Agnes Grey

I am a big fan of the Brontes. While Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights are deservedly all time classics, Anne's two novels are less well known and comparatively neglected; and Agnes Grey is probably less known than Anne's other novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Agnes Grey is comparatively short and is a semi-autobiographical novel where Anne recounts the eponymous young lady's experiences as a governess to the children of wealthy families. When her father's business ventures fall apart after the sinking of a ship of his merchant business partner, young Agnes goes to work as a governess to earn the family some money, despite discouragement from her family. Her experiences are actually quite hilarious, dealing with show more spoiled and delinquent children and their oblivious parents who refuse to see any wrong in their offspring, particularly in the case of the Bloomfields. Later she looks after the older daughters of the Murrays, who are also a trial, being self-centred and needy, but with whom she is able eventually to establish a modus vivendi. She also falls in love with a vicar in the Murrays' local village, Mr Weston. This is a lovely and very satisfying novel, in some ways ahead of its time in dealing with "feral" children, as is Wildfell Hall in dealing with domestic abuse. A great read. show less

There is a stock image of the Victorian governess, isn't there: the stern, plain figure in black who is given charge of the upper- or middleclass family's children, shepherding them from classroom to drawing room, and thence to bed. It's easy to caricature this figure, as Joan Aiken did with the figure of Miss Slighcarp in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, or to portray her as a dominatrix for men (and women) of certain tastes, but I suspect that mostly the romantic view of the governess will rest on the titular person of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847).

However, the life of many a governess is portrayed more realistically in Charlotte's sister's novel, the semi-autobiographical Agnes Grey, which even more than Jane Eyre exposed the show more circumstances which governesses were expected to tolerate without a murmur. Clues that much of the story of Agnes ("pure, holy") is based on Anne's own experiences come in the opening paragraphs: both their fathers are clergymen in the north of England; both young women are twice engaged as governesses, the first post being short-lived though the second lasts a few years; and both are involved in plans to begin a school with family members (though in only one case does it come to fruition). And, from what we know of Anne's life, the circumstances of Agnes' treatment parallel the author's own.

Because of her family's impoverished circumstances -- her clergyman father has made a disastrous investment -- the shy but principled Agnes chooses to offer her services as a governess to whichever family will take her on. The first family, the Bloomfields of Wellwood Mansion, abuse her greatly: the children are ungovernable, their sides taken by the parents, and Agnes given no leeway to assert any authority. The promise of her starting there is never fulfilled after her arrival:
I awoke the next morning; feeling like one whirled away by enchantment, and suddenly dropped from the clouds into a remote and unknown land, widely and completely isolated from all he had ever seen before.

She is indeed completely isolated and given no support, yet blamed for her lack of control over the four children. Not unnaturally she lasts scant months and is let go. She next applies as governess to the Murrays of Horton Lodge, a position only marginally more tolerable. The two sons thankfully soon depart for private school, making Agnes' life a little more tolerable with just two girls to supervise.

At this point the mood starts to lighten; there's a chapter where the teenage girls start a dialogue with Agnes, one that injects a moiety of humour into the proceedings, despite a moment of utter tragedy for our heroine. And in fact we begin to transition from a misery memoir to a romance of almost Austenesque sensibility as we wonder if the sympathetic parish curate Mr Weston will provide the solace and comfort that Agnes desires, for he seems to appreciate her sterling qualities as well as sharing the same interests and values.

"Reading is my favourite occupation, when I have leisure for it and books to read." -- Agnes to Mr Weston, Chapter XV

The climax takes place in a seaside town not unlike the Scarborough where Anne herself took her holidays (and where she was to end her days), for it is here that she and her mother have set up a school for gentle folk. And were it not for the more evangelical phrases that Anne employs the ending could easily be out of anything that Austen herself wrote.

Agnes Grey is, to my mind, a slightly uneven novel -- in tone at least -- but still astonishing for its realism and insights. Here for example is Agnes/Anne commenting on whether appearance matters or not in terms of others' assessment and judgement of one's worth:
If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior. So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day. All very judicious and proper, no doubt; but are such assertions supported by experience? -- Chapter XVII

There is too often a mismatch between what ought to happen and what actually happens, is what she's saying, and this authorial voice is what distinguishes Anne and her siblings from Austen's more observational approach, and which gives the first-person narrative of Agnes Grey its particular poignancy and potency.

