Agnes Grey

Anne Bronte

Agnes tells her story in the first person, as if to a friend, in Agnes Grey [published 1847], written by Anne Bronte. She begins by telling us how isolated her world is, where she lives on the Yorkshire moors with her parson father, her mother and sister. She is anxious to see more of the world.

Because her mother was cut off from her own well-off family when she married a poor clergyman, he tries to increase their small means by an investment which founders. It doesn’t worry Agnes. As the youngest, she is kept from work. She decides to become a governess, to help with the family finances. When she is 18 she gets permission to do so and excitedly takes her first situation 20 miles from home.

The Bloomfields are somewhat privileged and have two young children, Tom and Marianne. The parents are cold and forbidding, but give Agnes no authority to work with the children. Tom and Marianne have no desire to learn in any case, and Agnes’ best intentions seem sport to them. Tom is encouraged by his elders to treat animals badly and one day comes with a nest of pigeons, telling Agnes how he plans to torture them. Agnes tells him he has no right to torment them for his amusement. She takes a large rock and smashes it down on the nest, killing the tiny birds. At the end of May, Agnes is told her services are no longer required.

Agnes returns to the parsonage, but she wants to try again. She finds a position with the Murray family, who are farther away. She is in high spirits, anxious to make her way alone. Her charges are the beautiful and vain 16-year-old Rosalie and her sister Matilda two years younger, who is big-boned and awkward, interested in nothing but horses. Two sons are sent away to boarding school. The family won’t set a schedule for the school and Agnes is at the daughters’ beck and call. Agnes finds that “nothing can be taught to any purpose without some exertion on the part of the learner.”

The Murrays live in a large house with a beautiful park. At 18, Rosalie makes her debut. She flirts with all the men she meets and makes Agnes her confidant. “I detest them all,” she says, but her mother is angling for Rosalie to become the wife of Sir Thomas Ashby and the mistress of Ashby Park. 

With little entertainment in the country, the family often goes to church to hear the flamboyant rector Mr. Hatfield, and his quiet curate, Mr. Weston. Agnes is amazed by the contrast between them. When she has time, Agnes goes out to visit old Nancy Brown, who is having trouble reading her Bible. Nancy tells Agnes about the visits of the two pastors. Hatfield scorned and berated her, but Mr. Weston eased her mind with his kindness, exactly as Agnes suspected.

Walking out with her charges who rush ahead with their friends, Agnes is able to talk to Mr. Weston, telling him forthrightly, “I have no friends in my present position, though I am quite sociable.” Rosalie, seeing them talking, turns and flirts herself. But Agnes begins to see him as the one light in her lonely life. She has no one to whom she can speak her mind. 

When Hatfield proposes marriage to Rosalie, she scornfully turns him down. She does receive an offer from Sir Ashby, which she accepts. But even afterward, she flirts, especially with Mr. Weston, preventing Agnes from talking to him. 

Agnes’ mother writes to say that her father is doing poorly. Agnes goes home, but not in time to see her father alive. Mrs. Grey hears that her family will take her back and provide for them if she repents her marriage. But Mrs. Grey will not do this. She intends to start a school and asks Agnes to join her in teaching. Agnes returns to the Murray household to say goodbye. She meets Mr. Weston, who says it is a pity Rosalie should be thrown away on such a man as Ashby, known to be a rake. He asks after Agnes’ mother and says goodbye, asking whether Agnes would be pleased to see him again some day, raising her hopes that she will.

The school where Agnes teaches with her mother goes well, but Agnes receives a letter from Rosalie, who begs her to come and visit Ashby Park. Rosalie has come to appreciate Agnes’ plain speech. Agnes goes for a few days. She is not allowed to dine with the lords and ladies, but finds that Rosalie is miserable, detests her husband, hates her mother-in-law and refuses to be consoled by her tiny daughter. Agnes asks for news, but hears nothing about Mr. Weston, who has left the parish.

With almost a year since she has seen Mr. Weston, Agnes tries to console herself. She walks by the sea as often as possible. One beautiful morning she runs into Mr. Weston, who has with him the little terrier Snap, whom Agnes thought lost. After that he calls often on Agnes and her mother, as he has a parish quite near. Soon he asks Agnes to be his companion, they are married and have three children. “And now I think I have said sufficient,” she tells us.

The writer of this story, Anne Bronte, was only 26. It was published when Anne was 27. It is a study in values, in which Bronte contrasts her own values for quiet, introspective study with worldly desires for wealth, admiration and titles. All of the characters are seen through this clear lens, to which Anne Bronte was led by her own experiences.

Anne was known to tell the truth plainly, as Agnes does. She wrote: “Oh Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts – this whispering 'Peace, peace', when there is no peace, there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.”