Agnes Grey, by Anne Bronte

I just finished reading Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte, and it was so good that I wanted to write about it right away. The books I love best are often ones where I feel a connection to the main character. This story, told in first person, is about a young woman who goes to work as a governess when her family hits hard financial times. Although she has been little exposed to the world previously, she finds that the principles of morality, industry, and self-identity that she had been raised on are not typical fare for families she works for. Her sentiments about relationships and principles to live by resonate greatly with my own, both in their feeling and in their expression.

So many of the demands that the parents make of her as a governess are ridiculous, given the constraints they require. They want their children to be taught and molded with as little effort or bother to the children as possible. They would be great fans of obtaining knowledge and skills by osmosis if it were effectual in any degree! When I was talking with Mom and Dad about this book, Dad mentioned that that's actually a huge problem even today: giving responsibility but no authority. Needless to say, Agnes's efforts are greatly ineffectual, not from any lack on her part, but because the parents undermine everything she does with their own examples and relationships with their children.

There's another issue in the book that struck home with me, and that's how Agnes deals with her feelings on the romantic relationship front. It amazes me that with all of the years' distance between Anne Bronte's time and my own, that women should still be so similar in how we feel about things, and even how we act on them (and this thought is in reference to all of the women in the novel--both the good behavior and sentiments and the bad). Anyway, Agnes keeps her growing feelings for Mr. Weston, the newly arrived local curate, very much bottled up inside, but thinks about him a great deal and longs to run into him, particularly when the capriciousness of her charges leads them to pretty much make Agnes a hermit. I need to back up a little and say that Rosalie, Agnes's beautiful but heartless charge, decides at a certain point to make Mr. Weston one of her conquests because she'd already broken Mr. Hatfield's heart and was bored from lack of sport. Poor Agnes has to go through the agony of hearing about Rosalie's machinations to bring Mr. Weston to heel, without being able to express anything but indifference for the whole situation.

There is a point where Agnes struggles to accept that her hopes and dreams may never be realized. Here is a portion of her internal struggles: "[Is] it likely my life all through will be so clouded? Is it not possible that God may hear my prayers, disperse these gloomy shadows, and grant me some beams of heaven’s sunshine yet? Will He entirely deny to me those blessings which are so freely given to others, who neither ask them nor acknowledge them when received? May I not still hope and trust?" (Chapter 20)

"Should I shrink from the work that God had set before me, because it was not fitted to my taste? Did not He know best what I should do, and where I ought to labour?— and should I long to quit His service before I had finished my task, and expect to enter into His rest without having laboured to earn it? ‘No; by His help I will arise and address myself diligently to my appointed duty. If happiness in this world is not for me, I will endeavour to promote the welfare of those around me, and my reward shall be hereafter.’"(Chapter 21)

In these words you can see the struggles she has within herself. Luckily, things all turn out well. She opens a school with her mother and Mr. Weston moves to a nearby town and eventually proposes. It's almost as good as Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett, and very similar in the way you have the satisfaction of seeing two equally yoked, good people end up together.

This book is really rich in many ways, but I've only addressed a few things. I recommend it to everyone to read!