SOURCE: " Agnes Grey: 'all true histories contain instruction,"' in Anne Brontë: The Other One, Macmillan, 1989, pp. 96-117.

[In the following essay, Langland characterizes Anges Grey as a novel of female development "that both draws from a tradition of other such novels and departs significantly from it."]

Agnes Grey tells a story of female development. What makes it distinctive from previous novels by women with female protagonists is that Agnes more closely follows a male pattern of development. The classic starting point for the male Bildungsroman, or novel of development, is the protagonist's dissatisfaction with home and a corollary desire to gain experience in the larger world. While Agnes cannot simply take to the open road like a male hero, she nonetheless longs 'to see a little more of the world' (AG [Agnes Grey, Everyman's Library (London and Melbourne, Dent, 1958)] 4). She resists being kept the 'child and the pet of the family … too helpless and dependent—too unfit for buffeting with the cares and turmoils of life' (AG 4). She wants 'To go out into the world; to enter upon a new life; to act for myself; to exercise my unused faculties; to try my unknown powers; to earn my own maintenance …' (AG 10). Anne's sounding of these aims heralds the arrival of a heroine new to fiction, one to whom, as we have seen, Charlotte owes a major debt. Jane Eyre's famous call for general equality has some of Agnes Grey in it: 'Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculites and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do'.¹ But where Jane Eyre quickly finds her restlessness appeased by the arrival of Rochester, Agnes actually seeks that field for her efforts and exercise for her faculites.

The novel apparently had its origins in Anne Brontë's own experiences as governess first with the Inghams of Blake Hall and then with the Robinsons of Thorp Green. When Anne returned to Thorp Green in the new year of 1842, she began a story called 'Passages in the Life of an Individual'.² This work details her own experiences in her two posts and may or may not be a source for her first novel. But even if Anne mined her personal experiences for Agnes Grey, we should not confuse Agnes with Anne or neglect to appreciate the high level of artistic shaping present in the published novel. Three years and increasing literary sophistication wrought their effects. Too often, Agnes Grey has been read primarily to learn about Anne. Our goal here is to read it as the exquisite novel that George Moore praised in Conversations in Ebury Street.

I

Agnes Grey is foremost a novel dealing with education; it is a novel of education (Agnes's) and about education (her attempts as governess to educate her charges) whose goal is to bring about an education in the reader. Thus, Brontë opens her novel with the claim: 'All true histories contain instruction' (AG 3). There is, as a result, a constantly informing reciprocity of subject and form. For even as Agnes makes only slight gains with her recalcitrant students, she is continually taking home the lessons to herself, learning from the experience, and emerging more fully and forcibly as a self-determining individual. And in the process of displaying her own education, she brings the reader new knowledge.

Because Agnes is a female protagonist seeking to become educated and knowledgeable about the world, she is distinctive in the nineteenth-century novel. Although Anne Brontë seems to have been largely oblivious of any feminist or ideological agenda, her commitment to women's activity and influence in the world and her suspicion of men as providers led her to promulgate a feminist thesis: that women must look to their self-provision. Indeed, if Agnes Grey takes any stance, it is that the novel should both entertain and instruct, combine the dulce with the utile. This attitude, as we have seen, she learned from the eighteenth-century masters. Yet even as Anne Brontë intends that her novel should instruct, she rigorously insists that the only valid instruction comes from an unswerving commitment to the representation of 'truth'. Because all meaning derives from her representing reality as she saw it, her work remains strongly novelistic and does not become didactic. Anne Brontë focuses, then, on representing as fully as possible the quotidian details of Agnes Grey's employment as governess, and she lets any instruction emerge from that representation.

Agnes's progression from the Bloomfields' to the Murrays', from young charges between the ages of four and seven, to charges between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, marks her own self-progress and shapes the reader's developing understanding. When she arrives at the Bloomfields', Agnes is but a child herself, as she admits, having been spoiled and pampered by her family. But Agnes is naive only in experience; in principles and understanding she is mature. This maturity makes even more dramatic the disparity between the 'pampered' and 'indulged' Agnes and the pampered and indulged Bloomfields. Basically, Agnes has been indulged only in being overly protected. In contrast, the Bloomfield children are fairly sophisticated in the ways of the world and have even learned to manipulate their world quite cleverly. The indulgence they have been allowed in the unbridled exercise of their passions, has resulted in an early corruption of their principles.