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While Agnes Grey is well aware that her in-between position as neither family member nor servant gives her precious little status, some governesses achieved great dominance in their families by sheer force of will; this allowed Joan Aiken to caricature this type in the terrifying figure of Miss Slighcarp in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase (1962), a woman who felt free to dispense with the customary drab costume governesses were expected to wear and to usurp the parental position of authority.

https://wp.me/s2oNj1-agnes show less

3.5, rounded up to 4 because Anne
This suffers a bit from coming after [b:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall|337113|The Tenant of Wildfell Hall|Anne Brontë|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1479652419s/337113.jpg|1389477] for me. That book is a masterpiece, but this is Anne Brontë's first and it's still a must-read in its own right. Anne was really attentive to the way ideology is reproduced among the upper-classes, passed down from smug, privileged parents to their kids. As always, she's astute about how ideals of masculinity and femininity are maintained, and I don't know if that was her intention, but she really zeroes in on how hostile heterosexual relations are among the well-off; when marriage was about property and maintaining the show more family line.

My biggest issue with this book is that it felt too episodic, like a series of vignettes strung together. The narrative becomes a bit more fleshed out when Mr. Weston makes an appearance. If I read it before ToWH I would have loved it a little bit more; nevertheless, it is wonderful to see the progress from this to ToWH. To think about what could have come after ToWH had she lived longer! show less

The story of Agnes Grey is essentially thinly veiled autobiography which parallels key elements of Anne Bronte’s own life. Related in the first person, it is the story of a clergyman’s daughter in the north of England who seeks financial independence in light of the family’s straightened circumstances and eventually chooses, much to the astonishment of her parents and sisters, to become a governess. The ensuing narrative provides ample opportunity to present some powerful depictions of over indulgent and thoughtless parents, their obstreperous and selfish children as well as the vacuity of the schoolroom. We see two families, the Bloomfields and the Murrays, each of which proves unkind, unfeeling and insensitive after their own show more fashion. We also see the attendant village societies with their divisions, jealousies and aspirations – although the overall presentation of these is more akin to Jane Austen’s two inches of ivory rather than to Dickens’ or Eliot’s wider panorama of the social order.

This novel fits the pattern of so many great classic realist works of the Victorian era from Dickens to Hardy, which explore the principle division of matter and spirit. The material conditions of nineteenth century society are always kept in mind; we are given details of the wealth and earnings of Agnes, her economic strains and anxieties; and we are shown how they contrast with the ease and comfort of her employers as well as the pecuniary motivations for the marriages they arrange. But, while worldly enough to incorporate such gross matters, the moral and spiritual dimension of the characters is always the principle focus of interest. For Agnes, the most important concern is to maintain integrity in the face of experience; to focus on the simple and honest virtues of love rather than social probity or advancement. Agnes’ mother sums this up most clearly towards the end when she affirms the choice she made to marry for love rather than money many years earlier by turning down her own father’s offer to restore her place in his will if she will renounce her marriage. She stoutly asserts that “he is mistaken in supposing that I can regret the birth of my daughters...; had our misfortunes been three times as great as they were ... I should still the more rejoice to have shared them with your father...” (p.124). What keeps Agnes going in the dark times as she feels increasingly alienated from the world and its values, is this family feeling and the thought of doing her best for them. When the admirable curate Mr Weston asks her what her favourite flowers are, she replies with “primroses, blue-bells and heath-blossoms” because they remind her of home; and here she pledges herself to Victorian hearth and home: “It is so much that I think I could not live without it” she says (p.84).

