Letters and Revelations — The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Five or six days later Lawrence visits Gilbert's farm and shares another letter over the cornstacks. Helen permits Gilbert to make such revelations as he judges necessary but wishes little said on the subject; she hopes he is well and tells him not to think of her. Gilbert may keep this letter as antidote to pernicious hope. Excerpts describe Huntingdon's partial recovery under strict regimen opposite his former habits, his misery and degeneration from past dissipation, and Helen's exhausted pity mixed with shrinking when he attempts fondness she cannot credit. He veers between peevish demands and abject self-abasement. He asks what she will do when he gets well; she answers it depends on his conduct. Helen will not preach when he demands relief instead of amendment. Gilbert also learns Jane Wilson failed to recapture Lawrence or any sufficiently rich and elegant husband, withdrew to county-town lodgings, and lives as a cold, scandal-loving old maid who cites her clerical relations while disowning her farming kin. The letter deepens Gilbert's picture of Helen's resigned imprisonment at Grassdale without giving him permission to act on his love or write to her directly. Gilbert reads her guarded permission as both freedom and rejection: he may defend her honour in Lindenhope, but she still commands him to turn his thoughts elsewhere.