Agnes Grey
Anne Brontë is perhaps best known as the youngest sister of Charlotte (author of Jane Eyre, among other novels) and Emily (author of Wuthering Heights), but Anne was a prolific writer in her short life, and my favorite of the Brontë sisters. Like all her siblings, Anne died tragically before her time (Charlotte lived the longest and died at the ripe old age of 39 due to complication in pregnancy), yet she left behind two novels and a collection of poetry. About ten years ago, I read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (originally published in 1848 under the pseudonym, Acton Bell) and immediately appreciated Anne’s craft. While The Tenant of Wildfell Hall certainly engages with questions of female morality and scandal (in ways that seem to anticipate the works of Thomas Hardy later in the century), I found Anne’s prose gentler than that of her two sisters, perhaps more influenced by the writing of Jane Austen. While I am a fan of Charlotte’s famous Jane, I am less so of Emily’s brooding Anne gothic Heathcliff, but I greatly enjoyed Anne’s epistolary Wildfell Hall. Thus, when during the course of the library’s long corona-virus-induced closure, as I scanned my shelves for any unread books, I happily found myself absorbed in Anne Brontë’s first novel, Agnes Grey (published in 1847 under the pseudonym of Acton Bell).
Particularly after the postmodern project of Saramago’s Blindness, I swooned over Agnes Grey’s nineteenth-century prose, manner, and setting. This novel’s fist-person narrative follows the young life of its titular character, Agnes, as she makes her way in the world. It is, no doubt, based, at least in part, on Anne’s own life; like Anne, Agnes is the younger daughter of a clergyman who leaves home to work as a governess. The final sentence of the novel’s first paragraph nods to its autobiographical nature: “[S]hielded by my own obscurity, and by the lapse of years, and a few fictitious names, I do not fear to venture, and will candidly lay before the public what I would not disclose to the most intimate friend” (3). Of course, there is plenty in Agnes’ life that differs greatly from Anne’s experience, perhaps most importantly is the strong character of Agnes’ mother (by contrast, Anne’s mother died shortly after her birth).
During this ongoing pandemic shutdown (or perhaps, now that we are beginning to “reopen,” I should call it a slowdown?) I have considered the long-term effects this enforced family time will have on all of us, but my young daughters most of all. Thus, I found it thought-provoking when I read in Fred Schwartzbach’s “Introduction” to my edition of Agnes Grey that it was perhaps “due to the arrival of what would, sadly be their only lasting legacy to the family—tuberculosis” that Anne’s father’s “determination that he would educate the remaining children [Charlotte, Emily, their brother Branwell, and Anne] at home” (xv). It was their “access to both a learned father [a clergyman] and his library” and the fact that the girls “became extremely close emotionally” that emboldened the three to write and publish (xv). In other words, thanks to tuberculosis, a communicable disease (which ultimately killed nearly all the Brontë children), the world has a body of unique, timeless fiction from a triad of sisters who helped establish that women, as well as men, can author serious fiction. There is, no doubt, a silver lining to every dark cloud.
Critics have observed the many similarities between Agnes and Anne over the years. As Schwartbach notes in his introduction: “Agnes Grey portrays the awkward and at times painful situation of the governess” (xx). Having served as a governess herself from 1840-1845 for a family near York, she no doubt had ample personal experience from which to draw upon in constructing Agnes’s story.
Agnes’ perspective is an upbeat one, and she seeks to provide an example by way of didactic storytelling. In fact, the novel opens: “All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quality that the dry, shrivelled [sic] kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut. Whether this is the case with my history or not, I am hardly a competent judge” (3). It is precisely this optimistic, take-life-as-it-comes tone that I enjoy so thoroughly in Agnes Grey’s narrative. It is also this mood that reminds me of Austen’s lovely novels from earlier in the century.
Agnes, as a governess and the daughter of a clergyman (and a mother who lost her inheritance as landed gentry when she chose to marry for love), occupies a liminal space between the aristocracy and the poor. This in-between space allows Agnes to interact with all manner of folks, and gives the reader a view of nineteenth-century country life in Yorkshire. It also makes her a natural friend of the local vicar, Mr. Weston. He too occupies a liminality owing to his profession and educational background. Together the two find their way to friendship (and perhaps a bit more). As the century wore on, the Victorian novel becomes increasingly aware of the lower classes and their interactions with one another and the elites, as well as their daily lives, linguistic idiosyncrasies, toils, and hardships. Agnes and Mr. Weston, in connecting with both the landed gentry and the poor parishioners, anticipate later works of Dickens and Thomas Hardy, to name a few.
Overall, Agnes Grey is a delightful read and a quick one. I found myself absorbed in Agnes’ world within the novel’s first few paragraphs, and I didn’t lose interest for a moment. What’s more, Anne Brontë’s first novel transports its reader to the nineteenth-century Yorkshire countryside, and who among us couldn’t use with a bit of travel through books right now? Agnes Grey leaves the reader contemplating how we handle adversity, condescension, and disappointment with optimism. Ultimately, Agnes’s first-person account left me feeling inspired and renewed.
A Few Great Passages:
“[T]here is nothing like a cheerful mind for keeping the body in health” (50).
“It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. IF the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior” (134).
“When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which, yet, we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often, naturally, seek relief in poetry—and often find it too—whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in the our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and, therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart” (142).
“[I]s not active employment the best remedy for overwhelming sorrow . . . the surest antidote for despair? It may be a rough comforter: it may seem hard to be harassed with the cares of life when we have no relish for its enjoyments, to be goaded to labour when the heart is ready to break, but is not labour better than the rest we covet? And are not those petty, tormenting cares less hurtful than a continual brooding over the great affliction that oppresses us? –Besides, we cannot have cares, and anxieties, and toil, without hope—if it be but the hope of fulfilling our joyless task, accomplishing some needful project, or escaping further annoyance” (158).
Bibliography:
Brontë, Anne. Agnes Grey. Barnes and Noble Classics: New York, 2005.
Schwartzbach, Fred. Introduction. Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë Barnes and Noble Classics: New York, 2005.
