The Youngest Bronte Tells Timeless Tale

Anne Bronte was both the youngest and the least known of the three novel-writing Bronte sisters. But she was no less skilled. And her little-known novel “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” was a stunning accomplishment, a chronicle of spousal abuse during an era when married women in England had virtually no legal rights.

The novel, which was a bestseller when it was published in 1848 (despite Victorian criticism that described it as “coarse” and “revolting”), has been transformed into a riveting television version for PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre.”

The story it tells, despite its 19th century Yorkshire setting, is startlingly modern. As such, it makes a disturbing case for the fact that--despite suffrage, despite the rise of feminism--the treatment of women in the latter part of the 20th century still bears striking similarities to the treatment they received in the early 19th century.

But Bronte has not written a tract, and director Mike Barker and scriptwriters Janet Barron and David Nokes have not attempted to take the story out of its appropriate time and place. Nor was there any reason to do so, because the tale of Helen Huntington’s brutal, demeaning marriage is clearly timeless.

Huntington, played superbly by Tara Fitzgerald (from “Sirens” and “Brassed Off”), arrives, unannounced, in a small farming village with her young son. Moody and distant, reluctant to enter into the social life of the town, she is viewed by many with suspicion and disdain.

As the back story of her unhappy marriage and escape from her husband, the drunken, womanizing aristocrat Arthur Huntington (played with fierce authenticity by Rupert Graves) becomes clear, Helen Huntington’s character begins to emerge. And, in what is a virtual textbook depiction of the life process of marital abuse, we see, first, the impact of her susceptibility and codependency (both of which are exacerbated by the social conventions of the time) and, finally, her capacity to find the emotional strength to both prevail and triumph.

Although the picture is placed in settings and costumes that recall previous PBS renderings of Bronte novels, its direction, camera work, music and editing are pointedly contemporary. There are overhead shots, spiraling camera movements, sudden jump cuts into flashbacks and music that moves from sweeping melodies to thick, textured sound designs.

The effect is powerful, firmly establishing the linkages between past and present in this relentlessly compelling drama.

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* “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” airs on “Masterpiece Theatre” at 9 p.m. Sunday on KCET-TV Channel 28. PBS has rated it TV-PG-L (may be unsuitable for young children; contains coarse language).