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Best-Seller or “Entire Mistake”? : The Effect of Form on the Receptions of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne

Eshelman, Elizabeth A.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wuhonors1148666970

Abstract Details

2006, Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, English.
The best-selling novel of the nineteenth century, Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne, is not commonly read today; neither is Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. These books, published only twelve years apart, share strikingly similar sensational elements and common themes. However, they were received very differently; while the early critics disapproved of the subject matter of the both books, they praised East Lynne highly yet criticized The Tenant, setting the stage of each book’s fate through the first part of the twentieth century. As I show in this section of my honors thesis, it is first and foremost the form of these books – point of view, style, and structure – that determines their early treatment. Since the Victorian era refused to give voice to the experience of vicious living, The Tenant threatens the Victorian disguise of respectability by allowing the reader to witness – through a first-person narrator and a structure composed of a letter and a diary – scenes of debauchery and immoral behavior. East Lynne, on the other hand, distances the reader from the immorality in the book by using a third-person, storyteller perspective, thus presenting the story as exactly that – a story, rather than a truthful account.
Inboden Robin (Advisor)
Literature, English
critical reception; Victorian literature; sensationalism

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Eshelman, E. A. (2006). Best-Seller or “Entire Mistake”? : The Effect of Form on the Receptions of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne [Undergraduate thesis, Wittenberg University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wuhonors1148666970

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Eshelman, Elizabeth. Best-Seller or “Entire Mistake”? : The Effect of Form on the Receptions of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne. 2006. Wittenberg University, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wuhonors1148666970.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Eshelman, Elizabeth. "Best-Seller or “Entire Mistake”? : The Effect of Form on the Receptions of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Mrs. Henry Wood’s East Lynne." Undergraduate thesis, Wittenberg University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wuhonors1148666970

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2006, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Wittenberg University Honors Theses and OhioLINK.