Product Description

When her family becomes impoverished after a disastrous financial speculation, Agnes Grey determines to find work as a governess in order to contribute to their meagre income and assert her independence. But Agnes’s enthusiasm is swiftly extinguished as she struggles first with the unmanageable Bloomfield children and then with the painful disdain of the haughty Murray family; the only kindness she receives comes from Mr Weston, the sober young curate. Drawing on her own experience, Anne Brontë’s first novel offers a compelling personal perspective on the desperate position of unmarried, educated women for whom becoming a governess was the only respectable career open in Victorian society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #272792 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Anne Bronte was born in 1820, the youngest of the Bronte family. She was educated at home, and was particularly close to her sister Emily. Her first novel was AGNES GREY, and it was followed by THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL in 1848, written under a pseudonym. She died in 1849. Angeline Goreau has also written on Aphra Behn. She is a writer whose work appears regularly in the New York Times Book Review.

Customer Reviews

The tale of a governess
Mrs Brontë tells the tale of Agnes Grey, a young governess of a little over 20 and her experience working for two families, The Bloomfields and their 3 children Tom, Mary Ann and Fanny, and with the Murrays and their two daughters Mathilda and Rosalie.
In writing her first novel, Mrs Brontë must have drawn from her own experiences in 1839 when she worked for the Ingham family at Blake Hall and from 1840 till 1845 with the Robinsons at Thorp Green Hall. As her sister Charlotte sated, this personal experience lies behind many of the characters and events as well as Agnes's feelings in the novel.
As a first novel, it show an astonishing maturity and technical accomplishment since "Agnes Grey" is in many ways a very personal story. Mrs Brontë describes as vividly as possible the strong pressures that a governess' life involved at that time - the isolation, the frustrations, the insensitive treatment of employers and their families. Actually it transpires in this novel that middle-class households used to consider a governess as little more than a servant thus undervaluing her role as an educator. And the author's view of such households is sharply cynical: they are self-satisfied, vulgar, small-minded snobs who delight in social pretension. They are mercilessly depicted in their moral emptiness and Agnes actually suffers from moral isolation which becomes more and more oppressive and alienating, especially during her stay with the Murrays. In this family Agnes feel deprived from ordinary human kindness and warmth of affection so much so that she falls into depression because she feels that her moral identity is being destroyed, no longer confident in her "distinctions of right and wrong".
A remarkable novel about a young woman and such issues as moral behaviour, moral responsibility and individual integrity.

moving
This book is perfect for all those people who have loved unrequited or been through terrible times in their life. With the perfect ending this story touched and changed me. Anne, often considered the lesser of the Bronte sisters, shines with talent and individuality. A beautiful story.

Simple narrative about the plight of the C19 governess
Agnes Grey suffers probably the worst critical reputation of all the Bronte sisters' novels apart from Charlotte's The Professor, though hardly any would call it a bad book.

This is a simple narrative of the trials of a poor governess, substantially based upon the author's own experiences. Apparently it is the best extant contemporary evidence we have of that occupation - the only 'respectable' occupation open to an educated woman who did not marry in the mnid C19. It expounds, somewhat pleadingly, the impossible position in which the typical governess is placed.

The narrator herself is an infuriatingly moral, religious girl. You sometimes find yourself wishing she would just lighten up a bit. Passion comes in the smallest flickers: this is a cool, detatched book.