This is the kind of romance that I enjoy. Agnes Grey must be one of my favorite literary females. She's the type of role model who's not unrealistically perfect, but has developed virtues that make her a very worthy character. The book is certainly far from exciting or "passionate," but it has plenty of solid themes and lessons for young girls to learn from. It shows how the temporary pleasures of flirting are entirely fleeting, but the constant modesty and dependence on God is rewarded with true happiness in the end.

4/5 stars One bright day in the last week of February, I was walking in the park, enjoying the threefold luxury of solitude, a book, and pleasant weather.By reading Agnes Grey I've sufficiently accomplished my goal of reading a book from each sister.Despite many similarities in sisters' writing and the messages that they are portraying - the three of them are also very different. The first sister I had the pleasure of reading was Emily, and it's easy to assume that she was the risk taker of the written word. She embraced the wildness of the moors and the madness of true love, she let her imagination run untamed and her emotions unchecked. All of those qualities created a painful, but also very beautiful masterpiece of Wuthering Heights. Charlotte, while not shying away from the madness of love either, focused more on the resilience of human spirit and how ones principles get them through all trials. Jane Eyre was full of surprises as we watched her bravely walk through her hardships and onto the unexpected path of love, that in the end was a saving grace for both her, and her beloved. Anne's writing is definitely the most polished of them all. Her sentences are carefully constructed and all of the words are picked with a goal in mind. Not once Agnes Grey went out of bonds, not once she fell into her temptations or got lost on the path she was taking, no matter how bleak and gloomy it was. It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.The hypocrisy level in this book is absolutely hilarious and Agnes handles it all with such cool and stoic exterior, she's such a little sweetheart. But Agnes is not without flaws herself. The whole duration of the book I kept wishing that she would stop caring so much about what her friends thought of her - everything she did, everything she persevered to endure was to keep her face and honor in front of her friends, and to me that just wasn't a good reasoning. I absolutely adored how awkwardly honest Agnes always was, and how she herself always admitted it. No, thank you, I don't mind the rain,' I said. I always lacked common sense when taken by surprise.Most of the side character will make you blind with rage, especially Rosalie Murray - that girl was so backwards I was surprised she could walk a straight line. The novel portrays very well how riches and negligence will make anyone rotten spoiled and how amidst all of that those who have their principles in check will persevere no matter the trials. While not as emotional as works of her sisters, Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey is an excellent quick read - if the simple plot doesn't do you well, then read it simply for the excellence and brilliance of writing. My WEBSITEMy INSTAGRAMMy WORDPRESS BLOG

Agnes is in desperate need of a visit from Nanny McPhee and I am in desperate need of a Mr Weston.Utterly charming. Annes sharp sardonic wit and waspish humour is so compelling. Agnes Grey perfectly encapsulates the horror of a first job - or my first job, anyway. On paper, this could be satire... were it not for the very real situations Anne depicts. This is ruthless realism; her exposé was an explosive truth that no one wanted to tell - or hear. Agnes Grey is a sort of younger sister to Jane Eyre; but inferior in every way said one reviewer, crushingly. I need to rectify this: what very few people know is that Anne had covered the whole governessing, female self-determination thing way before Charlotte. Agnes Grey had been accepted for publication before Jane Eyre was even completed - Charlotte was still toiling away with her Charlotte/Monsieur Heger fanfiction that no one wanted to publish, AKA: The Professor. And yet Jane Eyre is remembered as the governess novel. Why? The simple reason is that Jane Eyre beat Agnes Grey to the press. The Brontë sisters sent their three respective debuts to publishers all in the same bundle, receiving rejection after rejection until one fateful day, both Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights were accepted by Thomas Cautley Newby - The Professor, however, was sent straight back. What should of been a triumph for Anne turned out to be less than perfect. The thing was, Newby was a bit of a chancer. He liked to procrastinate. During the lengthy wait for the dynamic duo to appear on the shelves, Charlotte had produced Jane Eyre, a novel whose core elements must have seemed very familiar to Anne; a plain, governess heroine, the daughter of a poor clergyman, finds love on her own terms - all communicated through an immediate and self conscious first person narrative. Hmm. Oh, Charlotte. How could you? Regardless of the fact Charlotte had none too subtly used Annes work as a template, Jane Eyre was promptly accepted by a different publisher, Smith, Elder & Co. It was out within a month and met with immediate success. By this time, Newby was still dragging his heels, but when news reached him of Currer Bells (Charlottes) success, he recognised that he had in his possession two novels by the esteemed authors brothers, Ellis and Acton - there was some serious money to be made. Finally the books were out - just five months late. Now Anne looked the imitator when she was in fact the pioneer. Of course, Jane Eyre was a highly romanticised and skewed interpretation of the precarious position of governess (although I do love it, regardless). Agnes Grey is highly autobiographical; sixty instances alone have been identified as being directly drawn from Annes own six years experience of the profession. She refused to wear rose-tinted