A Mother's Desperate Strategy — The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Huntingdon leaves Grassdale in early February, and Helen's spirits revive, not with hope of flight but because little Arthur is left to her at last. She treats the child's heart as fertile soil and works to uproot the weeds his father planted. Bad language fades. To break his love of drink she gives him as much wine as he wants, then mixes in tartar-emetic until the smell of wine, brandy, or gin is enough to make him sick. The daily treat becomes a threat: misbehave and you shall have a glass. If Huntingdon returns to the old game of teaching the boy to despise his mother, she has another scheme. Frederick must make a few rooms habitable at their mother's deserted birthplace, where she can live under an assumed name, paint for bread, and keep Arthur in seclusion while her brother sells the pictures.

Frederick comes in April and stays a fortnight. He is indignant at Huntingdon yet calls the asylum wild, until Helen makes it plain that nothing milder will answer and that the father will never surrender the son. He consents to prepare one wing of the old hall against a time of need, and hopes she will not use it unless she must. Helen promises, for Milicent, Esther, the Grassdale tenants, and her aunt still bind her to stay if she can.

In July Esther returns from her first London season, having refused the rich, ugly match her mother chose. Mrs Hargrave lectures; Walter is cold; Esther fears she will yield from sheer weariness. Helen tells her a loveless marriage is selling oneself into slavery, and that a husband's pleasures shared with no one else is a bar most matches never meet. Esther laughs, embraces her, and asks if Helen is happy. Helen will not answer. A tear falls on her neck. Esther means to be nothing like this lonely life at Grassdale; Helen already knows the girl has felt the cost.