Novel
Agnes Grey
Anne Brontë · 1847
Opening lines
All true histories contain instruction; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity, that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
The younger daughter of a clergyman in the north of England, ruined when the ship of a merchant friend is wrecked, the young woman wants to earn her living and prove that she is no longer a child: she takes a post as a governess. At Wellwood, little Tom tortures fledglings, encouraged by his uncle and defended by his mother, and she is dismissed before a year is out. At Horton Lodge, with the Murrays, she teaches two adolescent girls, Rosalie the coquette and Matilda, a tomboy; she is received like a new servant and ignored in front of visitors. The curate, Mr Weston, is the only one to show her consideration.
Context
The novel appeared in December 1847 as the third volume of a set whose first two contained the novel of one of her sisters. It draws on the years its author had spent as a governess in two households, and describes what the work involved: cruel children whom their parents defended, employers who treated the governess as an inferior, loneliness. The critics of the time found it even and without force beside her sister's novel, and at times coarse. A second edition appeared in 1850, prepared by her eldest sister and preceded by a notice by the latter on the two dead sisters; the same sister then refused the reprinting of her other novel.
Who it is for
A short novel, in the first person, translated into French as early as 1859 and retranslated in 2001 for Gallimard.
Prizes and reception
Reissued several times in French paperback since 2012, including an annotated edition in the Livre de Poche in 2021.
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