In partial fulfillment of the promise I made to read works by the sisters of Charlotte Brontë, and in partial penance for baiting remarks I made purporting to disdain “women writers”, I have just completed Agnes Grey by the lesser Baldwin—I mean Brontë, of course—Anne Brontë, the youngest sibling of the much ballyhooed literary sisterhood. Dragging myself to its pages after slogging through the wearying words written by her elder sister, Charlotte, I was pleased to find a novel which was better written than Jane Eyre, even though the latter was much more erudite and obviously the more thoughtful and painstaking work. In contrast to the most famous novel of the most diminutive Brontë, Agnes Grey has no references to deep cuts from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, though quite enough Bible quotes are to be found within its twenty-five fairly well-paced chapters. Where Miss Eyre broods, Miss Grey pines, and in a more seemly manner.
TRIGGER WARNING:
Agnes Grey depicts scenes of animal cruelty.
The plot, in brief, tells the story of young Agnes, frustrated because her family treat her like a child, boldly striking off to make her own living as a governess. The first family she works for harbors a child which we would now recognize as a serial killer in training. In spite of the unspeakable brutally of the family, Agnes is disappointed when the family dismisses her for having engendered little learning among her charges. (All the while every modern reader—one assumes—is silently shouting at the book, “Leave! Go! Get out!” and is relieved when our protagonist is not forced to endure more of the bestial cruelty she finds at this, her first assignment.) She then gets a position with a family having four children: two boys and two girls. The two boys are soon sent to school to get an actual education, and the majority of the novel details Miss Grey’s experiences as governess of the two ungovernable teenaged girls placed in her care. Along the way are several homilies in both internal and direct dialogue about the wonderful Christian virtues of hard work, good thoughts, humility, &c. At the end—ah, but that would be spoiling it, though if you do not see the ending coming from as far away as you might make out a distant figure on the horizon, you should enjoy most English literature for you will always be surprised.
No one triumphed over my failure, or said I had better have taken his or her advice, and quietly stayed at home. All were glad to have me back again, and lavished more kindness than ever upon me, to make up for the sufferings I had undergone; but not one would touch a shilling of what I had so cheerfully earned, and so carefully saved, in the hope of sharing it with them.
Like most kids who move back in with their parents, Agnes tries to pay something for her room and board.
At this point I would like to stake out a contrarian position vis–à-vis this novel. Though Miss Grey devotes much of her internal monologue or her narration (the two may not, in fact, be distinct) to bemoaning the lack of authority granted her by the parents, to decrying the unruly natures of her charges, and to shaking her (figurative) head at the complete disinterest in learning shown by the children in her care, there is another explanation for the fact that the youngsters in both families she serves do not make progress in their education and deportment: Agnes Grey is not good at her job.
I fear, by this time, the reader is well nigh disgusted with the folly and weakness I have so freely laid before him.
This is where the reader is supposed to say, “No, really. It’s fine. It’s not you; it’s me.”
This is hinted at quite strongly in several places and, indeed, Miss Grey obsesses over this very question, though she feels that the idea that she “had presumed to take in hand what she was wholly incompetent to perform” is just another of the baseless aspersions against her by those who have not provided her with more power (she desperately wishes to whip her students, just once) and better qualified pupils. (One is reminded of Lester Maddox, Governor of Georgia last century, who was confronted with the appalling condition in Georgia prisons, and who retorted that the problem was not with the prisons, but rather the need for a better class of prisoner.) There are many passages that illustrate just how incapable this young girl is to teach others, despite her high hopes and ambitions. For example, we are told that the eldest Murray girl learns music quite well when taught by the “best master the country afforded”, achieving “great proficiency” in the art. Agnes herself even ascribes the success of the small school she and her mother open in the closing chapters of the book to the efforts and abilities of her mother, not to herself.
Many will feel this who have felt that they could love, and whose hearts tell them that they are worthy to be loved again; while yet they are debarred by the lack of this or some such seeming trifle, from giving and receiving that happiness they seem almost made to feel and to impart. As well might the humble glow-worm despise that power of giving light without which the roving fly might pass her and repass her a thousand times, and never light beside her: she might hear her winged darling buzzing over and around her; he vainly seeking her, she longing to be found, but with no power to make her presence known, no voice to call him, no wings to follow his flight; the fly must seek another mate, the worm must live and die alone.
Um … yeah, right … okay?
But this is a quibble. The book is solid enough, with a few characters who are not mere caricature, and a religious sensibility of that type William James labelled ‘healthy-mindedness’. Nothing wrong with that as long as the proponent stays mindful of Jesus’ warning given in Matthew 23:3 to do as you say. And Agnes Grey does that, at least, in her thoughtful way. If the trigger warning given above doesn’t apply to you, you could do worse than to read the novel. It doesn’t scintillate on every page like the prose of Jane Austen, but … what does?
But our wishes are like tinder: the flint and steel of circumstances are continually striking out sparks, which vanish immediately, unless they chance to fall upon the tinder of our wishes; then, they instantly ignite, and the flame of hope is kindled in a moment.
Anne Brontë can write pellucid prose.
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