It is immediately clear to the reader that, in this contest between governess and pupils, the pupils will quickly gain the upper hand precisely because they have neither internal nor external bridles while Agnes knows both the self-restraint taught her by her principles and the external restraints imposed on her as the Bloomfields' 'servant'. Let us address the latter point first. Agnes is clearly instructed that she is not to punish the children. She recognises immediately that 'I had no rewards to offer; and as for punishments, I was given to understand, the parents reserved that privilege themselves; and yet they expected me to keep my pupils in order. Other children might be guided by the fear of anger, and the desire of approbation; but neither the one nor the other had any effect upon these' (AG 22). In an eloquent passage, Agnes sets out the plight of the governess:

I returned, however, with unabated vigour to my work—a more arduous task than any one can imagine, who has not felt something like the misery of being charged with the care and direction of a set of mischievous turbulent rebels, whom his utmost exertions cannot bind to their duty; while, at the same time, he is responsible for their conduct to a higher power, who exacts from him what cannot be achieved without the aid of the superior's more potent authority: which, either from indolence, or the fear of becoming unpopular with the said rebellious gang, the latter refuses to give. I can conceive few situations more harassing than that wherein, however you may long for success, however you may labour to fulfil your duty, your efforts are baffled and set at nought by those beneath you, and unjustly censured and misjudged by those above. (AG 29)

Through Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë has pinpointed what makes the situation of the governess intolerable: entire responsibility for those she cannot bend to her will.

This situation becomes the condition for Agnes's achievement and our evaluation of that achievement. Agnes will serve in two posts, the first of which will challenge her physically, the other spiritually. In both posts, huge demands will be made on her energies, yet she will be given little authority to fulfill those demands. Her success will be measured by her imaginative and flexible adjustment to the limitations imposed on her.

A schoolmistress, in contrast to a governess, has remarkable freedoms. When Agnes joins her mother to open a school, she remarks the difference between the life of a schoolmistress and the life of a governess:

I set myself with befitting energy to discharge the duties of this new mode of life. I call it new, for there was, indeed a considerable difference between working with my mother in a school of our own, and working as a hireling among strangers, despised and trampled upon by old and young. (AG 134)

It is interesting to compare Anne's representations of the governess's life with Charlotte's. Charlotte never succeeded in her posts as governess in a private home, yet, surprisingly, her novels fail to represent the difficulties and humiliations in that position. In Jane Eyre, the eponymous heroine finds herself in charge of a docile, if vain, child and in the presence of a motherly housekeeper. The task of teaching her charge scarcely consumes her time, and she has huge tracts of leisure for dalliance with Rochester. It is a highly romanticised portrait of the governess's life. Agnes Grey, in contrast, finds her job as governess endless and exhausting. She rarely sees her employer, Mr Bloomfield, and he speaks to her only when exasperated with her failure to control the children. She must do continual battle with recalcitrant and tyrannical pupils. The young master of the family, Tom, amuses himself by 'pulling off [the] legs and wings, and heads of young sparrows' (AG 18). To prevent another such episode of torture, Agnes herself drops a heavy stone and crushes a nest of fledglings that Tom has secured. When thwarted in his pleasures, he becomes violent and frenzied and Agnes's 'only resource was to throw him on his back, and hold his hands and feet till the frenzy was somewhat abated' (AG 22). Mary Ann, the oldest daughter, alternates between rolling on the floor in passive obstinacy or emitting 'shrill, piercing screams, that went through [Agnes's] head like a knife' (AG 25). When the younger Fanny joins her siblings, Agnes finds herself now with a creature of 'falsehood and deception, young as she was, and alarmingly fond of exercising her two favourite weapons of offence and defence; that of spitting in the faces of those who incurred her displeasure, and bellowing like a bull when her unreasonable desires were not gratified' (AG 27).

Despite her early recognition that her situation is untenable, Agnes has no choice but to behave as if she is dealing with students as susceptible as herself. As a result she is continually forced to confess her own failure: 'With me, at her age, or under, neglect and disgrace were the most dreadful of punishments; but on her they made no impression' (AG 25). Her early admission to Mrs Bloomfield that 'I am sorry to say, they [the pupils] have quite deteriorated of late' (AG 27) sets the stage for her dismissal after only six months, a dismissal which her mistress attributes to a 'want of sufficient firmness, and diligent, persevering care on [Agnes's] part' (AG 41).

