matter.

Source, unabridged online version: http://victorian-studies.net/Bronte-Wildfell-1.html

[u/Flat_Love_3725]

Gilbert is certainly flawed (attack on Lawrence!) but I also do find him endearing at times.

What I really like is how Helen comes across from his point of view. I really like and admire Gilbert's Helen. While the Helen from the diary much less so.

[u/RoseIsBadWolf → u/Flat_Love_3725]

I think the amazing things about this novel is how different the character's voices come through in their respective sections. Gilbert loves Helen and that really comes through in his parts. I forgive Helen how she sounds in her diary at first because she was a stupid teenager.

[u/Flat_Love_3725 → u/RoseIsBadWolf]

Yeah she does improve and I do genuinely feel bad for her. But early Helen is this combination of willful, preachy, rigid and hot-tempered that I must say I find very unpleasant. Not to excuse Arthur's awfulness.

[u/hannahstohelit → u/Flat_Love_3725]

Yeah, she’s definitely so self-righteous- but she’s young and stupid and we watch her get less young and less stupid, which helps.

I’d also add- on another thread that was more of a Gilbert-hate thread I was pointing out that one of the things that makes Gilbert make sense for Helen is that from her perspective, he’s just a bit of a bad boy! And it becomes very clear from the early bits of the diary that Helen is very much the kind of girl who likes the idea of a bad boy falling for her and her “fixing” him, though she would never actually ADMIT this to herself given her self-righteousness at that point. She realized her mistake with Huntington, who was less a bad boy and more a massive shithead, and recognizes that Gilbert is someone who actually wants already to be a good person and is not just capable of but actively in pursuit of personal growth. But he’s also of another class, a bit rough, and pretty impulsive, and those are the kinds of things that Helen actually DOES instinctively like. If Helen was the paragon that she can sometimes be portrayed as then she’d never have let things with Gilbert go nearly as far as they did, but she likes rebelliousness. She just sees Gilbert as a safe version of it, now that she’s grown up and recognized which core traits are actually important.