The Tenant in Barnard Castle

A new chance to watch a production of Deborah McAndrew's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, first premiered in 2017:

The Castle Players present

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

by Deborah McAndrew

The Witham, 3 Horse Market, Barnard Castle DL12 8LY

Directed by Mary Stastny.

Anne Brontë's book ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ both shocked and inspired her readers. This autumn, The Castle Players will be performing a dramatic adaptation of the story which some have dubbed the first feminist novel.

Finding herself in unbearable circumstances, our heroine Helen Huntingdon escapes the marital home with her young son. Assuming the identity of Mrs Graham, a widow, she becomes an independent woman earning a modest
living through her painting, but she also becomes the subject of much gossip amongst the local villagers who are sceptical of her widow's weeds.

The play, like the novel, shines a spotlight on the helpless plight of married women in Victorian England who found themselves with no independent legal rights at all: she was unable to sue for divorce, own her own property or have sole custody of her children.

It was said at the time that "the slamming of Helen Huntingdon's bedroom door against her husband reverberated throughout Victorian England."

Further information in Teesdale Mercury,