Description

Concerned for her family’s financial welfare and eager to expand her own horizons, Agnes Grey takes up the position of governess, the only respectable employment for an unmarried woman in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Agnes cannot anticipate the hardship, humiliation, and loneliness that await her in the brutish Bloomfield and haughty Murray households. Drawn from Anne Brontë’s own experiences, Agnes Grey depicts the harsh conditions and class snobbery that governesses were often forced to endure. As Barbara A. Suess writes in her Introduction, “Brontë provides a portrait of the governess that is as sympathetic as her fictional indictment of the shallow, selfish moneyed class is biting.”

Description

A novel that addresses the precarious position of a governess, and how it affected a young woman in that position: some critics, in fact, feel that Agnes Grey deserves the reputation of a ‘governess novel’ far more than Jane Eyre, as it is decidedly more realistic and down-to-earth in its depiction of the life of a governess.

Description

‘How delightful it would be to be a governess!’ When the young Agnes Grey takes up her first post as governess she is full of hope; she believes she only has to remember ‘myself at their age’ to win her pupils’ love and trust. Instead she finds the young children she has to deal with completely unmanageable. They are, as she observes to her mother, ‘unimpressible, incomprehensible creatures’. In writing her first novel, Anne Brontë drew on her own experiences, and one can trace in the work many of the trials of the Victorian governess, often stranded far from home, and treated with little respect by her employers, yet expected to control and educate her young charges. Agnes Grey looks at childhood from nursery to adolescence, and it also charts the frustrations of romantic love, as Agnes starts to nurse warmer feelings towards the local curate, Mr Weston. The novel combines astute dissection of middle-class social behaviour and class attitudes with a wonderful study of Victorian responses to young children which has parallels with debates about education that continue to this day. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Description

In her daring first novel, the youngest Brontë sister drew upon her own experiences to tell the unvarnished truth about life as a governess. Like Agnes Grey, Anne Brontë was a young middle-class Victorian lady whose family fortunes had faltered. Like so many other unmarried women of the nineteenth century, Brontë accepted the only “respectable” employment available — and entered a world of hardship, humiliation, and loneliness. Written with a realism that shocked critics, this biting social commentary offers a sympathetic portrait of Agnes and a moving indictment of her brutish and haughty employers. Separated from her family and friends by many miles, paid little more than subsistence wages, Agnes stands alone — both in society at large and in a household where she is neither family member nor servant. Agnes Grey remains a landmark in the literature of social history. In addition to its challenge to the era’s chauvinism and materialism, it features a first-person narrative that offers a rare opportunity to hear the voice of a Victorian working woman.

Description

Agnes Grey was one of a trio of novels that defined the “governess novel” in 1847 and 1848. Alongside Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, Agnes Grey may be the most radical of the three. Agnes Grey is the younger daughter of a clergyman and his wife of modest means, cherished but also infantilized. When her father’s mercantile investment goes disastrously wrong, Agnes decides to contribute to the family’s financial rebuilding by working as a governess, despite her mother’s and sister’s misgivings about her fitness for such work. Her first position is indeed trying, as the parents and children are uncouth and even cruel. Her second position is slightly more congenial, but she is still manipulated and ignored. Yet Agnes perseveres and begins to build relationships outside the family, most importantly with a kind, empathetic young curate. As life brings more trials to Agnes and her family, we watch her persist on her steady path of hope and determination.

This Broadview Edition provides extensive historical documents on the novel’s reception, the role of the governess in Victorian England, and contemporary debates about thetreatment of non-human animals.

Description

Anne Brontë’s debut novel tells the realistic and moving story of a young governess For well-educated women of lesser means in the mid-nineteenth century, there was only one option for employment that paid decently and provided a sense of dignity: becoming a governess. These young women were tasked with educating the children of the rich in the ways of the world. When the Grey family falls into debt, Agnes is forced to find work as a governess and learns of the misery and cruelty that exist in the landed classes. In her first home, she sees a family with spoiled, abusive children; and in the second, she discovers the misery of the elite, who seem from afar to have everything. Drawing from her own experiences as a governess, Brontë has crafted with warmth and realism the story of a young woman named Agnes Grey. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.