When the mysterious widow Helen Graham arrives at the crumbling Wildfell Hall with her young son, her reclusive habits and refusal to speak of her past ignite the suspicion and gossip of the whole neighborhood — until her diary reveals the truth of a disastrous marriage to a charming, dissolute husband, and the courage it took to escape it. Published in 1848, Anne Brontë's second and final novel scandalized Victorian society with its unflinching depiction of alcoholism, cruelty, and a woman's right to leave an abusive marriage — a boldness so far ahead of its time that many consider it one of the first great feminist novels in English literature.