Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë

First published: 1847

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism

Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century

Locale: England

Principal characters

• Agnes Grey, a young governess
• Edward Weston, a curate and later Agnes’s husband
• Mary Grey, Agnes’s sister
• Richard Grey, Agnes’s father
• Mrs. Grey, Agnes’s mother
• Mrs. Murray, the owner of Horton Lodge, and Agnes’s second employer
• Rosalie Murray, Mrs. Murray’s older daughter
• Matilda Murray, Mrs. Murray’s younger daughter
• Mr. Hatfield, the rector at Horton and Rosalie’s suitor
• Sir Thomas Ashby, later Rosalie’s husband
• Harry Meltham and Mr. Green, Rosalie’s other suitors
• Nancy Brown, an old widow at Horton
• Mrs. Bloomfield, the owner of Wellwood, and Agnes’s first employer
• Tom Bloomfield, her oldest child
• Mary Ann Bloomfield, her older daughter
• Fanny Bloomfield, her younger daughter
• Uncle Robson, Mrs. Bloomfield’s brother

The Story:

Mrs. Grey, a squire’s daughter, offends her family by getting married only for love to a poor parson in the north of England. She bears him six children, but only two, Mary and Agnes, survive. Nevertheless, the Greys are happy with their humble, educated, pious life in their small house and garden. Mr. Grey, never wholly at his ease because his wife was forced to give up carriages and fine clothes in order to marry him, attempts to improve their fortunes by speculating and investing his patrimony in a merchant’s sea voyage. However, the vessel is wrecked, everything is lost, and the Greys are soon left penniless. In addition, Mr. Grey’s health, never robust, begins to fail perceptibly under the strain of his guilt for bringing his family close to ruin. Mary and Agnes, reared in the sheltered atmosphere of a clergyman’s household, have spent their time reading, studying, and working in the garden. When the family situation becomes desperate, however, Mary tries to sell her drawings to help with the household expenses, and Agnes, the younger daughter, decides to become a governess.

Overcoming the qualms her family feels at the idea of her leaving home, Agnes finds employment and, on a bleak and windy autumn day, arrives at Wellwood, the home of the Bloomfield family. She is received coldly by Mrs. Bloomfield and told that her charges, especially Tom, a seven-year-old boy, are noble and splendid children. She soon finds that the reverse is true. Tom is an arrogant and disobedient little monster whose particular delight is to pull the legs and wings off young sparrows. Mary Ann, his six-year-old sister, is given to temper tantrums and refuses to do her lessons. The children are frightened of their father, a peevish and stern disciplinarian, and the father, in turn, blames Agnes when the children frequently get out of control.

Agnes finds it impossible to teach the children anything because all her efforts to discipline them are undermined by Mrs. Bloomfield, who believes that her angels are always right. Even four-year-old Fanny lies consistently and is fond of spitting in people’s faces. For a time, Agnes is heartened by Mr. Bloomfield’s mother’s visit, but the pious old lady turns out to be a hypocrite who sympathizes with Agnes verbally and then turns on her behind her back.

Matters become a great deal worse with the visit of Uncle Robson, Mrs. Bloomfield’s brother, who encourages young Tom to torture small animals. One day, after he collects a whole brood of young birds for Tom to torture, Agnes crushes them with a large stone, choosing to kill them quickly rather than to see them suffer a slow, cruel death. The family thinks she deprived Tom of his normal, spirited pleasure. Shortly after this incident, she is told that her services are no longer required; the Bloomfields believe that she did not discipline the children properly or teach them very much.

Agnes spends a few months with her family at home before taking up her next post. She finds the Murrays, the owners of Horton Lodge, more sophisticated, wealthier, and less bleak and cruel than the owners of Wellwood; but they are still hardly the happy, pious, warm family that Agnes hoped to encounter. Her older charge, Rosalie, is sixteen years old, very pretty, and interested only in flirting and in eventually making the most suitable marriage possible; her younger charge, Matilda, fourteen years old, is interested only in horses and stables. Although they treat her with politeness, neither girl has any respect for the learning and piety that Agnes offers. If Agnes’s work is less unpleasant than it was at Wellwood, it is equally futile.

