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    Agnes Grey
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    Agnes Grey
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    Agnes Grey
    Ebook253 pages4 hours

    Agnes Grey

    By Anne Brontë

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The novel follows Anges and her uneasy path to personal happiness and a romance with Mr. Weston. Agnes, her sister, Mary, and their mother all try to keep expenses low and to bring in extra money, but Agnes is frustrated that everyone treats her like a child. To prove herself and to earn money, she starts working as a governess, teaching children of rich families. Agnes Grey is an autobiographical novel with strong parallels between its events and Anne Bronte's own life as a governess.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSovereign
    Release dateDec 15, 2013
    ISBN9781909904958
    Author

    Anne Brontë

    Anne Brontë was born in Yorkshire in 1820. She was the youngest of six children and the sister of fellow novelists Charlotte and Emily, the authors of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights respectively. Her mother died when she was a baby and she was raised by her aunt and her father, The Reverend Patrick Brontë. Anne worked as a governess before returning to Haworth where she and her sisters published poems under the pseudonyms Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. She published her first novel, Agnes Grey in 1847 and this was followed by The Tenant of Wildfell Hallin 1848. She died from tuberculosis in 1849

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    Reviews for Agnes Grey

    3.5/5

    1,094 ratings76 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Anne is very under appreciated.I like her more realistic style.The book is told in the first person by Agnes. As a governess Agnes is given no real authority to punish her charges. So of course they feel free to disrespect her.
    • 4/5
      (Original Review, 1981-02-06)I read "Agnes Grey" after a visit to the Mosteiros dos Jerónimos, supposing I ought to try the lesser known sister after reading so much of Charlotte's work and of course “Wuthering Heights.” What a wonderful surprise. Anne had me at "...she would rather live in a cottage with Richard Grey than in a palace with any other man in the world." It's a beautiful novel and undeservedly overlooked. The tone is on the surface much less dark, but Anne pulls no punches about women's oppression and the appalling behaviour of the 'noble' families she had the misfortune to encounter in her time as a governess. The dialogue reminds me of Jane Austen in places, exchanges that are gently witty and scathing. Mr. Weston is something of an unassuming romantic interest, but coming to the novel as an adult I rather more appreciate Anne's quietly decent men than the Byronic sociopaths her sisters were obsessed with. For me the novel is more about women. Agnes' relationship with her mother is genuinely touching, imbued with Anne's longing for her own. The final meeting between Agnes and Rosalie juxtaposing their characters and fates, now firmly fixed, is haunting stuff. Anne's heroines are not defined by the men they love, but by their own convictions and resources - how refreshing even in 1981!
    • 4/5
      # 13 of 100 Classics Challenge

