Sunday, January 27, 2019

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte


I know so many people absolutely love Anne Bronte and Agnes Grey in particular, but sadly I am not one of them. I am a fan of Victorian literature and have been reading Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights for decades, but I was bored by Tenant of Wildfell Hall and annoyed by Agnes Grey.

Here is what I didn't like about Agnes Grey.

I found the first-person narrator to be sanctimonious and self-righteous without a spark of humor. I always assumed poor Agnes to be forced to become a governess, but this was entirely her choice. Yes, her father risked and lost their meager family funds and they were strapped financially, but her parents and sister repeatedly told her she needn't go off and be a governess since they could see she wasn't well-suited to it. But, she spent years miserable, lonely, and bitter about the thankless job. She was very snarky and judgmental about the children she was employed to teach and their parents, and I have to believe that she set herself up to be marginalized. I know I am not being fair, but the constant sniping by Agnes got on my nerves.

Anne Bronte didn't tell a very compelling story. The characters were either good or bad--that is, Agnes and her parents and sister and Mr. Weston, the curate she falls in love with, were all good, and the children and parents and their friends were uniformly bad. No shades of gray, no backstory to explain the manifold flaws of the gentry Agnes forced herself to work for, and definitely no growth. I was hopeful that Miss Rosalie would show some growth after she came back into Agnes's life as a married woman who regretted marrying for money alone, but no, she was still selfish and deceitful. And the main character showed absolutely no growth or development or enlightenment in the course of the story. She had no personal hills to climb, she had only to endure being around people she didn't like and who didn't like her.

So the plot was non-existent, the characters were cardboard, and the tone was supercilious. Why then did I give it three stars on GoodReads? Good question--I think I was swayed by the lovely description Bronte gave of the sea coast where Agnes and her mother go to live at the end of the book. I am always a sucker for good nature writing, and this stole my heart and made me want to return to the Yorkshire coast again.

Not the best classic to begin my Back to the Classics 2019 challenge, but now I have a check mark next to Classic by a Woman Author category.


13 comments:

  1. I have never read Anne. I do think that Jane Eyre was one of the finest books ever written and that Wuthering Heights was a great one. It is almost mandatory to eventually give Anne a try eventually. Too bad that this fell so short in so many ways.

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  2. What a disappointment! I still may be interested in reading it b/c everyone has different responses to a story and its writing, and your mention of the description of the sea may be tempting enough.

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  3. Hi Jane, I really liked Tenant of Wildfell Hall but I tried to read Agnes Grey years ago and I never got through it. I remember being a bit bored. Interesting that Anne Bronte's best passages were by the sea coast because I read that she loved the sea coast and is in fact buried there, not back in the Bronte's burial ground. Tells me that maybe a novel entirely set by the sea coast and the people who live there would have been the book Anne Bronte should have written rather than the life of a governess whoch I sense she didn't care for.

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    1. Yes, she is buried in Scarborough. I wish she had poured her creative energies into writing about she loved most instead of what she hated most...

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  4. I didn't love Agnes Grey, but I did find parts of it funny. Anne Bronte must've really hated being a governess! But I did really like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Sorry you didn't enjoy either book.

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    1. >>Anne Bronte must've really hated being a governess!

      No question!

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  5. What I admire most about your response is your willingness to say exactly what you think about Agnes Grey, and in part, Anne Bronte as a writer. I so applaud that because so few bloggers really reveal what their personal experience of reading a particular book was really like. They may say, "I didn't like it," but that's it. So thank you for opening up a discussion here! And I hope others will dig in if they've read the book.
    I have a slightly different view of the book, although I totally agree with you that the plot, the characterizations, and the theme all underline the fact that the novel is very far from accomplished.

    You're right that Agnes was not forced out of her home to earn her living. But, I would like to say, that from Anne Bronte's point of view, in her life as well, she may have felt that she had no choice but to be a governess. (By the way, I am not trying to change your opinion--I'm just sharing my view.)
    Anne was the youngest--and she had these three elder siblings who were so incredibly creative and brilliant. Patrick, Jane, and Emily all collaborating and trying to outdo one another with the elaborate written and illustrated creations of their fantasy worlds. Anne, naturally, as the youngest, eagerly tried to keep up.
    But Anne was the "low man down" in a proverbial "hothouse."
    How could she be an individual in the midst of her incredibly self-motivated, ultra-talented older siblings? (Patrick by now has left the scene, to his detriment.)
    Anne Bronte knew that she couldn't compete with her older sisters. I think Anne Bronte must have had enormous courage to leave home, but I'm willing to posit that I don't think she felt she had a real choice. It was to stay at home as "the youngest" or leave home and gain some experience, in the only respectable way possible at that time, and become a governess.
    I am not excusing the deficiencies of Agnes Grey in any way. But I think that what I appreciated in the book was what Anne Bronte tried so hard to do for herself. To individuate, separate from her older siblings. I think I enjoyed the book, seeing it from Anne's eyes, as the creator. I think she had enormous bravery to attempt a novel, and then another, in the wake of what I'm sure she saw as her sisters' superior products. Even if she never saw Wuthering Heights before its publication, or Jane Eyre, she knew deep down what her older sisters were capable of.
    However, all of this backstory aside--I truly believe that any piece of literature must be judged on its own merits.
    I would say that if Anne Bronte had not written this book, it would have 1) not been published at all, 2)faded into obscurity immediately, and so on. It's not a great book or even a really good book.
    But I appreciated the book, also looking at it from the point of view of women who had such a sliver's worth of options.

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    1. Thanks for continuing the conversation--I appreciate your thoughts. I think it's interesting what you say about Anne wanting to pull her weight, so to speak, financially and creatively. Of all four surviving siblings, I think Anne was the most successful as a teacher (meaning she found work and stuck to it), and certainly there were pitifully few vocations for a woman in Victorian times. I do admire her fortitude.

      I agree that if Anne wasn't a Bronte sister, she would never have been a published novelist. I do think she was a decent poet--the edition I read had a few of her poems and they were very creative and moving.

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    2. How interesting, Jane. I do recall the poems and thought them rather good as well.
      How tragic it is for all the Brontes that they all died so young. They never had the chance to develop into maturity, except perhaps for Charlotte, but she died before middle-age as well. Their gifts so tragically snuffed out.

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  6. Interesting! I've not read any Anne Bronte (or any Charlotte outside of Jane Eyre). I'll have to give it a go and see what I think. :)

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  7. Sounds like you should stick with the other Bronte! Cardboard characters are painful!

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  8. I've had Agnes Grey on my to-read list for a long time, but something always makes me hesitate when it comes to actually reading it.

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  9. I was underwhelmed by this one, I think I've really only liked one of the Bronte novels so far and that was Jane Eyre! I've only read one other novel by Charlotte, Villette, and I didn't love it. I also hate Wuthering Heights. I'm so sorry your first book for the challenge has been a disappointment! I hope your next book for the challenge is an improvement.

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