Agnes Grey

Synopsis: 'How delightful it would be to be a governess!' When the young Agnes Grey takes up her first post as governess she is full of hope; she believes she only has to remember 'myself at their age' to win her pupils' love and trust. Instead she finds the young children she has to deal with completely unmanageable. They are, as she observes to her mother, 'unimpressible, incomprehensible creatures'. In writing her first novel, Anne Bronte drew on her own experiences, and one can trace in the work many of the trials of the Victorian governess, often stranded far from home, and treated with little respect by her employers, yet expected to control and educate her young charges. Agnes Grey looks at childhood from nursery to adolescence, and it also charts the frustrations of romantic love, as Agnes starts to nurse warmer feelings towards the local curate, Mr Weston. The novel combines astute dissection of middle-class social behaviour and class attitudes with a wonderful study of Victorian responses to young children which has parallels with debates about education that continue to this day.

Review: My first Anne Brontë book. The tale is a fairly simple one, much less complex than either 'Wuthering Heights' or 'Jane Eyre', in some ways it's more reminiscent of Jane Austen's work than either of her sisters. Agnes is a likeable girl, her family are a bit strapped for cash and her father is in poor health. Determined to earn her own way in life and not overly enthusiastic about her parents choice of work (to draw and sell her own artwork) Agnes decides that she would like to be a governess.

Her first posting is to Mr and Mrs Bloomfield. Mrs Bloomfield informs Agnes that .... Master Tom (seven) is 'the flower of the flock' - a generous noble-spirited boy who always speaks the truth. Mary Ann (almost six) is 'a very good girl on the whole and Fanny (almost four) is a 'remarkably gentle child.' This all sounds promising but alas Agnes finds that Mrs Bloomfield's opinions of her children cannot wholly be relied upon. In truth the two eldest children are a nightmare to teach, rude, egotistical, boisterous and aggressive. Tom in particular is an absolute horror, intent on setting traps for birds and depatching them in different ways .. 'sometimes I give them to the cat, sometimes I cut them in pieces with my penknife, but the next I mean to roast alive.' He's determined not to be taught anything and Mary Ann is just as bad, Agnes occasionally has to forcibly drag them to the table and hold them there until the lesson is completed. Fanny is found to be a mischievous, intractable creature given up to deception and falsehood and employing her favourite tactics of spitting and bellowing whenever thwarted (this is said to be somewhat auto-biographical, with Anne drawing on her early experiences as a governess.) Although she tries hard, Agnes is unable to teach the children anything and she is constantly being undermined by the parents (who naturally regard their children's lack of improvement as solely the fault of the governess.)

'I observed, on the grass about his garden, certain apparatus of sticks and cord, and asked what they were for.
"Traps for birds."
"Why do you catch them?"
"Papa says they do harm."
"And what do you do with them, when you catch them?"
"Different things. Sometimes I give them to the cat; sometimes I cut them in pieces with my penknife; but the next, I mean to roast alive."
"And why do you mean to do such a horrible thing?"
"For two reasons; first to see how long it will live - and then, to see what it will taste like."
"But don't you know it is extremely wicked to do such things? Remember the birds can feel as well as you, and think, how would you like it yourself?"
"Oh, that's nothing! I'm not a bird, and I can't feel what I do to them."

"But you will have to feel it sometime Tom - you have heard where wicked people go to when they die; and if you don't leave off torturing innocent birds, remember, you will have to go there, and suffer just what you have made them suffer."

"Oh pooh! I shan't, Papa knows how I treat them and he never blames me for it; he says it's just what he used to do when he was a boy. Last summer he gave me a nest full of young sparrows, and he saw me pulling off their legs and wings and heads, and never said anything, except that they were nasty things, and I must not let them soil my trousers; and uncle Robson was there too, and he laughed, and said I was a fine boy."
"But what would your mama say?"

"Oh! she doesn't care - she says it's a pity to kill the pretty singing birds, but the naughty sparrows, and mice and rats, I may do what I like with. So now, Miss Grey, you see it is not wicked."
"I still think it is, Tom; and perhaps your papa and mama would think so too, if they thought much about it. However," I internally added, "they may say what they please, but I am determined you shall do nothing of the kind, as long as I have power to prevent it."

Eventually, in less than a year, Agnes is dismissed and sent home, much to her consternation and embarrassment. She's a little downcast but after spending a few weeks at home she decides to try again and this time secures employment with the Murray family. Although the daughters are vain, self centred and thoughtless they are more tractable that the Bloomfields and Agnes becomes more settled. It's here that she meets the curate Edward Weston, a very earnest and worthy young clergyman. Agnes is very taken with him, he's her ideal, but Rosalie, the eldest of the Murray girls (seventeen) is now in want of an admirer and with time on her hands, before she is advantageously betrothed, she fixes on Edward on which to bestow some of her well rehearsed coquetry. Poor Agnes is mortified, and when she is suddenly called back home she fears that she will never set eyes on Edward again.

Agnes is likeable enough but apart from the fact that she's obviously very conscientious and kind you don't really learn anything much about her. Despite her pledge at the beginning of the book to be candid, she's too guarded. The story is a pleasant one but it does lack a little bit of oomph .. obviously you can't always have a lunatic in the attic or a deranged lover digging up his dead soul mate but the story perhaps could have done with a tad more excitement. You have the feeling a long way before the end that it's only a matter of time before she's saying .. click here to continue review - possible spoilers

reader, I married him

.. or something very like it.