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rue_baldry 's review for:
Agnes Grey
by Anne Brontë
This is a very quiet, polite novel, especially when compared to the passion of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, or Anne's later, more mature, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The central character is a young lady of idealised christian virtues, who finds herself in an unpleasant, but bearable, situation, as a governess to spoilt children. Agnes is above bitterness or viciousness, but Anne gives her most unpleasant charge the punishment of (spoiler warning) an unhappy marriage. Given that the bulk of the story was based on Anne's own experiences as a governess, I think it's fair to view this as a writer's revenge on a real life nemesis, no matter how much mealy-mouthed Agnes may claim to care about and pity the character in question.
The romance plot is obvious and unrealistic, but the rest of the novel is worth reading to get an idea of the life of a victorian governess, the domestic arrangements of her employers, and the lives of clergy families at the time.
Anne's own experience was rather more scandalous than Agnes', the end to her career as a governess not so happy, but she was far too polite and respectable to write about the governess' brother entering the household as a tutor and having an affair with the mistress of the house, though that would have made for a more exciting story than this one!
The romance plot is obvious and unrealistic, but the rest of the novel is worth reading to get an idea of the life of a victorian governess, the domestic arrangements of her employers, and the lives of clergy families at the time.
Anne's own experience was rather more scandalous than Agnes', the end to her career as a governess not so happy, but she was far too polite and respectable to write about the governess' brother entering the household as a tutor and having an affair with the mistress of the house, though that would have made for a more exciting story than this one!