In December 1847, Agnes Grey was published two months after the far more famous Jane Eyre. Both novels tell the story of a lonely Yorkshire governess. Agnes Grey’s time with the unruly Bloomfields and the arrogant Murrays echoes Anne Brontë’s own experiences with the Inghams of Blake Hall (who dismissed her after only a few months) and the Robinsons of Thorp Green (for whom she worked for several years, until forced to leave after brother Branwell’s scandalous affair with the lady of the house).
On the surface a quiet and gentle story a world away from the Gothic excitements of Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Heights or Anne’s own The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Agnes Grey still has that signature Brontë streak of defiant radicalism in the face of class oppression and tyranny. The heroine becomes a governess in order to support her family — and gain a little independence — within a social context that severely limits her life choices, and the reader traces her steady disillusionment over time as class and money wreck human relationships. Agnes is treated just as badly by the gentrified Murrays as by the nouveau riche Bloomfields as Anne Brontë delineates the impossible between-stairs role of the governess, left ‘“hanging between two ranks” — not good enough to associate with [her] employers, but too good to be friendly with the servants’ (Goreau in Brontë 2004, p. 41).
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