glasses - being the social firebrand that she was, her purpose was reform. Agnes Grey is a deliberate attack of the disparity between the education of boys and girls and its consequences. Girls werent prepared for life, nor warned about the dangers of bad men. Even within these 200ish pages, Anne was already hinting at deeply controversial topics like marital abuse that she would later develop into her darker work, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (highly recommend, absolute masterpiece - see my thoughts here ). Critics however neglected to acknowledge her astute political engagement, asserting that her depiction of corrupt upper class morals and violent, beastly children was simply too monstrous to be true. Instead, they favoured Charlottes depiction: more Charlotte/Monsieur Heger fanfiction... but a slightly more coded version.Which is ridiculous - Charlotte hated governessing and couldnt manage it for more than eight months; Anne was the one who bit the bullet and endured. (Anne was the only of the four Brontës who managed to pin down a job, period.) On one occasion, the children Charlotte tutored even threw a rock at her which cut her badly on the forehead. She knew the crap governesses had to put up with: humiliation, oppression, isolation, bratty children and disrespectful employers. And yet she blesses Jane with one obedient pupil and a brooding, darkly romantic boss who treats her as an equal. I told you it was fanfiction.Dont get me wrong, Agnes Grey is pretty brutal in places, but its a novel that makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Why? Two words: Mr Weston. Good old Anne, she gave her heroine a man who is treats women well, something that put her at odds with her sisters who liked their malevolent Byronic heroes. Mr Weston is a babe and Agnes is at her most endearing when shes falling for him. Hes full of common sense and genuine affection... and he likes cats. He even saves a cat at one point, a plot device that is so reliable at making a character likeable, theres even a book about it: Save the Cat!: The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need. Need I say more?!!An exceptionally underrated book - and I dont think the copious editions with grotesque covers really do it any favours, either. A historically fascinating novel that already hints at some of those radical views Anne was brewing up ready for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, views that were years before her time - but a beautiful, beautiful story and a thoroughly moving romance besides.

It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well-cultivated, and the heart well-disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day. All very judicious and proper no doubt; but are such assertions supported by actual experience?Plot SummaryIn many respects, Agnes bears some similarities to Jane Eyre, at least in terms of temperament. She is quiet, sensible, clear-headed, and devoted to her family. She, unlike Jane, grows up in a relatively comfortable home, one of six children, which is eventually reduced to just two, Agnes and her elder sister Mary, which can only be expected, childhood mortality being what it was (I get the impression that Anne set the novel in the late Regency era, though I may be wrong). Agnes becomes the baby of the family, and is kept very much isolated throughout her childhood, having very few friends, and little to no contact with her relatives. When her father, a rector, makes an unfortunate monetary decision that results in their circumstances being considerably straitened, Agnes (aged 18) announces, much to everyone's surprise, that she wishes to become a governess, in order to improve the family finances. The reader is then taken along for the ride, so to speak, as Agnes endures the hardships that a 19th century governess is pretty much expected to put up with. The children in her first employment, the Bloomfields, are quite simply ghastly; the eldest son, equipped with a violent temper and an almost infuriating sense of his privileged position as the son and heir, enjoys torturing innocent animals (with the encouragement of his father and uncle), and his sisters more than equal him in that respect, endeavouring to get Agnes in as much trouble as possible. Despite their frankly awful personalities, their parents, alternating between a chilly regard towards Agnes to a fiery outburst of temper, seem totally unaware of their children's flaws, leading them to blame Agnes for their shortcomings.Eventually, Agnes (now in her early twenties) is informed that her contract has not been renewed, which leads her to seek new employment elsewhere. She finds work, and a larger pay packet, with the Murray family, where she becomes governess and companion to their two teenage daughters, Rosalie and Matilda. Whilst there, she becomes acquainted with the new curate, Mr. Weston, a thoughtful and somewhat solemn man, whom she often meets during her travels to her poorer neighbours in the community, and as the months pass she realises that she is falling in love with him, though she sees very little reason why he should ever return her affections, being, in her view, plain and insignificant. When her charge, the beguiling and beautiful, but hopelessly selfish and vain Rosalie Murray begins flirting with Mr. Weston, simply to order to snare yet another man whom she will enjoy rejecting later on, Agnes is silently distraught, but determined to keep her feelings hidden. Will Agnes be unlucky in love, or will events progress in her favour?Verdict*Four and a half stars*Okay, first of all - I really like this novel. I was somewhat less enamoured of it at first, though, I must admit. Whilst it certainly wasn't boring, it didn't grip me in the same way Jane Eyre did the first time I read it (Charlotte Bronte will feature in this review, as will Emily, as much as I'd rather keep them out of it). As the novel wore on, however, I began to change my mind. Agnes is a likeable heroine, for starters; whilst knowing her station, and trying to see the