      Agnes Grey🍒🍒🍒🍒
      By Anne Bronte
      1847

      Partially influenced by her personal experience as a governess, Anne Bronte takes us into her world of the humble, mistreated and overworked governesses, with horribly undisciplined mean children of the rich.She falls for an impossible man, but eventually finds true love. And happiness.A great classic. My first Anne Bronte and not my last.
    • 4/5
      Anne Bronte delivers a finely detailed account of the depressing trials of a untrained and timid young governess and her ruthless charges.She unfortunately gains little in self confidence as she moves with her mother to teach in their own school at the seaside.Mr. Weston, her concealed love interest, acts in his own secretive manner, as artful as the manipulations Agnes Grey despises in Miss Matilda,yet Agnes does not fault him for his many months of needless silence.His sterling act in her direction is the purchase of the dog, Snap. There is no reason given why Agnes did not purchase and so save the dog from cruelty herself.
    • 3/5
      I looked at several reviews of Agnes Grey before reading it, but they were so varied in opinion I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t find the heroine as insipid as many readers did; although she mostly failed to change the children in her charge she never failed to try to the best of her abilities, including physical means; and remaining polite and ‘in her place’ didn’t mean she lacked strong feelings.Where I felt the novel lacked power was in its romance. The only thing holding the two apart was their inability to meet often. There was nothing like Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth and Darcy having to accept their own faults and evolve into better people - Agnes and Mr Weston are both essentially perfect and only require a little leisure time to get to know each other so that doubts about each other’s feelings can be overcome.
    • 3/5
      I am glad I read this. It wasn't terrible but compared to "Tenant" I would never believe it was written by the same woman. It's just rather dull. Agnes is self-righteous and to our modern eyes rather a wimp. Yes her charges are horrible little monsters and a reader can't judge her by our modern standards but "Tenant" has issues which are no longer relevant in it and it's still a great book. So of some interest but flawed. The fact that it has never been filmed probably about sums it up.
    • 3/5
      This was an enjoyable book to read, but I found the plot to be predictable and the characters seemed stereotyped and flat. The plot is a familiar one. A pastor's family falls into financial troubles and one of the daughters has to go into service as a governess. She works for 2 different families - both of them shallow with spoiled children and of course, they treat Agnes like dirt. She keeps her chin up and endures and since this is a Victorian romance, you can imagine the final outcome. I usually love the Victorian marriage plot stories, but I found Agnes to be too much of a goody two shoes. Unlike some other memorable characters, like Jane Eyre, she lacks spunk and let's people walk all over her. Just add 3 miracles and she could be St. Agnes Grey. Still enjoyable, but not a classic that will stay with me.
    • 5/5
      a realistic & plain love story. The main character is normal and there isn't anything extravagant about the whole thing. Which makes this book a very nice read, it's a nice change to all the drama filled romance novels you find today.
      It was charming & wonderful.
    • 3/5
      Anne seems to be the forgotten Bronte, and while I liked this book as a change of pace from the outright melodramas and romances that Charlotte and Emily wrote, it really wasn't up to snuff with my expectations, I guess.
    • 5/5
      I am a big fan of the Brontes. While Charlotte's Jane Eyre and Emily's Wuthering Heights are deservedly all time classics, Anne's two novels are less well known and comparatively neglected; and Agnes Grey is probably less known than Anne's other novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Agnes Grey is comparatively short and is a semi-autobiographical novel where Anne recounts the eponymous young lady's experiences as a governess to the children of wealthy families. When her father's business ventures fall apart after the sinking of a ship of his merchant business partner, young Agnes goes to work as a governess to earn the family some money, despite discouragement from her family. Her experiences are actually quite hilarious, dealing with spoiled and delinquent children and their oblivious parents who refuse to see any wrong in their offspring, particularly in the case of the Bloomfields. Later she looks after the older daughters of the Murrays, who are also a trial, being self-centred and needy, but with whom she is able eventually to establish a modus vivendi. She also falls in love with a vicar in the Murrays' local village, Mr Weston. This is a lovely and very satisfying novel, in some ways ahead of its time in dealing with "feral" children, as is Wildfell Hall in dealing with domestic abuse. A great read.
    • 3/5
      Fodder for all romance novelists who followed the Brontes, how many ways can you tell the story of a mousy, governess beset on all sides by poverty, the winds of fate and wicked souls who try, if not her virtue, at least her patience? Yet she victoriously outlasts them all through her basic goodness to win the heart and hand of the right man in the end. Anne Bronte's heroine may be a bit boring, but her wonderfully descriptive passages lift Agnes Grey above the ordinary. Her intense attention to detail and personality are extremely well done, particularly regarding some of the nasty little psychopathic charges Miss Grey had to take in hand and their equally repulsive parents.
    • 3/5
      Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte; (2 1/2*)A clergyman's family falls into difficult financial times and one of the daughters must go into service as a governess. How many times and how many ways have we read this one? To give Bronte her due, she was young at the time she wrote this and she did have some experience of that which she wrote. I have to admit part of the reason I read this is that I was quite curious as to how this sister held up against her sisters and the outcome was 'rather poorly'. But then who can stand up against Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? I found Agnes Grey rather predictable and somewhat of a snooze. Anne Bronte does bring some nice bits of writing to the table throughout her novel but I doubt I would have completed the read had it not been that I was taking part in a tutored & group read. I did love the very last part of the novel so the author did score some marks.