Her second position, with the Murrays at Horton Lodge, secures her older pupils, less physically demanding but more intellectually demanding. Agnes never loses this position, but the threat of an arbitrary dismissal always hangs over her. Mrs Murray seems to echo Mrs Bloomfield in chastising Agnes: 'I have no desire to part with you, as I am sure you would do very well if you will only think of these things and try to exert yourself a little more: then, I am convinced, you would soon acquire that delicate tact which alone is wanting to give you a proper influence over the mind of your pupil' (AG 122). We have moved from 'sufficient firmness … and persevering care' to 'delicate tact'.

On one level, nothing has changed: Agnes is still expected to compensate for the parents' unacknowledged deficiencies in childrearing. On another level, there are substantial changes: something much more subtle is now demanded of Agnes.

If the Bloomfields initiate her education, acquaintance with the Murrays refines it. She begins with four pupils, but the two boys are quickly dispatched to school. Rosalie, sixteen years, and Matilda, fourteen years, remain, and to these, Agnes is sufficiently close in age that she might seem a sister rather than a governess. Nevertheless, there is never any confusion on that score, because of both rank and character. Agnes's inferiority in the former and her superiority in the latter keep her from intimacy with the Murray sisters. Yet it is important to note that Agnes's superiority of character helps breach the social distance. Agnes remarks of Rosalie, 'And yet, upon the whole, I believe she respected me more than she herself was aware of; because I was the only person in the house who steadily professed good principles, habitually spoke the truth, and generally endeavoured to make inclination bow to duty …' (AG 52). Rosalie is possessed of a good temper, 'but from constant indulgence and habitual scorn of reason, she was often testy and capricious; her mind had never been cultivated' (AG 52). Matilda has high animal spirits—'full of life, vigour, and activity'—but 'as an intelligent being, she was barbarously ignorant, indocile, careless, and irrational' (AG 54).

As at the Bloomfields, Agnes is severely limited in her authority. She is immediately instructed by Mrs Murray that 'when any of the young people do anything improper, if persuasion and gentle remonstrance will not do, let one of the others come and tell me; for I can speak to them more plainly than it would be proper for you to do' (AG 51).

Whereas the Bloomfields needed simple discipline before instruction could begin, the Murrays are sufficiently mature to have acquired some outward restraint and a concern for social reputation. Thus, Agnes can focus on much more subtle points of principle. She observes the sisters' want of discretion, of discrimination, of judgment, of compassion, of generosity. She delineates with precision their rage for attention that leads them to appropriate and use other people for their own amusement. Rosalie and Matilda condescend to the cottagers, treating them as 'stupid and brutish', yet expect the people to 'adore them as angels of light, condescending to minister to their necessities, and enlighten their humble dwellings' (AG 70). Rosalie encourages Mr Hatfield in a flirtation to entertain herself and to have the pleasure of disappointing him. Although engaged to Thomas Ashby, she seeks to snare Mr Weston in her nets before the engagement is publicly announced. Rosalie knows of Ashby's reputation as a reprobate, yet lacks the understanding to have concern for her own future with him. Throughout all, Agnes is anticipating, discriminating, and judging, learning the value of sound principles, individual integrity, and personal independence.

Although Agnes does not confront active and intentional evil at the Murrays, she finds herself grappling with a more insidious because more subtle and pervasive evil stemming from a confusion of right and wrong. Work at the Bloomfields was physically strenuous; work at the Murrays is morally strenuous. Agnes reveals to the reader that:

Already I seemed to feel my intellect deteriorating, my heart petrifying, my soul contracting; and I trembled lest my very moral perceptions should become deadened, my distinctions of right and wrong confounded, and all my better faculties be sunk, at last, beneath the baneful influence of such a mode of life. (AG 80)

This corruption of innocence by the 'baneful influence of such a mode of life' will become a central theme in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Here, the fear is sounded only at the moment that it is removed: 'Mr Weston rose at length upon me, appearing like the morning-star in my horizon, to save me from the fear of utter darkness' (AG 80). In addition, Agnes does not fall prey to the corruption because she imprints her character on the Murray sisters more than they influence her. She recognises at one point that they 'became a little less insolent, and began to show some symptoms of esteem' (AG 58).