good in everyone, she is not as naive as she first appears. She assesses her charges characters immediately, realizing their obvious flaws, as well as those of their parents, and hopes (in vain) that she will be able to remove these negative attributes by exerting her own influence. She is also, to some extent, slightly sardonic, and enjoys displaying an innocent smile to an outraged Rosalie when Mr. Weston offers her his umbrella to as they walk to the carriage due to take them home after church, whilst secretly rejoicing inwardly (we've all been there, haven't we?). I have to say, I loved Agnes' sassy side. It contrasted well with her pious nature, and removed any annoyance I might otherwise have felt towards her. Critics haven't always been so quick to heap praise on this particular novel as they have been towards Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, and one thing that I noticed is the similarity (in terms of the love triangle at least) with Charlotte Bronte's own wildly popular yarn, published along with Agnes Grey in 1847. I think this is partly due to the fact that Agnes undergoes far less in terms of suffering than Jane or Cathy (or any of the Wuthering Heights characters, for that matter), and, yes, she does have it relatively easy by comparison, though I'm inclined to view her character development as being pretty solid despite this. In some instances, this novel felt almost utopian in aspect, which may have had something to do with the character's own feelings of isolation. It reminded me occasionally of Austen's Emma, for example, although that may have been due in part to Anne's (as well as lot of other 18/19th century novelists) annoying decision to use only a dash instead of just inventing a town or village, eg. 'A----' or 'F---', which left me at times feeling rather lost. I shall not attempt to explain why.Overall, Agnes Grey is a good novel. Irish writer George Moore once called it 'the most perfect prose narrative in English letters' and compared Anne to Jane Austen, which I am inclined to agree with, at least partially. If you're wanting drama on the scale of Charlotte or Emily, then try Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. If you're not fussy then I'd still recommend reading this; I've always felt that Anne is vastly underrated in comparison to her more famous sisters. The day more of the world begins to realise this will be a great day indeed.

"... for nothing can be taught to any purpose without some little exertion on the part of the learner." So here we are, finding consolation in reading about the reality of schooling in a novel published almost two centuries ago. That quote is true, my dear Agnes alias Anne. And how come we still don't quote you on each curriculum, on each report card, on each test result?Well, that is because you let your governess alter ego discover the other eternal truth as well, known to teachers of all curricula: namely that many parents may CLAIM to want to hear the truth about their children, and they may CLAIM to want them to learn and work studiously, but in reality, what they want to hear is praise of their offspring's unique genius, and they also want to be spared the parental effort it takes to instil respect and love of learning in their children - which is contrary to their natural desire to feel superior to the person assigned to take care of the schooling.Being a governess in upper class Victorian England might sound like a completely different work experience when we compare it to being a school teacher in contemporary Sweden, but it is not. Where effort is avoided, and students are indulged to avoid short term tantrums and conflicts, the exact same situation occurs. A teacher trying to commit to a calling, a profession, will always be the first target for self-involved parents without true inclination for genuine education. Targeting the children is too close to self-criticism.What I learned - yet again - from reading Agnes Grey is that human nature is the same over time and space, and that change can only happen on an individual, voluntary level. Parenting matters, more than anything else in the world. The ideas we give our children on how to treat our fellow human beings, and on how to approach the privilege of being educated and well cared for, still make all the difference for their development. Tell students that the teacher is inferior to their parents and should be treated like a servant, and nothing the teacher teaches the students will be judged worth knowing. Tell them, on the other hand, that learning is the magical gate towards a self-determined and independent life, and that the teacher holds the key to the gate, - and the children will be sponges soaking up whatever knowledge they can collect. It is all about the mindset we give our children.On the sidelines of the main social issue - the hardship of young educated women trying to succeed in the teaching profession - Agnes Grey manages to describe another ordeal of vulnerable female characters: the marrying business. One might get the notion that a woman can only choose between Scylla and Charybdis when making her path between the inhumane treatment of governesses and the eternal unhappiness following a conventional loveless marriage.Had the youngest Brontë sister lived longer, she might have found a third path for herself - that of a successful writer. As it is, she remains forever contemporary in her honest and critical assessment of social injustice in her own time, based on firsthand experience and accurate rendering of basic psychological structures in upper class parenting.Is it making me feel hope or despair to realise that there never were any good ol' times? I don't know. I think it makes me feel hope that ANY society, no matter how dysfunctional and discriminating, can occasionally see the rise of brave and independent spirits like Agnes/Anne who dare to speak up for change. To be the change. To say and act on what is true:"... for nothing can be taught to any purpose without some little exertion on the part of the learner."