    • 3/5
      There are half a dozen recordings of 'Agnes Grey' and I sampled all prior to purchase; the American reader just wasn't going to sound right - but neither did any of others particularly, ranging from old maid, albeit Agnes does come across as such, to just too conventionally middle class, even though she is. So I plumbed for the most popular. A reading is necessarily a performance and thoroughly inhibits, I suspect, any possible further reading of the text, if like me you've not read the book initially. Thus inevitably Agnes comes across in this performance as priggish and judgmental, the younger daughter of a clergyman, who becomes a governesses as she feels that this would enhance her experience of life and that she'd greatly enjoy putting her skills to a practical end. Alas the world that she enters - the gentry, are dissolute, often idle, rude and snobbish and treat Agnes little better than a servant - which is what she is.She holds to her principles largely based on Christian values and her own class prejudices and ultimately her virtue and long suffering is rewarded. 'Tis but a short tale of love and toil and illness, unhappiness and great meanness of spirit, though I did enjoy some of the arch sentence construction, and a genuinely informative novel of country life in mid 19th Century England. By the end of the book I'd accommodated to Virginia Leishman's reading style, but wondered how a younger less knowing narrator might have tipped the story at different and more sympathetic angle.
    • 3/5
      A largely biographical novel, telling the trials and tribulations of a daughter of a clergyman who resorts to being a governess in order to reduce her burden on the family finances. Unfortunately, Agnes is allowed too little authority over her spoilt charges and has too little experience, character and authority in herself to be able to exert what little authority she does have over the brats. And they are uniformly brats who are neglected and over indulged by their parents. It is also a cycle that is difficult to break, with Rosalie Murray looking set to treat her child in the same manner as she was, thus perpetuating the cycle of bad behaviour. Agnes herself is not someone I'd want to spend a great deal of time with. Too innocent to know much of the ways of the world, she is entirely out of her depth for most of the novel. She is also too insipid to do much about it. She always takes the back seat and does little to develop her own character. I accept she's in a difficult situation, the governess sitting uncomfortably between the servants and the family, being a part of neither circle. It leads to a isolating position, despite Agnes' claim (about which she then does nothing) that she is the equal of the ladies and their friends that she has been employed to educate. The other topic this book covers is courtship & marriage. There are two very different end results, and, one suspects, one is supposed to take the message that a good marriage is deserved by the more godly (preachy and pious) person. I, however, take from it that I'm amazed any marriage was ever good, in that they seem to be based on a mere handful of meetings and those barely seem to scratch the surface of the kind of exploratory conversations you'd have on a modern date. Rosalie discovers her husband is not at all what she imagined he would be, and has no skills to manage him. I occasionally complain my husband is not at all romantic, but I did know that before I married him. Not the longest book, and not a difficult read. But it has that 19th century preaching tone about it - you're supposed to take a lesson from it. And so it's unlikely to be one I'll come back to.
    • 4/5
      The book reads much like her sister's books although the subject manner may be less universal. It deals with the British class system and how it leaves many, particularly governesses in an isolated condition.
    • 3/5
      Plain and rather predictable, but nice.
    • 4/5
      Of all the reviews on Goodreads, reviews of the Brontes puzzle me most. Wuthering Heights is meant to be a romance, relaxation reading etc... And Anne Bronte, who is now certainly my favorite sister, is always a distant third...
      This novel isn't as good as The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, sure. But it's more lovely, full of gentle irony, moral correction, and the promise that somewhere there is at least one person, who is not a member of your family, who is not a complete dip-shit. Like Austen, but more enraged, which is understandable given the facts of the story.
      I've read people who complain that this novel 'tells' too much rather than 'showing,' but given that it's written in the first person, I hardly see how it could 'show' without being insanely obtuse; imagine someone sitting down at a bar to regale you with a tale, except he treats it like a Henry James novel. No thanks. I've read that this is too moralistic. I wonder if the people who write this are the same ones who complain that other novels don't have any sympathetic characters? Come on people! Can you imagine a novel full of sympathetic characters, and then have those sympathetic characters not be pissed off that other people are terrible? Ugh. Insufferable.
    • 3/5
      Interesting social commentary, dull to read in some sections. apparently somewhat autobiographical.
    • 3/5
      It's one of the Brontes so, of course, there's a level of wonderfulness that's a given. The romance in this story feels like an add-on but the exposure of the hypocrisy of the "upper" classes and the rudeness towards the "lower" classes is wonderful. Jane Eyre is still my favorite but I'm glad I've now read Anne.
    • 4/5
      Anne Bronte's writings bring like in the 1800s to life on the page. Her short descriptive chapters set a fast pace to her vivid writing. This is a small treasure of a novel with semi-biographical experiences is often ignored alongside her sisters more famous novels, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights but it is not forgotten.
    • 3/5
