Anne Brontë (1820–1849)

Agnes has big dreams and she wants to be a governess, able to shape young lives and make changes to her own family's financial situation. However, the career does not live up to her expectations and already she encounters difficult parents while tutoring their two children. The second family are easier but one of the children later has different views on marriage compared to Agnes, arguing their thoughts on the clergyman. Written under the pseudonym, Acton Bell, Anne Brontë demonstrates life and the difference in status in the 19th Century while providing readers insight from Agnes's perspective.


I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.… (mer)

Helen gives Gilbert her diary, giving him deep insight into her art projects, thoughts, and the abusive relationship Helen had with her husband as well as the escape plan she derived to be free from the marriage. This is a lengthy book, taking the time to explore Gilbert's character and his interaction with Helen before Gilbert writes Helen's diary accounts to his friend in a letter. This is also a family-heavy story. The writing demonstrates the difference between men and women at the time: Gilbert refers to Helen's diary as his 'prize' while the diary really represents Helen's access to independence.


I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.… (mer)

I turned to this first novel of Anne Bronte's after reading her mature and accomplished second novel, so it did suffer a little in the comparison. Nevertheless there were good qualities here, too, although it is a much shorter and simpler work, and heavilly draws upon Anne's own experiences, working for two different familes as a governess.

Agnes Grey has another similarity with the author in that she is a clergyman's daughter and is the youngest child. However, unlike the author, Agnes has only one sister but two living parents when the story begins and in fact it is her mother who seems destined to live to a ripe old age at the close of the book. (Anne's own mother died when she was too young to remember her, and her father outlived all his children). Agnes' childhood is happy though materially poor, but her father makes a bad investment leaving them with only his meagre salary. Eventually, she succeeds in persuading her parents to let her take a position as a governess. It is twenty miles from home, further than she has ever travelled, but is meant to be with a kind woman and her husband.

Unfortunately her hopes are dashed. The parents are neglectful yet indulgent, are not kind to Agnes, and reserve to themselves all punishment of the children, thus undermining Agnes' authority in an age when corporal punishment was standard. The three eldest, with whom Agnes must contend, are out of control. The boy sometimes co-operates with lessons but just as often tries to throw Agnes' precious writing desk out of the window or takes delight in torturing baby birds. (From what I have read, when Anne was attacked for the scene where he forces Agnes to take drastic action to prevent this, she merely said that she had toned down a lot of the things she had witnessed as a governess.) His younger sister loves to roll about on the floor and generally refuse to learn anything and the still younger sister is a liar. The mother's critical attitude and total failure to grant Agnes any authority fatally undermines her position and Agnes is eventually dismissed for failing to instill any learning into them.

Refusing to give up - as Anne herself refused - she finds another place with a grander family who have much older children. The problem however is that again her charges have no interest in applying themselves. Luckily the two boys are eventually sent away to school (where they would have been beaten to make them change their attitude) so for most of her years there Agnes has to contend with the teenage girls alone. However, this produces great strain on Agnes, who again has no support from the parents.

The eldest girl is interested only in fashion, balls, and being fascinating to men. Her coquettish behaviour is outrageous to polite society of the period. She amuses herself then pretends to be horrified by their attentions if they seem to think she is prepared to marry them. She is especially entertained when the local clergyman does propose and she turns him down flat with glacial disdain. In vain Agnes tries to instill some idea of morality, or of being kind to others.

The younger girl is a tomboy, interested only in horses, dogs and hunting - her own father says it is a pity she wasn't a boy as she would have made a decent one. Agnes is faced with the thankless task of trying to make her more amenable to her role as an upper class young woman in the marriage market. The girls' mother is bent on marrying both off to rich men (as Anne's real-life second employer Mrs Robinson was) regardless of whether the men are good natured or not.

Agnes experiences the homesickness and also the gradually developing bitterness which we know from her poems and surviving letters were part of Anne's experience as a governess. Being disregarded, treated as an object, having tasks thrust on her that others don't want to do - from doing the mending to finishing a drawing or copying out music that her pupils can't be bothered with - Agnes suffers what we would view as depression. Her attempts to escape by visiting the aged or ill cottagers - she makes a friend of an old woman called Nancy - are often sabotagued by the pupils who want her to accompany them on walks or fulfil tasks they have neglected. Even the dog she loves is sold to a brutal rat-catcher. Her one consolation is her growing esteem for, and attraction to, the local curate, but it seems her love must remain a secret and one which it is perhaps mentally unhealthy to dwell upon.

I liked the book for its insight into the difficulties its author must have experienced. The main problem is that it is a bit one note. Agnes does not really develop as a character apart from becoming more morose during her years as a governess, from having to keep silent on her real opinions about what is going on around her and to contend with every child's stubborn refusal to learn - plus the more morally corrosive views of the older girls. I did like the eventual happy ending, even if it might not have been very realistic, and there were a couple of touching passages, such as when she leaves her family's home for the last time - but it is not a deep or absorbing story. So I am awarding it 3 stars.… (mer)