‘Horror and disgust’ : Reading the Tenant of Wildfell Hall
This article started out as a keynote lecture at the ‘Coarseness of the Brontës: A Reappraisal’ conference in Durham on 10-11 August 2017. It raises issues in which the ‘coarseness’ of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) - its most striking characteristic, according to censorious 1848 reviewers - is a central element. These issues include the violent Hattersley marriage, the manifestations of physi