Agnes herself gives us the full measure of her achievement by parroting her pupils' own evaluation of her. Because Brontë filters the Murray sisters' changes of opinion through Agnes's more generous and discriminating sensibility, we are able to appreciate two key things: (1) the respect Agnes has genuinely earned; and (2) Agnes's subtle and ironic understanding of the limits of that respect. Agnes summarises her influence in this way:

Miss Grey was a queer creature: she never flattered, and did not praise them half enough; but whenever she did speak favourably of them, or anything belonging to them, they could be quite sure her approbation was sincere. She was very obliging, quiet, and peaceable in the main, but there were some things that put her out of temper: they did not much care for that, to be sure, but still it was better to keep her in tune; as when she was in a good humour she would talk to them, and be very agreeable and amusing sometimes, in her way; which was quite different to mamma's, but still very well for a change. She had her own opinions on every subject, and kept steadily to them—very tiresome opinions they often were; as she was always thinking of what was right and what was wrong, and had a strange reverence for matters connected with religion, and an unaccountable liking for good people. (AG 58-59)

It is a measure of Agnes's own successful education that she has succeeded to the degree she has, especially in view of the limitations put on her powers.

If Agnes is often severely crippled in her efforts to teach her students by the restraints imposed by the Bloomfields and Murrays, she is, in key ways, enabled in these situations by her own self-restraints. She does not complain or lament or indulge in self-pity. She can see beyond the particular situation to her larger goals, and she 'longed to show my friends that, even now, I was competent to undertake the charge and able to acquit myself honourably to the end' (AG 28). Although we may find aspects of Agnes's self-suppression excessive—she says, for example, 'I judged it my wisest plan to subdue every resentful impulse, suppress every sensitive shrinking' (AG 28-29) or 'I sometimes felt myself degraded by the life I led, and ashamed of submitting to so many indignities' (AG 58)—the episodes culminate in self-affirmation rather than self-negation. She is both enabled and emboldened. She may adopt a policy of compliance to her employers, but the fact that it is a policy suggests the measure of control she preserves. She always has the choice of returning to her home; thus, she assesses her situation on the basis of the autonomy she has achieved rather than on the difficulties she encounters. Consequently, although Agnes is like many nineteenth-century heroines in having to turn inward to cultivate her spiritual resources, she differs from those heroines because this mode culminates in increasing mastery of the secular world. Although dismissed from her first post, Agnes chooses to depart from her second to open a school with her mother. The result is a female Bildungsroman, or novel of development, that both draws from a tradition of other such novels and departs significantly from it. Cultivation of the spiritual life, leading to mastery of the passions, seems to ensure a greater degree of self-determination for Agnes rather than an increase in self-abnegation typical of the protagonist of the female Bildungsroman. All of Agnes's pupils have been tossed about by their passions and, even with maturity, they remain unable to curb their indulgence in whims and their rage for attention. Agnes can see the evils to which they are vulnerable in maturity and, learning to conquer potential weaknesses in her own character, establishes herself as an independent woman.

Brontë's Agnes cannot replicate exactly the pattern of a male protagonist in a Bildungsroman. For example, the hero's two love affairs, one sexual and one spiritual, would culminate in social expulsion for a female protagonist. Nonetheless, Brontë uses the physical stresses suffered under the Bloomfields and the spiritual stresses endured under the Murrays as analogues for those other definitive developmental experiences en route to maturity. So Agnes, like the male protagonist, concludes her journey in her achievement of individual autonomy and social authority.

Through teaching, Agnes has plumbed her own strengths and honed her own understanding. She has completed her own education. Anne Brontë has carefully structured the novel to emphasise this completion. We have acknowledged that the novel was, perhaps, autobiographical in its inception, but Brontë shaped her materials towards novelistic ends. Agnes, as narrator, focuses on those episodes in which her education is being forwarded. She passes over her returns to home during the holidays. Her longing for such holidays is strongly represented to ensure our appreciation of her stoicism, but Brontë does not represent the holidays themselves because they are not germane to the novel's subject. Brontë opens Chapter four with Agnes's words, 'I spare my readers the account of my delight on coming home … I returned, however, with unabated vigour to my work …' (AG 29). Later, Agnes comments, 'for I was lonely. Never, from month to month, from year to year, except during my brief intervals of rest at home, did I see one creature to whom I could open my heart, or freely speak thoughts with any hope of sympathy, or even comprehension' (AG 79). But those precious, brief intervals do not make their way into the plot. Agnes concludes her tenure with the Bloomfields remarking, 'vexed, harassed, disappointed as I had been, and greatly as I had learned to love and value my home, I was not yet weary of adventure, nor willing to relax my efforts' (AG 41). Her several months at home are related in three pages and primarily establish two central points: Agnes must succeed in the world, and a woman need not marry to succeed. Agnes's mother counsels the father, 'But it's no matter whether [our daughters] get married or not: we can devise a thousand honest ways of making a livelihood' (AG 42).

