Beyond the margins: The worker Brontë

Anne is the often-forgotten Brontë who trekked to London with her older sister, Charlotte, to reveal her secret identity due to the ire incited by Acton Bell seeking a different publisher for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In the “Preface” to the second edition, Anne claimed an imperfect story can provide a window into human life. As both Catherine Paula Han and Marianne Thormählen argued, Anne de-centers her role in the writing process and argues for the story itself. With the continued acceptance of precarious caretaking workers, Brontë’s fiction is an embodiment of the struggles teachers and artists have in seeking opportunities that provide a livable wage. Her silence on the role biography had within this novel was a rhetorical technique utilized in her refusal to capitulate to criticism. Anne showed the forbearance for her fate that only a Brontë could: silent acceptance and trust in God and her abilities.