The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

From Vintage Classics

Helen Graham has come to Wildfell Hall to be left alone. The village has other ideas.

When Helen Graham arrives at Wildfell Hall, she brings with her a young son, a guarded manner and no wish to explain herself.
To the people around her, that is enough. Rumours gather quickly around the mysterious young widow: about where she has come from, what she is hiding and what kind of woman would choose such a lonely life. Gilbert Markham is drawn to her reserve, but affection does not give him the right to her story.
What Helen carries in silence is a past shaped by love, betrayal, religious conviction and the realities of a destructive marriage. As Gilbert begins to understand more, Anne Brontë turns a village mystery into something far braver: a Victorian novel about reputation, survival and a woman's right to protect herself and her child.
Frank about drunkenness, adultery and the limits of marital obedience, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall shocked Victorian readers when it was first published. It remains one of the most courageous Brontë novels, and one of the most powerful classics about marriage, judgement and hard-won independence.