I’m catching up on my 18th and 19th century classics and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has to be one of my favorites. I’ll preface this by saying don’t need these stories to feel fresh and relatable and I don’t need to be able to see myself in the protagonists. I’m not gonna love (or even enjoy) every English classic but I can generally take them for what they are. HOWEVER, Mr. Huntingdon has shown me that fuckboys are timeless. Timeless! It’s remarkable how modern their courtship felt. I found myself unable to put this one down because I was rooting for Helen to DUMP HIM!!! (as they say).

The story’s main characters each have one or two defining personality traits that become sort of cartoonish as the book goes on: Helen’s piousness, Mr. H’s selfishness, and Gilbert’s tempestuousness. Mr. Hargraves’…respect…for Helen is another trait that was pursued to its extreme in a way that surprised me. Perhaps this story was meant in part to be a meditation on inflexibility, although I felt like at least one character experienced some growth.

Fun fact: Anne Brontë depicted so much debauchery in this book that she actually apologized for it in the second edition’s introduction. Well, she sort of said “sorry you felt that way, won’t happen again.” Personally I thought it was a lot of fun.