The great temptation for the characters of the novel is the pride that comes from their wealth and the ability it gives them to exploit others. On one side are the wealthy who have generally succumbed to this egotism. Rosalie Murray, one of Agnes’s charges, fits this mould. Agnes admits to caring for her and seeing her virtues of vivacity and charm; but her indulgent parents and their philistine world view have allowed Rosalie’s weaknesses to outgrow her strengths. As Agnes notes “Her temper being naturally good, she was never violent or morose, but from constant indulgence and habitual scorn of reason, she was often testy and capricious; her mind had never been cultivated; her intellect at best was somewhat shallow; she possessed considerable vivacity, some quickness of perception, and some talent for music and the acquisition of languages, but till fifteen she had troubled herself to acquire nothing; - then the love of display had roused her faculties, and induced her to apply herself, but only to the more showy accomplishments” (51). Even worse are the cruelties of Tom Bloomfield, the eldest child of Agnes’ first placement. He is constantly defiant to Agnes and vicious to animals (he is the boy Lear refers to who kills things for his sport).

This culture culminates in mercenary attitudes to love and marriage as seen in Rosalie’s poor choice of a husband, something connived in by her parents.
All this is counterpointed with Agnes’s steadfast and level headed moral judgement. Her connections reflect this same modest and simple attitude: her constant and loyal family, Nancy Brown (a local cottage dweller looked down on by the well-to-do because of her meagre living) and the curate Mr Weston. Modesty, endurance and a clear sighted simple honesty and faith are the touchstone virtues here. And, as we would expect they are rewarded in their way.

The drama played out between these sets of characters is to a great degree predictable but the resolution is skilfully held back until extremely late in the story; the heart of the novel is Agnes herself, her modesty and moral integrity. She can judge harshly: Tom Bloomfield and the uncle who incites him to outrageous acts of so-called “manly” torture are clearly taken to task in the narrative. But she can also forgive Rosalie for her thoughtless marriage when she sees its sorrowful consequences in a poignant scene. So, along with a moral toughness there is a capacity for flexibility and kindness.

Agnes can seem a little pious at times to modern taste but the voracious, vindictive and spiritually vapid world of her antagonists serves to provide a counterweight to this. There is no shortage of cruelty and heartlessness to be seen in this novel, but these lack the energetic vigour with which Emily presents such emotions in "Wuthering Heights". But, the purpose of this book is to embody the values of Christian virtue not to extol or explore the passions of pantheistic or pagan character as her sister does. Whereas Emily’s novel leads us to the shimmering energies of “unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth”, Anne affirms a more conventional Victorian pietism by concluding that “we endeavour to live to the glory of Him who has scattered so many blessings in our path”. Unquiet slumbers? Quiet glory has its value, too. show less

Utterly dull. It only dawned on me towards the end of this tedious, plot-devoid novel that the reason Anne wrote it was as a morality tale, and then I understood it a little better, but I still did not enjoy it. Because there is nothing here to enjoy.

Anne Brontë clearly could write. Here and then in The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, she is capable of conjuring shocking scenes, which given the time she was writing in show great bravery. Also apparent (very occasionally) in this novel is a delightfully sarcastic wit, which would have been a lot more fun to be around if she had given her protagonist any personality at all. But alas. She also has two irritating habits throughout, one that the narrator keeps telling us that we probably aren't show more enjoying her story and generally commenting on the telling of it rather than actually TELLING it, and two that Agnes endlessly laments and thinks about things rather than EVER actually doing or saying anything. Even what plot might be happening is out of her sight and so entirely glossed over.

We are introduced to Agnes at the start as an irritatingly happy girl, despite her poorness, who loves her family but is tired of being the baby and wants to go out and become a governess. Why she fixes on this idea at all, particularly given that her mother and elder sister never allow her to do or achieve anything, is not explained. Nor how she would be any good at it, given the aforementioned babying. Anyway, off she goes to be a governess with the deplorable Bloomfields. Unfortunately this brief section of the book isn't much fun to read. Yes, the family are ghastly, but there's no particular plot going on here. It really just feels like Anne, having had this experience in real life, wanted to gripe about it and wrote it into a novel that it has no bearing on. Once Agnes leaves, she never sees or hears from these characters again and doesn't learn anything from it. The whole section could easily be cut.