II

Distinctively, the novel is neither male—nor marriage—oriented. Although it will conclude with wedding bells, that traditional bourne of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, the reader is not led to expect marriage as Agnes's fulfilment. We may contrast what Anne Brontë does with what Jane Austen does. Both writers are concerned with the education of their protagonists. We may say that Austen yokes the heroine's movement toward marriage with her education; that is, an Austen protagonist must learn to discern the true from the false, the flashy from the substantial, the truly amiable man from the merely agreeable one. This is particularly true for Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse. Their lessons in discernment culminate in their choice of suitable partners. Agnes's lessons, in contrast, all culminate in her independency. Perhaps this emphasis signals Anne Brontë's very different experiences. The Brontës were much poorer and of a lower class than the Austens; thus Anne had to think constantly about profitable employment while Austen never worked. More important, Anne could never rely on her brother for support as Austen could on hers. As a result, Brontë's feminism ultimately takes on a different character.

Anne Brontë has structured her narrative to emphasise the acquisition of independence. Her heroine meets a suitable man, a clergyman Mr Weston, relatively late in the novel. She first recognises his excellence and then discovers in herself symptoms of a growing attraction. When she leaves him to open a school with her mother, she has made this choice to depart. She has been encouraged to believe he might seek her hand, and, at first she pines for this resolution like a typical heroine. She reveals that:

I knew my strength was declining, my appetite had failed, and I was grown listless and desponding;—and if, indeed, he could never care for me, and I could never see him more—if I was forbidden to minister to his happiness—forbidden, for ever, to taste the joys of love, to bless and to be blessed—then, life must be a burden, and if my Heavenly Father would call me away, I should be glad to rest. (AG 136)

But no sooner has Agnes reached this pitch than she resolves, "'No, by His help I will arise and address myself diligently to my appointed duty"' (AG 137). The consequence is a rapid restoration of tranquillity of mind and 'bodily health and vigour'.

At this point we may note that there exists many another heroine of spunk who recovers her spirits without a proposal. We may recall Elizabeth Bennet's thoughts when doubtful that Darcy will propose again: 'If he is satisfied with only regretting me, when he might have obtained my affections and hand, I shall soon cease to regret him at all'.³ But, while Darcy immediately makes his appearance in Austen's novel, Brontë's narrative seems deliberately to shift to another scene and to a new focus: Rosalie's marriage. Agnes is invited by her former pupil to visit her in her splendour as Lady Ashby. What she finds is a woman in misery, yet another reminder that marriage does not necessarily culminate in fulfilment for a woman and, indeed, may mark her further imprisonment. When Agnes returns home, full of a sense of her own riches, she is rejuvenated: 'Refreshed, delighted, Invigorated, I walked along, forgetting all my cares, feeling as if I had wings to my feet, and could go at least forty miles without fatigue, and experiencing a sense of exhilaration to which I had been an entire stranger since the days of early youth' (AG 150).

It is only at this point of physical health, mental equanimity, and the personal fulfilment of financial and emotional independence that Mr Weston arrives to propose. The marriage simply stands as a coda to Agnes's journey toward autonomy.

The novel not only proposes that marriage per se does not constitute fulfilment, but also, as we have seen in the example of Rosalie, that marriage to the wrong partner might condemn one to a life of unhappiness. I suggested earlier that the novel was neither marriagenor male-oriented and the two are obviously related. The entire novel presents only one admirable man: Mr Weston. Although he is a good man, he is not at all romanticised. In contrast to Charlotte's heroes and Emily's Heathcliff, he is not stern, commanding, and forceful. He is strong mainly in his commitment to principle and duty. He is somewhat phlegmatic and unemotional, deliberate and precise. Anne seems to avoid any romantic idealisation of men, particularly of men with power and money. In them, she finds large scope for abuse.