After living at Horton Lodge for nearly a year, Agnes returns home for a month for her sister’s wedding. During this time, the Murrays give Rosalie a debutante ball, after which she exercises her charms on the young men at Horton. When Agnes returns, she is shocked to find Rosalie flirting with all the men and summarizing the marital possibilities of each with a hardened and materialistic eye. In the meantime, a new curate comes to Horton. Edward Weston is a sober and sincere churchman, neither climbing nor pompous like the rector, Mr. Hatfield. Mr. Weston and Agnes, attracted to each other, find many opportunities to meet in their sympathetic visits to Nancy Brown, an old widow who is almost blind. At first, Rosalie finds Mr. Weston both dogmatic and dull, but Agnes finds him representative of the true piety and goodness that she believes are the qualities of a clergyman. Rosalie, continuing to play the coquette, first conquers the unctuous rector, Mr. Hatfield, and then after he proposes and is quickly rejected, she turns her charms on Mr. Weston. Although Agnes is fiercely jealous of Rosalie’s flirtation, she never really acknowledges her own growing love. Finally, Rosalie accepts Sir Thomas Ashby; his home, Ashby Park, and his fortune are the largest in the vicinity of Horton.

Shortly after Rosalie’s marriage, before Agnes has the opportunity to see much of Mr. Weston, she is called home by the death of her father. She and her mother decide to start a school for young ladies in the fashionable watering place of A——. Although Agnes returns to Horton Lodge for another month, she does not see Mr. Weston before she resignedly leaves to rejoin her mother. Although the school begins to prosper after a few months, Agnes still seems weary and depressed, and she welcomes an invitation from Rosalie, now Lady Ashby, to visit Ashby Park. She finds Rosalie disappointed in her marriage to a grumbling, boorish man who ignores her and who, after a honeymoon on the Continent, forbids her the frivolous pleasures of London and European society. Agnes also learns from Rosalie that Mr. Weston left Horton a short time before.

A few days after Agnes returns to her mother and the school, she is walking along the waterfront one morning when she unexpectedly encounters Mr. Weston. He secured a position as a minister in a nearby village. He promptly begins calling on Agnes and her mother, who soon comes to hold him in high esteem. One day, while walking with Agnes to the top of a high hill, Mr. Weston proposes marriage. As husband, father, clergyman, and manager of a limited income, he is in later years the perfect mate for virtuous and worthy Agnes.

Bibliography

Bell, A. Craig. The Novels of Anne Brontë. Braunton, England: Merlin Books, 1992. A critical study providing a general introduction to Brontë’s work. Includes discussion of the novels’ sources, style, structure, and characters.

Chitham, Edward. A Life of Anne Brontë. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1991. This biography reexamines sources of previous biographies and guards against indiscriminate use of novels and poems for the purpose of biographical study. Explains the composition of Agnes Grey and distinguishes its autobiographical and fictional elements.

Eagleton, Terry. Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës. Anniversary ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. A significant reading by a major Marxist critic, originally published in 1975. Analyzes social implications of Agnes Grey and its triadic structure of pious heroine, morally lax upper-class man, and principled hero. Maintains that the novel connects social and economic issues with moral principles and inculcates bourgeois virtues of piety, plainness, duty, and sobriety.

Jay, Betty. Anne Brontë. Tavistock, Devon, England: Northcote House/British Council, 2000. Reevaluates Brontë’s novels and poetry from the perspective of feminism and other twentieth century critical theories.

Langland, Elizabeth. Anne Brontë: The Other One. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1989. One of the best book-length critical studies of Anne Brontë. Examines Brontë’s innovations in theme and technique, identifies her literary precursors, and analyzes the relationships between the novels of all three Brontë sisters. Treats Agnes Grey as a novel of female development and stresses its feminist principles and realism.

Meyer, Susan. “Words on ’Great Vulgar Sheets’: Writing and Social Resistance in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey.” In The Brontës, edited by Patricia Ingham. London: Longman, 2003. Meyer’s analysis of the novel is one of the essays that examine the Brontë sisters’ work from the perspective of feminism, Marxism, postcolonialism, and other twentieth century interpretations.

Nash, Julie, and Barbara A. Suess, eds. New Approaches to the Literary Art of Anne Brontë. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001. Collection of essays, the majority of which offer various interpretations of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Scott, P. J. M. Anne Brontë: A New Critical Assessment. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1983. Analyzes themes and characters with particular emphasis on moral issues and on Agnes’s learning to cope with the realities of life. Includes close reading and explication of a number of passages.

Torgerson, Beth E. Reading the Brontë Body: Disease, Desire, and the Constraints of Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Examines how the Brontë sisters’ literary depictions of illness and disease reflect Victorian attitudes and their personal experiences. Includes analyses of Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.