The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

 Oh what a hateful book!  Long, boring, and with main characters I found tedious and annoying.  It has claims to being one of the first feminist novels and I guess I can't disagree with that-Helen certainly has a mind of her own and she, when pushed far enough, takes her life into her own hands which is not something expected from your traditional 19th century heroine.  But she also gets herself into the sort of trouble that you can't really align with her experiences in other parts of the book...but then again, she falls in love with not one but two absolute dolts in the course of the novel so maybe it is consistent?  And our hero, the teller of the tale, is a real piece of work.  He's a selfish, lazy guy who pursues his self-absorbed activities to the detriment of his land, his tenants and his family.  Though he expresses admiration for his sister, love for his mother and a stereotypical rivalry with his little brother, he is a horrid friend at one point literally attacking one on the basis of a rumor.  Though he seems to be writing to a close friend to whom he does not feel he needs to cover up his baser notions, it does seem that even so, one would not be so anxious to share such an unflattering portrait of oneself.  It makes you wonder what he maybe wasn't sharing, given how bad what he did share was.   And Helen-by the time the point of view switched from Markham to Helen I was well and truly done with him.  Her writings were more tolerable, but they were diary entries, not the contents of a letter to a friend, so in my opinion her writings were perhaps more open and honest.  But she did not seem so very smart in her early days, falling for the scoundrel she married, and then falling for Markham who while lacking the most horrid of her husband's traits, was not exactly a paragon of virtue.  I found it difficult to stomach her allowing not one, but two different men fall in love with her while she was married and had no intent of reciprocating their feelings.  She's a mess and displays severe lack of judgement herself.