The men who employ her, Mr Bloomfield and Mr Murray, are contemptible. Neither man does her the courtesy of introducing himself. She infers their identities from their behaviour. Neither is prepossessing. Mr Bloomfield is a 'man of ordinary stature—rather below than above—and rather thin than stout, apparently between thirty and forty years of age: he had a large mouth, pale, dingy complexion, milky blue eyes, and hair the colour of a hempen cord' (AG 20). Mr Murray is a 'tall, stout gentleman, with scarlet cheeks and crimson nose' whom Agnes often hears 'swearing and blaspheming against the footmen, groom, coachman, or some other hapless dependent' (AG 50). Neither exercises any proper authority over his children. Their deficiencies reveal themselves in the defects of their children.

The most pernicious effect of these careless fathers is the automatic assumption of authority, importance and careless disdain for so-called lesser creatures they bequeath their sons. We will recall that Tom Bloomfield, Agnes's first charge, likes to torture fledglings which his papa says is 'just what he used to do when 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 …' (AG 18). But not only birds suffer under this masculine dictatorship. Women do as well. When Agnes protests, 'Surely, Tom, you would not strike your sister! I hope I shall never see you do that', he replies, "'You will sometimes: I am obliged to do it now and then to keep her in order"' (AG 16). And this general attitude is fostered in young boys by the men who surround them. Mr Robson, Mrs Bloomfield's brother, 'encouraged Tom's propensity to persecute the lower creation, both by precept and example' (AG 37). He chortles when Tom heaps opprobrious epithets upon Agnes—'Curse me, if ever I saw a nobler little scoundrel than that. He's beyond petticoat government already …' (AG 39)—recalling Walpole's characterisation of Mary Wollstonecraft as a 'hyena in petticoats'. Anne Brontë will explore and expose more fully this masculine arrogance toward women in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, but it is evident even here that the subject concerns her greatly. Here, too, she links, as she will in The Tenant, male drinking, masculinity, and male tyranny. Mr Robson encourages his nephew 'to believe that the more wine and spirits he could take, and the better he liked them, the more he manifested his bold and manly spirit, and rose superior to his sisters' (AG 37).

In linking women with the 'lower creatures', Anne Brontë also suggests in this novel that a woman may take the measure of the man from his treatment of animals. Mr Hatfield, the vain and arrogant rector in the Murray's parish, consumed by his flirtation with Rosalie Murray, kicks a poor lady's cat 'right across th' floor, an' went after [the Murray girls] as gay as a lark' (AG 74). And he harasses the poor woman's spirit much as he harasses her cat's body. Mr Weston, in contrast, 'spake so civil like—and when th' cat, poor thing, jumped on to his knee, he only stroked her, and gave a bit of a smile: so I thought that was a good sign; for once, when she did so to th' Rector, he knocked her off, like as it might be in scorn and anger …' (AG 75-76). Agnes has formed an affection for a little terrier at the Murrays' and is heart-broken when he is taken away and 'delivered over to the tender mercies of the village rat-catcher, a man notorious for his brutal treatment of his canine slaves' (AG 118). Mr Weston heralds his arrival to propose to Agnes with this little canine messenger, whom he has rescued from the rat-catcher. Agnes's satisfaction that Snap, the terrier, now 'has a good master' anticipates her own acceptance of Mr Weston.

It seems that Charlotte may have drawn this mode of characterisation from her sister. In Shirley, the eponymous character argues that to know if a man is truly good, 'we watch him, and see him kind to animals, to little children, to poor people'.⁴ In praising Robert Moore, Caroline Helstone replies, 'I know somebody to whose knee that black cat loves to climb; against whose shoulder and cheek it likes to purr. The old dog always comes out of his kennel and wags his tail, and whines affectionately when somebody passes'. Charlotte intensifies her similarity to Anne's description in a succeeding passage: 'He quietly strokes the cat, and lets her sit while he conveniently can, and when he must disturb her by rising, he puts her softly down, and never flings her from him roughly'.⁵ Louis Moore, too, has his excellence measured by his sympathy with animals. And Shirley's cousin, Henry, is distinguished from the usual school-boy by his behaviour with animals. Shirley reveals, 'Generally, I don't like school-boys: I have a great horror of them. They seem to me little ruffians, who take an unnatural delight in killing and tormenting birds, and insects, and kittens, and whatever is weaker than themselves … '⁶ Finally, as if recalling Agnes Grey, Martin Yorke is reminded at one point 'of what he had once felt when he had heard a blackbird lamenting for her nestlings, which Matthew had crushed with a stone'.⁷ Charlotte has learned from Anne a very powerful mode for realistically delineating male tyranny.