Next she goes to work for the Murrays. Although not as bad as the Bloomfields, they have the exact same faults, and Agnes is unable to improve the children because of the exact same restrictions imposed upon her (she isn't allowed to use punishment). At this point it became clear to me that Agnes just isn't a very good governess. We have two examples in a row of her failing to do her job, no examples of her succeeding, her disturbing insistence that a child can only be moulded by hitting them and even if this is in part the fault of her employers, she never explains to them what needs to be done or stands up for herself in any way. Agnes Grey is a shy, passive character who completely failed to win my sympathies. I have no idea why she stays in this job for three years, given that she is hopeless at it, other than some misplaced stubbornness, another quality that will not endear her to the audience.

Meanwhile, she hears that the new curate is a good man and is impressed by his sermons, and therefore submits to being obsessively in love with him for no discernible reason. She barely knows him at all, they only speak a handful of times, most of which are filled with awkward silences. I assumed occasionally that she must be deluded and perhaps we would learn more about this character at some point (he never seemed to be 'nice' only 'good') but later realised that he just existed to be the reward for the pious character, and need not actually have anything like a personality.

Agnes moves to her third job towards the end of the book, and briefly visits her former charge, who is miserable you see because she has sinned, and Agnes gets to have a happy ending you see because she is good. Because MORALITY. (Though how she and Mr Weston could possibly be happy, what with not knowing each other and showing no particular interest or attraction towards each other I don't know.) Apparently morality was considered more important to Anne than drama. I mean, sure, in living your life, but not in writing a damn novel! show less

I love this book. I know nobody gives a shit about Anne Bronte, from a scholarly perspective (what? who?) - she's meek and shy and passive and doesn't give her characters flaming banners, extolling self-reliance/feminism/courage/narcissism/evil, as do the other literary Brontes, her sisters, Emily & Charlotte.
WHATEVER. I love it. Anne is not self-possessed; she is homesick to the point of stomach ulcers. Anne - I mean, Agnes - visits poor old women and makes nice with cats. She goes to church and listens to the preacher. She sits the backwards in the carriage and gets ill. She is abused by her charges, ridiculed by the servants, and given a thick steak to eat when her hands are so "palsied" with cold that she cannot hold the knife. show more It's all the minutia of Austen without the wit, or the verve.

But then... she'll come out with a trace of sarcasm, or take back a little complaint with self-remonstration, or describe her employers in language that is even more cutting for its calm.

And did I say she had no courage? I imagine her in plain dresses and 20-pounds-per-annum pay, alone & friendless in a strange household - too timid to leave food on her plate. Anne, resolute, who drops a heavy flat stone on a nest of baby birds rather than let them be pulled to pieces or set afire by her young pupil. show less

Another hit for Team Anne! I have no idea why I took so long to read this delightful little novel - the threat of animal abuse in the introduction, I think - but I'm glad I finally did. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a triumph of realism over romanticism, and Agnes Grey does the same for the governess tale (I'm not a fan of Jane Eyre!)

Agnes Grey, unlike her fictional cousin Jane, volunteers to become a governess in order to support her family. The first family she works for, the Bloomfields, are living example of why some people shouldn't have children just because they can (and why taking charge of the monsters they produce is a thankless task). The three young children are spoiled rotten and Agnes, much like Anne herself, is soon let show more go because she can do nothing with them. Moving onto a new family, the Murrays, who are of a better class than the Bloomfields, Agnes is given the task of 'improving' the two young ladies, Rosalie and Matilda, while the sons are sent away to school. I actually loved the Murrays, particularly Rosalie, who knows she is a beauty and treats men like playthings! Like Austen's Emma, not a lot happens - Agnes stays with the Murrays and gets ignored and blamed on a regular basis, while finding herself drawn to the local curate - but the eponymous narrator is so delightfully blunt - in her thoughts, if not her speech - that I was instantly drawn into her small world.

There is a boring chapter given over to the religious ramblings of a 'cottager' - not in that sense! - who requires Agnes to read the Bible to her and sings the praises of Weston the curate during her visits, and Agnes herself is ridiculously slow to pick up on a proposal towards the end of the book, but overall, I enjoyed Anne's first novel. She is honest about cruelty, ignorance and vanity without going overboard (*cough cough* Charlotte and Emily) and her heroine might be pious in person but she's wonderfully haughty in thought (walk in front of Agnes and ignore her? How very dare!) show less