Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

Agnes Grey's portrayl of the life of a governess is one that seems to stand out from the usual portayl of children in the Victorian era. If we think of children in the 1800's we get the Dickensian idea of workhouses and the downtrodden child or possibly the peripheral Henry James type child - Bronte's children differ from both of these. This is mainly down to the fact that a) she is dealing with, largely, a different class of children then Dicken was and b) Anne Bronte actually knew what children were like due to her own work as a governess. This sees a vivid and truly emphatic portayl of the life of someone whose job is the family but who is never truly part of the family.

The opening sections of the story recounting a household in which the three young children ran rings around the protagonist I found both unsettling and entertaining in equal measures. The steep learning curve that Agnes finds herself on is one where it is easy for the reader to empathise with her. However as the book progresses and Agnes moves to another house to become the governess to two older young women I felt the characters began to blend together far too much. A tool used by Anne Bronte to highlight the character traits is to present you with two characters at the same time that are vastly different to one another. This can be seen in the differing portayl of the two sisters, Mary and Rosalie, as well as the difference between Mr Hatfield, the mean spirited rector, and Mr Weston, the inevitable love intrest. I found this technique did not work so well as I have seen it done in other books of the period and I often found the two sisters interchangable.

In books of this style and period one cannot help reading sideways and comparing Anne Bronte's works, firstly to that of her sisters but mainly to Jane Austen. Anne is no Jane Austen and Agnes Grey is no Jane Eyre. I got the feeling that Anne's youth disabled her to writen as convingincly about love as she did about children - in many ways Anne's work seems to be cribbed from her contempories, both familal and liteary. Anne Bronte is unfortunatley going to be consigned to history as an also-ran.