Anne deserves recognition for the clarity with which she details men's contempt for women in Victorian society and for the corollary recognition that, given this contempt and the power men hold in marriage, women are likely to suffer in that relationship. In her first position, Agnes witnesses a scene in which Mr Bloomfield berates his wife for her presumed negligence of duties. Agnes relates that, 'I never felt so ashamed and uncomfortable in my life for anything that was not my own fault' (AG 21). When Rosalie Murray marries the reprobate Lord Ashby—described as 'disagreeably red about the eyelids', with 'a general appearance of langour and flatness, relieved by a sinister expression in the mouth and the dull, soulless eyes'—she anticipates that because he adores her, he will 'let [her] have her own way' (AG 146). But she discovers to her chagrin and pain that 'he will do as he pleases, and I must be a prisoner and a slave'. Rosalie cries out, 'Oh, I would give ten thousand worlds to be Miss Murray again! It is too bad to feel life, health, and beauty wasting away, unfelt and unenjoyed, for such a brute as that!' (AG 147). Ironically, Rosalie has earlier glimpsed her impending prison and confided to Agnes, 'But if I could be always young, I would be always single' (AG 64). Less vain than Rosalie and independent of male approval, Agnes is more suspicious of marriage as woman's fulfilment.

Even her parents' own example has given Agnes cause to proceed cautiously and to ensure her own autonomy before committing herself to another. Although Anne Brontë represents Mrs Grey's decision to marry a 'poor parson' as a positive one, one for which Agnes's mother is wholly admirable, Mr Grey is painted less sympathetically. Agnes confides that 'saving was not my father's forte. He would not run in debt (at least, my mother took good care he should not), but while he had money he must spend it' (AG 5). Ultimately Richard Grey decides to speculate with his small capital and loses it. Agnes, her sister, and her mother all survive the shock, but Mr Grey 'was completely overwhelmed by the calamity' (AG 6). Not only does he plunge them into poverty, but, incapable of rising to the challenge himself, he becomes an additional burden on his struggling family. His weakness leaves them vulnerable and ultimately increases their responsibility. In contrast, Mrs Grey is resourceful, energetic, strong, and determined. She ultimately heads a little community of women that provides a much more positive image of relationship than that of heterosexual marriage.

Anne Brontë, however, does not allow this female community to resolve her novel. As I've pointed out above, Agnes ultimately marries. But she does so only after we have been made to feel she has the option of self-support and of a nurturing female community. These are unusual options to find represented in a novel set in Victorian England. And, lest we feel that, after all, Agnes, like many another heroine before her, has succumbed to marriage as the only viable option, we have the positive portrait of successful Mrs Grey, who refuses to live with her daughters, 'saying she could now afford to employ an assistant, and would continue the school till she could purchase an annuity sufficient to maintain her in comfortable lodgings …' (AG 157). This might yet be Agnes's fate, and not a bad one, we feel, in a world that encourages male strength to take the form of tyranny and that indulges male weakness.

III

I've suggested above that the novel's strength lies in its quiet realism. Here, it is well to note what cannot be too often emphasised: Anne Brontë's talent for painting her milieu. She gives us, more accurately than most of her contemporaries, a sense of what Victorian female leisured life was like. She communicates the lassitude, the emptiness, the boredom. She makes us experience the significance of social rank: the disdain in which Agnes is held by the neighbouring gentlemen, the rudeness with which servants—taking a cue from their masters—treat her. We share the frustration of being a servant, subject to the whims of one's masters, whether these whims take the form of either demanding that she finish the tedious parts of pictures and of fancywork or encouraging her to appear unobtrusive when unwanted and infinitely accommodating when needed.

