Self-restraint and temperance

Self-restraint and temperance in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are disciplines tested by appetite, habit, and the people who reinforce them. The novel sets deliberate resistance against the recurring promise of “just once more,” and shows that reform depends not only on resolve but also on sustained effort and the conditions surrounding the person who is trying to change. Its examples range from gambling and laudanum to wine, work, and the upbringing of a child; together, they make temperance a practical and relational struggle rather than an abstract virtue.

Habit, Resolution, and Relapse

Lord Lowborough’s gambling exposes the weakness of resolutions unsupported by changed habits. He is described as infatuated with gaming, though not willingly: he continually resolves to give it up and continually breaks those resolutions. Winning encourages him to risk more in the hope of further gain; losing persuades him to continue until he has recovered the last loss. In either case, the next venture seems to offer a reason not to stop. The pattern makes gambling self-perpetuating: each outcome is reinterpreted as grounds for another attempt.

He eventually keeps his oath about gambling, despite Grimsby’s efforts to tempt him back. But abstinence from one compulsion does not mean freedom from appetite. After drinking enough to become unsteady, Lowborough takes to liquor to solace his cares, and drink becomes another habit difficult to escape. During a later period when he refuses to drink openly, he keeps laudanum privately and uses it in an erratic pattern of abstaining one day and exceeding the next, much as he does with spirits. The shift from gambling to drink and laudanum complicates any straightforward account of reform: a visible victory can coexist with new or concealed forms of dependence.

Appetite and the Discipline of the Future

Helen argues that self-command involves protecting the capacity to choose later, not merely denying pleasure in the present. In her exchange with Arthur, she distinguishes the ordinary dinner of today from the “choicer banquet of to-morrow”: the point is not total abstinence from present enjoyment, but moderation sufficient to avoid disabling future enjoyment. Her analogy frames temperance as a proportion between immediate appetite and future freedom. Giving oneself over to excess is destructive precisely because it sacrifices the ability to act otherwise.

That argument also reveals a tension in the novel’s moral language. Arthur jokes that he was not made to be a saint and suggests that God should have given him a stronger faculty of religious veneration. Helen answers with the parable of the servant who returns his entrusted talent unused and excuses himself by claiming his master is hard. Her reply treats limited capacity not as permission to make no effort, but as a measure of responsibility: less may be required of the person given less, yet the gift must still be used. The exchange places self-restraint between two extremes, rejecting both the fantasy of effortless sainthood and the excuse that weakness removes all obligation.

The Conditions of Reform

Helen understands Arthur’s appetites as connected to idleness and the upbringing that formed him. She wishes he had useful employment to occupy his hands and mind and direct his attention beyond his own pleasure. He might attend to the farm, pursue literary study, learn to draw, or study the piano, for he likes music; instead, she says, he will not exert himself to overcome obstacles or restrain his natural appetites. She attributes these failures to the combination of a harsh but careless father and a madly indulgent mother. Her reflection turns temperance into a question of education: self-command is a capacity that should be cultivated, not simply demanded after habits are established.

The same concern shapes her later efforts to keep wine from becoming Arthur’s chief comfort. During his weakness and depression, she fears that wine will serve not just as an accompaniment to social pleasure but as medicine, support, recreation, and friend. She cannot prevent him from taking more than is good for him, yet she persists through kindness, firmness, vigilance, coaxing, and determination, and succeeds in keeping him from absolute bondage to drink. The account insists on the labor involved: her influence can limit the harm, but it cannot make Arthur’s appetite disappear.

That limited achievement is vulnerable to other people’s conduct. Helen records that Grimsby and Hattersley encourage Arthur each day to exceed moderation and sometimes to disgrace himself through outright excess. Their arrival undoes much of her work against his love of wine. In this household, temperance is not a private contest between a drinker and his own will: companions can normalize excess and help restore the very habit another person has worked to restrain. Helen’s effort and the men’s encouragement stand in direct opposition, showing how social surroundings can either support or sabotage self-command.

Parenting, Example, and the Limits of Control

Helen’s thinking about indulgence extends from Arthur to the child he is raising. She recalls that Arthur was taught evil habits by his father and says that, as a mother, she will resist the crime of over-indulgence. Her concern is not that a child should be denied everything, but that indulgence can train appetite without teaching the effort needed to master it. In this way, the novel links temperance to parental responsibility: the habits adults permit or model may become the burdens children later have to overcome.

Her strategy for young Arthur makes that aim concrete and ethically uneasy. He is excessively fond of intoxicating liquor for a child, and Helen fears the consequences in light of both her father’s history and the child’s. Rather than forbid wine or reduce the accustomed quantity, she gives him as much as he wants and secretly adds a small amount of tartar emetic to each glass. The dose produces nausea and depression without causing outright sickness; after repeatedly finding that drinking brings these disagreeable consequences, the child grows tired of it and develops an absolute disgust for intoxicating liquor. Helen’s method works by associating the desired drink with aversion rather than by relying on prohibition, which she fears would make it seem a greater treat. The episode demonstrates her resourcefulness and protective purpose, while also exposing the morally complicated means by which she tries to shape her son’s appetites.

Narrative Significance

Across these cases, temperance is neither a single vow nor a guaranteed cure. Lowborough’s kept gambling oath coexists with his turn to drink and his irregular use of laudanum; Arthur’s drinking is restrained for a time by Helen’s vigilance, then encouraged back toward excess by his companions; and their son’s aversion is deliberately cultivated through a concealed intervention. Each instance distinguishes a stated intention from the habits and environments that determine whether it can last.

The novel thus presents self-restraint as active work: resisting the next wager, refusing the rationale for another indulgence, finding useful occupation, maintaining vigilance, or shaping a child’s habits before they harden. Yet its examples also resist the notion that virtue alone settles the matter. The person attempting reform may relapse, the household may undermine it, and the methods used to prevent future harm may themselves raise questions. Temperance matters because it preserves the possibility of choice, but the narrative makes clear how easily that possibility can be narrowed by appetite, upbringing, and social influence.