The mysterious new tenant of Wildfell Hall is a strong-minded woman who keeps her own counsel.
Helen 'Graham' - exiled with her child to the desolate moorland mansion adopting an assumed
name and earning her living as a painter - has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a
disastrous marriage. Narrated by her neighbour Gilbert Markham and in the pages of her own
diary the novel portrays Helen's eloquent struggle for independence at a time when the law and
society defined a married woman as her husband's property.