No one has communicated better than Anne Brontë the sheer physical demands of the period. I have already detailed her exhausting struggles with her pupils. Travel, too, is particularly demanding. When Agnes first arrives at the Bloomfields, she has only a minute to try to put herself in order and is dismayed at her appearance: 'The cold wind has swelled and reddened my hands, uncurled and entangled my hair, and dyed my face of a pale purple; add to this my collar was horridly crumpled, my frock splashed with mud, my feet clad in stout new boots' (AG 14). Her second journey is even more difficult. Agnes leaves on a dark winter morning and relates that 'the heavy snow had thrown such impediments in the way of both horses and steam-engines, that it was dark some hours before I reached my journey's end, and that a most bewildering storm came on at last … I sat resigned, with the cold, sharp snow drifting through my veil and filling my lap, seeing nothing …' (AG 47). Brontë captures, too, Agnes's nausea from being stuffed into a carriage and riding backward, and her humiliation at being forced to dawdle behind a walking party because she is regarded as a 'mere domestic, who knew her own place too well to walk beside such fine ladies and gentlemen …' (AG 85).

Because Agnes Grey is dedicated to portraying a truth about Victorian life, Brontë eschews dramatic scenes. Many readers will find the 'plot' turgid, so little happens. But that is, as I have argued, because the novel is about education. It intends to keep the reader focused on the life of a mind.

Certain classic themes are generated out of these formal ends. First, the family is the primary focus of education. All subsequent influence cannot wholly eradicate the deficiencies produced by early indulgence and insufficient guidance. But if the understanding has been trained and the passions reigned in, then a great flowering is possible.

A corollary theme suggests that money and a monied, class society lie at the base of this pernicious indulgence. Having been encouraged by their wealth and social position to think well of themselves, the upper classes fail to ground their pride properly in their understanding, judgment, and discrimination. Anne Brontë makes it evident that in moving to the Murrays' Horton Lodge, Agnes has enjoyed an accession of social prestige: 'The house was a very respectable one; superior to Mr Bloomfield's, both in age, size, and magnificence' (AG, 56). Mrs Grey has distinguished the Bloomfields from the Murrays terming the former 'purse-proud tradespeople and arrogant upstarts' while the latter are characterised as 'genuine thorough-bred gentry' (AG 44, 46). However, although the Murray's outrank the Bloomfields, they share their coarseness and crudity. There is more superficial polish but no increase in real elegance. And when Agnes finally visits that star in the social firmament—Rosalie Murray, now Lady Ashby—she remarks on departing:

It was with a heavy heart that I bade adieu to poor Lady Ashby, and left her in her princely home. It was no slight additional proof of her unhappiness that she should so cling to the consolation of my presence, and earnestly desire the company of one whose general tastes and ideas were so little congenial to her own. (AG 148).

We feel that Agnes, who cannot possibly envy Rosalie Murray nor desire her company, possesses a life both richer and more meaningful.

Growing out of Brontë's perception that money and power corrupt, is her recognition that the only real source of happiness lies in cultivating the spiritual life and pursuing the dictates of religion. Agnes tells Rosalie, by way of farewell: 'The best way to enjoy yourself is to do what is right and hate nobody. The end of Religion is not to teach us how to die, but how to live; and the earlier you become wise and good, the more of happiness you secure' (AG 148). We discover, then, that the religious theme is linked to the educational theme that controls the novel; religion helps teach us how to live the good life. It provides the foundation for moral principle, and it stands as a bulwark against despair. By thoroughly integrating the religious theme with the educational one, Brontë precludes the intrusion of any awkward or disruptive moral didacticism into her tale. When we finish the novel, we must feel that Brontë has accomplished her end of furthering our instruction through her protagonist's. But, perhaps more important, we feel that the process has gone on unobtrusively while we were fully engaged with the quiet story of an unassuming young woman.

And, once more, we are reminded of Brontë's triumph: her ability to take materials superficially so unengaging, so devoid of dramatic incident, and to involve us so deeply in them. Finally, Anne Brontë's achievement in Agnes Grey must be measured by her success in transforming a radical theme of women's education and independence into a subject matter so wholly reasonable. Brontë's next novel, to be her last, will demonstrate the as-yet-unexplored reach of her talent and suggest what might have been had she lived.

Notes

¹ Charlotte Brontë, [Jane Eyre, New York, W. W. Norton., 1971], p. 96.

² Winifred Gérin, Anne Brontë, [London, Allen Lane, 1959; 1976], p. 176.

³ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972), p. 370.

⁴ Charlotte Brontë, Shirley (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1974), p. 224.

⁵ Ibid., p. 225.

⁶ Ibid., p. 436.⁷ Ibid., p. 531.