Product Description

With a specially commissioned Introduction and Notes by Kathryn White, Assistant Curator/Librarian of the Brontë Museum, Haworth, Yorkshire This novel is a trenchant expose of the frequently isolated, intellectually stagnant and emotionally-starved conditions under which many governesses worked in the mid-19th century. This is a deeply personal novel written from the author's own experience and as such Agnes Grey has a power and poignancy which mark it out as a landmark work of literature dealing with the social and moral evolution of English society during the last century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2172918 in Books
• Published on: 1998-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Review
?The one story in English literature in which style, characters and subject are in perfect keeping.? ?George Moore --George Moore

Review
“The one story in English literature in which style, characters and subject are in perfect keeping.” —George Moore

From the Inside Flap
Concerned for her family?s financial welfare and eager to expand her own horizons, Agnes Grey takes up the position of governess, the only respectable employment for an unmarried woman in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Agnes cannot anticipate the hardship, humiliation, and loneliness that await her in the brutish Bloomfield and haughty Murray households. Drawn from Anne Brontë?s own experiences, Agnes Grey depicts the harsh conditions and class snobbery that governesses were often forced to endure. As Barbara A. Suess writes in her Introduction, ?Brontë provides a portrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictional indictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting.?

Customer Reviews

Simple, Unpretentious and Down-to-Earth
After reading "Wuthering Heights" (by Emily), "Jane Eyre" (by Charlotte), and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (by Anne), I found myself slightly disappointed by the lack of passion and romanticism in Anne Bronte's "Agnes Grey". This novel truly is simple, unpretentious, and down-to-earth--and, therefore, far too easy to underestimate and undervalue.

The title character is the younger daughter of a poor family, who seeks employment as a governess in order to help her parents make ends meet. This noble act of maturity on her part earns her nothing but disillusion, humiliation and hardship in the hands of the tyrannical children and over-indulgent parents of Wellwood House (Note the intriguing initials W.H., which stand for Wuthering Heights and Wildfell Hall in other Bronte books) and, later, Horton Lodge. For several chapters, Anne Bronte does not do much but--dare I say it?--complain about the lot of the Victorian governess. Though her portraits of the children and their parents were obviously drawn from reality, which certainly won sympathy from me, I wanted to tell her to "Get on with the story" many times.

The plot does pick up after the artful and exasperating Rosalie Murray has her "coming out" ball. Thoughtless rather than tyrannical, Rosalie has the most well-drawn character of all of Agnes' charges, which makes her such a great foil for Agnes. Rosalie delights in thinking that she could have any man she wishes and enjoys nothing more than toying with men's hearts. When she finds out that Agnes might be in love with the curate, Edward Weston, she makes every attempt to make Mr. Weston fall in love with _her_, thinking that it would be a grand joke to make Agnes miserable. Yet it is impossible to hate her, somehow. She steals every scene she is in; half the story is truly hers.

I am happy to say that both Rosalie and Agnes get what they deserve, which is, fittingly, what each explicitly asked and worked for. (Read that any way you wish--or better yet, read the book.) "Agnes Grey" has left me believing that we truly do sow what we reap and receive what we ask for.

This book is about a girl trying to earn $ for her family.
In the beginning I thought that I wouldn't like this book because of the period in which it was written (Victorian Era). I liked this book because of the plot and characters. The love story, adventure, and decision making in this book, make it extremely interesting. The young girl is immersed in a wealthy society even though she is not wealthy herself. The portrayal of the differences in classes are evident. In this book, the young girl is a governess. It shows the frustration and feelings that a governess goes through. This book was incredibly easy to get into. The writing style made the reading a simple task. Many people have not read any books by the third Bronte sister, and I would recommend reading this book.

Insightful and gemlike
Anne Bronte constructs a vivid Victorian world in AGNES GREY, which isn't surprising since it's drawn so strongly on her own experiences.

Agnes is a dutiful clergyman's daughter who goes into the world to seek employment as a governess in order to contribute to her family's financial well-being. Her several positions are described with deadly accuracy--the bratty children, the yapping dogs, the secretly disdainful other servants, the uninvolved parents. All are rendered here in minute and telling detail.

Agnes's familial background--and the familial background of Anne Bronte, of course--makes her especially well-suited to describing a local cleric she dislikes: "His favourite subjects were church discipline, rites and ceremonies, apostolical succession, the duty of reverence and obedience to the clergy, the atrocious criminality of dissent, the absolute necessity of observing all the forms of godliness, the reprehensible presumption of individuals who attempted to think for themselves in matters connected with religion, or to be guided by their own interpretations of Scripture, and occasionally (to please his wealthy parishioners), the necessity of deferential obedience from the poor to the rich--supporting his maxims and exhortations throughout with quotations from the Fathers . . . But now and then he gave us a sermon of a different order--what some would call a very good one; but sunless and severe: representing the Deity as a terrible taskmaster, rather than a benevolent father . . . [on leaving the church, I heard] his voice in jocund colloquy with some of the Melthams or Greens, or, perhaps, the Murrays themselves; probably laughing at his own sermon, and hoping that he had given the rascally people something to think about; perchance, exulting in the thought that old Betty Holmes would now lay aside the sinful indulgence of her pipe, which had been her daily solace for upwards of thirty years; the George Higgins would be frightened out of his Sabbath evening walks, and Thomas Jackson would be sorely troubled in his conscience, and shaken in his sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection at the last day."

Bronte displays this same calm, measured, extraordinarily accurate descriptive skill throughout the novel, which more than makes up for the fact that the plot is simple and the action mostly calm and uneventful. The joys of the book lie chiefly in seeing how Bronte renders even the simplest character vividly lifelike.