It's very much the less talented sister's version of Jane Eyre, stripped down as a simple governess romance. Agnes, a put-upon governess, falls in love with Mr. Weston, a curate, and must wait patiently until he declares himself--that's pretty much the whole story. For me the real tension in the novel isn't romantic, it's spiritual. How will Agnes learn to bear her life? Like Anne herself, with patience and submission.
Governessing involved hard work, or social isolation, and a job where you're supposed to raise children while having no authority over them. Her helplessness pains her the most, and I thought this was interesting, when it comes to animals. She hates the mean-spirited cruelty of her charges, like the boy who enjoys taking nestlings and ripping them apart alive, and finds her highest courage in standing up for innocent creatures. She's one herself, of course, as encoded in her name--Agnes means "lamb."
Agnes isn't always likeable, as when she frets over the eternal souls of the children she watches, because they act like children. A six-year-old girl loves being told she's pretty, "which I had instructed her to regard as dust in the balance compared with the cultivation of her mind and manners." It's not hard to see why these children might not like their governess and make a point of teasing her. She has class issues--she resents having to call an 11-year-old Master Bloomfield--but doesn't even notice that she herself calls an elderly cottager Nancy, not Mrs. Brown.
Reading this novel reminds me what a powerful achievement Jane Eyre was--that Charlotte Brontë could make Jane so much her own person and an actor in her own life. It also reminds me, though, what a fantasy of governessing Thornfield Hall is, with just one child to teach and a biddable one at that, and consideration made within the household for Jane's comfort and convenience. Not so in this novel. At one point Agnes is a guest, kind of, in a former ward's house, stuck in her room, not knowing when to come to dinner because there's no clock in her room and she "was not rich enough to possess a watch." That kind of detail makes Agnes Grey an interesting, and more realistic, read.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
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You crazy Oxford comma-loving writer! :)
ReplyDeleteI find that having read Singled Out informs my reading of everything else. The life of a governess was hardly Mary Poppins. Not quite servants, but definitely not of the same class as the family of the manor household, it must have been incredibly lonely and frustrating. (I know from experience how hard it is to take care of other people's children-- constantly second-guessing whether the parents would approve) Poor Agnes, whose child-rearing approach is criticized by readers over a hundred years later. ;)
This stuff is fascinating to me-- there are so many social assumptions embedded in the text--like not understanding the hypocrisy of referring to Mrs Brown as Nancy. It is fascinating to see how understanding and overturning the roles of a rigid class system evolves over time.