      1001 list book #158.Sweet, short, sappy, romantic, yet somehow satisfying. This would actually be a great read for middle/high schoolers--especially for those kids who are young but read at an advanced level. The 18th century language is not simple to read (not hard either, just different), social history is important, and this book is clean and gentle.Read on Serial Reader.
    • 4/5
      I had to read an ANNE Bronte book after the movie 'Devotion' only describes Charlotte and Emily as geniuses. Why not Anne, too? This could not stand! I had been meaning to read this one for a while anyway. If I were deprived of Charlotte's and Emily's writing, Anne's writing would be all the more appreciated. The story or writing here might not be on the level of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, but I will take what I can get of the Brontes! I know I couldn't write like Anne anyway! Anne seems to overuse the comma here, which is the most irritating this book could be for me. I love the story of Agnes Grey and her perseverance with her job as governess to various children and teens and her perseverance with the disappointments of life overall. The Brontes sure had a handle on the story of the governess. I especially love the appreciation Agnes has for the ocean and her walks (my favorite part!), as I know Anne herself died at the ocean. Now I know how much Anne herself appreciated the ocean and that gives me comfort and reason enough to read the book alone.
    • 1/5
      Agnes is an idiot. And I only made it through about 60% of this very boring book.
    • 3/5
      Slow, sometimes overly pious and reflective. Bronte does have plenty to say about wealthy people of the time.
    • 4/5
      Not nearly as remarkable as her sisters' novels, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but still Agnes Grey was a good read. I liked that it was quick unlike many of the classics that can be hard to get through.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book. It was a quick read, which can be really nice.The first part of the book read like a babysitter's worst nightmare; I could hardly believe that the kids could be that consistently stubborn. If I hadn't known that the book was based on Anne Bronte's own experiences, I would have said that part of the book was unrealistic.I enjoyed reading about Agnes' next job as a governess more. Although Rosalie was vain and conniving, I didn't mind her as much. I really liked the character of Mr. Weston, and as soon as he was introduced, I hoped that Agnes would fall for him.I liked Agnes as a character as well. It was very easy to imagine myself in her situation making a lot of the same choices, and that always adds an extra bit of interest for me.
    • 3/5
      Agnes Grey, which was published the same year as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, isn't nearly as dramatic as either of her sisters' most famous works. It's a story of a basically good, but naive, young woman. As the youngest child in a loving family, she was pampered by her mother and older sister. She asserts some independence by seeking work as a governess in order to contribute to the family finances. Nothing in her background has prepared her for the situations in which she finds herself. She seems surprised when the families she works for treat her as less than a social equal. The household servants seem to be beneath her notice, and are hardly even mentioned in the novel. Good works provide her with her primary social contacts. In her limited free time, she visits the sick and elderly members of the community, and it is through these visits that she makes an acquaintance who will change her life.Agnes Grey is more overtly religious than either Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, with its frequent references to the Bible and to Christian virtues. Its seems to instruct as much as it entertains. While Agnes doesn't have the passion of a Jane Eyre or the tragedy of a Catherine Earnshaw, she is a gentle soul who deserves a happy ending.
    • 4/5
      I liked this book by Anne Bronte about the governess. It is so interesting to read about the past in this way. I think that if I had been in her shoes I wouldn't even have lasted a week. I think I will need to read it again.
    • 3/5
      Wow.....I cannot believe how long it took me to finish this book, although the book is certainly not entirely to blame......my life was a much larger factor....however, had i been 'gripped' more by what i was reading, it would not have taken me nearly 2 months (!) to get through it. But then again, one does not read Bronte sister books for adventure and heart-pounding excitement, so i have no one to blame but myself. With that all said, i did enjoy some aspects of the book. It always fascinates me to learn that self-centered rude entitled behavior is not some recent quality in society that we are all so quick to point to as some terrible decline feature of today's world, but has been with us a very long time. This also shows clearly the value that faith can have in offering up a path through which we can maneuver through difficult times. A little sappy, a somewhat predictable ending, but no regrets.
    • 3/5
      This was a Librovox recording that was ok. I thought that the voice of Agnes was a bit whiny. This matched the first half of the book which was Agnes's narrative about the awful students in her care. I sympathized with her a bit and thought that not only the students but parents were absolutely awful and disrespectful. It is interesting how little preparation a governess had for taking care of the young people she spent all day teaching and guiding. Going into a family with predefined behavior and disfunction had to be incredibly difficult. I am sure that very little was ever discussed prior to starting a placement in terms of managing difficult situations a governess was most likely going to experience.

      A governess was both a necessity and an evil. She was needed but not included as a member of the family. The ultimate decision-making was also in the hands of the parents, something that I am sure many youth took advantage of on a day to day basis.

      The second half of the book was more bright as some of the characters received their just desserts and Agnes found her path and voice. I was happy with the ending and must confess that I do enjoy things being wrapped up neatly.

      Looking forward to more of the Bronte sisters.