Two Is All We Get

“Agnes Grey,” written by Anne Brontë, the youngest of the three Brontë sisters, was originally published in 1847. It is one of only two novels that she published. It is a very uncomplicated story, at least on the surface of it, about the travails of governess Agnes Grey in the privileged world of wealthy, mid 19th century British society.

It is autobiographical. It is a sensitive and beautiful novel, reflective of Anne Brontë’s own religious convictions. Sadly, it is the last of Anne Brontë’s two books that I can read, as she only had time to write two. She died young. I spoke of the other, “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall” (1848), some weeks ago.

Family financial difficulties drive Agnes to leave her loving home and serve as a governess for young children and teens who, to say the least, are inattentive and willful, products of the class mindset and biases of their own parents. Spoiled and self-centered they are.

These circumstances alone are enough to challenge the governess, but there is another. It is that a governess must suffer the constant humiliation of being held to the light as a lesser being, one for which parental expectations are ever the impossible, while always class impositions are transferred directly as well as through the subject children.

In a school room full of governess and children, children rule. Class rules. Even servants abide by that snub.

Agnes persists because she must. She and her family are poor. She must suppress her own instincts, as those who are powerless often do. Her Anne must write this book. But, without revealing the heartwarming subtext of the novel, there is good to come of the whole experience. One must read with hope.

It is not unusual for me to find an author, and, if I fall in love with a first read, go on a quest for everything else by the author that has been published. It has happened with Margaret Atwood after “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Colson Whitehead after “The Underground Railroad” and Edith Wharton after “The Age of Innocence.”

Sometimes, the first book remains the standout in my mind. In the case of Anne Brontë, though, both her books stick with me equally. They are very different in storyline and tone. “Agnes Grey” is a much less complex novel than is “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.” At its time of publication, it was seen as too simple a storyline. But, both, together, seem to sum up the very short lifetime of the author. Both are needed.

So, sadly, my author quest this time ends with the very short novel “Agnes Grey,” as there is no other to be had. I suspect that “Agnes Grey” will stick with me all the longer for that.

Two is all we get.